Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Present Day
Palm Springs, California
Mission Day Three
Emily was opting out of their previously planned morning visit to the hotel’s gym.
Mick pulled on his running shorts and yesterday’s T-shirt, then sat on the edge of the bed as he tied the laces of his running shoes.
They’d been out late last night, and she was burrowed in deep beneath the high thread-count sheets and the crisp, white duvet, her dark hair spread across her pillow as she peeked up at Mick. “I don’t know how you wake up so early without coffee,” she mumbled.
“I’ve just always been a morning person,” he said. Or at least he had been since getting sober—since becoming Mick.
“You really are, aren’t you?” She pulled the blanket over her head. “This might be a relationship deal-breaker.” But then, almost immediately, she re-emerged. “I’m kidding. I’ll go with you if you want me to.”
“Nope,” he said, kissing her. “And likewise, I’ll stay if you want, but... I’d really love to get in a workout. Blow off some steam. The pool days are nice, but... I’m gonna go for a run.”
Emily sat up. “I didn’t know you were a runner.”
“Yeah,” Mick admitted. “There’s a... freedom to it that... Well, I started in my early twenties and just... I love being outside and just... going. No fences, no boundaries.” He kissed her again. “I’ll bring you back one of those giant tubs of coffee that you like to swim in.”
“Bless you,” she said, “but, you know...” She whispered her last words. “Be careful.”
As in... don’t get hit by a car.
Oh shit, he’d never even once thought about...
“You know what,” Mick said, “I think I am just gonna go to the gym today.”
“No! I didn’t mean for you not to...” Emily closed her eyes. “I’m so sorry. Look, it’s light out. You’re careful—”
“No, Em—”
She cut him off. “You just told me this is something you love to do. If you have to start making crazy, irrational sacrifices to be in a relationship with me—”
“It’s really okay.”
“No, it’s not!”
“Yeah, it is,” Mick said. “There’s like forty million things I love as much as running. Let’s go for a walk later. That’ll be just as good. Better, because I’ll be with you and we can hold hands. Meantime, I’ll hit the gym while you sleep more.”
But he could tell, just from looking at her that she wasn’t going back to sleep—not this morning at least.
“Can I... come with you?” she asked. “I mean, I know I’ll slow you down, but...”
“Of course,” he said. “And I don’t care about—”
“My mother loved running, and I just never... tried it. My grandfather would’ve... um... He wouldn’t’ve...” She tried again. “His life was hard enough.”
“So you did for him what you don’t want me to do for you,” Mick pointed out.
“He was pretty broken,” she said. “I’m not.” But then she smiled. “As much, anyway. You love running, my mother loved running—I bet you a million dollars I’ll love it, too.”
Mick nodded. “Okay. Sneakers, shorts and a T-shirt,” he told her. “You’ll want to pull your hair back.”
Emily swung her long legs out of bed. “I’m gonna lock my phone in the safe so I don’t have to carry it.”
That was a good idea. Her wallet and his laptop and headphones were already in there, and he put his burner phone—still powered off—in as well. His other phone he slipped into his pocket. Best to have it, just for safety’s sake.
“You know, I used to be really athletic. I played basketball in high school,” Emily told him as she went into the bathroom, leaving the door open a few inches.
Yeah, I know, he didn’t say. Instead he went with, “Well, you’re tall, so that makes sense.”
Sherman Oaks, California
“I woke up this morning,” Jules said to Sam as he poured himself a cup of coffee in the rental’s kitchen, “thinking Of course. This is why Harper wants Milt the Junior to inherit Devonshire Place. Emily Johnson is a complete unknown. Milt the Junior is the devil he knows.”
“And he’s probably less likely to move in and plant tomatoes in the garden,” Sam agreed as Robin joined them, fresh out of the shower and ready to head to the studio for the day’s filming.
Last night, Sam’s initial response to Jules’s announcement that he was pretty damn certain there were three bodies buried in Devonshire Place’s garden was to laugh his ass off.
And yeah, Jules himself was still in the land of disbelieving and slightly hysterically-tinged laughter.
Robin’s reaction had been full support with a gentle request for clarity—his version of trust, but verify.
Because yeah. It had still sounded bat-shit crazy to Jules, and he’d been sitting with it for a while, while he’d been making those phone calls to the former housekeepers.
But, as Jules had explained exactly what he’d uncovered to Sam and Robin, they all became more and more convinced that his crazy theory wasn’t as bat-shit as it seemed.
“Bottom line is this,” Jules had told them last night.
“With the exception of Rene who actually witnessed Devonshire’s death, all three of the other housekeepers told me that when the ambulance was called, they were certain that the old man would not survive.
