Chapter 20
TWENTY
GABE – THURSDAY EVENING
Gabe didn’t like that Casey had gone alone to Snowcap Estates.
Why hadn’t Greta gone with him? Weren’t they work partners?
The events of last fall, when Casey had been attacked and Gabe couldn’t get to him fast enough, snuck into his mind.
For a short period of time, he and Elton hadn’t even known where Casey was, and that had sent his blood pressure skyrocketing.
He was pacing in his living room, but it wasn’t at all satisfying seeing as he had to turn around again every three seconds. Giving that up, he stopped in front of Alfred and the stack of boxes and glared at them.
“Obviously, I’ve missed something important in you all, more important than the yearbook.”
Lifting a random box, he carried it to the coffee table and opened it.
This was the one that seemed to be the contents of a young woman’s dresser drawer.
Carefully, Gabe removed everything, setting the items on the table after examining each one.
He even tried opening the lip gloss, but it was permanently sealed shut.
Taking the empty box, he turned it upside down and shook it.
A tiny, gold-colored hoop earring that must have been trapped in a crease dropped out with a soft plink sound.
He picked it up and peered at it. Had his mother worn this earring and then lost its twin?
How? Had she been at a high school dance?
Or hanging out with friends? Since he didn’t know how to feel about the earring and what it said about a young Heidi or the fact that it had been in a box since the mid-seventies, he tossed it back and set that box aside.
Gabe repeated the process with three more of the boxes, finding nothing to note.
Box number four was the one that held the spiral notebooks.
He’d thought at first that they were full of teenaged Heidi’s class notes and homework, but when he flipped the top one open this time and scanned the page, he realized it was a diary. They all were.
The earliest one began Saturday, January 1, 1977.
This is the diary of Holly Pritchard.
Heidi’s handwriting was loopy but clear and fairly easy to read.
To Gabe, it seemed similar to her handwriting as an adult.
The entries were benign, Heidi declaring on page one that she was going to write every day.
She managed that for about a month, then the entries slowed to two or three times a week.
Heidi recorded daily life, what it was like being a sophomore in high school, the teachers, her school assignments, etcetera.
It was almost a calendar rather than a diary.
There were no entries with heart-rending confessions of young love, crushes, or friend group issues, which did not shock Gabe. The Heidi he’d known had not been sentimental. She could turn on the charm when needed, and it rarely failed, but Heidi didn’t waste time bellyaching. Heidi moved on.
She also didn’t name names, which Gabe found incredibly irritating.
“Come on, Heidi. Not one ‘Eli Rizzi is a pig’? I need some hints.”
The second notebook was similar to the first: boring.
Gabe wondered why Heidi had bothered. Maybe it had become habit for her?
He certainly had no memories of his mother spending her evenings jotting down what had happened during her day.
If she’d been a diarist as a teen, it was something she’d stopped.
If that was the case, why? If she hadn’t, was he going to get another letter leading to boxes sometime in the future? Gabe shuddered.
His eyes started to water. Gabe rubbed them and, with a sigh, picked up a third notebook. The beginning date on this one was September 1977. Heidi had stopped including the days of the week by that point, just a date and whatever she thought important enough to jot down.
Landed the job.
Gabe at first thought she was talking about working for Elton. But an entry two pages later disabused him of that idea.
Found a secret door!
There were no secret doors. Elton had sold his wares from a booth at summer fairs. Gabe’s exhaustion vanished. Quickly, he flipped through the pages to see if anything else leapt out at him.
“Really, Mom, would it have hurt you to add a bit more detail?”
He found it striking that even at sixteen or seventeen years old, Heidi was already extremely careful about what kind of information she left behind. It was almost as if she’d been born that way.
Or trained.
As a child, Gabe had never questioned his mother’s choice of careers. After all, food on the table was a good thing, and he didn’t understand that Heidi was usually bending the law. As an adult, he hadn’t questioned it either. They’d often worked together, a sort of family affair.
Once a grifter, always a grifter. Kinda sorta. Gabe was doing his best to leave that part of his life behind. Now it was becoming clear, or at least less opaque, that Heidi had spent her early years learning the art of the swindle. And she’d passed that knowledge on to Gabriel.
