Chapter 24
Brooklyn Sloane
The forensics techs were still working in the lab, their voices carrying faintly through the open bookshelf in the library along with the occasional click of a camera shutter and the soft scrape of tools against surfaces that hadn’t been disturbed in a very long time.
Brook was sitting in one of the dining room chairs that Bit had dragged into the foyer earlier that evening, her back against the wall near the base of the staircase.
The foyer was dim, the sconces turned low, and the house had gone still in the way it only did after dark, when the stone walls gave up the last of the day's heat, and the floorboards stopped their restless creaking.
Sheriff Gentry occupied the wooden bench near the front door, his hat resting on his knee, exhaustion evident in his broad face that came from a week of events that his county had never been built to handle.
Theo appeared from the kitchen, carrying two mugs. He handed one to Brook and the other to Sheriff Gentry before retreating toward the library without a word, understanding that the conversation about to take place was better had without an audience.
Sheriff Gentry raised the mug to his nose and inhaled.
“You must have stopped in at Lacie’s Café.”
“Theo bought some decaf for me on his way back from town yesterday.”
“She imports her decaf from a small roaster in Oaxaca. Swiss Water Process, single-origin. People drive forty minutes just to buy a bag.” Gentry took a sip and nodded his approval. “Best decaf you’ll ever have.”
Brook brought the mug to her lips and let the coffee settle on her tongue.
She closed her eyes after coming to the realization that Theo had just discovered a needle in a haystack.
The flavor was rich and full-bodied, with a depth that she hadn’t been able to find in any of the decaf options she’d suffered through her pregnancy.
There was a warmth to the coffee that went beyond temperature, something almost chocolatey beneath the roast, and for a few seconds, her stress faded into the background.
The mug was warm between her palms, and the steam curled upward in the still air of the foyer, drifting past her face before dissolving into nothing.
She finally opened her eyes and made a mental note to buy several bags before they left town.
“Has Gwenyth come out of her room?” Gentry asked, his gaze drawn to the staircase landing.
“Once. When the forensics team arrived.” Brook adjusted her position in the chair, the baby having settled directly on her bladder for what seemed to be the third time that hour.
“She came downstairs and stood outside the library for a while, observing the techs’ work.
She was coherent. Even interested, from what I could tell.
She didn’t say anything to them, but she wasn’t confused or withdrawn. ”
“And then?”
“She wandered into the kitchen and made herself a grilled cheese sandwich.” Brook took another sip of the coffee.
How much easier would her pregnancy have been had she had these grounds on hand?
“Sylvie stayed in the kitchen to make sure she was alright. Gwenyth handled everything with care, used the stove without difficulty, and cleaned up after herself. She put the plate in the dish rack and wiped down the counter, as if she knew Porter wasn’t there to do it for her. ”
Gentry processed that information quietly.
Brook caught the conflict working through him, the same struggle that seemed to follow every conversation about Gwenyth Ellingham.
A woman who couldn’t take care of herself, according to Dale.
A woman who had just made a meal, cleaned up, and observed a forensics operation with quiet interest, according to everyone else.
“I have to be honest with you, Ms. Sloane. I never knew those women came to Nestor on their own.”
“Neither did we until tonight.” Brook set the mug on the floor beside her chair, the ceramic clicking softly against the hardwood.
“My team is going to look into how these women could have heard about Nestor in the first place. His research was rejected by the academic community, so there wouldn’t have been any published papers or institutional referrals.
Someone was connecting them to him, or he was reaching out through channels we haven’t identified yet. ”
“That was thirty years ago. Word of mouth was about the only channel people had.”
“Now that the techs have fingerprinted the journals, I’ll go through each one personally. When I submit my reports to the Bureau, I’ll make sure you have copies of my notes, as well.”
“I appreciate that.” Gentry turned the mug slowly in his hands, the steam rising between his thick fingers. “So, where does this put the investigation?”
“The women weren’t murdered, Sheriff Gentry.
It’s looking as if they came here voluntarily, received treatment, and died of their cancers.
Nestor buried them. While tragic and illegal, it’s not homicide.
” Brook met the sheriff’s gaze. “What happened to Nestor is murder. Someone struck him hard enough to fracture his skull and left him in that greenhouse alongside those women. Technically, once the Bureau closes its investigation into the female remains, Nestor’s murder falls under your jurisdiction. ”
Gentry slowly exhaled through his nose.
“You wouldn’t happen to want to stick around, would you?”
“Since it’s still going to take Dr. Kessler several more days to excavate the rest of the remains, my team will stay on for the time being. We can work both ends simultaneously.”
The relief on Gentry’s face was brief but genuine. He covered it with another drink of coffee.
“What can you tell me about Nestor’s disappearance?” Brook asked, hoping for more insight now that they had some direction. “Details that weren’t in the initial report.”
“I wasn’t the sheriff at the time. That was Len Caulfield. He’s been dead going on twelve years now.”
“There didn’t seem to be an in-depth investigation conducted back then. At least, not to my satisfaction.”
“It’s a small town, Ms. Sloane.” Gentry set his mug on the bench beside his hat and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees.
