We slid through—quietly; Marley kept the hinges oiled—and along the wall of the house. I hoped we looked like two shadows, but I wasn’t sure.
At the corner, I motioned Darcy to a stop, and we stood and listened. There were no voices coming from the deck. They must be inside. Lucky break.
I gestured to Darcy, and we flitted into the backyard. Or at least Darcy flitted. She was tall, but lithe. I felt more like a lumbering elephant, leading with the stomach. As I thundered along, I kept one hand under it so the baby wouldn’t bounce up and down. The other hand still clutched the flashlight.
We made it across the lawn without being told to stop. And then we were into the band of trees separating Copper Creek and Marley’s house from the subdivision beyond.
“Slow down,” I panted, while Darcy ran like a gazelle. “I can’t keep up.”
She slowed down, and we spent a few minutes pushing through the brush while I struggled to catch my breath. Now was when the flashlight came in handy. I figured we were far enough away from all the houses that it was safe to turn it on, so I did. And it did help us navigate the tree roots and branches and brush littering the ground among the trees.
Then we were out on the other side, and crossing the lawn toward Denise Seaver’s house, looming dark and forbidding in front of us.
My heart was thudding, I admit it. And not only because I’d been running. It had been a while since I’d done much breaking and entering. I was out of practice.
But we’d come this far. I wasn’t about to turn back now.
Back in November, Marley had thrown a terra cotta flower pot through the glass in the back door before sticking her hand through the hole to unlock the door. I had assumed the glass would have been repaired by now, for safety’s sake if for no other.
Of course, Denise Seaver hadn’t been home to do it, but I had thought someone else would. Imagine my surprise when we got to the house and saw that all that stood between us and entrance was a piece of cardboard taped over the hole.
“Looks like somebody’s broken in,” Darcy whispered. And added, “someone other than us.”
I shook my head. “Marley did that. It’s been sitting here like that since November. I can’t believe nobody’s fixed it.”
“I can’t believe nobody’s broken in,” Darcy said.
“We don’t know that they haven’t. The TV and everything else of value might be gone. But they wouldn’t have been interested in her medical records.”
“If she kept them on her computer...” Darcy began.
“If she did, we’re out of luck. But we’re here. Let’s look around for hardcopies.”
And since the door was already open—sort of—maybe we wouldn’t go to jail if we were caught.
We approached the door.
“Flashlight or door?” I asked Darcy.
“I’ll hold the flashlight.” She held out a hand for it. I handed it over and waited for her to train it on the door before I stuck a fingernail under the bottom edge of the cardboard and lifted.
It came away too easily for it not to have been lifted before.
“I don’t think we’re the first people to have been here,” I told Darcy. “Here. Stick the light under the cardboard so I can see the glass. I don’t want to cut my wrist accidentally.”
I slipped my hand between the jagged pieces of glass still outlining the hole in the door, and stretched for the door knob. And came damn close to severing an artery when there was the scuff of a foot behind me.
Seventeen
“I knew you weren’t exercising!” my brother said triumphantly.
I drew my hand back out of the broken window and turned to him. “Holy crap, Dix. You almost scared me into cutting my wrist!”
He ignored me, of course, in favor of looking around. “What are you doing here? No one’s lived here since Doctor Seaver was arrested.”
“That’s why we’re here,” I said. “We’re looking for the medical records of Darcy’s birth mother.”
Dix looked at her.
“It’s a long story,” I added.
And not one that Dix cared to go into at the moment, it seemed. He shook his head. “I can’t let you do this, Sis.”
“You can’t stop me,” I pointed out.
“You wanna bet?” He didn’t wait for me to answer, just went on. “The cops are keeping an eye on this place. Bob Satterfield knows it’s sitting empty, so they do drive-bys a couple times a night, to make sure nobody’s squatting or carrying things out.”
“But we need those records!”
Dix eyed me. “Do you even know there are records?”
