“Pretty much,” Jules said. “So I dug into it with Cathy and Paula, who were housekeepers two and three. Helen, Devonshire’s longtime housekeeper, told us she was let go because her bad back didn’t fit with the old man’s mobility issues—his need for a walker or a wheelchair. But Rene—the final housekeeper—was adamant that Devonshire was bedbound from the very start. So I asked Cathy—housekeeper number two, who was employed immediately after Devonshire’s stroke—and she confirmed that yeah, he only left the bed for his weekly excursions into the garden, and it was a whole big production to get him into the wheelchair. As for using a walker? Nope.”
“So Harper lied to Helen, probably because he wanted to get rid of her,” Sam said. “He probably knew he could pay someone else a lot less.”
“Yeah, but he didn’t,” Jules said. “Their salaries were comparable, if not higher. And since everyone got severance pay...? Harper wasn’t saving money here.”
“So maybe he just hated Helen,” Sam said. “And Cathy. And Paula. I mean, we know he hated Rene—maybe she was about to get the boot, too.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Jules said, but he didn’t think so. “Look at the dates of employment of all four housekeepers.” He’d marked the exact dates that Helen had left and Cathy had started, whenCathyhad left and Paula had started, and so on until Devonshire’s death—all laid out clearly on the timeline.
Sam and Robin both leaned in to look.
“There are gaps,” Robin noted.
Sam did the math. “There’s a three day gap betweenHelen and Cathy—housekeepers one and two, two days between Cathy and Paula, and twenty-four days between Paula and the final housekeeper Rene.”
“Did he have extended hospital stays at those times?” Robin asked.
“That’s what I was thinking, too,” Jules said. “So I called Cathy and Paula back and asked—as gently as I could—why they were let go. And both women told me that Devonshire had some kind of medical incident. In Paula’s case, he was going downhill fast—a natural expectation for someone of his age—but he apparently was suddenly in pain—and she never found out exactly why.Cathytold me that he had a bad case of the flu, possibly pneumonia—which at that age can be deadly. However, both women followed protocol and called the security head, Clayton Spencer, who called a private ambulance, which apparently is a real thing.”
“Wearein LA,” Sam said.
“Actually, it’s everywhere these days,” Jules corrected him. “But okay, I was thinking what you thought,” he looked at Robin. “Devonshire’s whisked off to the hospital for an extended stay. But it felt... wrong that he was only in there for a few days both for his initial massive stroke and a bad case of the flu, while random pain gets more than two weeks? I asked Paula, who was the housekeeper before that big twenty-four day gap, if her nursing staff had had any idea what the problem was, and she told me her day nurse was convinced that Devonshire was dying. And when I circled back to Cathy, she said the exact same thing.”
“Hewasa million years old,” Sam pointed out.
“Yeah, well, I’m trying to make it make sense, and as I’m talking to them, I keep thinking about the garden. I know, weird, right?” He aimed his words at Robin since Sam had seen the place. “So here’s the batshit part. See, the last andfinal housekeeper—Rene—gave us a lengthy monologue about how someone planted petunias and put down fresh mulch in the garden, right before she arrived. She was... a tad judgmental about the fact that it was mid-August and the flowers?—”
“Oh, they were DOA,” Robin said. “In LA? I mean, their life expectancy was a day, maybe two at most in that kind of heat. That’s not crazy.”
“No,” Jules said. “Rene’s Rene. The crazy’s all me. The crazy is, well, how do I say it...?” He took a deep breath. “I strongly suspect that more than petunias were put in that garden, and not just in August, either. I think, with Mick’s permission to search the estate, we’re gonna find three bodies buried out there.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Jules: Age Seventeen
Connecticut
During history class on Monday, Mr. Harrison asked Jules to come and see him during lunch.
That was definitely an aberration, since the teacher was legendary for never,eversacrificing his own lunch break.
So yeah. Harrison’sYou have lunch when I do—can you come and see me? I’ll be in my room. Bring your sandwichwas an interesting development.
Still, Jules was pretty sure he knew what the conversation topic was going to be when he knocked on Harrison’s door and the man waved him on in. “Grab a chair. Orange or grape?”
The man held up two cans of soda as Jules pulled a seat over to the space Harrison had cleared for him on his usually messy desk. “Orange. Thanks.”
Harrison had a really awesome looking ham and cheeseon a bulky roll on a sheet of deli paper in front of him, next to the kind of old-school construction worker lunchbox with a curved lid that madeMeet Fred Flintstoneplay loudly in Jules’s head.
Harrison waited for Jules to sit before he said, “I heard your weekend was eventful.”
Jules nodded. Yup. “I figured my mother called you.”
“She’s worried.” Harrison held his gaze, leaving that gorgeous sandwich untouched.
“I’m going to assume she filled you in—” Jules started.
“With what you shared with her, yes.” Harrison correctly guessed that there was information Juleshadn’tshared with his mom. Smart man. “Look. Kid. Kudos to you for caring, but there comes a time when you’ve gotta let the grown-ups take charge?—”
