Chapter Seven #2
Livvy thought about that for a moment. “Then, what happened to make Zadie believe such things were going on?”
“Because she said one of the women had called New Hope to complain about repeated procedures, and Zadie has passed along the complaint to Chloe. But when Zadie looked, the woman’s entire file was missing.”
So, maybe that was Chloe covering her tracks. Or Franklin.
“Did Chloe or Franklin kill my sister?” Sunny came out and asked.
Again, Livvy went with the honest answer. “We don’t know. Obviously Anthony is a person of interest, too.”
Sunny made a soft sound of agreement. She was pressing her hand to the side of her head now and was clearly in pain. “If any of them killed Zadie, I want them punished. I want you to throw them in jail and never let them out.”
“We want the same thing,” Ethan assured, and he took out a card from his wallet. “My number is on there. Please call me if you think of anything. And don’t speak to Chloe, Franklin or Anthony.”
Panic shot through her eyes. “They could get in here—”
“No,” Ethan interrupted. “You have a deputy guarding your door, and all visitors will have to be cleared through the sheriff. Once you’re released, Deputy Walsh and I will be taking over your protective custody.”
That eased some of the panic, and Livvy could see the exhaustion moving in to take its place. “Call us if you need anything,” Livvy told her.
Ethan and she said their goodbyes, and they headed out.
Not far. Just into the hall so that Livvy could text Grace about what Sunny had said.
It was hearsay, so it likely couldn’t be used to get that search warrant of New Hope’s records, but there was a higher priority now to speak to any former clients.
Especially since uncovering those irregularities could be the reason Zadie was dead and Sunny was in danger.
It didn’t take long, less than a minute, for Grace to respond: Once I have the list of names of clients, I’ll start interviewing them. For now, you two go home and stay there until you hear from me. I’ll let you know if I need you.
“Home,” Ethan repeated under his breath, and Livvy heard the same concerns in his voice that she had in her head.
Still, that didn’t stop them from moving toward the exit. They made their way through the hospital and out to the cruiser. Both of them looked around, checking to see if the dead thug’s boss or a partner was anywhere around, but Livvy didn’t spot anything suspicious.
“We can work on the client list, too,” Ethan said. “We can look for mentions on social media and such.”
Livvy welcomed the task. Not only did it get her mind off sharing a house with Ethan, but it could also help uncover what the heck was going on.
She drove down Main Street and took the familiar turn toward Ethan’s.
Like most of the deputies in Renegade Canyon, he didn’t live in town but rather on a small ranch several miles away.
In Ethan’s case, he’d bought the place about a decade earlier, shortly before Isabel and he had married.
So, it’d been their home. A place they’d lived when they had intended on starting and raising a family.
Obviously, that hadn’t happened.
And it brought her to something that had been niggling away at her.
Livvy hated that this was going to scratch away at old wounds for Ethan, but she didn’t think it was something they could just ignore.
“If Isabel went to New Hope, there should be a medical record,” she said after taking a deep breath. “As Isabel’s next of kin, you could maybe get access to the file. And no, it might not have any indications of one of those irregularities, but I think it’s still worth looking into.”
And she was babbling. That might have continued, too, if Ethan hadn’t stopped it.
“It’s a good angle,” he muttered, though it was obvious he was still dreading it. “I have no idea if she even had procedures there. Or if she was put on any meds.” He paused, swallowed hard. “By then, Isabel and I weren’t really talking about what she was doing.”
Yes, Livvy had gotten the gist of that five months ago on the anniversary of Isabel’s death. Ethan had been drowning in grief and had admitted that the infertility had put a huge strain on their marriage.
“I’d wanted Isabel to stop the treatments,” he added a heartbeat later. “She obviously didn’t. But she was keeping all of that secret from me.”
Livvy wanted to assure him there was nothing he could have done to stop Isabel. She had been driven to have a child. But there wasn’t anything Livvy could say that would help with the guilt he was feeling.
It was the same for her.
Isabel had been her friend, and Livvy hadn’t been able to get the woman to see the damage that some of the experimental treatments were doing to her health. And Livvy totally understood that obsession.
