The Legacy: A Kimberly & Sykes Mystery Novel (10 page)

“Am I so obvious?” Lauren laughed when Sykes handed her the car keys. Taking a few minutes to go over the controls, she adjusted the rear view and outside mirrors, pulled the seat closer to the pedals, and raised the backrest. With everything adjusted correctly for her needs, and a huge smile on her face, Lauren rested back in the seat, engaged gear, and took off. 

Familiar with Wendy Barton’s neighborhood there was no need to activate the GPS or discuss the route with Sykes. It was a smooth ride and Lauren quickly mastered the handling of the TT even though it was significantly different to her old beater. It was her dream come true; at least it would have been if it was actually her car and not Sykes’. However, try as she might, Lauren couldn’t fully embrace the thrill of driving as her mind kept pulling her back into Wendy Barton’s stories about her dad.

It suited Lauren that Sykes was quiet. She used the solitude to process her thoughts and to imagine her father as the man Wendy Barton knew. She wondered how different things could have been if he had exhibited that side of himself to her, and, her mother.

Before long, Lauren turned off the highway and into a quiet residential neighborhood located eighty miles north of the city limits. Lauren once had a client who had relocated to this area, and she had to make some house visits until the file was handed off to a new social worker. After a few miles of twisting and turning along residential streets, Lauren pulled into Wendy Barton’s driveway.

The house was a cookie cutter version of the surrounding residences; a single story rancher with attached garage built in the 1930s. It was clear to see Wendy Barton, kept the property well maintained.

As Lauren and Sykes climbed out of the vehicle, Lauren noticed Barton had made some effort to distinguish her house from the pack by designing an unusual garden. It was very different from those around, and more unusual than any garden Lauren had seen before.

The outer edges were planted with roses spaced six to eight feet apart. The middle of the garden held an unusual arrangement of cutting flowers. Instead of the typical flowerbeds where assortments of flowers were mixed decoratively, Barton had laid her flowers in straight rows with the flowers in each row of similar height and color. One row was red flowers, another yellow, while yet another was white. 

The ground cover was unusual, but not unique; several years earlier, there was a trend to use colored glass as a ground cover accent. Barton had taken this fad and topped each row of flowers with a different color of small glass rocks, about an inch in diameter. The trend was short lived, or so Lauren had thought until seeing the garden in front of her. Instead of mulch, irregular shaped fragments of colored accent glass lay beneath the flowers. The garden was a rainbow of colors. Lauren thought it looked cheap and garish but knew that regardless of how ugly it looked, this type of top dressing was very expensive.

Walking across the lawn for a closer look, Lauren saw that the main glass rocks were various shades of blue, red, yellow, orange, and violet, while much smaller green and opaque rocks filling the gaps between the larger ones. She shook her head wondering why someone would do such a thing. No accounting for taste and budget she decided.

“Lauren?”

“Sorry. Just checking out the bizarre garden.”

“Can you give me your father’s keys, please?” Lauren dropped the set of keys in his palm.

Sykes tried the first key in the door. As he put the key in the lock, Lauren crossed her fingers and closed her eyes in prayer. She opened her eyes to see Sykes smiling. The key opened the front door. With a nod from Lauren, Sykes preceded her into the house. They both exuded excitement as they stood in the hallway surveying the scene. Lauren felt her body buzzing at a higher vibration. She knew that this was the place she would find her father’s analyzer and the diamonds.

Standing halfway down the entrance hallway Lauren spun back and forth looking in each direction, unsure of where she should go first. Sykes, meanwhile, had walked ahead and found a light switch. Lauren shielded her eyes from the glare of the light while Sykes walked around switching all the lights on. “Let’s make sure it’s obvious we are meant to be here otherwise someone will call the police.” He said.

Lauren walked into the living room. The decor was comfortable though somewhat dated. While Barton’s landscaping skills leaned towards the garish, her living room furniture on the other hand, was local big box store. There was nothing to differentiate the inside of Barton’s home from millions of others cross America. 

After a quick glance around the living room, Lauren and Sykes decided to split up. Lauren took the den while Sykes headed for the kitchen. The den was furnished in the same style as the living room. Lauren could see this was where Wendy Barton spent most of her time. An oversized brown leather three-piece sofa and two overstuffed armchairs faced the large flat screen TV in the center of one wall. A dark brown checked wool throw was draped across one arm of the sofa and a sheepskin foot snuggler sat perfectly positioned waiting to warm Barton's cold feet. In front of the sofa was a retro modern highly polished teak coffee table. The finish was similar to the high gloss epoxy finish on the tables in Lauren’s local restaurant: it made the table look as though it were made from plastic.  Other than a couple of standard lamps, there wasn’t much else in the room.

