Mischievous Malamute Mystery Series: Books 1-3

Chapter 9-2

“Having been an only child, she had no other family to confide in, so she turned to her parent’s oldest friend, Sir Edward Harrington. Though he was known as Sir Edward to everyone else, Victoria insisted upon calling him Sir Harry from the time she was a toddler, despite her parent’s opposition.

“Anyway, upon their deaths, Sir Edward received a key from Joseph Winestone to a safety deposit box at a bank near his residence in London. The letter that accompanied the key was written in Mr. Winestone’s handwriting and instructed Sir Edward to review the contents and make his own decision with regard to their handling. He immediately called Victoria and encouraged her to come to London.”

“Did Sir Edward know about Victoria’s adoption beforehand?” I asked.

“That’s a good question. Victoria asked him the same thing.” Abe smiled. “Though the Winestones never directly discussed it with him, he guessed an adoption had taken place. They were very public people, and though there were months they would hunker down to work on a project, a pregnancy would not have gone unnoticed. No one said a word when little Victoria was finally spotted in public. Perhaps because of the era, or perhaps, like Sir Edward, people were happy the couple had something other than work to occupy their lives. As strange as it sounds, the adoption never came up.”

“Perhaps the wealthy do live charmed lives,” Leah remarked as I excused myself so I could take Nicoh for a quick walk. Poor baby hadn’t gotten much attention since introductions were made and had been dancing on the tips of his paws for at least fifteen minutes. He finished his business, and after I gave him some well-deserved scratches, we headed back to join the others.

Preoccupied with the conversation, I hadn’t realized how much the patio had filled in. We now had company on both sides: a couple bickering over wedding invites on the left and a guy wearing an Arizona Diamondbacks hat on the right similar to one my dad once owned, listening to his iPod while reading the paper.

I realized Abe and Elijah were laughing at Leah’s stories of our good old days in high school, so I quickly sat down and gave her the look, which made them laugh even harder. Great. That was the last time she was going to borrow my vintage 1950s cat-eye sunglasses, which coincidentally, were currently perched on top of her head. Would anyone notice if I suddenly snatched them?

Once the chuckles finally subsided and I decided to leave the sunglasses alone, I nodded at Elijah to continue.

“Victoria went to London to meet Sir Edward. Before opening the safety deposit box, he let her read the letter, in which Joseph Winestone came clean about the adoption. He and his wife had intended to have children, but work encompassed their lives. By the time they felt they could make a go of it, it was too late. Determined to have a family, they did the next best thing. They adopted.

“According to the letter, the box contained the documentation relating to the adoption and as promised, an overwhelming pile of paper was enclosed. The adoption had been arranged through the Sterling Joy Agency, a Chicago-based firm. Neither Sir Edward nor Victoria was familiar with the laws relating to adoptions, but it seemed the Winestones collected every tidbit of information they could find on the birth parents, including age, appearance, education, occupation, current relationship, reason for the adoption, etc., which is how they found out both were deceased.

The birth mother had died of complications following childbirth and the father…passed, a short time later.” Elijah swallowed hard. Clearly, something bothered him about that but before I could ask, he went on, “Fortunately, they had the foresight to make arrangements with an agency in the event of their deaths—likely because they had no living family—otherwise their children would have become wards of the state.

“Anyway, Victoria also found out about you. Under a section titled ‘Other Children Born to Birth Parents’, there was a single listing: ‘Female, one-month of age, born at the University of Chicago Medical Center’. Same birth location as was listed for Victoria, as well as her age at the time of her birth.

“This intrigued both Victoria and Sir Edward. Why hadn’t her parents adopted both children? They had wanted a family—this would have been the perfect solution. They found the answer further down in the papers.

Once the Winestones learned of the second child—you—they immediately contacted the agency. Though the agency sympathized, they claimed the birth parents had explicitly stated under no circumstances were the children to be adopted together. And, based upon the letters exchanged between Sterling Joy and the Winestones, it also became quite clear the agency had been paid handsomely to honor the birth parent’s last wishes.”

“That is strange,” Leah commented, before looking to me to gauge my reaction to this news. I wasn’t sure what my face showed, but I was astonished.

“There was one final surprise waiting on the bottom of the security deposit box. Five documents were bound together, almost symbolically. They included Victoria’s current birth certificate, her original birth certificate, your original birth certificate, your current birth certificate and your parent’s address.” My address.

“Oh, my gosh,” I gasped as I looked at Leah, flabbergasted, “that is totally insane. Do you think they contacted my parents—that my parents knew?”

“We don’t know, AJ,” Abe replied quietly, “and with the players deceased, I’m not sure we’ll ever know. It was this information, however, that prompted Victoria to search for you. And, it was at the beginning of this search she learned of your parent’s tragic accident. That’s when she hired us.”

Leah murmured absently, “Perhaps there’s another safety deposit box lurking around somewhere? One with more clues?”

“We’d thought of that too. It’s certainly something we can pursue,” Elijah replied, “but first, there’s a bit more we need to tell you.”

