Nineteen #2
Her eyes got big. “You think the Harcourts adopted Dane and somebody else?”
It was a juicy lie. “Yeah. I think maybe Dane has another sibling out there, but I can’t even dig until I know the agency.”
“Okay.” She nodded. “Let’s go see what we can find.”
I was led to her father’s den and then directed to the safe in the floor behind his desk.
Gwen knew the combination, and once it was opened, we found the deed for the house, invoices for various supplies and merchandise, birth certificates, picture negatives, five thousand dollars in cash, passports, and a set of keys.
“Sorry, J.” She sighed. “I would have thought this is where it would have been.”
“Can we check your mom’s room?”
“Sure.” She yawned, locking the safe. “C’mon.”
We climbed the stairs to the second floor, and Gwen explained that to the right was her father’s room. I looked at her.
“Yeah, I know. But my parents have always had separate rooms. My dad snores like mad, and my mom does this freaky throat-clearing thing in the night. It’s all phlegmy and gross.”
I smiled at her as we passed his room and walked to the next one.
Susan’s room was connected to her husband’s by a door, just like at a hotel, except there was no lock on either side. Which made sense. Why would there be a lock?
“Cute, right?”
Big is the adjective I would have chosen. Susan Reid’s bedroom was all wood floors and a huge four-poster bed made of what looked like mahogany. It was very dark and just a little creepy. The entire wall, on either side of the bed, was comprised of drawers.
“You want me to help you look for any paperwork?”
“That’d be great.”
Gwen carefully went through drawers with me, but after half an hour she left me alone to go get another cup of coffee.
She promised to bring me back a bottle of water.
As soon as she walked out the door, I went immediately to check between the mattress and the frame of the bed.
There was nothing there, but that gave me another idea, and I checked underneath all the drawers in the room.
There was nothing anywhere, and when Gwen came back, she told me that she could just call her mom and ask the name of the agency. She felt stupid for not thinking of that earlier, but she had gotten caught up in feeling like a detective, looking for a clue with me.
I explained that telling Susan would be a bad idea because then she would tell Dane and it would be a mess. I didn’t want to alert him in case I was wrong.
“Oh.” She smiled at me. “Smart.”
“Where else could we look?”
“Her office?”
“Perfect, where’s that?”
“Downtown. I’ll go with you to the office, introduce you to everyone, go to class, and then afterward we can get lunch with Casey and some of my friends. Sound good?”
“Sounds great.”
“Okay, lemme get my bag.”
We left the rural area of Mesquite, and she drove me back toward downtown.
Apparently, Susan had taken a job to help bring in some extra money, to help the business get back on its feet.
She was working at a doctor’s office as a medical transcriber and manager.
The other nurses were happy to see Gwen and interested to meet me.
When Gwen left, with orders for me to meet her right off campus at a really good restaurant that served great Mexican food, I agreed quickly.
I was left alone in Susan’s office and instructed not to move anything.
Her friend Nancy gave me a serious look over the top of her glasses, but I grinned, and she broke down and smiled back.
Alone in the office, I carefully ransacked it, getting under every drawer, going painstakingly through the files in her desk.
I was sure the file cabinet behind me only had the doctor’s files in it, but I had to look anyway.
When I went back out to the front, Nancy told me that I was right—the large steel drawers were full of patient information, and I wasn’t getting in there.
“What are you looking for, anyway?” she asked irritably. “I’m not sure I want you going through her office without her permission. The more I think about it, the weirder it is.”
“I’m just looking for some papers that pertain to my brother. She told me to come get them while I was in town because she’s helping me run down a lead with the adoption agency.”
“Oh.” She nodded, going to a desk drawer and opening it up. “Then you probably need the safety-deposit box key. She told me that someone would be by to get it; she must have meant you.”
“That’s right. It was me.”
“I don’t know why she didn’t just say Jory, but she’s just been so scattered lately—I’m worried about her.”
“Probably has to do with Daniel’s business.”
She looked over her shoulder at me before turning back around. “Oh, you know about that?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She put a hand on my arm. “It’s a shame, isn’t it? Them having to take out a second mortgage on the house just to get by.”
“Her son will help.”
“Darling, Caleb’s been out of work for months, and Jeremy—”
“Yeah, but Caleb—”
“Will probably end up moving back in with his parents. I told Susan that if he doesn’t get a job and pay some rent, she shouldn’t let him.”
