Unraveling Isobel (24 page)

I stood up and shuffled over to the pile of books. I picked one up. It didn't look any different. It didn't feel any different. It was a copy of
The Phantom Tollbooth
. It had been one of my favorite books as a kid. My dad had gotten it for me. I turned the pages. There was a smear of what I guessed was chocolate on one of the pages. Much like Nate's mom, I came from a line of well-loved-book people who didn't mind a smear here and there. I scraped the chocolate blob off the
page so the page number could be seen again.

I dropped the book. It felt like my heart had stopped. Was that it? It might be nothing, but it was the first idea that had made any sense in a long time. I looked at the clock one last time, and then I left.

I stopped at Nate's room and tapped on the door softly. Mom and Dick's room was just a few doors down, and the last thing I wanted was to wake them up. I turned the knob slowly and pushed the door open.

“Nate? Are you here?”

His room was pitch black, but even though I couldn't see very well, I could tell he wasn't there. He must have snuck out of the house and gone to the party. I didn't know if I should wait for him or check things out on my own. An image of him sitting on a piece of driftwood at the cove came into my mind. He had a beer in one hand and Nicole in the other. Forget it. I wasn't waiting for him. For all I knew, it would turn out to be nothing anyway. If I found anything, we could talk about it later.

I tiptoed down into the kitchen and grabbed the flashlight that Dick kept by the back door. I clicked it on. There wouldn't be any lights in the west wing. I stepped quietly through the foyer, listening for any sounds coming from upstairs, but everything was quiet. The west wing was cold, but normal cold, the way it should feel. There wasn't the same chilling cold that had been in my room. The smell of mildew and rot tickled my nose.

When I got to the library I closed the door behind me with a quiet click and panned the room with the flashlight to confirm I was alone. I crossed the room and checked the window. It wasn't locked. I suspected Nate had left through here to keep Dick from knowing he was out on a school night. I was half tempted to lock the window to teach him a lesson, but decided against it. I slid the thick green velvet curtains shut so that any light from the flashlight wouldn't bounce off the window, just in case Dick was looking out from upstairs. I started on the farside, trailing my finger along the shelves. I tried to figure out if there was any sort of rhyme or reason to how the books were kept, but everything seemed sort of clustered together.
Tom Sawyer
next to a Tom Clancy. A bunch of boring looking books on economics, broken up by a hardcover Calvin and Hobbes collection. They weren't even organized by size or color. There was a serious lack of the Dewey decimal system in this library. If Mandy were here she would whip this place into shape in no time.

I climbed the rolling ladder so I could check the shelves at the top of the bookcase. I heard a floorboard creak and I shut the flashlight off quickly. There was a rustle outside the door. I pressed against the ladder, my face between two rungs, and tried to hold my breath. I must have breathed in some dust, because instantly I wanted to sneeze. I wriggled my nose back and forth to make the urge go away. My ears strained to pick up any other sounds, but I didn't hear anything. It must have been the house
settling or maybe a mouse. I refused to think rat.

Unless whatever was out in the hallway was being quiet so it could listen too.

I shook off the heebie-jeebies. I had to stop winding myself up. There was enough creepy stuff going on without asking for more. I let out a tiny sneeze, but no one called out. I slowed my breathing and counted to a hundred.

Nothing.

I clicked the flashlight back on and waited to see if Dick would fling open the door and demand to know what I was doing, but it stayed quiet. I turned my attention back to the shelves. The only things on the top shelves were books I was pretty sure no one had read for decades and a gray flannel blanket of dust. I sneezed again and almost dropped the flashlight but caught it just in time in the crook of my arm. I shivered at the idea of losing my light, and hurried to examine the last row of shelves.

I was about a third of the way down the next shelf when I saw it, a book with greenish-tan binding and red detail. I slid the book out.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
. The cover had an illustration of Alice being attacked by a wall of playing cards.

I sat down in one of the leather chairs. I couldn't tell if I wanted to find anything or not. I opened the cover and thumbed through the first few pages. I thought the book might smell a bit musty, but it didn't. The book opened to an illustration of Alice following the white rabbit. I flipped ahead to
page 123
.

The pages were stuck together, and I didn't want to tear them. This first-edition book probably cost more than I could imagine. Dick could probably tell me to the penny what this thing was worth. While Nate's mom might have been a fan of letting books be broken in and loved, I was pretty sure Dick would make me pay him back for any lost value if I so much as sneezed on a page. I slid my finger between the pages, slowly breaking them apart.

The pages fell open. There were two pieces of paper tucked in between
pages 122
and
123
.

Chapter 33

I
unfolded the papers. The first was a statement from Bank of America. It had Dick's name on the account, but the address was a PO box over on the mainland. Interesting. I'd seen bank statements come here to the house. Either he had closed this account and opened one with the bank here on the island, or he had a separate account. I checked the date on the statement; it was the month before the boating accident. I wondered why Nate's mom wasn't on the account. The account had just over $100,000 in it. That was a nice chunk of change.

