Chapter 40
Grace
Grace walked out of the hospital to find Detective Callum Baxter waiting for her just outside, in the covered area where patients often went for a smoke. Snow had fallen again that afternoon, small drifts of it on the concrete.
The Los Angeles cop was wearing the biggest jacket she’d ever seen. Had to be a California native unused to East Coast cold. For her, this was a balmy winter, her own jacket a lightweight wool that she’d thrown on over her scrubs.
She’d have recognized Baxter even if he hadn’t sent her a snapshot of his ID. The man looked like some casting director’s version of a cop—wrinkled jacket that had seen better days, slightly dissolute look, grizzled face.
“Ms. Green,” he said, holding out his hand.
“Detective. And please, call me Grace.” She nudged her head to the right. “There’s a sort of park area where we can walk—the hospital keeps the paths clear of snow so the patients can get some air if they want.”
Hands in the pockets of his jacket, he fell in beside her. “Thank you for meeting me.”
“Well, you came a long way.” Grace had been startled when he’d told her he was flying over to talk to her in person, couldn’t imagine that his police department would’ve okayed the expenditure.
Which meant he’d paid for it on his own—a cop certain enough of himself that he was willing to put money on the line. “Why are you so interested in Tavish?”
“He’s had three women with whom he’s been involved die,” the detective said flatly. “He’s also done well financially out of all of those deaths.”
Grace shook her head. “Did you ever stop to think that both those things can be explained by the fact he dates wealthy older women? People who might die for various reasons anyway?”
“Yes, but I’d be a bad cop if I didn’t investigate.”
Sighing, Grace smiled at a patient who was seated on a bench, her eyes on the snow-covered gardens.
“My aunt left me a luxury condo in Paris, and another one in Los Angeles. If you’re looking for who did the best out of her death, it was me.
” Her throat thickened, the loss one she wasn’t yet over—might never be over.
Aunt Susanne had been one of a kind.
Seeing from his expression that she’d well and truly surprised Detective Baxter, she said, “It wasn’t in the will.
She didn’t want certain other family members to be able to challenge the gifts, so she transferred both properties into my name a year prior to her death, which meant that—unbeknownst to me—I was already the owner at the time of her death. ”
It meant all the more because Aunt Susanne had done it after she got sick but long before she asked Grace to be her nurse.
Her aunt had just liked her enough to give her the properties, and for Grace, who’d never been the popular girl, never had her aunt’s charisma, the knowledge was worth more than the monetary value of the gift.
“Aunt Susanne’s lawyer got in touch with me the day after the will reading. ”
Stopping below a tree denuded of all its leaves, a skeleton facing the sky, she turned to the detective.
“She bought the condo for Tavish around the same time—though she gave the deed to him personally a couple of months before she passed, not through her lawyer like with me. Tavish told me about it.” Her throat grew thick as she thought of that conversation between two people who had loved Susanne Winthorpe.
“And I can tell you that Aunt Susanne was in full control of her faculties right up to the very end.” It angered her that anyone would seek to infantilize her powerhouse of an aunt. “He didn’t influence her, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
From the way he was rubbing at his face, she’d just smashed a great big axe through his theories about Tavish. “A nineteen-year-old with a woman in her sixties, there’s something off about it. Don’t tell me you don’t agree.”
“Yes, and I told Aunt Susanne he was too young and she was being predatory.” Grace wanted to laugh as the detective’s face fell again at her switching around of the players. “I was right—and wrong. He was very vulnerable—but he was also very able to handle my aunt, in a good way.”
What she didn’t add was that she was sure he’d learned to be that tough on the inside due to his mother. Audrey Advani might be America’s favorite siren, but Grace had always felt as if it was all an act, a thread of meanness beneath the surface. “My aunt and Tavish had fun together.”
The detective’s eyes narrowed. “You’re awfully interested in defending him.”
“You think I have a crush on him?” Hugging herself, she said, “I’m gay, Detective.
” Hard even now to say those words aloud.
“It took a letter from Aunt Susanne—she’d put it in with the deeds to the properties—for me to admit that to myself.
My mom, Aunt Susanne’s sister, died when I was a teen, and my paternal family is very conservative.
I grew up being taught that it was a sin to be gay. ”
She rubbed her hands over her arms, even though she knew the cold was inside her. “I’d tell you if he tried anything on me, but the truth is that Tavish and I still meet to talk about Aunt Susanne. We both loved her.”
He had more questions for her, and none of her answers seemed to satisfy him.
When he did finally give up and leave, she took a few minutes to walk around the snowy garden on her own…
and she thought about how Aunt Susanne had made her leave the apartment the week of her death, how she’d booked Grace an all-expenses-paid tropical vacation because Grace “needed to get out of the sickroom and drink some margaritas”…
and how she’d ordered herself a respite nurse from a service.
She’d made sure neither Tavish nor Grace would find her.
But Grace had found something else. A single tiny pill on the floor of the condo after she was permitted to go in to fetch an outfit for her aunt to be cremated in—Aunt Susanne had left instructions on what it was to be, of course.
Grace had been crying when her eye caught on the pill lying on the carpet just under the bed.
She was a senior nurse, one with a degree in pharmacology.
She’d recognized the pill and she also knew that there was no way Susanne could have gotten her hands on it herself—her aunt had lived in a world without those connections.
Susanne Winthorpe wouldn’t even have known how to get her hands on cocaine, much less something this exotic.
If the cops had discovered this pill or anything connected to it, the coroner wouldn’t have ruled her death a simple suicide so quickly, with no autopsy necessary.
Which meant Aunt Susanne had made sure to get rid of any evidence before she ingested the pills…
except for this one that had fallen and become lost in the rich dark of the carpet.
The pills in the bottles found around Aunt Susanne’s body? Theater to cover the actual drug she’d taken to die.
Grace had walked out with the pill, later dropped it in a public toilet and flushed it away.
Grace and Tavish, they had a bond nothing could break.
Not after those hours they’d spent together in Singapore as Susanne screamed in pain and the night wouldn’t end.