Chapter 13
Skylar
I angrily brushed tears from my face, mad at myself for letting Prescott get under my skin again, mad at him for allowing me to forget the truth of what really existed between us. A few kisses, some sexy touches—that didn’t change anything. He wasn’t a man who was interested in commitment, and I wasn’t a girl who could give herself to a man without that commitment.
I was stupid for believing he could ever want me. If he knew I was a damn virgin, he probably wouldn’t have done half what he did last night. Hell, he’d probably go running for the hills, but not before first telling everyone what a naïve, inexperienced little girl I was. I never should have let myself get carried away. I never should have forgotten that this marriage was a farce. Just because he was willing to play house didn’t mean he was willing to stick around and actually experience real feelings.
He was missing out! I could make him a really good wife. I was smart and organized and generous and kind and gentle. I would make someone a perfect wife someday. It was his loss.
But why did it feel so bad? Why did it hurt like someone had ripped the heart right out of my chest?
I brushed more tears away, walking quicker, needing to find my great-gran. Maybe she’d have some answers for my many, many questions. Or she could just hold my hand and tell me I was a good girl like she used to do when I was little. That always seemed to make everything all better.
I’d gone straight to the study to visit with great-gran when we’d returned to the house, wondering if I should tell her about Tamara Olen or not. But the study was empty, and Nolan was in the sunroom, sprawled on a chaise watching some obscene television show on his phone.
“Where’s Great-Gran?”
“Went for a walk,” he said without bothering to remove his earbuds.
So, here I was, searching for my eighty-year-old great-grandmother, crying over a man I knew didn’t love me, a man I knew would never love me, because I let myself fall in with his little game despite knowing it wouldn’t end well for me.
“Great-Gran?” I called as I walked down the path between the rose bushes. “Where are you?”
The only response I got was the buzz of a bee in my ear as I passed a particularly tall bush.
Zander was working on a bush a few yards ahead. I walked up behind him and touched his shoulder lightly.
“Hey.”
He turned and smiled, pulling his earbuds from his ears. “Back already?”
“Have you seen my great-grandmother? She’s gone for a walk without me, but I can’t seem to find her.”
“She’s not out here. I’ve been here for nearly an hour and I haven’t seen a soul.”
I frowned, turning on my heel to look back the way I’d come. “Are you sure? Nolan said she’d gone for a walk, and she wouldn’t go anywhere else.”
“Maybe Nolan is wrong. She might have gone to the kitchen to talk with Mother. Sometimes she likes to hang out there and hear the gossip from around town.”
I nodded, reaching up to tighten my ponytail. “I suppose. You don’t think she’s planning another luncheon, do you?”
“There’s no telling with Aurora. One day she’s too tired to move; the next day she’s entertaining the whole neighborhood. Tomorrow she might decide to tour the quarry.”
“The quarry?”
Zander nodded as he dropped a handful of cut roses onto a cloth he’d spread out on the ground. “There were some men who came by a few months ago, wanting to reopen the old quarry out by the old highway. Turns out she still owns the land.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“I’m not sure she did, either.”
“What did she tell them?”
“That she wanted to discuss it with her business partner. I think she meant you.”
I shook my head. “I’m not her business partner. I wouldn’t even know what to tell her.”
“I don’t know. I heard all this secondhand through Father. You should talk to her about it.”
“I will.” I turned back to him just as he held out a beautiful, perfectly unopened rose. “Thank you,” I said, lowering my head slightly as I took it. “I think I’ll go look in the kitchen.”
“Maybe that husband of yours can help. Surely he’s better at searching for people than he is cleaning up the pool house.”
There was bitterness in Zander’s voice. I blushed at the memory of the pool house. “That’s my fault,” I told him. “I caused us to fall into the pool and then I invited him into the pool house to clean up.”
Zander shrugged. “This place is as much yours as it is anyone’s. It’s just… my parents are getting older, you know?”
“I know. We’ll do better about cleaning up after ourselves.”
Zander just nodded, turning back to his work.
Great-Gran wasn’t in the kitchen. No one was. There was no one in the laundry room, the library, Great-Grandfather’s study. No one in the theater, the guest rooms on the second floor, the guest rooms on the third. The fourth was no longer used, but I walked through it anyway, waving away dust and cobwebs. No one was up there, either.
I was beginning to worry as I made my way back down to the sitting room. No one was there, either.
It was almost a relief when my phone rang, and Ox’s familiar face filled the screen.
“Hey, is this a good time? I need you to talk me through that spreadsheet we did last week.”
I dropped into a chair and sighed. “Maybe a little distraction would make this day a little better. Maybe.”
“Yeah? What’s going on?”
“Oh, well, my great-gran’s lawyer apparently dropped dead in the minutes before I walked through her office door and now I can’t find my great-gran. She went for a walk, and seems to have evaporated.”
“What do you mean, your great-gran’s lawyer dropped dead?”
