Chapter 11 #2
“Ma’am.” Jake reached out to stop the door before she could close it. “I really am sorry to disturb him, but it’s important.”
“Gilbert, eh?” She looked him up and down, her eyes studying his badge. “You John and Harriet’s boy?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied.
“Hmmm,” she replied. “Knew your mama back when she was a nurse.”
She stepped back and allowed them to enter the neat living area.
“This is my friend, Olivia West,” Jake said as they stepped through the door.
The woman nodded, her eyes lingering on Olivia for the barest hint of a second. “Adele Leland. I’m Wallace’s nurse. I’ll have to check if he’s willing to see you. Wait here, please.”
The pair of them waited patiently while the older woman left the room for a few minutes.
“I don’t know as you’ll get much out of him, but you might be lucky. Today is one of his better days,” she informed them when she came back.
“Sorry?” Jake replied.
“Come with me.” She indicated for them to follow her.
They all walked down the hallway toward a door that she slowly opened and allowed them to enter.
Wallace’s bedroom was light and airy, decorated in a soft blue and edged in white.
A medical bed was tucked against the wall to the right of them, and to the left, by the dresser, were French doors overlooking a garden.
A high-backed chair faced the fall garden, and in it sat an older man Olivia presumed was Wallace Grady. He slouched heavily against one winged side of the chair.
His iron-gray hair, a contrast to his dark skin, curled tightly against his head and the left side of his face drooped slightly. His left arm curled into his side, his gnarled hand hooked against his chest, and his gaze deviated to the left as well.
A pretty young woman with golden skin and jet-black corkscrew curls perched on a small stool beside him, smiling affectionately as she slowly spooned soup into his mouth.
“What happened?” Jake asked.
“Massive stroke last winter,” Adele answered. “I’m his full-time nurse, and this is his granddaughter, Charlotte.”
“Charlie,” the young woman added. “Only Pops here calls me Charlotte, usually when I’m in trouble.”
“Is he able to speak?” Jake asked.
“A little on a good day.” Charlie wiped his mouth with a cloth napkin. “He usually finds a way to communicate what he wants if you’re patient enough though.”
Olivia moved closer, pulling up a stool she took a seat beside the chair. Wallace Grady’s gaze fell upon her, and for a moment, she saw a flicker of recognition. There was intelligence in that gaze. His mind still functioned, but it was trapped in a broken body.
“Hello, Mr. Grady,” Olivia greeted him softly. “My name is Olivia.”
Lifting his hand with great effort he grazed her cheek with gentle but clumsy fingers. His skin felt dry and papery but not unpleasant.
“West.” His voice was low and gravelly, his words slurred.
Olivia’s smile widened.
“Look like your mother.” He spoke sluggishly, his mouth fighting to form the right words. “Always knew you’d come back.”
“Chief Grady.” Jake squatted down beside Olivia’s stool so the chief could see him. “We need to ask you about a string of unsolved murders from about twenty years ago. Several young men, and one of them had his bones removed. Do you remember?”
“Files.” He raised a shaky hand and gestured toward a closet across the room.
“Pops has a box of old police files in there,” Charlie explained.
“May we take a look?”
The old man nodded slowly as if the action took great effort. “Trust no one,” he whispered as his eyes drooped.
“That’s the most I’ve heard him speak in months,” his granddaughter told them. “You’re welcome to take a look at his files, but I’m afraid he needs to rest.”
Jake and Olivia rose to their feet, moving the stool aside so Charlie could lift her grandfather’s feet onto a small footstool. They watched in silence as she covered him tenderly with a patchwork blanket and kissed his forehead.
“Rest up, Pops,” she whispered, then turned back to Jake and Olivia. “If you want to go back to the living room, I’ll find the box and bring it to you.”
They made their way back out into the other room and waited patiently. A few minutes later Charlie reappeared carrying a shabby brown box file, that she placed on the table in front of them.
“I don’t think he’s supposed to have these.” She shook her head. “But I remember him telling me before the stroke that there were a couple of unsolved cases he just couldn’t let go of. One of those was the murders of Isabel and Alice West. I remember because he mentioned that one more than once.”
Olivia stiffened as her eyes sought out Charlie’s.
“Same last name, I’m guessing they’re related to you?”
“Yes,” Olivia murmured.
“I’m sorry,” Charlie replied. “That case never sat well with him. He kept going over the file even after he retired. Said he always felt like they’d missed something.”
