Chapter 13
Brooklyn Sloane
Porter Voss was nowhere to be found.
Brook had knocked on the guesthouse door twice, but there had been no answer.
She’d walked the grounds near the barn and the toolshed, checked the perimeter along the stone wall, and even circled back to the greenhouse on the off chance he’d gone to speak with one of the forensics technicians.
The cottage was quiet, his boots were missing from the front step, and the truck he used for supply runs was gone from its usual spot near the barn.
He’d left the property without telling anyone, which wasn’t unusual for someone who made regular trips into town. But the timing bothered her. She had questions about Nestor’s missing equipment, and Porter was the one person who had been on this estate long enough to know where it might have gone.
The walk back across the grounds had taken more out of her than she’d expected.
The midday heat pressed down on the property, and the air was so heavy that each breath was like an act of intention.
The gravel path radiated warmth through the soles of her flats, and by the time she reached the rear entrance of the main house, a film of perspiration had formed along her hairline.
The baby had shifted during the walk, settling lower, and the pressure on her hips was a reminder that her body was operating on a timeline that had nothing to do with the investigation.
She made her way down the hallway toward the kitchen, intending to cut through to the dining room and ask Bit to pull the surveillance footage from the cameras he’d mounted yesterday. The cameras would have captured the time and direction that Porter had left the estate.
She was in the foyer when she caught sight of Gwenyth.
The woman was standing on the second-floor landing, both hands resting on the railing, her body angled slightly forward as though she’d been watching the foyer below for some time.
The gray cardigan hung from her thin shoulders, and her hair fell in the same straight, uncombed curtain as it had the previous evening.
Her expression was blank in a way that went beyond disinterest. It was completely absent. Whatever clarity had carried Gwenyth down the staircase last night, whatever sharpness had allowed her to confront Dale and ask Brook to find her father’s killer, was gone.
The woman standing at the railing wasn’t the same woman who had spoken those words.
Brook slowed her steps and stopped at the base of the staircase. She kept her voice soft and unhurried.
“Good afternoon, Gwenyth.”
No response. Gwenyth’s hands remained on the railing, her gaze directed downward but unfocused, as though she were searching for something that existed several layers beneath the surface of the hardwood floor.
Brook didn’t push. She placed one hand on the banister and began to ascend, taking the steps slowly enough that Gwenyth could track her movements without feeling rushed or cornered.
The wood creaked beneath Brook’s weight, each step producing its own specific groan, and the sound seemed to register somewhere behind Gwenyth’s eyes, though her expression didn’t change.
When Brook reached the first landing where the staircase split, she lowered herself carefully onto the top step and sat down.
It wasn’t the most dignified position for a woman eight months pregnant, and the process of getting back up would require more effort than she cared to think about, but she’d learned a long time ago that the fastest way to get someone to come to you was to stop moving toward them.
She rested her hands in her lap and waited.
The house was quiet in the way that only old, large houses could be, not silent but filled with the small, involuntary sounds of a structure breathing around them.
The tick of the clock from deeper in the house.
The faint settling of pipes in the walls.
The barely perceptible hum of Bit’s equipment from the dining room below, muffled by the stairs and the distance.
A full minute passed.
Gwenyth eventually shifted her weight from one bare foot to the other.
She released the railing with one hand, then the other, and took two tentative steps toward the landing where Brook waited patiently.
Gwenyth stopped several feet away, close enough to hear a conversation but far enough to retreat if she needed to.
It was the same boundary she’d established at the threshold of the dining room the night before.
Brook accepted the distance without comment.
“I want you to know that I’m truly sorry for your loss, Gwenyth.
” Brook kept her tone conversational, as though they were two women sitting on someone’s front steps rather than occupying the staircase of her home.
“I lost both of my parents, and I can tell you from experience that nothing ever truly fills the hole they leave behind. You learn to live around it. You build your days on either side of it. But the hole stays.”
Gwenyth’s gaze had drifted from the floor to Brook’s stomach. She didn’t speak, but her attention was steady, and that was enough.
“I know that trying to remember things from thirty years ago isn’t easy,” Brook continued, letting the words flow at a pace that matched the quiet of the house.
“Half the time, I can barely recall what I did last week. But your father spent his life in that greenhouse, and the people who came and went from this estate during those years might help us understand what happened to him. If you could recall some things from back then, even the smallest of details that might not seem important, they could tell us where to look.”
Gwenyth remained standing for several more seconds before something in her posture gave way.
She lowered herself onto the bottom step of the right-side staircase, the one that led up to her private wing, and drew her knees toward her chest. She wrapped her arms around them and rested her chin on top, making herself as small as the cardigan would allow.
The position was childlike and protective, making her appear far younger than her forty-eight years.