I didn’t. “But it’s worth a look. We can’t get into the clinic where she worked, and she wouldn’t give us any information.”
Dix’s eyebrows rose. “You spoke to her?”
“This morning,” I said. “We went to see her in prison. She wouldn’t tell us anything helpful.”
Dix looked torn, but he still shook his head. “We can talk to the sheriff tomorrow—” his glance included Darcy, “and ask permission to go through the place. I’ll go with you.”
“You think that will make a difference?”
“Yes,” Dix said.
“What if he says no? We’re here now. And the door’s open. Look.” I pushed it.
It opened, into the same tiled mudroom I remembered from last year.
Dix’s eyes narrowed. “You did that!”
“I didn’t. I swear. I didn’t have time before you startled me. Someone else has been here. The least we can do is go in and see if anything’s been stolen. As good neighbors.”
“We aren’t neighbors,” Dix said.
“It’s a figure of speech. As in ‘love your neighbor.’ Not just the people in the house next door to you, but everyone.”
“I know what it means,” Dix said. “I went to Sunday School too.”
“Then why did you ask?” It was my turn to shake my head. “We’re wasting time. All I want is ten minutes to go inside and see if there are any medical records. Less than that. Five.”
Dix vacillated. I could see it. Years of practice.
I pressed the advantage. “We know exactly what we’re looking for. A nine-month period before Darcy’s birthday, thirty-four years ago. Once we find the records, it’ll be very easy to check the ones that might apply. Three minutes.”
“If you keep going, you won’t have any time at all,” Dix said. “Fine. Go. But if the cops come and catch you, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“Maybe you should leave,” I told him. “If you get arrested too, there won’t be anyone to bail us out.”
“We’ll call Catherine,” Dix said and gave me a shove. “Go on. Clock’s ticking.”
I went. Through the door and into the mudroom-cum-laundry I remembered from last fall. Into the kitchen I also remembered—where at least someone had cleaned up the vegetables Denise Seaver had been chopping when we walked in on her back then, so they hadn’t turned to rot on the cutting board—and then into parts of the house I hadn’t seen before.
I was looking for a home office. It was a big house for one person—one of the McMansions similar to Dix’s house. A bit smaller, since Denise Seaver had been single and Dix had been married with two little girls when he bought the place. But still, plenty of room for an office. She’d been a professional. She must have had one.
“Spread out,” I told the other two. They’d come in behind me, of course, instead of staying outside and letting me do the reconnoitering. “Look for an office. Or filing cabinets. Or filing boxes, or anything like that.”
“Maybe one of us should keep an eye out the front,” Dix suggested. “In case we get company.”
Sure. We wouldn’t want Sheriff Satterfield to sneak up on us unannounced. “Flip a coin.”
“I’ll do it,” Darcy said.
Neither Dix nor I bothered to argue. We had little enough time as it was. If one of the neighbors had noticed us standing outside the back door ar
guing, the police could already be on their way.
Dix went one way, I went the other. Darcy walked to the front door and positioned herself off to the side, so she could peer out at the—hopefully—quiet residential street, but not be seen by anyone on the outside.
It didn’t take long. Dix found the office upstairs. “Here it is!” he called down the stairs.
I walked to the bottom of the stairs and whisper-called up. “Are there files?”
“There are filing cabinets,” my brother said.
“I’m coming.” I started up. Darcy looked at me over her shoulder, but didn’t budge from the front door. “You can probably come up,” I told her. “I’m sure there’s a window up there you can look out of.”
She hesitated, but by the time I had navigated half the staircase, she was on her way up, too, two steps at a time.
There were, indeed, filing cabinets. And the not-so-good doctor had kept meticulous—and meticulously organized—records.
Organized by last name, not year.
We shuffled through to the S drawer, but of course there was no Ora Sweet. Proof, if we’d needed it, that Ora Sweet was not Darcy’s mother’s real name.
