When she’d arrived at the property, the elaborately decorative wrought-iron gates were open—there was a delivery truck up around the side of the house—so she’d just walked right in and up the long driveway.
It was like stepping back in time. Spanish architecture. Rolling lawns. Lush gardens. She half expected Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn to come racing out of the open side door.
Except maybe not, since that propped-open door led into a kitchen that was huge, but empty. Gleaming white and shiny clean, it screamed of an era in which staff—not just a chef, but kitchen maids and servers—would bustle about, ready to respond to their employers’ every whim. But from what she’d read, Milton Devonshire lived here alone and was down to a single housekeeper who cooked for him.
“Hello?” Emily called. Well, in truth she spoke rather softly. She suspected the housekeeper was with the delivery person, and that both had gone through the open door that revealed dimly lit steps going down into some kind of storage or wine cellar. Another doorway opened into a dry goods pantry. Yet another had a closed set of double swinging doors.
Highly aware that she shouldn’t be doing this, Emily chose the swinging doors and went out into a narrow servants hall that led, eventually, to a single swinging door. She pushed it and peeked through.
It opened into a magnificent, high-ceilinged and very formal dining room.
What a room it was. It held a huge, dark wood table with well over a dozen chairs around it. An enormous glittering chandelier hung overhead. The floors were hardwood with gorgeous borders—Victorian parquet, it was called, and it was museum quality.
Big double pocket doors were wide open and Emily cautiously went out into the house’s equally ornate entryway. It was textbook grand, complete with a sweeping staircase going up to the second floor.
From the back of the house, she could hear a television playing—an old-time comedy with an obnoxious canned laugh track. She followed the sound—mindful of the fact that she wasn’t supposed to be here. But also certain that she wouldn’t have gotten this far if she’d gone to the front door and rung the bell.
“Hello?” she said again, but again didn’t raise her voice very much at all. Her heart pounded as she mentally practiced her defense.The door was wide open, so I came in. I kept saying hello...
As she headed down the hall toward the sound of that TV, she adjusted the heavy bag she was carrying over her shoulder. She hadn’t wrapped the enlarged photo that she’d framed—a drone shot of this very estate with a late afternoon swirl of gorgeous clouds in a breathtaking sky. It hadn’t seemed appropriate to adorn it with bright paper and a bow, because it wasn’t a gift. It was more of a... presentation. Or, more accurately, it was graffiti that she hoped to leave behind, like writingI was hereon the wall.
It would be proof that she existed—although ifherson had killed someone’s mother, she’d think about them constantly, endlessly.
But from what she’d read, it was highly unlikely that Milton Devonshire had spent the past ten years haunted by thoughts of her.
As Emily got closer to that room where the TV was playing—from the open door it looked to be an old-fashioned library with walls that were covered floor to ceiling with books, books and more books—she almost turned and ran away.
But she forced herself forward, part of her in a sheer panic, part of her watching almost impassively as if from a distance, and all of her not quite knowing where she’d gotten the sheer audacity to come here in the first place.
She’d recently graduated from college and spent four months in Alaska—got some crazy great photos of Juneau and the intercoastal waterway, made some good friends, too. With that breathtaking adventure still singing in her blood, she’d returned home and bought that sweet little house on Columbus Avenue—because she wanted to be close to Carlotta and her grandfather without moving back into her childhood home. Then she’d bought the drone and was expanding her website and her business, Emily Johnson Photography. She’d even designed a logo and gotten a rubber stamp to mark her photos. It was pretty silly and whenever she used it she felt a bit like she was eight years old and playing office as—cah-chunk—she stamped the bottom right corner of each printed photograph with her name and web address.
I was here.
And here she was. At the door of what definitely was this estate’s library. A big, ornate wooden desk sat in the middle of a room that was dominated by stacks and stacks andstacksof files and papers. Big wooden filing cabinets lined the one wall that didn’t have built-in bookshelves, and they wereclearly overflowing, with more stacks of paper piled atop them. There were even piles of paper on the mantle of a big fireplace, piles atop the comfy-looking sofa and chairs placed around it as if arranged to be a cozy, fire-lit, winter reading area.
But the giant desk was the true focus of the room.
The TV that was playing was off to the side of that desk—where an impossibly ancient man was sitting in a huge leather swivel chair.
She didn’t see him until he moved, reaching for the remote and muting the television. Because he’d spotted her there, in the doorway.
“Well, don’t just stand there,” Milton Devonshire said rather crossly in his reedy, old voice. “You’ve already interrupted me, you might as well come in.”
They were scripts, she realized as she went into the room and up to that big desk. Those stacks of paper that were everywhere were bound together. They were movie and TV scripts, some scribbled with notes in blue and black and bright red ink.
“People still send me their shit,” he said, clearly noticing her wide eyed gaze. “And itisshit. Most of the time. But the joy of finding a diamond in the dung heap? Can’t beat that.”
His eyes were sharp in his wrinkled face as he looked her over, with obvious judgment that found her lacking. She was tall and awkward—definitely neither pretty nor skinny enough for most of the world, of which he was clearly in agreement. “Who are you, and what do you want?”
“I’m Emily,” she said, watching him closely for any sign of recognition. “Johnson.”
Nothing. Not a clutching of his chest, not a wince or a grimace, not even a blink.
“Did Helen send you for my approval, for this night-shiftnurse bullshit she’s been going on about? Tell her I say if you’ve passed the background check and won’t murder me in my sleep, you’re fine. I won’t see you, my eyes will be closed when you check to see if I’m still breathing, so I don’t care what you look like. Stop wasting my time.”
He picked the remote back up to unmute the TV. Obviously she’d been dismissed.
Emily sat down in one of the green leather chairs positioned in front of his desk. “Your son killed my mother,” she said, her voice shaking only a little. “I think you can give me a few more minutes.”