The light from the corridor window fell across her bare feet and the hem of her sweater, leaving her face in shadow.
“Uncle Dale came around more when Mama was alive,” Gwenyth said, her voice quieter than it had been the previous evening.
It was stripped of the authority she’d shown when she’d directed her uncle to leave the estate.
“He and Daddy used to argue about money. Always money. Money, money, money. Dale wanted Daddy to sell off part of the property, saying it was too much land for one family. Daddy said the land wasn’t Dale’s to sell. ”
Brook listened without interrupting.
“After Mama died, Dale stopped coming as much. I think he was afraid of Daddy’s sadness.
Some people are like that, you know. They don’t know how to be around grief, so they stay away and pretend it isn’t happening.
” Gwenyth’s fingers tightened around her knees.
“But Uncle Cal was different. Uncle Cal was always here.”
“Tell me about him.”
“Kind.” The word came with a simplicity that carried more weight than any elaboration could have.
“He brought me books from the school library. Science books, mostly, because he said I was smart enough to understand them. He’d sit with Daddy in the greenhouse for hours, and when he came out, he’d find me and tell me what they’d talked about, but in a way I could follow.
He made it sound exciting. Like Daddy was doing something that would change the world. ”
“Were he and your father close?”
“They were best friends.”
Gwenyth’s chin settled deeper against her knees.
“I’m curious,” Brook said as she shifted and rested one hand on the landing behind her. The baby had once again settled over her bladder. “Do you know what happened to your father’s equipment? The microscopes, the instruments he used in the greenhouse, his journals?”
Gwenyth’s expression didn’t change, but the rhythm of her breathing shifted almost imperceptibly.
“It’s in Daddy’s lab.”
The answer was delivered with the same quiet certainty as everything else Gwenyth had shared, as though the existence of a lab were common knowledge rather than information that hadn’t appeared in any of the files, records, or interviews Brook’s team had conducted since their arrival.
“Where is the lab, Gwenyth?”
“Daddy loved his greenhouse.”
Brook turned Gwenyth’s response over in her mind.
The greenhouse had already been searched.
The worktables were bare, the shelves held nothing but ceramic pots and hardened soil, and Dr. Kessler’s team had been working in the space for days without finding any equipment.
If Gwenyth was pointing her back to a place that had already been examined from top to bottom, then maybe the answer wasn’t in the greenhouse itself.
Maybe it was beneath it.
A cellar, a basement, an underground space that Nestor had built or converted without anyone else knowing.
Gwenyth spoke again, though the words seemed to arrive from somewhere further away.
“Do you think that maybe the man who used to sneak onto the property at night hurt Daddy? I always thought he was nice. So nice.”
Brook’s hands stilled in her lap.
“What man, Gwenyth?”
But the window had closed.
Gwenyth unfolded herself from the step and stood with the slow, deliberate movements of someone surfacing from deep water.
She pulled the cardigan tighter around her frame and turned toward the staircase that led to her wing.
The light from the corridor window caught her profile for a moment as she turned, and Brook caught sight of the sharp lines of her cheekbones and the hollows beneath them, the face of a woman who had once been beautiful and had stopped caring a long time ago.
“I’m tired.”
She climbed the remaining steps without looking back, her bare feet padding softly against the wood, and disappeared down the second-floor corridor.
A door opened and closed somewhere beyond Brook’s line of vision, and then the house was quiet again.
The clock resumed its measured pulse, and the afternoon light through the foyer windows had shifted enough that the shadows on the staircase had lengthened by an inch since she’d sat down.
Brook remained on the landing, her hands resting in her lap, staring at the empty staircase above her. Gwenyth had just revealed two things that changed the shape of this investigation.
Gwenyth had pointed her back to the greenhouse, and Brook believed the answer was underground. And at some point during the years before Nestor’s death, someone had been coming onto the property at night without permission.
The lab could contain everything Dr. Kessler had identified as missing from the greenhouse. Nestor’s journals alone might document who had access, what compounds were being developed, and whether any of his research had been diverted toward something other than its intended purpose.
And the man who came at night could be the individual who put seven women in the ground.
Brook gripped the banister and pulled herself to her feet.
The effort was considerable, and she made a mental note to choose her seating positions more carefully for the remainder of this pregnancy.
She descended the staircase and crossed the foyer toward the dining room, where Bit was sitting at the end of the table in front of his laptop with a bag of chips off to the side.
“Bit, I need you to go through every blueprint, county record, and property filing on this estate. Floor plans, building permits, renovation records, anything that shows the layout of this property.”
“What am I looking for?” Bit asked after chasing his snack with the rest of his energy drink.
“A room or chamber that isn’t on any of the plans.”