Chapter 33 #2
“Um…” Frankie did some mental math—travel time, boots on the ground, that sort of thing. “Maybe four hours. At most.”
The man looked up from his computer. “Oh, we have a twenty-four-hour minimum.”
“But I don’t need it for that long.”
He shrugged. “Company policy. You can return it sooner, but the charge is the same.”
“Fine.” She handed him her emergencies-only credit card and hoped it wouldn’t be too expensive.
After signing the necessary paperwork, the guy walked her to the car. “Have you driven in England before?” he asked, unlocking it.
“No, but roads are roads, right?” Restless energy bounded inside Frankie. She wanted to be on her way five minutes ago. “Don’t worry, I’m a safe driver.”
“And you have insurance, which is what I care about,” he said. “But what I meant was—have you driven on the left before?”
Frankie pulled up short, eyes drawn to the small sedan where, yep, the steering wheel was on the wrong side. She’d forgotten about that detail.
“I’m a quick learner,” she said, holding out her hand for the key.
He hesitated for a beat, then dropped it into her palm. “If you say so. There are some great videos online of how we do roundabouts and intersections. You might want to check them out. Friendly suggestion.”
“Thanks.” She opened the door and got in, looking around at the backward interior. Fluttery critters started circling in her belly, but she forced a smile as she waved the guy off. She could do this. Lavignes didn’t back down from a challenge.
As soon as he was out of sight, she took him up on his advice and viewed several short videos of common pitfalls of left-side driving for tourists, and then she started up the car, thanking her luck that he’d at least given her an automatic transmission.
She took it slow at first, singing a made-up song about “staying to the left” any time she had to make a turn, but once she was out of the city, it was easier.
She reached Aftbury in twenty-two minutes and even managed to parallel park along the narrow street that ran through the small village.
If Guildford had been cute, Aftbury was downright picturesque, with hollyhocks lining the cobblestoned streets in front of quaint cottages adorned with thatched roofs. It was like entering a fairy tale.
“Excuse me, do you know where I can find the St. George’s Trust?” she asked the first person she came across.
The woman pointed ahead. “Second right,” she said. “Past the church.”
“Thanks.” Frankie set off in that direction at a quick pace, forcing herself to ignore the scenery. Everything but the task at hand could wait.
After searching for a few minutes, she found a sign on a brown-brick building with the name of the trust and knocked on the door.
She waited, her pulse thrumming erratically both from her quick walk and the potential for answers.
The squat stone church with its ornate square tower rose on her right, its medieval features poised as if to launch knights and dragons from its belly any moment, and beyond its cemetery was an even larger matching building that Frankie guessed had been the monastery.
She knocked again when no one came to the door, fighting the urge to peek through the lace-curtained windows.
“Come on,” she whispered, knocking a third time.
“No one’s there,” a voice said from somewhere behind her.
She spotted a man in the shade of a tree at the edge of the cemetery. He was resting his hand on top of a rake handle, a bushel of yard debris at his feet.
Frankie took a step toward him, shading her eyes against the midday sun. “Do you know where I can find them?”
He looked off toward the village. “I suspect they’re at home with their families. You know it’s a Saturday, right, love?”
Right. And maybe a trust wasn’t the sort of place where urgent work happened around the clock. “I need to speak to someone about… something,” she said, not wanting to get into it with this groundskeeper.
“That’s to do with St. George’s?” he asked, gesturing toward the church.
“Maybe,” she said.
“Well, the priest is here. You could try him.”
Frankie looked wistfully at the trust sign again, then accepted the change of plans. “Inside the church?” she asked.
“Last I saw him.”
She thanked him and directed her steps to her new destination.
The inside of the church was steeped in muted light, the air stale with old mortar and dust, but the brightly colored cloth on the altar spoke of an active space, as did the small children’s play area near the doors.
“Hello?” Frankie called, entering the central nave.
The rustling of paper reached her ears from somewhere not far off, then footsteps headed her way.
