He had met someone else there, too. Not once, but on several occasions. I counted at least four visits by a man in an unmarked van, none of which had occurred while I had been at home. Each time, Steven had unloaded several bags of mulch from his truck and loaded them into the back of the man’s van. But why have his buyer pick up mulch at our home? Why not deliver it to the man’s house? Or have him pick it up at the farm?
I jumped out of my skin as a hand came down on my shoulder. “Find anything?” Nick asked.
I closed the notebook and dropped it in the box. Nick had plenty of lingering suspicions about Steven’s truthfulness in all this, and I didn’t see any reason to add more fuel to that fire.
“Just a bunch of old photo albums and some journals the police already searched.”
“Journals?”
“Nothing useful. Just Mrs. Haggerty’s neighborhood watch diaries. Community drama mostly. You know, which neighbors are cheating on their clueless wives, how often, and with whom. That and her weekly grocery lists.” I rolled my eyes, if only to hide the fact that they’d begun watering.
Nick pulled me in for a hug. He rested his chin on my head. “I’m sorry you had to see that.”
“It’s fine,” I insisted, eager to change the subject. The diary I was looking for wasn’t in the box, and I doubted any of the other neighbors even knew these journals were here. I was certain they wouldhave all been stolen and destroyed (or sold to the highest bidder), depending on which neighbor had found them. Which meant the missing one I was looking for was either in Mrs. Haggerty’s possession or in Mike Tran’s. I hoped to god it wasn’t the latter. “Did you find anything?” I asked Nick.
He shook his head. “The garage was empty. So was the basement. Looks like Mike Tran took just about everything. If you’re finished down here, we could try upstairs. But I’ll understand if you want to go.”
“No.” I tossed the lid back on the box. “If you’re stupid enough to commit a B&E to help me, we might as well be thorough about it.”
“It’s not a B&E if she gave you her key,” he reminded me. He took my hand and led the way upstairs, winding us around the chairlift that took up one side of Mrs. Haggerty’s stairwell. I’d always wondered why she had one. She’d seemed pretty spritely for her age when she’d been kicking my ass on the police academy training course, though that was mostly due to the fact that Brendan was her partner and he was in excellent shape. And she’d certainly had no problem climbing the stairs inmyhouse when she’d staked her claim to my bedroom. I could only assume the chairlift had been her husband’s.
Nick aimed his flashlight into the first room at the top of the stairs. A set of twin beds bookended one wall. Framed photos hung behind them. The photos were mostly of Brendan. While Brendan hadn’t grown up in this house, this room had clearly been where he stayed when he visited.
Nick and I moved through it in tandem, searching drawers and closets, but it was as tidy and spare as Brendan’s condo.
“Nothing,” Nick said, emerging from the closet. “You?” He came up behind me, putting his hands gently on my waist as he looked over my shoulder.
I shut the desk drawer a little too hard. “Nothing that screams, ‘I murdered Gilford Dupree.’ I swear, Brendan is involved in this somehow.”
“Why do you say that?”
“He was supposed to pick up his grandmother two days ago, but he’s not returning my calls, and I’m pretty sure he’s skipped town. When I told Mike Tran, he completely ignored me. And I didn’t see much about Brendan in that file in your apartment,” I pointed out.
“You never saw that file,” Nick reminded me. “And be careful before you go throwing accusations around. Brendan’s a big supporter of local law enforcement. He’s got a solid shot at a seat on the city council and he’s in tight with some very big donors—”
I opened my mouth to point out that his political standing had no bearing on his capacity to commit murder, but Nick beat me to it.
“—I know, I know. I’ll look into him. Quietly,” he added.
“If you find him, tell him to pick up his grandmother.”
We moved down the hall, door by door, until we reached Mrs. Haggerty’s bedroom. I searched the dresser. Nick checked her closet. The contents were disheveled where police had already searched them: clothes organized by season, rolls of yarn, an assortment of knitting needles and sewing supplies.
I opened Mrs. Haggerty’s nightstand. A collection of dog-eared, yellowing paperbacks was tucked inside the drawer, along with a bottle of hand cream, an eyeglass repair kit, and several ballpoint pens. I picked up the stack of books to look beneath them and tossed them on the bed. One slipped off the edge. A folded piece of stationery fell out of its pages.
Curious, I opened it. It was written in the kind of crisp, careful script they used to teach in schools before the advent of computers.
Dearest Maggie,
You’ll never know how sorry I am. I know I can’t take back what I’ve done, but I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me. It was all my fault. You shouldn’t harbor any guilt for that night. I take full responsibility.
Yours always,
Owen
There was no date on the letter. The paper hadn’t yet yellowed, but the stationery had been pressed flat for so long, it was impossible to tell how old the note really was. Which begged the question: What happened on the night Owen had written about, and what was he taking responsibility for?
I looked over my shoulder for Nick. His light bobbed inside the closet.
