Page 38 of Finding Silence
“Already spoke to her earlier as well,” Savvy shares with a friendly smile.
“Oh, good.”
“And you likely won’t be able to get a hold of her,” she adds, looking at her watch. “She’s on a flight into Spokane as we speak.”
“Grace is?”
Chapter 12
Phil
* * *
“They’re my loony files.”
I glance at Grace over the rim of my fifth or sixth cup of coffee today. I may have to call this my last one because, I swear, I’m so charged my ears are buzzing.
My manager drove up half an hour ago with an extra suitcase which is currently sitting open on my coffee table. She’s pulling out shoeboxes, file folders, and plastic bags stuffed with some disturbing shit to show the sheriff.
Savvy called after lunch and asked for me to come over to my place to do a walk-through of the house, and go over a list of the things her team is taking in as evidence. Brant dropped me off and was going to run into town to check on Angus and pick up a few things.
We’d barely finished with the walk-through when Grace rolled up in a rental, and Brant’s Bronco was right behind her.
I can feel him standing at my back as Grace pulls out one of the bags and spills the contents. Handcuffs, a whip, some leather contraption that looks like a harness of sorts, and a disturbingly large black dildo bounces off my couch and on the floor.
“What the fuck?” Brant growls over my shoulder.
Savvy’s eyes widen in shock as she turns to look at her father. I guess he really doesn’t swear much normally. I’m starting to think I’m a bad influence on the man.
“Oh, believe me, this isn’t the worst,” Grace shares as she bends over to grab the monstrous silicone dick off the floor and casually tosses it back on the couch. “Over the years, I’ve collected some pretty weird and worrisome stuff from your admirers.” She emphasizes it with finger quotes. “Some of it I actually ended up handing off to law enforcement—anything that had biological material or actual physical threats—but I have pictures of everything in those file folders along with copies of the police reports.”
“Biological material?” I can’t stop myself from asking, even though I’m not sure I want to know.
“Trust me, you don’t want to know,” Grace confirms right away. “Although…I guess you had Duncan smear shit all over your wall, so you can probably use your imagination.”
“We can’t be sure it was him,” Savvy corrects her. “At least not until we have some concrete evidence to that fact. I’ve had my deputies looking for Mr. Brothers but he’s not answering his phone and, so far, we haven’t had any luck connecting with him. He’s definitely not staying anywhere in Silence. At this point, we have nothing but suspicions to go on. So, while we wait for the lab to process the evidence we’ve collected, I’m going to take this fan mail with me and go through it. Maybe I can flag other potential suspects.”
She packs the contents of Grace’s suitcase in a box Brant digs up from the garage.
“I’ll carry it out for you,” he offers, following his daughter out the door.
“Sooo…” Grace drawls, as soon as they’re out of earshot. “You and the silver fox neighbor look pretty cozy. Any prospects there?”
I’d say there were more than prospects, but I don’t know if I’m ready to share yet, so instead of an answer, I give her a shrug. Kissing and telling was never my style, and I’m not about to start now.
Besides, Grace may have been my manager for many years and probably knows me better than most, but I wouldn’t exactly say we were that close. For instance, I don’t really know what goes on in her life outside of her work for me. I know she’s single, and has no kids of her own—similar to me—but she has mentioned her brother and her niece before.
Maybe my move here to Silence is creating a slightly different dynamic than we had back in Portland, where our routine had been pretty predictable over the past nine or ten years.
“I can’t believe you never told me about the BDSM stuff,” I comment instead, still processing the extent of the creepy fan stuff she brought over.
Now it’s Grace’s turn to shrug.
“It’s part of my job to deal with the crazies so you don’t have to. That was especially true at the height of your career, you needed to focus on other things, so I ran interference. If there was anything concerning, I notified your security detail, as well as law enforcement.”
“Well, I’d hoped I could slip a bit further into obscurity here in Silence, so I hope the sheriff’s office can get a handle on this situation with Dunk quickly, so I can get back to becoming a nonentity.”
Grace looks at me, her head tilted to one side. “Are you positive Duncan is responsible for this? I find it so hard to believe he’d go to these lengths.”
