Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Present Day
Burbank, California
Mission Day Two
As Sam pulled through the gate of the Devonshire estate, Jules exhaled the breath he’d probably unconsciously been holding, at the sight of a gray-haired woman standing beside an older but well-kept sedan.
It was Rene—at least they hoped it was Rene and not someone else like Rene’s sister or friend, come to tell them that Rene, too, had had a fatal heart attack that morning.
Sam was still a little freaked out from their badly timed visit to the Magic Hour Home for the Aged in Pasadena. Where an ambulance had been parked out front when they’d arrived.
As they’d walked in, the team of paramedics were walking out a rolling stretcher upon which lay someone in a body bag.
“Oh, shit,” Jules had breathed, and Sam had tried to be glass half full.
“There’s gotta be a hundred people living here,” he murmured. “The odds of that being Gavin are—”
“One in a hundred. And yet...” Jules led the way past the somber, whispering crowd who’d come to watch their fellow resident’s final departure, beelining for the front desk where a near-elderly woman herself looked up to greet them. “Yeah, we’re here to see Gavin LaCrosse?”
The look on the woman’s face said it clearly, even though the words she spoke were, “Are you family?”
“No,” Jules was always painfully honest, whereas Sam would’ve figured there was surely a connection enough to call the man Cousin Gavin, even though they’d probably have to go back three or four hundred years on the old family tree.
But Jules was Jules and his honest no got him: “I’m afraid he’s no longer... available.”
Sam pointed back to the front door that was still wide open, and the ambulance that hadn’t yet left. “Was that him?”
“I’m sorry, I’m afraid I can’t—”
Sam didn’t wait for her to finish. He went over to an ancient but bright-eyed man in a wheelchair. “Was that Gavin LaCrosse on the stretcher?”
“If I tell you, will you help break me out of here?” the old man said, but then, as Jules joined them added, “Sorry, I’m a wiseass. If my wife was still alive, she’d tell you that and she’d be right. Was he family?”
“No, but we were hoping to talk to him. Was that...?”
“It was,” the old man said as Jules sighed heavily as he no doubt inwardly cursed their luck. “Heart attack. Or so I heard. He was fine at breakfast—which is, in my opinion, the best way to shuffle off this mortal coil. Blueberry pancakes, maple syrup, and then whammo. A hard and fast goodbye.”
“Did you know him well?” Jules asked.
“I did not,” the old man said. “Not to speak ill of the dead, but he was a giant, pompous ass.”
“Did he ever mention his friendship with Milton Devonshire?”
The old man laughed. “Did he ever not?”
“How about someone named Emily Johnson? Did you ever hear him talk about her?” Jules was attempting to make like all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, and put this ugly, dead-witness mess of an informational Humpty Dumpty back together again.
But their bad luck was holding. The old man shook his head. “To be honest, I tuned out when he opened his pie hole for, well, pretty much anything but talk of pie.”
“Did he have any... closer friends here?” Sam asked.
The man made a face. “The pompous ass thing was generally not well received. Most of the inmates here are of the not-suffering-fools variety. You reach this age... Anyway, he tended to keep to himself—eat in his room. If he dined with anyone it was usually Roger and Wendall, but I doubt they’ll be able to tell you much. ”
And yeah, both Roger and Wendall lived in the memory care wing. Conversations with them got them a giant ball of nothing.
But now here they were, driving back up the sweeping driveway to Devonshire Place with its grand front entrance.
Sam knew from yesterday’s exploration of the property that a four-car garage was around the back, but there were plenty of parking spots here in the front—one of which held Rene William’s car.
“I usually parked in the back,” she told them as they pulled in beside her, “but I figured since I’m no longer employed here...”
She was probably in her fifties, with her hair pulled severely back from a perpetually annoyed face. Her smile was tight, and her entire vibe was fake-friendly, which was better than hostile, but not by much.
Introductions were tossed out and they all shook hands as she let them know—indirectly through her body language and word choices—that this job had Not Been Fun, and she was doing them a huge favor by coming back here.