With no cupboards to search, Lauren checked under the sofa and seat cushions as well as behind the opened heavy drapes. The analyzer wouldn’t be hidden there, but the diamonds might. However, she found nothing of interest. After a last glace around the room, Lauren turned and met Sykes in the hall.

Sykes had similar results. “Nothing unusual in the kitchen, I’ll check the bedroom. Why don’t you check the garage?” he said pointing to the connecting door.

Lauren stepped into the garage and fumbled for the light switch. When the door swung closed behind her with a bang, she jumped. The garage was thrown into pitch-blackness. Lauren put her hands out in front her, moving them up and down the wall, feeling for the light switch. Something fell on her head, she shrieked as it scurried through her hair. Flailing her hands, Lauren shook her head violently to shake off whatever was running over her scalp. Convinced it was a large spider, Lauren flicked her hair with her fingertips and screamed when she touched a rat’s tail.

The door flew open and Sykes’s rushed in almost toppling her over. “What? What?” he said, grabbing Lauren’s arms.

Lauren was embarrassed. The open door let in the light and what she thought was a rat’s tail was, in fact, a dangling light cord tangled in her hair. She brushed away Sykes hands and jerked the cord. The garage was bathed in a strong light. Sykes was bewildered. “What the heck was that about?”

“I thought it was a spider, but then I thought it was a rat,” Lauren responded sheepishly pointing to the light cord dangling overhead. “Sorry.” Sykes raised his eyebrows and walked out of the garage shaking his head and muttering to himself.  Lauren’s sigh of relief was audible. The light was brighter than expected and she blinked until her eyes were accustomed to it. She paused, remembering her father always installed high powered lighting in his workshops. There was never enough light for Mike Kimberly. Lauren knew she was close.

She turned to look around the garage and shouted for Sykes.

Sykes’ running footsteps brought him flying through the door. “Lauren. Lauren. What? Are you O.K? What happened?” He did a rapid reconnoiter of her body, looking for injury. Finding none, Sykes dropped his hands.

“Look.” She pointed her finger over his shoulder. Sitting on a medium sized worktable in the far corner of the garage was a piece of machinery. Matching step for step, they walked slowly over to the table. Unconsciously, Lauren reached out and held Sykes’ hand. He gave it a small squeeze but didn’t let go.

“Is this the prototype?”

The contraption was made of clear heavy acrylic and appeared to be glued together at the seams. Multiple colored acrylic tubes ran like puzzle pieces inside the box-like structure, as did a series of colored thin wires. A web camera and a funnel protruded from the top section, and a tiny piece of webbing hung off the back like a spider’s web. Though Lauren had never seen anything like it, she had seen many of her father’s prototypes made in the same style. He could trace every part of the machine just by following each separate color.

They both walked around the table, bending and peering into the inner workings of the machine without touching anything. Then Lauren carefully retrieved small opaque rocks, about a quarter of an inch in size, from the webbing. 

“I guess this is the analyzer,” she said in a hushed voice stroking the small stones with her fingertips.

“Yes, but to analyze what? This isn’t anything like the machine I saw Mike working on.”

“I don’t know. Call Smith, tell him we found it.”

“Not yet,” he said looking under the table and pulling out a 220 volt electric wire. Seeing no 220 volt power source in the garage he said somberly, “I want to know just what this machine is before I do anything else.”

Lauren blinked rapidly. Surely, she had mis-heard., Sykes held his hand up to stop her before she could speak. “Lauren, this could be anything. You said yourself, your father always had lots of ideas in his head and we don’t know if this is the analyzer. Let’s at least make sure we know what it is before we sit back and relax.”

Lauren frowned, bending her head to the side and looked first to Sykes and then to the machine. She was confused. “You’re not serious? This has to be it. What else could it be?” 

“I don’t know Lauren. All I can be sure of right this moment is that this,” he said pointing to the device, “this is just a machine. We don’t know what it is or even if it works.” He turned and looked around the garage. “And we still need to find the diamonds.”

“What do you mean - ‘we’?” Lauren seethed through her clenched teeth. Her footsteps resonated on the concrete floor as she stomped around the table putting the machine between them. She words came fast. “I’ve had about all the drama I need in my bloody life and I want this nonsense to end, right now. I’ve been scared to death the last couple of days and I need this to be over so I can get back to my life. I keep telling you Sykes, I’m a bloody social worker, not a pawn in some game you’re playing. I was asked to find the diamonds. I have found them.” She tossed the stones in her hand to Sykes. “It’s over. Call Smith. So I can go home!”