“When I turned eighteen, I submitted myself to some questionable practices to try to regain my memory,” she admitted.
“Three sessions with drugs used in hypnosis. Countless hours of therapy, including some that were considered promising and cutting edge. I soon learned that was code for this might work and you’re a test case. ”
“I remember,” he said, and there was something in his tone that had her glancing at him. “When you were twenty or so, I drove you back from one of those sessions. I was worried about you,” he added a moment later.
Yes. She’d been worried about herself. About the thoughts that had come with the attempts to dredge all of that up. And here they were again. The dredging was happening, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
Her phone rang, the sound thankfully yanking her out of all of those bad memories, and when Livvy saw Eden’s name on the screen, she took the call right away on speaker.
“How are you two holding up?” Eden asked.
No small talk. Eden was their friend and had been a cop as long as Ethan and her, and she knew the sickening tangle of emotions that came with having to kill someone in the line of duty.
“We’re managing,” Livvy said, and Ethan echoed something similar.
“Good. I almost believe that,” she remarked. “I might have found something,” she added after a quick breath. “And FYI, I’m not sure if it’ll help or hurt.”
Livvy felt the dread wash over her. Still, she insisted, “Tell us what you found.”
Eden dragged in another breath. “I’ve been going through Ivy’s diary. Since this spans over several entries, I’ll try to summarize, and then I’ll send you copies of the pages so you can read them for yourselves.”
Good. Livvy wanted to read every word of it. Especially since Ivy had died around the exact time that she had been found in Renegade Canyon. They could be connected, especially considering that Ivy had had stab wounds.
“Let me start with the page that Anthony showed you,” Eden went on, “and I quote—‘Chloe’s jealous of her lying, cheating husband, and she accused me of sleeping with him. As if. The man is slime. But I don’t think Chloe believed me, and when she’s like this, she’s dangerous as hell.
I think I should go to the cops.’ That all sounds as if Ivy wanted no part of Paul, right? ” she asked.
“Yes,” Livvy verified, wondering where this was going.
“Well, apparently Ivy didn’t always feel that way about Paul,” Eden explained. “In the entries from the year before, Ivy admitted to having an affair with him.”
“Wow,” Ethan grumbled. “That was in the diary?”
“It was. So, I don’t know if the part Anthony showed you is fake or if he simply refused to believe it. It’s also possible he hadn’t read the entire diary before today, though that doesn’t feel right.”
Livvy agreed. The man was on a mission to find who was responsible for his mother’s death, and since Ivy had died when he was ten, the diary was his insight into what might have happened.
“He maybe didn’t want to paint his mother in a bad light,” Ethan suggested. “Heck, Anthony might not have even considered that we’d take the diary and examine it.”
“True,” Eden admitted. “But we do have it…and there’s something else.
Again, I’m going with a summary here because the info spans over about a dozen entries.
About three weeks before Ivy was killed, Paul ended their affair.
She was clearly hurt and really angry. Lots of profanity and venom aimed at Paul.
And also aimed at the woman he dumped her for. ”
Ethan and Livvy exchanged another glance. “I’m guessing Paul didn’t quit seeing Ivy for his wife?”
“No. Ivy called the woman Anna. No surname given,” Eden tacked on. “But Ivy said in a couple of the entries that she intended to get back at Anna and Paul. Remember, all of this would have been days before Ivy was murdered.”
Livvy was having no trouble seeing the timeline. And that feeling of dread was growing by leaps and bounds.
“There’s more,” Eden said. “This one entry where Ivy talks about Anna. I’ll read this one to you verbatim.
” She cleared her throat. “‘I talked to Anna’s kid, and she said Paul had been coming around to see her mom. Out of the mouths of babes. I guess when you’re six years old, you don’t think to lie about something like that. Or wonder why someone is asking.’”
“Oh, God,” Livvy blurted. She hit the brakes and pulled to the side of the road. “Six. I was six.”
“Yeah,” Eden verified. “And here’s the rest of what Ivy had to say—‘That bitch, Anna, and Paul are going to pay, and I’m going to use the kid to help me.’”