As Jules led the way into the house, heading for the ground floor room where Milt the Senior had spent the final years of his life, he started the interview with a question about Gavin LaCrosse, no doubt because the man was on his mind. Did she know him? Was the name familiar?
No and no.
She was clearly curious, but Jules moved on immediately, asking questions that Rene could easily answer, first verifying how long the woman had worked there—nine months—and then asking to get a quick overview of her day-to-day activities.
He had his little pad out and was jotting down notes as she stopped, right there in the grand foyer and talked.
And talked.
And talked.
Sam was tired and a bit hungry—the day had already been too long and too disappointment-filled. So while he appreciated copious and free-flowing information from a primary source, Rene was a lot.
She had Things to Say: about cooking for Mr. Devonshire and the nursing staff, about keeping the huge house clean with a focus on the library, its adjacent bathroom, and the rooms that were used by the round-the-clock nurses and twenty-four-hour security team—none of whom were named Emily Johnson, she was afraid.
The nurses, that is, because security had always been rather large and forbidding men—no women amongst them.
And most of the guards looked like they were part of a biker gang, for which Rene carried a few metric tons of both judgment and shade.
Although the guards did come in handy for the several times a week that Rene and the nurses wrestled the old man into a wheelchair to allow him several hours in the sun at—she paused dramatically—Mr. Harper’s request.
And it sure as shit sounded like Rene had a boatload of distaste for Mister Harper even though they were kindred spirits in their unrestrained judgy disapproval.
Jules, wise man that he was, was simply standing by and letting Rene word-vomit.
It was hard to know for sure (pause for silent drumroll) if Mr. Devonshire enjoyed his time outside in the garden—or if he truly liked having the TV on in his room all day, but Mr. Harper insisted on that, as well. And with the volume up high—
Wait a minute... Sam roused himself from his day-of-disappointments stupor to clear his throat and ask...
“I’m sorry.” Jules was already efficiently on top of it. “But Mr. Devonshire wasn’t able to communicate with you?”
“Oh, bless your heart, no,” Rene said. “He’d had a massive stroke—it was a miracle he'd survived for three years after, with all the damage done. At his age? Especially with no familiar faces around him. He was estranged from his son, and even his longtime housekeeper abandoned him after the stroke—Helen Davis—not Johnson or even Emily, sorry. Apparently she didn’t want the responsibility of managing his care.
” She tsked and sighed. “Which I thought was a little cold since she’d been here for at least twenty years prior, and even lived on site.
I mean, whatever happened to loyalty? Of course, maybe it was just time for her to retire.
To be fair, I never met her. Or Cathy or Paula.
They were the housekeepers employed before me. ”
Jules had started walking, gently herding her back toward the locked library door, but now he stopped, stuck back on... “Massive stroke?” The moment he could get a word in edgewise, he repeated her words. “Unable to walk or communicate at all? For the whole nine months of your employment?”
“Bed bound,” she confirmed. “Completely. For well over three years, in fact. He had a bedsore that must’ve started during his initial hospital stay, right after the stroke.
It was quite an ugly wound, even all those years later.
It required the nursing team to shift his position every two hours, day and night.
Which they most certainly did under my watch. ”
Jules flipped back a few pages in his notebook.
“We spoke to Helen Davis—for the record, she absolutely wanted to stay. She’d lived here, for decades, and said she had to move out to make room for the new housekeeper.
She was told—” he found the page he was looking for “—because of the stroke, Mr. Devonshire would be using a walker, and he’d need additional physical support that due to her age and some issues she’d been having with back pain, would make it impossible for her to continue in the position. ”
Rene was shaking her head. “Maybe I got it wrong,” she said with the attitude of a person who never got anything wrong.
“But I don’t think he was ever able to walk again, not even with a walker.
I mean, we had all kinds of mobility assistance devices, but when I arrived, more than two years in, they were all still brand new.
The wheels on those things wear down pretty quickly.
” She shrugged. “One thing’s for sure, this job does not go well with back pain, so I do sympathize with her about that. ”
“I can only imagine,” Jules said as they once again made their way toward the big wooden door to the library—the one room they hadn’t been able to access yesterday.