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As she stepped onto the little front porch, she looked to her left at the beautifully landscaped garden. Last time she’d been here, Sheriff Flynn’s car was hiding in the bushes.
The Realtor lockbox was on the door and she tapped in the code numbers Tayla had set up. It was a date and everyone in the office speculated what the numbers meant to their boss but no one had the nerve to ask her.
It worked. She quietly opened the door and—
“Guess we can go in now” came Jack’s deep rumble from behind her.
Kate was so startled that her heart leaped and she put her hand to her throat. “What are you doing here?”
Aunt Sara stepped from behind him and smiled at her pretty niece. “Waiting for you to come with the code. Jack said he could get a window open and he’d push me through, but I said we’d wait for you. Who do you think left the gate open for us?”
“Flynn.” Jack was making a joke. “He probably read your report, saw your picture of the books, and knew we’d want to get them.”
“You could have ordered them off Amazon,” Kate said.
“Or you could Kindle them.”
“Ha!” Sara said. “I like those machines as much as I do cell phone cameras.” Around her neck was what she called her baby camera, the Fujifilm X100F. It looked like something from the 1950s.
Kate was still standing by the open door wearing a look of disgust. It was deeply annoying that they’d known she was going to go to the house. Especially since she hadn’t decided until the last minute.
Jack and Sara were standing there grinning at her.
“We get the books, then we’re done, right?” Kate said.
“Of course.” Sara filled Kate’s big bag with all the Amanda Martin books, then began taking photos. This time she opened closets and cabinet doors and even drawers.
When they finished, they went outside and Sara took pictures of Sylvia and Janet’s garden. Jack held back shrubs as Sara photographed the area around the tall fence.
“I bet this is where the kids’ soccer balls came through,” Sara said. There was a four-foot-deep planting of perennial flowers against the wall-high fence. A ball hitting them would destroy the delicate stems.
Kate was looking around the beautiful garden and at the lovely house. “I don’t get it. Sylvia had all this and a successful career and people who loved her. Why did she kill herself?”
“Writers have a lot going on in their minds,” Sara said. “It makes us ecstatic and miserable at the same time. We crave the ordinary but we also hate it. I’m afraid that I can understand suicide very well.”
Jack and Kate had no reply to that. She looked at her watch. “I think we should go. That gate was opened for a reason and I don’t think it was for us. I wouldn’t want to be caught here. Do you think they’ll notice that the books are missing?”
“Only if their records say that the California serial killer stole paperback novels after he did his business.” As Jack looked at the house, his anger began to rise. “Suicide, murder. I don’t think we’ve accomplished anything so far. But I’m sure Flynn and his entourage are going to arrest someone soon. I need to go back to work. If Gil comes back today, somebody has to be there to protect him.”
“You’re sure he hasn’t said anything to you about why he’s so upset?” Kate asked.
“Are you asking if Gil told me that his son’s mother is threatening him? Or that he needs a half mil or so to pay her off? Or that he killed Janet Beeson in a really nasty way so no one would suspect him?”
Kate ignored his sarcasm and glared at him.
“No. Nothing. Not a word. Today when Gil picked up a Skilsaw I took it from him and he got angry. Yelled at me. Gil never yells at anybody. I put on my best caring look and asked him to tell me what was wrong. He said...” Jack looked at the women. “And I quote, he told me that I wasn’t his, uh, f-ing therapist and I could mind my own f-ing business. Then he got in his truck and spun out so fast two of my men got hit with gravel. So no. Gil told me nothing.”
Jack stalked ahead of them as he went to the gate, Sara and Kate behind him.
“Boxing, right?” Kate said.
“Oh yeah.”
When they got home, it wasn’t easy, but they got Jack to stay there and take his anger out on a boxing bag. That his friend Gil wasn’t there to hold the hand pads made his anger worse.
Kate went to the kitchen to make a pot of chili—with no beans for her aunt’s keto diet—while Sara snuggled down and began to read the Amanda Martin books.
“They’re all brand new, unopened,” Sara said. “It looks like Janet was a real fan. She probably had a set for reading over and over, and a display set just for show.”