“Just what I said. I found her body laid out on her desk like some sort of dressed pig. It was disturbing.”
“I can imagine. Are you okay?”
For some reason, those kind words brought to mind the feel of Prescott’s arms around me. I closed my eyes and bit back the tears that once again threatened to clog my throat.
“Skylar? Is there anything I can do?”
“I’m making it out to be more than it really is, I think. I’m just… I’m sorry. What do you need to know about the spreadsheet?”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll figure it out. You just go deal with your stuff and let me know how it turns out, okay?”
“Thanks, Ox.”
“If you need anything, you know where I am.”
I disconnected the call, again thinking of the way it had felt when Prescott pulled me into his arms, holding me outside that lawyer’s office until the horror of what we’d found began to lessen. I had all the help I needed at the moment. I just needed to learn to appreciate it more.
“I should have known it would be Ox you’d turn to.”
I looked up, surprised by the flash of anger in Prescott’s expression. He crossed his arms over his chest and turned slightly, his stance suggesting a danger I wasn’t sure I was capable of standing up to.
“Prescott, I—”
“Do you know where your great-grandmother keeps her legal papers?”
I shrugged, caught off guard by his question. “Her study, I suppose. Or in Grandfather’s study.”
He nodded, turning to leave the room.
“Wait! Prescott, I can’t find my great-gran. Have you seen her since we got back?”
His expression changed as he considered my question. “How long has she been missing?”
“I don’t know. I went to see her when we got back and Nolan said she’d gone for a walk. But she’s not in the garden and Zander says he hasn’t seen her all day. And she’s not anywhere else. I’ve searched the entire house and I can’t find her.”
“Is her purse here?”
“What?”
“Do you think she may have
driven somewhere of her own free will?”
That hadn’t occurred to me. I brushed past him and went down the hall to her study. Her purse, a simple black handbag, sat on the same shelf where she’d always kept it. Her wallet was inside, as was her checkbook and her house keys. The car keys would be in the kitchen, but I was pretty sure they’d all been there when I was there earlier.
“She wouldn’t go anywhere without these things.”
Prescott moved up behind me, careful not to touch me as he looked over my shoulder. “You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
“Then maybe you should call the police.”
My blood turned to ice. I looked up at him, searching his face. He was as serious as I’d ever seen him and that frightened me more than his words. If Prescott thought something was wrong… something was wrong.
I went to the phone that had been moved from the now absent desk to the shelf beside the hospital bed. I dialed 911 and was connected with the same switchboard that would have answered Prescott’s call from the lawyer’s office this morning.
“This is Skylar George. I need to report a missing person.”
Chapter 14
Prescott
The detective we’d seen at the lawyer’s office was standing on the doorstep when I opened the door. Skylar was already in the sitting room with two uniform cops—two different cops—as well as Nolan, Zander, Hannah, and Johnny.
“Detective Verbeck.”
“Mr. Armstrong. When I heard your wife’s name on the wire, I thought I’d come myself and see what was happening.”
“Come in. Maybe you can make head or tail of this whole thing.”
The detective walked past me into the impressive foyer of Aurora’s house. He looked around and whistled low under his breath. “I’ve heard stories about this place, but none of them do it justice.”
“It’s a beautiful home.”
He nodded, glancing at me with suspicion in his eyes. “Kind of convenient, marrying the only relative the old lady has any affection for. You stand to inherit quite a load when she dies, don’t you?”
“I wouldn’t know. I wasn’t even aware that Skylar’s great-gran had money when I married her. And Skylar is not involved in the estate planning, so she has no idea what her great-gran plans to do with her wealth when she dies.”
“I’m sure she doesn’t. But do you?”
I gestured toward the back of the foyer. “They’re all in the sitting room. Why don’t we go join them.”
The detective followed me through the house. I was impressed with my ability to get around by myself now. It was much easier now that I’d figured out a few landmarks in this long corridor, but I still got lost from time to time. Not this time, though.
Skylar was sitting on the couch and Hannah was beside her, holding her hand. The others were scattered around, Zander standing by the door, Nolan watching his phone in one of the armchairs, and Johnny talking to one of the uniforms by the piano. Skylar looked up when we came into the room, her expression tightening a little when she saw the detective.
A quick introduction was made as the detective took control, the two uniforms moving off to the front of the room almost like they were taking up guard duty at one of the two exits. I stood at the end of the couch, taking a position from which I could watch Skylar without seeming to interfere. She glanced at me a few times, but her sole focus seemed to be on the detective.
“I understand you believe your grandmother has disappeared.”
“Great-grandmother,” Skylar corrected. “She’s not here and it’s not like her to just wander off, especially without her purse.”
“When’s the last time you spoke to her?”
“Last night. There was a luncheon. She got tired and went to bed. I walked her into the house.”
“You didn’t see her this morning?”
“No. I had my appointment in town.”
“Yes, with the lawyer. The dead lawyer.”