Jake lifted the lid off the box and started leafing through the stack of files. “Are these all of them?”
Charlie nodded. “I think they’re all unsolved cases. The ones he couldn’t let go.”
Jake stopped when he came across the file labeled homicide with the dates they were looking for written beside it. But when he flipped it open it was empty.
“What the hell?” he cursed. “Do you have any idea what happened to whatever was in this file?”
“No. I’ve never even been in these boxes before.”
“Has he had any other visitors recently, anyone asking about old cases?”
“I don’t think so, just family.” She looked up at Adele walking into the room. “Adele, has anyone else been to see Pops recently?”
“Your mama and your brother last week, and his cousin, Vern, came in from Florida last month.”
“Anyone else?” Jake persisted.
“There was someone else, about a month and a half ago,” she mused.
“Who was it?” Jake asked.
“A man I’d never seen before. Said he was Internal Affairs and that he was tidying up some loose ends on a couple of old cases.”
“Did he ask to see any of these files?”
“No.” Adele shook her head. “He wanted to speak with Wallace, but he was having one of his bad days and wasn’t making any sense. I could tell the young man was getting quite frustrated.”
“Was he alone in Pops’s room at any point?”
“Now that you mention it, yes, he was. I was about to show him out, but I had to take a phone call. It was the drug store about a problem with the dosage printed on Wallace’s meds, and it took me a while to straighten it out.
When I came back into the room, the young man seemed a lot calmer. He thanked me for my help and left.”
“But he was left alone long enough to have looked around Wallace’s room?” Jake asked.
“Yes.” Adele frowned. “You think he searched through Wallace’s things?”
“I think it’s probably a fair assumption.” Jake sighed. “Do you remember his name?”
“No.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry, but I do remember that he looked a little strange.”
“Strange, how?”
“Well, like I said, he was young, probably in his mid-thirties. But his hair was pure white, and he had very pale blue eyes.”
Jake and Olivia exchanged a long look before Jake finally tucked all the files back into the box.
“Well, thank you for your time,” he said. “We really appreciate it.”
Olivia and Jake kept silent until they were both standing back on the sidewalk, the door shut behind them.
“Well, that little bastard does like to get around, doesn’t he?” Jake mused.
“What do we do now?”
“I don’t know,” Jake admitted. “But I don’t like the fact that you’re out at the lake house all by yourself. It’s too secluded. They’ve already found one body a stone’s throw from your house, and with Brody missing–”
“You don’t think they’ll find him alive, do you?”
Jake shook his head. “I hope to God I’m wrong, but I don’t want to take any chances. I’d like you to think about staying with either me, or Louisa. All of our places are more central to town and have better security.”
“I appreciate it, Jake, I really do.” She sighed as they began to walk back toward his car. “But the lake house is my home now, and I’m not leaving it.”
“Don’t be stupid, Olive,” Jake snapped. “You’ve got a murderer dumping bodies around that place. He’s taking victims who are connected to you, and now we have this unknown white-haired man stealing files, breaking your father out of the mental institution, and stalking you.”
“I don’t think I’m the murderer’s type.” Olivia shrugged. “He obviously has a thing for guys.”
“This is serious, Olivia. You could be in real danger.”
She stopped abruptly. “Look, Jake, I know you’re worried about me.
But, after being on my own for the past twenty years I can take care of myself.
My house may not have up-to-date security, but I have powerful protection wards around my property.
What you saw me do the other night with the fire isn’t even a fraction of what I’m capable of.
Trust me, nothing is getting over that line. ”
He exhaled in frustration. “You’re not going to budge on this, are you?”
“Not right now.” She offered a conciliatory smile. “But how about this? If anything significantly changes, I’ll think about staying with Louisa for a few days, okay?”
Jake nodded, but she could see the trace of reluctance in his eyes.
* * *
After Jake dropped her home on his way back to the police station, Olivia made herself a sandwich and settled down to get some work done, but she couldn’t focus. Needing a distraction, she pulled out the notes she’d made at the museum about Theodore Beckett and his family.
She felt uneasy as she climbed up to the top of the shelf where she’d stored Hester’s trunk and pulled it down.
She flicked through Theodore’s journal again and pulled out the sketches.
This time, she looked more closely, finding herself once again drawn to the picture that looked alarmingly like her house.
In fact, the more she looked at it, the more she recognized little details.