Caleb had been out of work before he was kidnapped. He hadn’t told me that. “You were going to say something about Jeremy before I interrupted you.”
“Well, yes—Jeremy’s the oldest, right? He should be the one stepping up to the plate.”
“And he’s not?”
She winced. “It’s not like he doesn’t try, it’s just… He missed a promotion he was supposed to get after he and Taylor broke up… He’s just not in a good place.”
“Taylor?”
“His girlfriend.”
“Oh.”
“So both her sons are in no shape to—”
“I meant Dane when I said her son would help. He can and will.”
Her face brightened. “Will he?”
“Oh, yes, ma’am.”
She passed me a small set of five keys and squeezed my shoulder. “You’ll talk to him, will you?”
“I will.”
“That’s great. Susan told me that your brother just dotes on you. I’m sure if you ask him, that will go a long way to convincing him.”
I nodded.
“And especially now.” Her brows furrowed as she shook her head. “They need help.”
I squinted at her. “Do you mean with just the business?”
She studied my face. “No, but if the business does well, maybe they will too.”
Daniel and Susan’s marriage was rocky? All the little secrets I was finding out.
“Now, dear, I have no idea what any of those keys are for,” she told me, “but they aren’t for the doctor’s files.
” She pointed at a flat one. “I think that’s the safety-deposit box one.
She banks at First United Credit Union, a block from us.
But just call her and ask, and if she calls here, I’ll tell her I gave you the keys. ”
I couldn’t very well tell her not to. How suspicious would that have looked? So I nodded, thanked her, and left. I just hoped Susan wouldn’t feel compelled to call work for some reason. As long as she and Nancy didn’t talk, I was fine.
The credit union was small and crowded with people when I got there.
It was lucky, because the girl who helped me just took the key, walked into the vault, and came back hurriedly with the box.
She motioned me to the cubicles behind her and sat me down before she put the box down.
She left seconds later with orders to call her when I was done.
When I lifted the lid, I found a lot of the same contents that were in Daniel’s safe at their home.
Copies of birth certificates. Their marriage certificate was also inside, and five hundred dollars in cash.
There was also a set of two keys on a Tiffany key ring.
It was the one Aja had given out at the wedding in her gift bags.
One of the keys was a large square-top one with a Do Not Duplicate engraving on it.
It looked just like the one I had for my security door at home.
The other was a house key. I wondered why they were there instead of at her house with all the other sets I had seen there, hanging on pegs in the kitchen.
There was nothing else in the box. I pocketed the keys, locked the box, and called the attendant back.
Back outside on the street in front of the credit union, I wasn’t sure what to do until I remembered Gwen.
Maybe she knew what the key was for. As I walked back toward the office and farther, toward the campus—apparently sometimes Gwen walked to her mother’s office and had lunch during the week—I turned my phone on and called Dane.
“Jory,” he snapped at me, “where—yes, it’s him.” He sounded really exasperated.
“Hey, I gotta—”
“Jory, where are you?” he almost yelled but stopped himself.
“I’m on my way to—”
“I’m going to strangle you!” Sam roared into the phone. “Where the hell are you? Tell me now!”
“It’s really hard to talk to both of you at the same time, especially when you’re both yelling at me.”
“Dane and I just landed in Dallas.”
“Really?”
“Yes really!”
“Okay, well, I was just at the Reid place, and Gwen was there, so she let me look around, and then we left and came into town to check Susan’s office.”
“You’re at her office?”
“I was.”
“Where,” he growled, “are you right now?” He finished with a yell.
“Don’t be loud on the phone,” I reminded him.
His huff was filled with frustration.
“Jory.” Dane’s soothing voice was like velvet. “Wherever you are right this second, stop.”
“But I gotta find out what this key is for.”
“What key?”
“The key I found in the safety-deposit box.”
“You found a key in whose safety-deposit box? Susan’s?”
“Yeah.”
“And you—oh, Jory, I—what? Sure.”
“Jory.” Sam was back on the phone, his voice low and full of gravel.
“Hey.”
“I have to warn you about something.”
“What’s that?”
“The Dallas PD is on the lookout for you. If they pick you up, they’re gonna take you in on a psych eval, and that’s—”
“What? Why would they think I’m crazy?”
“They don’t think you’re crazy, they think you’re a danger to others.”
“You told them that?” I couldn’t even breathe.
“Of course I didn’t tell them that,” he barked at me. “Calhoun told them that.”
And that fast, everything was better. “Calhoun?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”