Chapter 13 - THE MISSING PAGE
Park found Vale’s car in the clinic parking garage. Her office lights were on. She was nowhere inside.
By noon, her attorney heard from her. Vale had gone to her sister’s house in Connecticut after receiving a message threatening to release her role in the false billing. She came back with an attorney and gave Park a full statement.
Vale admitted approving fake charges during the clinic’s financial crisis. She said she’d planned to reverse them after a large donation arrived. When Bellini found out, he offered money and told her he could make the books balance.
“He made them worse,” she said.
Bellini had then used patient accounts to hide transfers. When Rosa discovered it, Vale tried to persuade her to stay quiet. Rosa refused.
“Did you hurt my grandmother?” I asked when Park told me what Vale had said.
“Vale denies it,” Park answered. “We’re checking her account against the records.”
Vale handed over the missing list. It named patients whose appointments had been canceled so the clinic could bill for visits that never happened. One was a woman Rosa had often spoken about, Mrs. Greene. She’d been turned away three times while trying to get help for her husband.
I went to see her with Park’s permission. Mrs. Greene remembered Rosa sitting with her in the waiting room and promising to look into the bill.
“She called me the week before she got sick,” Mrs. Greene said. “Told me she finally had proof.”
The investigation now had a deadline. Bellini’s company was due to move funds out of several accounts in forty-eight hours. Park’s team worked with financial investigators to hold the money while they sought charges and recovered more records.
Antonio brought Maria to the precinct to identify the man who’d approached her at Bellarosa. From a set of photographs, she chose Bellini’s driver. Marco identified the same man.
It felt, briefly, like the pieces were coming together.
Then Ruth called me.
“I found an email Rosa sent herself,” she said. “It’s dated the morning she went into the recovery wing.”
“What does it say?”
“She wrote, ‘If Antonio sees the first ledger, Bellini will show him the second.’”
May you like
I asked what second ledger meant.
Ruth hesitated. “I think Bellini kept records of money that passed through Russo’s businesses without Antonio knowing.”
