by Linda Coles
It was always peaceful in her attic office; she liked it up there. Smiling, she reached up to open one of the skylights. The temperature in the room was still warm, and the air was a bit stuffy from the late afternoon sun shining through. She could hear the chatter of birds in the trees nearby and she stood for a moment under the window to listen, enjoying the birdsong. It could be incredibly relaxing. When a cloud passed over and changed the light in the room, she took her seat once again in front of her laptop and pulled up a webpage to start her search on the name she’d been given. Philip Banks she’d already got, but now she knew something more about him, namely that he was American, and so was his friend Alistair; that should narrow things down a bit. She wrote their names down on a pad in front of her to come back to.
She decided to start with one whose full name she knew, and typed Samuel Moore into the search bar. Samuel Moore, Moor with an E on the end. She added 1987, figuring there would be hundreds of thousands of Samuel Moores. It turned out to be a good move. Up came a picture of the boy, looking similar to the one in the biscuit tin, though whoever had posted it online had omitted the E on the end of his surname. It was a clear likeness to the picture she already had. Finally, she was getting a bit further. She clicked on the link to read more about the boy from thirty years ago.
There wasn’t much to be gleaned; it was mundane school stuff, nothing to get excited about, so she went back to the search results and look further on for a more adult Samuel Moore. With an E on the end. Reading the headlines, she scrolled down the first and second pages. Nothing particularly grabbed her attention. On the third page of the search results, she stopped, hovered her mouse over the link and groaned. It was an announcement of the death of Samuel Moore; the age listed looked about right. The deceased man would have just turned 45.
The small hairs on the back of her neck prickled slightly as she read that Samuel Moore had taken an overdose twelve months previously and was found by his family in his home. It went on to say that friends and family had no idea why such a happy man would have taken his own life; there seemed to be no reason for it. A shock to them all. He’d left two small children and his wife behind.
Chrissy studied the photograph of the man and then flipped through to the other webpage she still had open, where a younger Samuel Moore looked back at her. She checked the boy’s eyes against the man’s eyes, the boy’s mouth against the man’s mouth, and made adjustments for fading hair over the years. In her opinion, the two photographs were of the same person at different stages in life.
She’d found the right Samuel Moore, but too late, it seemed.
“One down,” she said to herself, and opened another browser tab for the next search. She had two more that she had full names for: Stuart Townsend and Steve Marks. She picked the latter, entered his name in the search bar, and pressed search. With just his name alone there were over 100 million results, so she tried her trick again and added 1987. That brought the figure down to 16 million, still far too many to wade through. She thought for a moment and then added Glendene into the mix. It didn’t do much good, but she scanned the first few pages of headlines just in case something grabbed her like it had with Samuel. There was nothing obvious, nothing worthy of investigating, nothing that piqued her interest one iota.
“Damn. I thought it might have worked a second time. I must’ve just got lucky.” She sat back in a chair and stared across at her screen, wondering what to try next.
“What if Philip and Alistair were friends as kids?” she thought, sitting forward again. “I wonder if they stayed friends as adults, being that they are both American.” She hurriedly typed in Philip Banks plus Alistair plus America and waited for the results to come back.
She couldn’t believe her luck.
Smiling, she clicked on the top listing, the URL for a firm of lawyers in the LA suburbs, not that far from Santa Monica.
“Well, would you look at that? What are the chances that they are in Santa Monica, and that I’m going there too?” She raised her eyes to the ceiling, her hands in front of her as if praying, and said, “Thank you.” Now she was excited: finally, she was getting somewhere, and the stars were aligning on her side. She clicked on to their ‘About Us’ page and read the brief corporate descriptions of Alistair Crowley and Philip Banks. Both were divorce lawyers, both working in Abbot Kinney at their own practice.
But the thing that really caught her interest was their photographs on the page. Even though they were on the formal side, something sparked inside of her.
She was sure she’d seen Philip’s face before. But where?
Chapter Forty-Two
Chrissy peered a bit more closely at the picture on her computer screen. Although Philip’s shirt and tie made him look older, stuffy and corporate, she was certain now that she’d seen him before, although she still couldn’t be sure where—if it indeed had been him. She’d never used a lawyer in LA, so it couldn’t have been that, and she certainly didn’t socialise when she was out there, preferring her own company, peace and relaxation. Her time away. Sure, she had a few friends, but they were passing acquaintances and she was sure he wasn’t the partner of any of them. And since he wasn’t from around Englefield Green either; that couldn’t be it. She put the thought to the back of her mind to come back to later, then carried on with her search.
Getting results spurred her on. She checked the time via the clock on her computer screen and figured what the hell, she’d keep looking. But her mind kept drifting back to Philip and Alistair, their law practice and the fact that they were literally around the corner from where her LA place was. Clearly, she had some decisions to make. But first, she wanted to find out more about Stuart Townsend, another boy whose name she had but hadn’t been able to find much information on. Figuring that all the boys had gone to the same school and that two—Philip and Alistair—were lawyers, she wondered now if maybe there were other lawyers amongst them.