“Come on, I need more. Where was this job? What was up with the door?”
Flipping back to the first page, Gabe reread each entry. Maybe he’d missed a reference. He had not.
“Jesus Christ.”
There were fewer notes in this book. Almost, for instance, like she’d gotten a part-time job and didn’t have as much time on her hands. Gabe did find it amusing that many entries were a variation of it rained today.
Not that Gabe had read many teenaged girl’s diaries, but he’d kind of expected had a fight with my mom, she’s dumb. He tried to imagine what he would’ve written about, and the answer was that Gabe wasn’t the type to write shit down. And Heidi was the one who had taught him not to.
The last remotely interesting record was sometime in June of 1978, not long before he was assuming that Holly became Heidi.
He came into the store again today!
He had been circled several times. Gabe squinted. It looked to him like the circle had first been a heart shape and then Heidi had done her best to obliterate it.
Gabe set the book down again and blew out a big breath of air.
What the hell? Why did he have the feeling that He was David Delacombe?
Was it possible that David Delacombe had been a part of whatever Heidi had gotten herself involved in?
Gabe didn’t think the idea was farfetched.
From what he understood, David Delacombe had never been a paragon of virtue, not even close.
Of course, if that was the case, that meant Heidi’s from-beyond-the-grave letter hadn’t exactly been truthful.
“Twenty when you met, Heidi? Really?”
Patting various pockets to search for his phone and not finding it, Gabe spun in a circle until he finally spotted the device just where he’d left it, next to the blessed caffeine machine. Snatching it up, he opened his contact list and stared at the screen for a moment, then pressed Call.
Shay Delacombe answered after three rings with a smooth, “Gabriel, how are things?”
“Ridiculous, as seems to generally be the case with me.”
“Are you calling for legal help?” Shay asked with a chuckle. “I can offer a friends and family discount.”
“Not really. Thanks though. I have a question about, er, our father, and I figure you or maybe Claribel are the only ones who might be able to answer it.”
And while yes, Claribel undoubtedly had more information, Shay would be the source of least resistance. Gabe wasn’t prepared to talk to the Delacombe matriarch this afternoon. Claribel was the eleven on a scale of one to ten.
Niall Hamarsson was also a no-go. Gabe and Shay’s other brother had never known David, having discovered that David was his father when he’d moved back to Piedras Island several years ago. Shay, at least, had lived with the man until he left the island for college.
Additionally, to the surprise of literally no one, it turned out that David Delacombe had had at least one girlfriend in most major cities in Western Washington.
The man had had issues being on his own.
Gabe just hoped those issues hadn’t led to more invitees to the next family reunion Claribel called.
“I’ll do my best.”
Gabe could hear more than one voice speaking in the background. Wherever Shay was, he wasn’t at home or his office.
“Are you busy right now? I don’t want to barge into your day.”
“Please. I’m Claribel’s acting handler today. Just waiting for her to fleece her best friends while she cheats at bingo.”
Ah, yes. Gabe had been invited to bingo but hadn’t taken Claribel up on it yet. He was curious though.
“Sounds like an adventure.” Phone in hand, Gabe walked over to stand in front of the other living room window, the one he could still see through.
As usual, there was nothing going on. A lone squirrel scrabbled across the access road and up a maple tree on the other side.
“Do you know anything about what David was up to in 1977-ish?”
“I’m older than you, Gabriel, but not by enough to have any clue what David was doing. One sec.”
Abruptly, the incoming sounds were muted, probably by Shay’s finger over the phone’s microphone. Gabe caught sight of the squirrel again. Now it was carrying something in its mouth and was definitely acting furtively.
“Stole your neighbor’s snacks, huh?”
“I’m sorry, what was that?”
Great. Shay now knew that Gabe talked to squirrels.
“Nothing, just talking to squirrels, as one does.”
“Okaaaay. I’m going to put you on speaker. Claribel is right here with me. She says to hurry it up, she’s about to cover the board.”
“Good afternoon, Gabriel. How are you doing? Shay says you have a question about my feckless nephew.”
Gabe decided less explaining and just asking his question would likely get him a more straightforward answer. He had only met the woman twice and already knew not to give her too much leeway.