11
I hoped things would look clearer this morning, but they don’t. Not really.
Sleep eluded me for the most part. I managed an hour or two at most. So this morning I am paying a heavy price. My body is sore and achy from all the bending and reaching while poking around in the house. Worse, I feel heavy and sluggish. My mind is slow, sporadic.
I pull on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, then brush my hair. I stare at my reflection and wince. I look old. The accident added a good ten years. This person I have become is not me.
Really this was never me. How is it that no one ever noticed?
The memories from last night—finding the necklace, searching the house—circle me like a kettle of buzzards waiting to pick my carcass.
“I’m not down yet,” I promise the woman in that mirror.
I am clearly not myself. It started only hours after arriving at this house. Is that a sign this was, as Rick suggested, a bad idea?
As I leave my room, I smell the scent of frying bacon and hear the laughter of my child. For now, I put the worries from last night on ignore. I’ll come back to it.
Olivia is munching on a slice of bacon when I arrive in the kitchen. “Good morning, girls,” I say with all the enthusiasm I can muster.
Olivia giggles. “Acacia is not a girl,” she scolds.
“She is so,” I argue as I join my sweet child at the island. “She’s just an all-grown-up girl. There was a time when she was a little girl like you. Mommy was too. Remember, I showed you the photos.”
Another happy giggle from Olivia. “Silly Mommy.”
Acacia settles a plate in front of me. “You should eat.”
Her voice sounds a bit clipped, but when I look up, she smiles one of those practiced expressions and adds, “You’re way too thin.”
I frown at the food and remind myself that eating is necessary. I pick up a slice of bacon and force myself to eat it.
As we eat in silence, I can see that Acacia is upset about something. No doubt she recognizes that I lied to her last night. We’ll get to that soon enough.
“What?” she asks.
I blink, realize Acacia is peering expectantly at me. I must have been staring at her again. “I was just thinking about how Olivia needs some time outside before starting her schoolwork. We should have a scavenger hunt.”
Olivia claps her hands. “Yes! Yes!”
“Sounds interesting,” Acacia agrees, her expression revealing a bit of confusion. She slides off her stool. “I should clean up the kitchen so we can get going.”
I watch as she wipes the stovetop and loads the dishwasher. I can’t decide if she’s worried about my restless night or if she’s waiting for the other shoe to drop in regard to the necklace.
My money is on the latter.
While Acacia is preoccupied I decide to give my PI a prod. Surely he has at least a little something for me by now.
With Olivia occupied piecing together a puzzle featuring her favorite Disney princesses, I sequester myself in Phillip’s study and make the call.
“Morning, Dr. Belmont.”
I wonder whether to be worried that Reed Archer, my go-to PI, didn’t say “good” morning. Any hope I dared to entertain deflates.
“Do you have any news for me, Mr. Archer?” I say rather than hello or any other greeting. I innately understand that if he had news, he would have called. Still, I say the words and hope.
“Well, I do have an update, though it doesn’t give us anything new other than confirmation of what you suspected.”
I hold my breath, silently urging him to go on, though I suddenly don’t want to hear the words.
“The autopsy was finally released.”
I close my eyes and ride out the pain that twists in my chest. Since Eleanor’s death involved a fall down a stairwell and allegedly no one was there to witness what happened, an autopsy was deemed necessary.
I have been waiting what feels like forever to get this news.
Autopsies typically take ninety days, and we’ve just hit that mark.
“The ME’s conclusions are,” Archer goes on, “that the fall down the stairs caused a fatal cervical fracture. Her death was ruled an accident.”
Frustration pinches my face. “That isn’t what I expected the ME to conclude.” What the hell? Archer just said the autopsy confirmed what I suspected.
“Hold on,” he urges. “There’s more. There were other injuries that I believe give us the real story.
A spiral fracture to her right arm. And a bruise on her right cheek that looks to me like someone slapped her hard or pushed her into something.
The ME didn’t say so, but I’m looking at the photos, and that’s the way it looks to me.
Truth is, the woman is dead. She was seventy-six years old and has no family.
With an already overwhelmed system, no one is going to follow up with any sort of investigation. ”
The idea of the pain involved with the sorts of injuries he listed rips at my heart. “Tell me what you’re thinking.” I know damn well what I’m thinking. There was a struggle before Eleanor fell.