She typed in Stuart Townsend and lawyer, and waited. There was still over a million results, but the Wikipedia result at the top of the page caught her eye and she clicked on that as a starting point. No good. Unless the Stuart she was looking for was an Irish actor, and she doubted that, it was the wrong guy. She scrolled down, looking for something else that might stand out. She’d no idea at this point if she was in fact actually scrolling over useful posts or not, but she hadn’t the time to go through every single link—she’d be searching all year.
It was page six when something eventually popped out at her, and she decided to click. It was on a UK law website, in the news section and it was a brief story about how Stuart Townsend had been found dead at his home in Richmond, Surrey. He’d left a wife, Jo, and two twin boys, Ben and Jerry, behind. She read a brief outline of Stuart’s accolades and achievements, that he had been a talented lawyer in his prime and that his suicide had been a massive shock to all. There was no mention of how he’d taken his own life, but immediately Chrissy heard alarm bells ringing.
That was two on her list who had committed suicide—Samuel Moore and Stuart Townsend—and that was too much of a coincidence. Would any more turn up dead, she wondered. With a sinking feeling, she turned her attention back to Cody Taylor now, putting his name in the search bar again and adding lawyer. Nothing. But adding suicide brought up what she needed.
“Shit!” she exclaimed. Cody Taylor, a businessman in infrastructure, was also listed as having died of suicide. That made three. Her pulse started to race. There wasn’t much more now that she needed to find out: she needed to find out a surname for Robert, and she didn’t have a fat lot on Steve Marks either. Adding suicide to Steve Marks turned up nothing of interest. So, Steve could still be alive, but what of Robert? She sat back in her chair and pondered for a moment; the light around had begun to dim slightly as the sun slid down the sky to the horizon. She flicked on the desk lamp and sat thinking for a moment in the quiet of her attic office.
Her head was buzzing. Buzzing with what she had found out
so far: the fact that two of the boys in the tin were alive and well, and had their business at Abbot Kinney, and the horrible fact that three of the others had committed suicide, and only fairly recently, in the last year or so. All of those three had had young families at the time of their deaths, so whatever it was that had encouraged them to take their own lives must’ve been pretty rough. Chrissy was never of the opinion that those who committed suicide were cowards. More the opposite: to be able to take your own life, to swallow those pills or put a noose around your own neck or any of the other ways that people chose to take their own lives, must be incredibly frightening. It would take a lot of guts to accomplish. Leaving a small family along with a loving wife must be devastatingly difficult to contemplate, never mind act on. She wondered what that something was that had encouraged them to do such thing. Was it connected to her puzzle?
The wine and the sandwich weren’t doing much for her concentration now, so she made her way back downstairs. Once back down in the coolness of the kitchen, she flicked the kettle on to make some tea, hoping to dilute the couple of glasses of wine dulling her senses. The sandwich hadn’t been sufficient, so she took a pizza out of the freezer, unwrapped it from the cellophane and placed it in the oven on high. Pizza wasn’t normally her thing. She kept them in for her boys, but since neither one was home and she was hungry, she considered it a treat. She wasn’t going to beat herself up over it; she was sure pizza had some vital nutrients in it somewhere—maybe in the sliced vegetables on top? ‘Everything in moderation’ was her guideline; there was no need to deprive yourself when you really desired something. Instantly, however, she thought of Julie’s waiflike body.
She must be permanently hungry.
I should cook her a proper meal.
With my cooking skills? Maybe not.
She let her head run free while she waited for the pizza to cook, her brain filtering through all she’d learned while she was upstairs in her office. Now she had to put it into some sort of order and figure out what the link was other than that the boys had all gone to school together and a good proportion of them were lawyers.
Or dead.
The more she delved, the more she found out, the more she wanted to know. It was a shame her father wasn’t around to tell her more.
He’d hidden that tin for a reason.
“And where the hell are the three missing diaries? Why would someone take them? And who? Did they even exist?” The more she thought of the missing diaries, the more she realised they had to hold the key to whatever it was that was being concealed. Of course they existed: her father had been too meticulous over the years to not have kept the three in question. And whoever had them now surely was involved. She couldn’t see either Julie or her mother being that person. What motive could they have?
But somebody had a motive; somebody was hiding them from her.
The timer dinged. As she slid the pizza out of the oven, she wondered what else the old headmaster hadn’t told her. He was definitely somebody else who held clues. There was a story he wasn’t telling her. She’d have to go back and pay him another visit, ask about the suicides and about Robert, the boy without a surname. And since she was leaving for LA the day after tomorrow, she didn’t have much time to see the old man again.
Chapter Forty-Three
They were hidden for safekeeping. Nobody should ever know the truth; there was little point. It served no purpose now that Gerald was dead. Enough people had died already, and if the full story ever came out there would be shame added to the hurt. Shame on those that were involved; shame on those that were left behind. How those photographs had ever come to be found at all was a mystery. But now Chrissy was snooping; only time would tell if she was savvy enough to piece it together and bring the story to light.
Unless the story was stopped, of course. But that would mean stopping Chrissy—not an easy task.