“Hello there,” a heavyset man in his fifties said upon approach, his collar telling Frankie she’d found the right person. “Can I help you, Miss?”
“I hope so,” Frankie said.
She shared what she’d learned at the bank and that it was important to her to understand why her mother had made payments to the trust but that their offices had been closed.
“The last payment was ten years ago, and I have reason to believe the account is no longer active,” she said, being intentionally vague to protect the tellers who’d helped her more than they should have. “Any idea where her money ended up?”
“Hmm,” the priest said. “About ten years ago, you say. Could I possibly see the document?”
Frankie retrieved it from her bag and handed it to him, pointing out where the account number and code were located.
“Do you mind waiting while I make a call to someone who might know more?”
“Of course.” Frankie nodded, hope returning.
She paced the aisles while she waited, the priest’s muted voice skimming the walls around her as the sound traveled from what she assumed was his office.
Please, find some answers, she pleaded silently, eyes drawn to the stained-glass windows up high.
She snapped a picture and sent it to Owen with the caption Following breadcrumbs in Aftbury.
Look at you sleuthing, was his response. Grams is so proud.
Just then, the priest returned, so she tucked her phone away. “Anything?”
“I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before,” he said. “But at least I confirmed it for you. We believe the payment was a donation to the boarding school.”
“A boarding school?” Frankie frowned.
“See the first S in the code would have earmarked the funds for the school, but it was closed permanently a little over eight years ago,” the priest continued.
“Dwindling enrollment and the cost of building maintenance made it unsustainable. A shame. It brought energy to the community for so many years.”
“But why would my mother in North Carolina make payments to this school?” Frankie asked. “And why stop paying two years before it closed if it had financial issues?”
“Was she an alum perhaps? We did get a handful of overseas students each year. Or her church might have directed her charity our way if they knew of a struggling partner parish.”
Frankie shook her head. None of it fit well.
Mom had attended church regularly for the past twenty years, so maybe the priest’s second suggestion had some merit, but it still didn’t explain the connection to Frankie’s birthday or why Estelle hadn’t used her regular checking account to make the payments.
The only comfort was that it at least didn’t suggest Estelle having paid someone off for a criminal endeavor.
“Would she have had reason to sponsor a student?” the priest asked.
Frankie was about to say no, but then a thought struck that made her gasp.
“What age were the students?” Could her sister have come here?
She quickly calculated how old baby A would have been when Estelle started sending payments, but her excitement faltered as soon as she realized the years didn’t add up.
Her sister would have been an adult by then if she was still alive. Her heart squeezed at the thought.
“Twelve to eighteen. Such a fun age,” the priest said. “I joined the parish five years before the school’s demise and didn’t have much to do with the academic side of the trust, but we all felt the quiet after they were gone.”
“Do the names Lavigne or Milne mean anything to you?” she asked just in case. “Or maybe Sutton? First initial A? A girl.”
He thought about it. “Nothing comes to mind. I think there was an Anthony Milner toward the end possibly.”
“What about Estelle Lavigne? Ever heard that name?”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry, no.”
Frankie sighed. Was this really going to be another dead end? She might have found out where Estelle’s money had gone, but the big “why” remained infuriatingly veiled.
She thanked the priest and returned outside where the sunlight blazed her retinas as she adjusted to the light.
She stood for a while on the church step, the village quiet before her.
The heaviness in her heart didn’t fit this beautiful May Saturday.
She was in England—her first trip ever crossing an ocean—but as much as she wished she could enjoy it, that wasn’t why she’d come.
She was on a mission, and if she wanted to prevail, she had to think.
She opened a browser on her phone and searched for St. George’s Academy in Aftbury to see if anything would pop up and spark an idea, but her roaming internet was too slow to load anything.
“Crap,” she muttered, dropping her phone to her side, her mind working.
If she was Estelle, why would she donate money to a school so far away? Had she come here at some point? Did she have ties to someone local? Was it merely a religious donation?