I straightened and looked around. “This can’t be all of it. There are just four file drawers here. That’s not enough for thirty-five years of patients.”
Dix shrugged. “It’s all there is.”
“There has to be more somewhere else. Let’s look around. You check the closets in the other rooms on this level, and see if there are attic stairs. If it’s just a pull-down ladder, I don’t think we have to bother with it. She wouldn’t have carried any files up there.”
“We should get out of here soon,” Dix said, but he headed for the closet. I guess the life of crime we were living was growing on him.
The house had no basement, and I didn’t find anything of interest during the cursory search I did of the downstairs. Everything of value was gone, by the way. There was no TV, no stereo, no computer equipment... and a couple of walls looked bare, too, like they ought to have a painting or something on them, that wasn’t there.
I was just reaching for the garage door when I heard Darcy’s voice from upstairs.
“Sirens!”
I pricked up my ears, but couldn’t hear anything. Not from outside. From upstairs came the sound of scrambling feet as Darcy and Dix made for the stairs.
“Coming closer!” Darcy called from the upstairs hallway.
I yanked open the garage door and saw what I was looking for: stacks of file boxes. And—Yes! thank you, God!—they were sorted by year.
“We have to go!” Dix yelled. He turned up in the doorway from the house to the garage. “C’mon, Sis!”
“Grab this box!” I was wrestling with it, and probably shouldn’t be, since it was heavy.
“We have to go!”
“It’s what we came here for. I’m not leaving without it!”
Dix cursed, but loped across the floor and hoisted the box. “Move!”
I moved. I really wanted the second box, too, the one that covered the couple of months of the year before Darcy’s birth in the spring, but I had to content myself with opening it, grabbing a couple of handfuls of files, and thrusting them at Darcy. “Take them and go!”
I took the last handful myself and ran for the back door. The sirens were definitely louder now. I mean, I could hear them. And they were coming closer. Not much doubt they were on their way here. Any second, the car would come to a screeching halt in front of Denise Seaver’s house.
I crunched across the glass on the tile floor and out through the back door. With both hands full, I couldn’t stop to shut it, so I didn’t. Up ahead, Darcy was loping across the grass, gaining on Dix, who was struggling with the heavy box. The were both getting close to the tree line. I hurtled after, just as flashing blue lights illuminated the area between Denise Seaver’s house and the one next door.
Dix and Darcy disappeared into the trees. I scrambled after, clutching my handful of folders against my chest and the flashlight in my other hand. In front of the house, the sirens went suddenly silent, and I heard the slam of a car door, and then another.
And then I was under cover, too, stumbling over roots and brush as I tried to keep up with Darcy and Dix. They were making as much noise as buffalo up ahead, crashing through the trees. There was no way the cops, if they came into Denise Seaver’s backyard, could avoid hearing them.
“Stop!” I hissed.
We all stumbled to a stop and listened.
At first I couldn’t hear anything but my own ratcheting heart and the sound of everyone’s breathing. Then came noises from the house, and the beam of a flashlight.
Two shadows approached the back door, and I could hear the excitement in their voices when they discovered that it was open.
There was a moment or two of discussion and gesticulating, and then they pulled their guns and slipped inside, one after the other.
“Now,” I told the others. “Go. Quietly.”
We moved forward, careful where we put our feet, crunching over dry sticks and last year’s leaves. I didn’t envy Dix, carrying the heavy box. I was having a hard enough time juggling my own flashlight and the few files I was responsible for.
It felt like an eternity, but eventually we made it out on the other side of the trees and onto Marley’s lawn.
Only to be met by a bright beam of light that left us standing in the middle of the yard on display.
“What’s going on here?” Sheriff Satterfield’s voice asked.
Uh-oh.
I smiled sweetly into the glare. “Good evening, Sheriff.”
There was a pause. “I should have known,” the sheriff said, resigned.
“Any way you could get that light out of our eyes?”