“Are you serious?” Leah squawked a bit too loudly, which made Nicoh moan like a moose.

I couldn’t blame him, I wanted to moan like a moose myself—this conversation was becoming more and more like the one with Ramirez. Abe and Elijah both apologized, but I told them to continue, so Abe picked up where Elijah had left off.

“When Victoria got back from London, she went to her parent’s house to check on things. On the answering machine, there was a message from someone at the dealership where her mother had purchased her Jaguar, apologizing for the mix-up and confirming she still wanted the original car. Victoria lost it.”

“What rock had this guy been living under?” Leah snarked.

“Victoria said she gave him an earful,” Abe replied. “The manager apologized profusely. He returned from a cruise vacation and wasn’t exactly sure how it happened, but in his absence, the assistant manager had delivered her mother’s custom-designed car to another client. Rather than disappoint that client, who had already fallen in love with the car, he immediately called Victoria’s mother to confess his oversight. As gracious as ever, she let the assistant manager off the hook and agreed to take the car until another could be ordered.”

“So, the car she was driving when the accident occurred wasn’t the car she should have been driving?” I asked.

“Nope,” Abe continued, “but that wasn’t the end of it.”

“Of course not,” I retorted, perhaps a bit too sarcastically, “why would it be?”

“What raised the red flags—and frankly, still raises the hair on the back our necks—was when Victoria asked to speak with the assistant manager.”

“The manager had already fired him?” Leah asked.

“He probably should have been fired, but no, it didn’t go down quite that way,” Abe replied. “He disappeared.”

“Well, perhaps that’s not such a loss,” I countered.

“No, probably not,” Abe agreed, “but when he went missing, so did all the other client’s paperwork.”

“As if that weren’t a flaming red flag,” Leah mused. This situation just kept getting better and better.

“So, is that something you’d still be willing to look into?” I asked, not even remotely familiar with the private investigator protocol, considering Victoria had originally hired them.

“Absolutely,” Abe and Elijah said at the same time. Unless I was mistaken, they almost seemed relieved I had asked. Perhaps my affirmation meant they had passed some sort of imaginary test?

“Well, I’m sure your brains are mush by now, we’ve covered so much stuff today.” Elijah smiled warmly. “Maybe now would be a good time to discuss where we go from here, if that’s what you’d like?”

Though I was pretty sure he was asking me, Leah nearly swooned as she burst out, “We definitely like.” I rewarded her by smacking her arm, which drew chuckles from Abe and Elijah and a serious unhappy-face from Leah.

“Yeah, I think so,” I replied as Leah feigned rubbing her injured limb, “but I’m not sure how we do this. Do we divide and conquer, or do you guys prefer to work solo?”

“Heck, no, we’ll take any help we can get, plus, we’ve got Anna too, who has pretty much already made this case her mission in life,” Abe commented.

“Wow,” was all I could muster. Victoria must have had as profound of an effect on Anna as she had on Abe and Elijah. In my opinion, they all seemed pretty loyal to the cause.

“So, if you are cool with it, here’s what we thought some of the next steps—or action items as we call them—could be,” Elijah said.

“Oooh, I like action items,” Leah cooed but toned her oozing enthusiasm down once she caught a glimpse of my I-will-smack-you-again look.

“As I was saying,” Elijah stifled another laugh, obviously enjoying our banter, “if you wouldn’t be opposed to it, it would be helpful if you could find out some more information about the adoption, about your biological parents, their backgrounds, etc. We’ll have Anna send you the documents Victoria brought back from the London safety deposit box.”

At my questioning look, he continued, “Victoria would have wanted you to have them. I know she would.” Elijah turned to his brother, who nodded in agreement.

I nodded back. “I can definitely do that. Plus, as the adoptee, it would probably be easier for me to obtain the information, without raising a ruckus.”

“Yeah, we’d prefer it if you limited the ruckus-raising. We wouldn’t want it to result in a brew-ha-ha, after all,” Abe teased. “Anyway, while you look into that, we’ll try to find out more about the dealership’s missing assistant manager and the client who took possession of Mrs. Winestone’s Jag.

“In addition, we’ll be tracking down whatever information Victoria found that led her to believe your parent’s plane crash was not an accident,” Elijah said. I had almost forgotten about the cryptic voicemail Victoria had left Abe and Elijah. Her last voicemail.

“She believed ‘bigger forces were at play’ that affected all of us,” I repeated from memory, my voice barely a whisper.

Elijah nodded. “We’re not stopping until we determine what those forces might be. Whatever they are, they killed Victoria.”

“Well, there’s good news and bad news.” Leah sighed as we walked to the parking lot several minutes later.

“Bad news first, as always,” I told her, though I wasn’t sure I was prepared for anymore.

“The bad news is they didn’t pull up in a red Ferrari.” She pouted, confirming my previous suspicions about the dual Magnum, PI fantasy. Stupefied, I could only shake my head.

“But, the good news is—it was black!” She squealed with delight.

More proof that the more things change, the more they stay the same. With the month I’d had so far, I guess I should have taken comfort in that.