“Can I... come with you?” she asked. “I mean, I know I’ll slow you down, but...”
“Of course,” he said. “And I don’t care about?—”
“My mother loved running, and I just never... tried it. My grandfather would’ve... um... He wouldn’t’ve...” She tried again. “His life was hard enough.”
“So you did for him what you don’t want me to do for you,” Mick pointed out.
“He was pretty broken,” she said. “I’m not.” But then she smiled. “As much, anyway. You love running, my mother loved running—I bet you a million dollars I’ll love it, too.”
Mick nodded. “Okay. Sneakers, shorts and a T-shirt,” he told her. “You’ll want to pull your hair back.”
Emily swung her long legs out of bed. “I’m gonna lock my phone in the safe so I don’t have to carry it.”
That was a good idea. Her wallet and his laptop and headphones were already in there, and he put his burner phone—still powered off—in as well. His other phone he slipped into his pocket. Best to have it, just for safety’s sake.
“You know, I used to be really athletic. I played basketball in high school,” Emily told him as she went into the bathroom, leaving the door open a few inches.
Yeah,I know, he didn’t say. Instead he went with, “Well, you’re tall, so that makes sense.”
Sherman Oaks, California
“I woke up this morning,” Jules said to Sam as he poured himself a cup of coffee in the rental’s kitchen, “thinkingOfcourse.This is why Harper wants Milt the Junior to inherit Devonshire Place. Emily Johnson is a complete unknown. Milt the Junior is the devil he knows.”
“And he’s probably less likely to move in and plant tomatoes in the garden,” Sam agreed as Robin joined them, fresh out of the shower and ready to head to the studio for the day’s filming.
Last night, Sam’s initial response to Jules’s announcement that he was pretty damn certain there were three bodies buried in Devonshire Place’s garden was to laugh his ass off.
And yeah, Jules himself was still in the land of disbelieving and slightly hysterically-tinged laughter.
Robin’s reaction had been full support with a gentle request for clarity—his version of trust, but verify.
Because yeah. Ithadstill sounded bat-shit crazy to Jules, and he’d been sitting with it for a while, while he’d been making those phone calls to the former housekeepers.
But, as Jules had explained exactly what he’d uncovered to Sam and Robin, they all became more and more convinced that his crazy theory wasn’t as bat-shit as it seemed.
“Bottom line is this,” Jules had told them last night. “With the exception of Rene who actually witnessed Devonshire’s death, all three of the other housekeepers told me that when the ambulance was called, they were certain that the old man would not survive. So they were surprised when they got the news that he had, in fact, lived.” He paused. “Allegedly.”
“Oh, snap!” Robin said, both laughing and horrified as the bat-shit crazy clearly started to make sense to him now, too.
Sam however was still skeptical. “Nah. Come on, Squidward...”
“Stay with me, Starrett,” Jules said. “I started seeing patterns that were... Well. Kinda hard to miss. I’m on the phone with Helen?—”
“Housekeeper number one,” Sam confirmed.
Jules nodded. “I asked if she’d ever visited Devonshire after she was let go?—”
“Let me guess, let me guess,” Robin said. “She tried but was denied.”
“Yup,” Jules said. “She went to the hospital a few days after his stroke and was told he’d already been moved to a private facility. She called Harper, but he wouldn’t tell her where. Mr. D wasn’t up to having visitors, yada yada. She wanted to send flowers; Harper had her send them to his office, said he’d hand-deliver them. Frustrated the hell out of her. Same thing happened over the past few years whenever she tried to visit. Harper kept telling her that Devonshire wouldn’t recognize her and she’d only upset the daily routine. One time she just showed up at the house, but Spencer’s team scared her, pretty badly, and she never triedthatagain.”
“So Helen never saw Milton Devonshire,” Robin concluded, “after the stroke that sent him to the hospital three years ago.”
“She did not.” Jules said. “Same with the other two housekeepers before Rene. Cathy and Paula. Neither of them have seen Mr. D, as they called him, since the private ambulance took him away—allegedly—on their watch.”
“So we need to get all four of the housekeepers—Helen, Cathy, Paula, and Rene—to take a little trip to the funeral home for a private viewing of the deceased,” Robin said. “See if Rene’s Devonshire is the same as Helen’s and Cathy’s and?—”
“That’s a great idea,” Sam said. “Confront this craziness dead on. Maybe bring Wig-Milt along, too, for the viewing.”