The second paper was a printout of an email, with a number scribbled at the bottom of the page. I checked the date; it was in early February, right around the time of the boating accident. I read through the email quickly.

Dear Ms. Wickham,

In response to your call to our office inquiring as to the diminished balance in the account, we confirm that funds in the amount of $543,000.00 were transferred from the trust account set up for your daughter, Evelyn Wickham, to an account in your husband's name. These withdrawals occurred over a period of seven years, starting immediately after the settlement was determined in your daughter's case.

Your request for money to be transferred to Progressive Rehab to cover the costs for a therapist to work with Evelyn has to be denied at this time, as there are not sufficient funds to cover this withdrawal. The account currently has a balance of $5,550.00. Copies of the monthly statements can be provided at your request.

The trust for your daughter was set up in both your and your husband's names following the settlement from the malpractice case. You each hold independent signing authority for these funds. The signed releases for each withdrawal are available for your review if desired. As to what these monies were used for, I am unable to comment, as we have no way to track the funds following them leaving the trust.

While I understand your distress, I can assure you this firm has acted in accordance with both the law and the confines of the trust agreement. If you were unaware of these withdrawals, I respectfully suggest that you and your husband,
Mr. Wickham, discuss this in more detail. If there is anything further we can do, please do not hesitate to contact our office.

Sincerely,

Brian Hudson

Hudson, Vickers, and Ackerly Law Firm

Holy shit. I folded up both pieces of paper and tucked them back into the book. Talk about going down the rabbit hole. My heart was beating quickly as I started to run through the logic in my head.

 

1. Dick had a private account.

2. Dick spent his daughter's settlement money without telling his wife, and no one other than Dick seemed to know where the money went.

3. Sylvia, Dick's first wife, didn't find out about this until just before her death.

My mind leaped to a possible number four: Sylvia confronted Dick about the missing money and he killed her over it. I wasn't a homicide detective or anything, but I watched enough
Law & Order
to know that over half a million dollars provided at least 500,000 motives for murder.

I unfolded the paper again and looked at the number someone
had scrawled at the bottom. There wasn't a name written down, but it was a Seattle number. It seemed familiar, but I couldn't place it.

I stuck the book under my arm and slipped out of the library. The house was still deathly silent. I put the flashlight back in the kitchen. I looked at the phone and debated my options. It made more sense to wait until tomorrow. Nate would be home, plus my call wouldn't wake anyone up. On the other hand, I was never known for my ability to delay gratification. I picked up the phone and dialed before I could think about it anymore, and hoped whoever owned the number was the kind of person who liked to stay up late.

I was prepared to tell whoever answered that I must have dialed wrong, but it wasn't a personal line. A business voice mail picked up. As soon as I heard the voice on the line, the blood ran out of my head and I could feel a cold wet sweat break out.

“You've reached the office of White, Watts, and Kleinmann. Our office is now closed. If you know the extension of the party you want to reach, you may press it now.”

I hung up and slid down the cabinets until I was sitting on the floor. The voice on the machine was my mom's. The reason the number was familiar was because it was the main line of the law firm she used to work for. They must have left her out-of-office message on the machine even though she had quit a month ago when Dick proposed. White, Watts, and Kleinmann was a law firm that specialized in one area: divorce.

It bothered me that my mom married Dick so quickly after meeting him, but now I realized there was something that might bother me more. What if my mom knew Dick when he was still married? What if they'd been dating for a long time? And if I believed there was a chance Dick was somehow involved with his wife's murder, what did it mean if he and my mom were already a couple? Thinking your creepy stepdad might be involved in murder was one thing. Thinking your mom might be was a different thing altogether.

Dr. Mike had made it sound like taking control of my life would be a good thing. We never covered what it would mean to take control of something you wished you never knew.

Chapter 34

I
waited up until close to one a.m., but Nate didn't come home. I knew he was annoyed, but I couldn't imagine he would do something with Nicole to get back at me. On the other hand, I did believe it was very possible that Nicole would tackle him if she could. If Nate was in a weakened state from beer, she could sneak up on him and pounce. I could picture her sidling up to him while the
Jaws
theme music played.

I finally crawled upstairs and into bed, but all I could do was stare at the ceiling. I was tired, but I couldn't sleep. My brain was racing like a coked-up hamster on a well-oiled rodent wheel. There was, of course, another conclusion one could leap to. I had just about convinced myself that there wasn't anything wrong with me, but I needed to show the papers to Nate to see if he would have the same reaction I did. If he didn't see anything
sinister in it, then there was a chance I was having paranoid delusions. With my genetic makeup, delusions were not a good thing, but the papers had to mean something. Something had led me to the exact place to find them; that couldn't be in my head.

Anita had taught me how to do visualization and deep breathing. At the time, I'd mocked her, but at the moment, being able to relax even slightly seemed like a great idea. But the “breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth” thing wasn't working.