“I’m thinking someone forced her to the edge of the landing, maybe twisting her arm—slapped her at some point—then pushed her down those stairs with enough force to ensure she wasn’t going to get back up.”
I flinch at his words, and my heart sinks. Eleanor was murdered.
The person living in her house was the same person to find her. Acacia. Fury rushes through me like a brush fire in the middle of a hot summer day.
I drag in a harsh breath and struggle to remain calm. “Anything else on Acacia?”
Archer grunts. “In my opinion, Acacia Hanson, as you know her, doesn’t exist. There is nothing on her.
No prints on file. No school or work records I can find.
No nothing. She is definitely using an alias.
Under the circumstances, it’s going to take some time to track her down.
All the neighbors I’ve interviewed only knew her as the pleasant young woman who took care of Eleanor’s place.
Eleanor mentioned to her closest neighbor that she’d decided to get a tenant because of a string of burglaries in the neighborhood.
I checked it out, and that part is true, at least.”
I wish Eleanor had told us. I can only assume she didn’t want to mention that she felt the need to have help with her own home since she spent all her time and energy at ours.
Maybe she worried we would feel it was time for her to retire.
Or maybe she just didn’t want anyone to know she no longer felt capable of doing both.
Whatever the case, we should have seen it.
I will never forgive myself for not being more aware—more sensitive to her needs.
I want to kick something. “So where does that leave us in determining her identity?”
He heaves out a breath. “I just might have something new to go on. It’s a long shot, but we’ll see.
A friend of one of the neighbors—a nice but nosy lady I hadn’t interviewed before—mentioned a boyfriend coming and going a couple of times.
On one of those occasions he was carrying a box—like a moving box. ”
“And?” I glance at the door. For all I know, Acacia could be listening. But I need to hear the rest.
“Although my forensics guy got nothing back on Acacia when he lifted prints from the room she used, I wasn’t aware of a friend at the time.
Considering this new information and since there were a couple of boxes left in her closet, maybe we’ll get lucky and the guy’s prints will be on one of them.
If he has a record, then we might be able to locate him and find out who Acacia is via that route. ”
Code for he needs my okay on the added expense of calling his forensics guy back in. “Sounds like the proverbial needle in a haystack.” I rub at my forehead, wishing the ache there would go away. Headaches have been my near-constant companion since the accident. A brain injury will do that.
“Hey, it’s something,” he points out. “At this point I’m damned desperate.”
He isn’t the only one. “Okay, do it. And thanks for the update. By the way, I’m at the lake house now.”
“Is she with you?”
I moisten my lips. “Yes.”
Another of his sighs tells me he thinks this is a bad idea. “Keep a close eye on her.”
“Yeah.” I end the call and tuck my phone into the back pocket of my jeans. Apparently it’s a good thing our attorney is in charge of Eleanor’s estate, allowing me continued access to the apartment. At least for a little while longer.
When I open the door I fully expect to find Acacia standing there, but she isn’t. I track her down in the kitchen, admiring Olivia’s work on the puzzle.
I think of the necklace and what Archer told me, and I wonder just how much Acacia knows about me and my distant past.
Far too much, I fear.
As Olivia, Acacia, and I step out into the crisp air, the soft lap of the water against the shore relaxes me instantly. The view of the lake always makes my breath catch. This is a beautiful, restful place under ordinary circumstances.
In some ways I feel inordinately lucky to be here. In others I know I earned it and more. Not going down that path of memories.
I blink away the past and affix myself firmly in the now.
The woods that border the property are thick and dark and always filled with birds.
Birds love old trees. There’s the house, a massive barn that predates the house by about half a century.
Two other stone buildings that were once cottages but now serve as mere storage space.
Somewhere on a neighboring property was once a stone farmhouse where the owners of all this land lived, but it’s long gone now.
The barn is Olivia’s favorite place. We check the stables where horses once resided. Wander through the various separate spaces that served as feed and tack rooms.
“What’re we looking for, Mommy?” Olivia skips down the barn’s broad center aisle.
“You never know until you find it.” It’s the best answer I can think of.
“You might find some sort of old tool,” Acacia suggests. “Maybe parts of a saddle or”—her eyes get big—“maybe a horseshoe.”
Olivia makes a face. “Horses don’t wear shoes.”