Page 53 of The Lost Heiress
What the hell was she doing? Did she just have a stroke and forget that this was Ransom Towers she was talking to? The man who, prior to this conversation, she had always seen as a cold, pompous—hell,sociopathic—asshole?
Oh God.Had he seen her close her eyes in anticipation of a kiss? She swallowed, hard. She was glad the room was dark and that at least he couldn’t see the blush rising from her collarbone to her cheeks. Her face felt like it was on fire.
“Yeah, right,” she said. “Good night.”
She sat there for a while in the dark after he had gone, waiting for her heart rate to return to normal.
Chapter Seventeen
Present
Detective Church leaned back in his chair and rubbed his temples. His head was starting to throb from all the reading he’d done, the strain of studying small text and puzzling out handwriting in the old case files, which had never been digitized. Instead, there were several large binders full of typed and handwritten reports, microfiche, and photographs that had degraded with time. The pages had yellowed, the ink had faded, and everything smelled musty, like an old library book. Church had been through the whole thing now, catalogued timelines and persons of interest. The details swam around in his head, untethered.
A cold case was like a giant puzzle that had been partially assembled, the edges and corners filled in, the middle a patchwork of center pieces and the maddening empty spaces between them. Normally, Church enjoyed the slow, laborious process of examining each piece and figuring out how they fit together; he loved the challenge of looking for the needle in the haystack that someone else had missed.
But the Towers case was frustrating. Often, crimes were solved by one of two things: witness testimony or physical evidence. What was perhaps most remarkable about Saoirse Towers’s case was the scarcity of either, when one would think the circumstances under which she disappeared would have lent themselves to an excess of both. How wasit, Detective Church wondered, that in a house full of guests gathered for the express purpose of celebrating Saoirse’s birthday, nobody had noticed that the guest of honor was missing? Surely somebody would have seen or heardsomething? Anything.
But when the police interviewed the guests the evening after Saoirse disappeared, the timeline they were able to cobble together of Saoirse’s activities the night prior was piecemeal and fuzzy. One guest claimed to have seen her floating on a swan raft in the outdoor pool, sipping champagne, at the same time that another saw her eating cake in the ballroom. One guest might have seen her crying in the bathroom. She had given her handkerchief to a tall dark-haired girl in a silver party dress weeping over the sink, but it could have been someone else—she didn’t get a good look. On only three points were the guests decidedly unanimous: the night was dark, the drinks were flowing, and the storm was loud. The party and the weather worked in unison to create the perfect cocktail of chaos and distraction. Part of Detective Church couldn’t help but wonder if that was purely coincidental or by design.
When the police searched the house and grounds the next day, they were dismayed to find that the whole scene had been compromised. The household had known about Saoirse’s disappearance for hours before they alerted the authorities. By the time the police arrived, any evidence that the storm had not washed away had been destroyed by the guests in their search. The halls were smeared with muddy footprints going in every which direction, the gardens trampled, every surface in Saoirse’s room touched by dozens of hands.
Detective Church shook his head to clear his frustration. So no evidence to go off of, then, and a suspect list that included everyone in the house that night—312 names, to be exact, when the staff and entertainers were factored in along with the guests.
The last sighting of Saoirse had been around midnight, when several guests claimed they had seen Saoirse barefoot and inebriated, clutching her shoes in one hand and laughing as she headed down tothe beach for the fireworks. A man was with her, but it was dark, and they couldn’t see who.
Was it Teddy Mountbatten?Church wondered.Ransom Towers? Or someone else?
Church had tried to substantiate Teddy’s claim that Saoirse had been pregnant when she was taken out of school. He’d asked Nisha whether there was any way to determine, based on Saoirse’s remains, whether she had ever been pregnant or given birth. Nisha told him that sometimes there were parturition scars on the pelvic bones from childbirth but that they were not always present and certainly wouldn’t be present if Saoirse had had a C-section or miscarried. As it was, Saoirse had no such scars. So Church tried to find another witness to substantiate Teddy’s claim. The family doctor was deceased, but Church had been able to track down a gardener who had worked at Cliffhaven during the time in question. The man was in his eighties now, living in Sacramento with his daughter. Church had sat with him for over an hour, but he had no recollection of Saoirse being with child and claimed to have spent very little time in the house.
Church sighed. There was only one thing left for him to do. He would have to go back to Cliffhaven and talk to Florence Talbot.
It was Florence herself who answered the door when he showed up at Cliffhaven unannounced.
“Detective Church,” she said brightly. “I was wondering when I might see you again.”
“I’m sorry for not phoning ahead,” Church said. “I hope I’m not intruding.”
“Not at all,” Florence said and waved him in. “Come into the drawing room; I have something for you.”
Florence ushered him into the next room and onto the sofa, while she orchestrated an order of tea to be brought out and a box to bebrought up from the storage closet. She inquired about his grandmother and made sure he had exactly the number of lumps of sugar and milk that he wanted. Not long after, a maid entered, carrying an old, dusty box.
“Ah, here it is,” Florence said, setting down her own cup on the coffee table and waving the maid over. “You can set it down here, Jenny. Thank you. Would you go check on Rebecca and make sure she takes her break now?”
Jenny nodded and left the room.
“What’s this?” Church asked, looking at the box.
“Just some old party-planning things,” Florence said. “Odds and ends.”
When he still looked confused, Florence went on. “Seating charts, from the night of Saoirse’s party. RSVP cards. Some old photographs from that night, like we talked about.”
“Oh, yes,” Church said. He had forgotten all about that. “Yes, thank you.”
“Of course,” Florence said. She looked at him for a moment, a crease of concern forming between her brows. “You look tired, Detective,” Florence said. “Bone weary.”
Church rubbed his jaw. He thought about denying it, but hewastired, and he knew he looked it. “Lots of long nights lately,” Church said.
“Yes,” Florence said, nodding. “Maybe you should do something to take your mind off of it? Just for a little bit. I read somewhere that the subconscious mind is better than the conscious mind at solving problems, that even when you’re not actively thinking about something, the subconscious is at work, making connections.”