So they were surprised when they got the news that he had, in fact, lived. ” He paused. “Allegedly.”
“Oh, snap!” Robin said, both laughing and horrified as the bat-shit crazy clearly started to make sense to him now, too.
Sam however was still skeptical. “Nah. Come on, Squidward...”
“Stay with me, Starrett,” Jules said. “I started seeing patterns that were... Well. Kinda hard to miss. I’m on the phone with Helen—”
“Housekeeper number one,” Sam confirmed.
Jules nodded. “I asked if she’d ever visited Devonshire after she was let go—”
“Let me guess, let me guess,” Robin said. “She tried but was denied.”
“Yup,” Jules said. “She went to the hospital a few days after his stroke and was told he’d already been moved to a private facility.
She called Harper, but he wouldn’t tell her where.
Mr. D wasn’t up to having visitors, yada yada.
She wanted to send flowers; Harper had her send them to his office, said he’d hand-deliver them.
Frustrated the hell out of her. Same thing happened over the past few years whenever she tried to visit.
Harper kept telling her that Devonshire wouldn’t recognize her and she’d only upset the daily routine.
One time she just showed up at the house, but Spencer’s team scared her, pretty badly, and she never tried that again. ”
“So Helen never saw Milton Devonshire,” Robin concluded, “after the stroke that sent him to the hospital three years ago.”
“She did not.” Jules said. “Same with the other two housekeepers before Rene. Cathy and Paula. Neither of them have seen Mr. D, as they called him, since the private ambulance took him away—allegedly—on their watch.”
“So we need to get all four of the housekeepers—Helen, Cathy, Paula, and Rene—to take a little trip to the funeral home for a private viewing of the deceased,” Robin said. “See if Rene’s Devonshire is the same as Helen’s and Cathy’s and—”
“That’s a great idea,” Sam said. “Confront this craziness dead on. Maybe bring Wig-Milt along, too, for the viewing.”
“Sadly, it’s not an option.” Jules told them the news that had disappointed him, too, when he’d found out.
“But it’s definitely a factoid that ups my percentage of certainty that there’re bodies buried in that garden.
” He picked up the sharpie and added to the timeline, for the day after Milton Devonshire’s death, Harper cremates the remains.
“The funeral’s not until next week—but it’s an internment ceremony with his ashes. ”
“Hey now!” Robin said. “That body wasn’t even cold. Forget any visuals, DNA testing is now also off the table. Can’t do that with ashes.” He laughed a little. “Dead Milt is definitely in the garden.”
Sam was shaking his head. “I’m not on Team Definitely, BW. I think we’re all just tired and need some sleep.”
Jules nodded. “Yeah, I was where you are, but... the bedsores clinched it for me.”
“Bedsores,” Robin said. “Oh! Oh! I know where this is going!”
“Rene told us,” Jules reminded skeptical Sam, “that Mr. Devonshire had a really bad bedsore—it’s a pretty common health issue for elderly people who are bedbound.
She guessed, presumably from what it looked like—bedsores have stages, kinda like cancer, from one to four, with four being really awful.
But she told us that she thought this one had started years ago during his initial hospitalization, after the first stroke.
They can last for a long time, and take literally years to heal.
Best case for a later stage sore to fully heal is around three weeks. That’s absolute best case.”
“Just cut to the chase, Cassidy,” Sam said. “I get it. Bedsores, bad.”
Fair enough. “I called both Cathy and Paula yet again—this time to ask about bedsores. Cathy, post-stroke housekeeper number one, told me that her Mr. D had a really bad bedsore on his upper back, near his left shoulder blade. Paula—”
“The housekeeper immediately after Cathy,” Robin confirmed by looking at the timeline.
“Her Mr. D had no bedsores at all. It was something of which she was very proud.”
“It coulda healed,” Sam pointed out.
“It could have,” Jules agreed even as he shook his head no.
“But not in the three day period between Cathy’s leaving and Paula’s arriving.
And in the event that Paula was lying or misinformed, I called Rene to follow up, and her Mr. Devonshire’s egregious bedsores—her words—were on his buttocks, also her word. Nothing at all on his shoulder.”
“So Cathy, left shoulder; Paula, zero; Rene, buttocks,” Robin summarized. “What I want to know is where did Harper and what’s-his-name, Security-Clayton, find an unlimited supply of extremely old men to stand in after the OG Milt died three years ago?”
“You honestly believe,” Sam asked, “that Dead Milt actually died after his so-called massive stroke? And that was why Harper fired Helen?”