The posture made him appear smaller than he was, and the weariness in it had been there long before this case arrived on his doorstep.
“I was a young deputy back then, barely a year on the job. I remember the other deputies talking about it, though. The general consensus was that Nestor couldn’t handle it anymore.
He’d lost his wife, spent years locked away in that greenhouse, and people assumed he’d gone off somewhere to take his own life.
Didn’t want Gwenyth to find his body. That was the story most people settled on, and once a tale like that takes hold in a town this size, it’s hard to shake loose. ”
“That’s it?” Brook asked again as she had trouble coming to terms with such a decision.
She was from a small town herself. Not all were the same.
“The sheriff and his deputies just ignored the fact that a respected man just up and vanished, leaving his eighteen-year-old daughter to carry on without him?”
“Cal Brennan insisted that Nestor would never do something like that. He was vocal about it, went to Sheriff Caulfield personally, and demanded the department follow through. Cal and Caulfield were friends for decades, so the sheriff obliged to some extent. Filed the missing person report, conducted some interviews, and checked the usual places. But there was no evidence of foul play, no body, no witnesses, and after a few months, it went quiet.”
A missing person who was already considered eccentric, a community that had already written its own explanation, and a sheriff who had followed procedure without the resources or the pressure to dig deeper.
It wasn’t negligence, per se. It had been the reality of a department with limited manpower and a case that hadn’t presented as criminal.
“It must have been horrible for Gwenyth,” Brook said as thoughts of her own teenage years came back to haunt her. “Eighteen, alone on this property.”
“She was always a loner, even in high school.” Gentry rubbed the back of his neck as his gaze flickered to the staircase.
“I was a few years ahead of her, so I didn’t know her personally, but you’d hear things.
She didn’t have friends. Didn’t participate in any extracurricular activities.
Came to school, sat in class, went home.
After Nestor disappeared, she just stayed on the estate and never came back out.
It wasn’t until years later that stories about her mental state started circulating.
People in town would hear things from Porter or Cal, little comments about how she was having a rough stretch or how she wasn’t doing well. ”
“And the town’s opinion?”
“Split down the middle.” Gentry picked up his mug again but didn’t drink from it.
He held it between his hands the way people held things when they needed something to anchor them during a conversation that they’d rather not be having.
“Half the folks agree with Dale that she needs more support than what she’s been getting.
A proper facility, medical care, someone with the training to manage her condition…
whatever that might be. The other half believes she’s earned the right to live however she wants.
Unfortunately, the trust only has so much money left in the account. ”
“Which Dale wants control of so he can sell off this property.”
Gentry nodded, and the expression that crossed his face carried a deep disappointment that he didn’t bother to conceal. Whatever professional neutrality he was obligated to maintain, his personal feelings about Dale Ellingham’s motives were written clearly enough for Brook to read without effort.
“Sheriff, did you ever hear of anyone having a grudge against Nestor? Any conflict, any dispute, anything that went beyond the usual small-town gossip?”
Gentry didn’t reply right away, and Brook sensed he was sorting through decades of memory, separating what he’d heard firsthand from what had been passed along through the layers of a community that talked more than it listened.
The house creaked above them, a sound that had become so familiar over the past few days that Brook barely registered it anymore, though Gentry’s gaze shot briefly toward the ceiling before settling back on her.
“There was one thing," Gentry murmured as the recollection became clearer.
"To be honest, I hadn't thought about it until you asked.
When I was a young deputy, I remember Nancy Pruitt coming into the station one afternoon to speak with Sheriff Caulfield.
She was upset. I wasn't in the room, but word got around the way it does in a small department.
Apparently, Nestor had been calling their house late at night, pressuring Owen to provide prescription pain medication without a physician's authorization. Nestor had hurt his back. No, shoulder? I don’t right recall.
Anyway, she claimed it had been going on for months, and Owen was losing sleep over it. "
Brook straightened in her chair, grateful when the baby shifted off her bladder.
"Caulfield spoke with Owen directly, and Owen downplayed the whole thing. Said it was a misunderstanding, that Nestor promised to go see Dr. Baskins.” Sheriff Gentry waved a hand in the direction of town.
“He used to be our town doctor back when there were town doctors.
No formal report was ever filed, though.
Caulfield handled it as a conversation, not a complaint, and as far as I know, the calls stopped after that. "
"What kind of pain medication was Nestor requesting?"
“I never heard the specifics.”
Brook leaned sideways to pick up her coffee from the floor.
At first, she was afraid that she wouldn’t be able to pull herself back up.
She managed, though she doubted she came off as graceful.
The foyer was darker now than when Gentry had arrived, and the shadows on the staircase had climbed past the landing toward the second floor.
Owen Pruitt hadn’t mentioned late-night phone calls or requests for pain meds when speaking with Sylvie. Neither had the man’s wife, for that matter.
“Is that the kind of thing you were looking for?” Gentry asked as he studied her.
“It is.” Brook continued to hold her mug, not wanting to risk not being able to retrieve it next time around. “I’ll send Sylvie to have another conversation with the Pruitts. But Sheriff? If there’s anything else, now would be the best time to share it with me.”