“In a minute.” But the light moved away from me and swung toward the others. “Dix?”
The sheriff sounded surprised. Maybe he’d expected someone else. Rafe, probably. “And... Darcy, is it?”
“Yes, sir,” Darcy said, her voice subdued.
Finally, the light went away. “What are you three up to?”
“Exercising,” I said brightly.
“Uh-huh.”
“That’s what they said they were doing,” Dix said, “when they parked in front of my house. I didn’t want them going off on their own in the dark, so I went after them.”
“And got roped into breaking and entering?” The sheriff’s voice was dry.
There was no real point in denying the obvious. We were standing there holding the evidence. Caught red-handed, as the saying goes. All the sheriff had to do was take a look at the files to know we’d been inside Denise Seaver’s house.
A couple of silhouettes were standing a few feet away, behind the sheriff, and I peered through the dark. “Hi, Marley. Did you call the sheriff?”
“Sorry, Savannah,” Marley said. “We didn’t realize it was you. When we saw you go through the yard earlier, Todd called his dad.”
Of course he had. “Hi, Todd,” I said.
Todd nodded. Things have been awkward between us ever since I turned him down in favor of Rafe. This was even more awkward. And not just that he had called the cops on me, but that he was here, at Marley’s house, at night.
I turned back to the sheriff. “Can we go sit down somewhere? So I can explain? My feet hurt.”
“Make it good,” the sheriff said.
Yessir. I made it as good as I could, once we were on the deck and seated in Marley’s patio furniture. I emphasized how we’d gone all the way to the Tennessee Women’s Prison to speak to Denise Seaver, and how she had been unwilling to help us, and how we’d reasoned that she might have old records at her house. “It’s not like we were stealing anything valuable. We weren’t trying to profit. Just find out who Darcy’s biological mother is.”
The sheriff looked at her. “You were born here?”
“Nashville,” Darcy said. “But my mother was from this area.”
>
“Denise Seaver admitted that Darcy’s mother was one of her patients,” I added. “But since she used a fake name at the hospital, we don’t know who she is. But Denise Seaver went to school with her, so she would have her real name on her medical records here.”
“They went to school together?”
“That’s what Doctor Seaver said. That Darcy’s mother was a year ahead of her in school.”
“I was a year ahead of her in school,” the sheriff said.
“Good for you,” I said. “Although you’re not Darcy’s mother.” And presumably not Darcy’s father, either.
Although someone had to be. He was tall and lean. So was Darcy.
He wasn’t dark, though. Like his son, the sheriff has fair hair—more silver now that he’s sixty—and grayish-blue eyes.
So maybe Darcy’s mother had the dark hair and eyes. Light hair and eyes are recessive, aren’t they?
I peered into the sheriff’s face, searching for a resemblance. There wasn’t one, not that I could see. Then again, I don’t look much like my father, either. Dix and I take after Mother’s family.
While I’d been thinking, the sheriff had turned to Dix. “You’re a lawyer. How did you let yourself get talked into this?”
“They walked off in the dark,” Dix said. “I followed them because I wanted to make sure they were safe.”
“Where are the girls?”
That was my interjection, not the sheriff’s. Dix shot me a glance. “They spent the evening with Catherine. She’s bringing them home at nine.”
“We might not be back there by then.” Certainly not if the sheriff arrested us. It was getting close to that time now.
“She has a key,” Dix said and went back to explaining what had gone wrong. “I didn’t catch up until they were opening the door into Doctor Seaver’s house. And then I didn’t want them to go inside on their own.”
“You do know that breaking and entering is a crime?”
“Misdemeanor trespassing,” Dix said. “Empty house, no weapon.”
He turned to Marley. “Will you be pressing charges for us crossing your lawn?”
“Of course not.” Marley smiled at him. Todd scowled, and then straightened his face when he realized I was looking at him.
Uncertain Terms (Savannah Martin Mysteries Book 12) Page 20
