She was terrified.

What had propelled this woman out of her comfort zone?

“I’m Detective Callahan.” He led her back to his desk and gestured at a chair. Ray had stepped away to wrap up his call. His wife understood late hours and changed plans came with the job, but that didn’t mean she had to like it.

“Esther Cavallo.” She looked straight at him as she sat down, and Mason saw a spark of determination in her eyes.

“You’re married to one of Lorenzo’s sons?”

“Yes, Nico is my husband. You were at our house today. I apologize for my bad manners in not greeting you as a guest.” She swallowed hard.

“Ah… that’s quite all right. No harm done.”

“Nico didn’t know if your visit was going to be appropriate.”

Appropriate for what? For a woman’s ears? Like he and Ray were going to drop a bunch of f-bombs that might sully Nico’s wife? “That’s understandable.” In the Dark Ages. “What can I do for you?”

“It’s about Lucia.”

Mason waited.

Esther toyed at her purse clasp, her fingers tracing its metal prongs. “Lucia was one of those women found so long ago, right? You’ve identified her?”

“That’s right. We’re ninety-nine percent certain it is her. Lorenzo left a DNA sample for us to compare, and we’re waiting on those results. But based on some dental findings, we believe it’s her.”

Esther nodded.

“Did you know Lucia?”

“Oh, no.” Esther shook her head. “Nico was only a boy when his aunt left.”

Mason abruptly realized the woman in front of him couldn’t be older than fifty. She acted two decades older.

“But there were always stories about his wild aunt. The other family members would always whisper about her. She was the one who’d been sent away.”

“I thought she ran off after a fight with her father.”

“The men described it that way. But the women knew. She’d been punished for her behavior.”

Ray sat down at the desk across from Mason and nodded at Esther. “Punished? Punished how?”

Esther stared at him with wide eyes.

“Mrs. Cavallo, this is Detective Ray Lusco. Ray, this is Nico Cavallo’s wife.” Mason spoke up before she took flight. “Maybe you better tell us about the rumors of Lucia’s behavior and punishment.”

For the next ten minutes, Mason listened and gently led the woman through a story that sounded straight out of a third world country. Women treated as belongings, men who dominated, and a man who ruled over all of them.

“This took place here?” Ray asked in disbelief at one point. “In Oregon?”

Esther nodded emphatically. “The church dissolved when Nico was a teen. His mother sometimes told me stories about the old days, when she was encouraged to not speak to men other than her husband. She never learned to drive or handle any money. The men did everything. A woman’s role was to serve her husband. But Lucia didn’t like it.”

“Mrs. Cavallo, why are you telling us now? Aren’t you worried about getting in trouble?” Mason wanted to say getting in trouble with your husband, but couldn’t form the words. How had women lived with this oppression?

“Because it’s not right that Lucia is not laid to rest. Her bones should not be in a box somewhere. And no matter what bad blood there is between Lorenzo and his sons, at least one of them should be stepping forward to claim his body. They may have avoided him for the past decade, but they should not continue to punish him in death.”

Esther was a woman with principles.

“What do you think happened to Lucia?” Ray asked softly.

She held his gaze. “I think she was killed. She and those other five women.”

“Who did this?”

“Cesare Abbadelli. No one dared speak against him.”

The same man that Michael Brody discovered ran the church and who arranged the adoptions.

“The minister?” Ray asked.

She nodded.

“Mrs. Cavallo,” Mason asked carefully, his brain spinning. “Do you know anything about adoptions arranged by that church?”

The woman paled. “What of it?”

“We have a friend who was put up for adoption through this church. She’s trying to find her birth parents. Where did the babies come from who were put up for adoption?”

Esther stared at him. “Some were of the church,” she whispered. “The unmarried women who got pregnant. Others came from the surrounding area. Girls who got in trouble and didn’t know what to do.”

Mason looked at Ray. A different era. Yes, this church was in a rural and rather isolated area, but was there nowhere else for the women to turn?

“Why do you think the minister killed Lucia?” Mason prodded.

Esther looked at her hands, strangling her bag in her lap. “I don’t know.”

Mason believed this terrified woman was reaching out to him to share what she knew. He just had to guide it out of her. Gently.

“Mrs. Cavallo… why do you suspect Cesare Abbadelli was responsible for those women’s deaths?” he asked calmly.

“It was whispered.” Her gaze slowly lifted from her purse, meeting Mason’s. “The other women of the church whispered behind closed doors that Cesare was weak when it came to women. And that he hated his weakness, blaming the women who created it. His own wife vanished decades ago. No one asked questions. He said she ran off with another man.”