I scanned the room at that comment, looking for reactions to the detective’s words. No one responded. In fact, all their faces were so noncommittal that they must have heard those words already.
Dead end.
“Have you checked the garage, made sure she didn’t drive herself somewhere?”
“We did. All the cars are here.”
“What about girlfriends? Could someone have come by and picked her up?”
Skylar shook her head, shooting a glance in my direction.
“We’ve had Hannah call everyone in Mrs. George’s address book,” I told him. “No one has seen her since the luncheon yesterday.”
The detective nodded, adding this tidbit to the notes he was taking on his smartphone. “Is there anything else I should know?”
“Nolan was the last to see her.” I nodded toward the caregiver. “You might ask him a few questions.”
“Sure.” The cop stood, looking hard at me. “Can I ask how a woman in her eighties could disappear in a home she has been sharing with a security professional?”
“I was in Shy Valley with you, wasn’t I?”
“Touché.”
The detective sauntered over to where the uniforms were and spoke to them in quiet whispers for a moment. I walked behind the couch and patted Hannah on the shoulder, offering a reassuring nod when she glanced up at me. Johnny was still by the piano, watching the whole scene with something like detachment. I moved beside him, picking up a framed picture from its place on the top of the beautiful grand piano.
“She do this before? Wander off without her purse?”
“No.”
“No one seems terribly concerned.”
“Aurora is a strong woman who has a mind of her own. There is nothing she could do that would surprise me at this point in our relationship.”
“You’ve worked here a long time.”
“Since I was a child. My father was chauffeur for Mr. Mark George.”
I moved the picture so that he could see it. “This Skylar’s father?”
He nodded, his expression softening slightly. “We grew up together, Miles and me.”
“Must have been tough when he died.”
“Yes, sir.”
Johnny moved away, going to sit beside his wife on the couch. I studied the picture, noticing similarities between the happy toddler in the picture and the woman I’d married. She had her father’s eyes. And his smile.
I set the picture back on the piano, noticing something I hadn’t paid much attention to before. There were no pictures of Skylar here. None at all.
As close as Aurora and Skylar were, why wouldn’t the old woman have pictures of her? Was this a usual thing, or was it new?
The detective moved into the center of the room and cleared his throat. “We’re going to ask that each of you give us a little time to ask questions. We’ll be taking you, one at a time, to another room for this—”
“What about my great-gran?” Skylar asked. “Are you going to send someone out looking for her?”
“Yes, ma’am. We’ve already notified the sheriff’s office. They have several deputies out looking for her right now.”
Skylar lowered her head. “Thank you.”
I hadn’t told Skylar yet about the pills. I wanted to wait until after she’d talked to the police, until after I was able to narrow down the list of suspects. The only problem was, my list wasn’t getting any smaller. It was clear to me that everyone in this room had a reason to believe they deserved part of Aurora’s fortune. And everyone in this room had ample opportunity to switch her pills.
“Let me show you to the study,” I volunteered to the cops. “You can conduct your interviews in there.”
“I appreciate that,” the detective said, giving me that little bow he seemed to have perfected.
I touched Skylar’s shoulder as I passed her, hoping she knew I was there to help her. I was going to figure this out no matter what the truth might turn out to be. The first step was to hear everything these people
told the cops. To that end, I escorted the detective to the old man’s study, a large room with dark walls and darker furniture, the kind of study one would expect a very rich old man to have.
I waved my arms, gesturing around the room. “Does this fit your needs?”
The detective nodded. “Why don’t we start with you?”
I shrugged. “I wouldn’t want to cut in line.”
“I’m sure the others would understand.”
“All right, then.”
I tugged on a chair, pulling it to the center of the room as the detective sat back against the front of the desk, taking a position that suggested power. Little did he know that I had more power than he could imagine.
I slipped my cell phone out of my pocket and held it up where he could see it. “I’ll just turn off the ringer so we won’t be disturbed.”
“Expecting a call?”
“You never know these days. We’re all so readily accessible with these fancy phones. Calls, texts, emails. Seems like there’s no privacy.”
As I spoke, I pulled up an app that Cheryl had placed on my phone months ago for a case I was working. It was a cloning/bugging/listening device sort of thing. It allowed me full access to any phone I paired it with, including access to the speakers and microphone. In just a second, the app let me know it had paired with the detective’s phone and I would be able to see the notes he’d taken, listen to any phone calls he should take, and read all his texts. I’d also be able to listen to his interviews with Aurora’s staff.
Thank you, Cheryl.
“How long have you and Ms. Skylar George been married?”
“Almost two years. Our anniversary is the week of Halloween.”
“Interesting choice of dates.”
I shrugged. “Wasn’t our choice. We had to move things up a little because the INS was a little testy that I’d let my student visa run out.”
“When did it run out?”
“Eight years ago.”
The detective’s eyebrows rose. “And it took you that long to do anything about it?”
“I’m not a details sort of guy. I leave that stuff to my beautiful bride.”
Caballo Security Box Set Page 57