“I can’t do that.”

Sykes’ eyes were unwavering as he held Lauren’s gaze. Standing a couple of feet apart, the tension between them was electric. Lauren’s heart rate was increasing and she could hear the blood rush through her ears likes waves crashing on rocks. She knew from Sykes’ set expression that his mind was made up. Lauren felt betrayed. As far as she was concerned, this was a no-brainer. This
had
to be the analyzer. Sykes was supposed to make sure she found it, it’s been found, so what the heck was the problem?

As if reading her mind, Sykes said, “We need to find the diamonds; these stones might be worth a few thousand dollars, but certainly not
fifteen million.”

Lauren stormed out of the garage and stood in the hallway breathing deeply. She gave a snort as she realized she had been focusing on her breathing more in the last three days than she had in her five years of meditation practice. At least she had it mastered now, she thought.

Lauren had become so skilled at calming herself that within a short time she was breathing normally. She listened to Sykes opening and closing cupboards in the garage. If that device is the analyzer then the diamonds had to be nearby. Lauren tipped her neck to the side to stretch the tight muscles. Standing in the hallway was not going to make the diamonds appear. She knew the only way to convince Sykes that they had the analyzer was to present him with the diamonds. There was still a lot of the house that needed to be searched and she set out to do it single handed.

She was searching cupboards recessed into the hallway walls when she was realized that she still didn’t have a clue what fifteen million dollars worth of diamonds would look like. She could so easily overlook them. Feeling somewhat chagrined Lauren went back to the garage.

“I don’t know,” Sykes responded to her questions as his head emerged from behind a tool cupboard. “They are probably bigger than a handful but not by much. Smith and the others kept calling them ‘stones’ so I’m guessing they are unpolished and raw rather than the typical polished sparkling diamonds you might be accustomed to seeing in jewellery. Just call me if you find anything that looks the part.” If he was angry with her Sykes, didn’t let it show.

Two hours later, there wasn’t an inch of the house that hadn’t been meticulously searched. Sykes even emptied the ice cube tray, placed all the ice cubes in a frying pan and lit a low light under them on the stove. All that produced was a pan of boiling water.

Lauren was still angry with Sykes for not calling Smith. She was in no mood to talk to him and was thankful that Sykes had stayed out of her way and focused on the search. They had each re-checked where the other had searched, just in case something had been missed. Finally, they met back in the den.

Lauren flopped in one of the armchairs. She ran her fingers through her hair, and then rested her head on the chair back. Sykes was sitting on the sofa with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. “We need to think this through,” he said. “If the analyzer is here, it would make sense that Mike kept the diamonds here as well. Your father said he needed the diamonds to do a final test of the prototype. So, that means the diamonds are still here, we just haven’t found them. We’re just going to have to rip the house apart until we do.”

“This isn’t the bloody movies. We can’t just demolish Wendy Barton’s home!” Lauren was exhausted and hungry and pushed herself up from the chair to open the bottle of white wine she had seen in the fridge. Better the expense of replacing a bottle of wine than a bill to rebuild a gutted house she thought as she removed the cork. Taking a glass from the cupboard she poured a good serving of wine. The cool liquid felt refreshing, and she ran the glass across her brow. Taking another mouthful she savored the taste in her mouth before letting the wine slide down her parched throat.

This simply can’t be so difficult, she thought. All the intrigue and drama happened in books, not in real life. It just didn’t make any sense to Lauren that her father would have been smart enough to play cat-and-mouse hide and seek games; he just wasn’t the type. He may well have been a genius around machines but he was not crafty and calculating. There wasn’t one place they could have missed in the search for the diamonds. Toilet tanks, under beds, between mattresses, every pack of food in the freezer had been checked, the attic - such as it was - the panel removed from the side of the bath…she, and Sykes had been focused and relentless.

Lauren had even searched the garage though Sykes assured her he hadn’t missed a speck of dust. Thinking about the garage brought Lauren right back to her frustrating conversation with Sykes. She was still angry that he refused to call Smith until he could confirm that the machine they found was indeed the analyzer.

Then it hit her.

Lauren smacked her forehead with her hand and sat bolt upright. Sykes had said if it wasn’t the analyzer then what could it be. At that moment, Lauren knew exactly what it was.