Page 49 of Willowbrooke
“But that’s not all I found.” Greg seemed nervous as he pulled a file from his backpack. “I was able to get a copy of your mother’s police report.” He slid the file on the coffee table in front of Leo.
“You should take a look—I removed the pictures, but if you want them, let me know,” Greg said.
“No.” Leo shook his head. “I don’t think I could…”
“There are interview transcripts with the people thatknew her—were close to her around her death.”
“Anything suspicious? Anything that stood out?” Leo rested his hand on top of the folder, too nervous to open it.
“Everyone except for your aunt was surprised about her method of death,” he replied.
Leo looked up at Greg, waiting for more information.
“George wasn’t around much, though he did admit that they’d drifted a bit, and that they’d been fighting about how much he worked. He said your mom wanted him to spend more time with you.”
The interview corroborated what I’d learned from the journal, although Christine hadn’t mentioned any fights, which did prove she was writing in a way that edited her thoughts.
“Margot said she and William were close to Christine, and that Christine had confided in her before that she had suicidal thoughts after she had given birth,” Greg revealed.
“Postpartum depression is common, but it wasn’t talked about as much back then,” I chimed in. “Do we know if Christine ever went to therapy?”
“I’ll look into it,” Greg offered, seemingly disarmed that I had thought of something he hadn’t considered.
“What did William say?” Leo asked.
“Not much. He said that his relationship with your mother was a surface-level friendship due to his business relationship with your father.”
“So who was telling the truth? Margot or William?” Iasked.
“The truth usually lies somewhere in between,” Greg offered cryptically.
Leo still seemed shell-shocked.
In the privacy of the library, knowing that Greg had already guessed our secret, I reached out to him, taking his hand in mine. He squeezed back gently, saying thank you with the gesture rather than words.
“There’s one last thing,” Greg said.
Leo’s eyes darted across to him.
“Your dad mentioned an ex-boyfriend of your mother—Jeremy Pruitt. She had a restraining order. He began stalking her when your parents first started dating. Your father was convinced he had something to do with it, but he was in another state on business at the time, so the police dismissed him as a suspect and decided to rule her death a suicide.”
“He never mentioned an ex-boyfriend or stalker—he never even told me he didn’t think she had killed herself…” Leo said dejectedly.
Greg got up from his chair. “I’ll look into the therapist and keep an eye on the nurse’s case,” he promised Leo, giving him a handshake instead of a verbal goodbye. “I’ll see myself out.”
“Thanks, Greg.” Leo stood from his chair and watched the man as he left the library, gently closing the door in his wake. Leo locked it behind him.
Leo sunk back into the chair, his mood dour. I wasn’tsure what he’d expected the private detective to find, but that hadn’t been it.
We sat in silence for a few minutes.
“What motive could Uncle William have had to kill Nurse Julie?” Leo finally shattered the library’s quiet. “Let’s say they did have an affair—why kill her now?”
“Because we started asking about her…” I was hesitant to say it out loud, but we both knew it to be true.
“Okay—let’s follow that thread,” Leo tried. I could see him kicking into his own sort of detective mode, the same way he had the night we’d discussed his father’s death—he was disassociating. “What could she know—or say—today that she wouldn’t have said before?”
“If they were in it together—the nurse didn’t have a motive to kill George, but if they were having an affair, maybe he convinced her to do it.” It felt silly to suggest.
