Chapter 8 - Isabella Had Kept a Ledger Alessio Never Knew Existed

The investigators found another clue in the greenhouse itself.

Behind a row of old seed-storage drawers was a narrow notebook in Isabella’s handwriting.

Not hidden dramatically.

Just overlooked.

The first half contained ordinary garden notes.

Bloom dates.

Fertilizer schedules.

Ruby’s childish drawings tucked between pages.

Then the entries changed.

Isabella began recording invoices from Marco’s company.

One premium soil treatment billed at $4,800.

Actual supplier delivery:

$730.

Specialized fungal control billed twice in the same month.

No matching delivery record.

Several large charges for imported planting material Isabella wrote she had never received.

Then one sentence:

Marco says Claudia handles the invoicing. Need full reconciliation before I confront them together.

Three pages later:

Beds 3, 4 and 7 damaged after unauthorized spray. Samples sent. Marco barred from greenhouse.

And finally:

If this is what I think it is, they used my garden to bill us for work they never did, then damaged the beds badly enough to sell us the replacement job.

Alessio closed the notebook.

There was the central scheme.

The flowers had not merely been collateral damage.

The Moretti business profited twice.

First by billing for treatments it did not properly provide.

Then by proposing expensive replacement work when sections of the garden failed.

Isabella had caught the pattern.

Her illness prevented her from finishing the confrontation.

Her death did not create the fraud.

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It simply gave the people responsible time to hope the evidence died with her.

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