The diary paper sounded crinkly, thin, like parchment paper almost, and it was covered with the man’s inky scrawl; he had used a fountain pen to create the distinctive calligraphy on each page. There were everyday notes, there were business dealings, and then there were his love notes. They had stayed in the diaries, never been delivered, and so they were there to read, Gerald Baker pouring out his heart and soul into his private writing. Maybe he re-read them to himself, relived them even. From the content he’d written, it was obvious quite how in love the man was—with a woman he couldn’t have. The passion in his words showed how it pulled at his soul.
Another page turned, another day devoured, another story learned.
There’d been a rumour that Gerald had had an affair, but no one had ever seen any proof. No one realised just how deep in he had been until the diaries had come to light.
They’d always been there, locked away in the cupboard in his den, but the key had been hidden, keeping the cupboard’s contents safely away from prying eyes. But now Gerald was dead and buried, and it seemed only right that his sordid secret should stay with him.
The three diaries were slipped back inside the safe for safekeeping, far away from searching, prying eyes.
Chapter Forty-Four
Chrissy seemed to be making a habit of getting up before dawn, she thought, sighing with frustration. Knowing full well there was no point lying there any longer, she slipped out of bed once again. It was just coming up to 5 AM, almost dawn. Instead of going down to the kitchen, she went up to her attic office as quietly as she could so as not to wake the rest of the household, who were still peacefully sleeping. The boys had got home later than expected and would welcome the sleep-in. Chrissy would drop them at school herself to save them time. Adam would be up shortly; she’d wait for her morning cup of tea until then. But first she wanted to find out if a hunch she’d had during the night would pay off. There were still two names that she had virtually nothing on—Robert somebody and Steve Marks. If she put all the names into one Google search at the same time, would anything rise to the surface, something they all had in common, perhaps? It was worth a try.
Making herself comfortable at her desk, she opened her laptop and waited for the WiFi to connect. She entered each of the boys’ names, adding a plus sign between each one, and threw in Glendene for good measure. She clicked search and waited.
Nothing.
“Damn,” she said to herself. She took Glendene out and tried a second time without it. She sat staring at the screen, willing it to give her an answer, but once again, nothing was forthcoming. She sat back, tapping a finger on her chin. What would she have done in a previous life? How could she have found out more with just a first name to go on, for a boy that she knew had existed back in 1987?
Legwork. She had to talk to people on that list who had known the boy, but the only ones still alive both lived in LA. Three more were deceased. There was the old headmaster, of course, but she’d drawn a blank there yesterday, so unless he’d had a miraculous memory explosion since she’d left him in the pub, that was a dead end.
“I guess first I need to go back to Inkpen, see if the school secretary will talk to me. Maybe she’s been there a while and can help.” She remembered the bright, breezy voice of the girl she’d spoken to on the phone, the one she’d lied to about working for Horse and Hound. Maybe she could bribe her somehow to gain access to the boys’ records. All she needed was this Robert’s surname, and maybe where he’d moved on to if they kept that information, and then she’d follow it up herself. Or maybe the school had an address, and Robert’s parents still lived there, and she could call in on them. Either way, she had to do the legwork; there was no other way.
And she only had today.
She heard the faint sounds of movement from the floor below her and figured Adam was up. She flipped the lid of the laptop shut and went down to join him.
“Good morning. Want some tea?” she said brightly as she entered the kitchen.
“Three mornings in a row you beat me to it. I hope you’re not ailing for something,” he said. Adam wrapped
his arms around Chrissy as he pulled her close and kissed her forehead tenderly. “You do feel a bit warm.” Chrissy enjoyed the comfort of his arms; she’d miss them in the coming days, but knew that she would look forward to his embrace even more when she returned. Absence made the heart grow fonder.
“I’m fine,” she said. “I’m just cramming, trying to get everything tidied up before I go. A bit on my mind. But thanks for asking.”
“I’ll miss you, you know. I’m not fond of when you go away.” He tightened his grip ever so slightly and nuzzled into her neck. If she were a cat, Chrissy would have purred. He smelled of sleep; his face was rough with stubble and he had a severe case of bed head. Her stomach growled. Her own evening meal the night before had not exactly hit the spot.
“Why don’t I make us both scrambled eggs for breakfast, before the boys get up? And a pot of coffee?” she said, looking up at him expectantly. “You always enjoy my eggs.”
“That’s because it’s hard to ruin them, unless you leave them on too long and burn the toast.” She slapped him lightly across his chest and he restrained her further in a tight bear hug until she squealed out. “Ssh, you’ll wake the boys,” he said.
“Then stop teasing about my cooking skills. Eggs or not? You’ll wish I was here to make them next week,” she said in a singsong voice. Knowing he’d succumb, she unwrapped his grip and gathered the utensils she’d need, taking eggs from the fridge.
Adam added bread to the toaster for them both. “I’ll be in charge of the toast,” he informed her, a knowing look in his eye. “That way, I know it will be done to perfection.”
Chrissy raised her wooden spoon in the air at him, mock threatening. Changing the subject away from her cooking skills, she said, “I leave tomorrow night. Are you sure you won’t come out for a couple of days?”
