Page 16 of Her Last Refuge

"Caleb, I want to be straight with you about why we're here. There was another death out at Ashford Glen last night. A resident named Howard Pelham."

Caleb's fork paused over his fries. "Another one?"

"Yes. And there are enough similarities between his death and Ruth's that it caught the Bureau's attention. Enough that this is now an active investigation, not just a favor."

Caleb set the fork down entirely, his face going still as the seriousness of it settled over him. "So you think somebody did this. To both of them."

"We don't know that yet. But we're taking it seriously." Rachel watched him carefully. "But, look…I want to ask you something, and I need you to think back as clearly as you can.”

“Okay,” he said, taking on a very serious look.

“When you first called me about Ruth, you said something felt off. I need to understand what made you feel that way, beyond just the fact that her death was sudden."

Caleb was quiet for a moment, pushing a fry around his plate without eating it. "She'd been doing better. For a while there, honestly, she seemed like she was having a good stretch. She seemed more like herself. And then a few weeks before she died, something changed. She got worse, and she got worse fast."

"Do you remember when that started?” Novak asked. “Even roughly."

"Three or four weeks before, maybe? I wasn't keeping exact track…but I wish I had been now. It wasn't just the confusion getting worse, either. That happens with dementia, ups and downs, you know? I get that. But this was different. She got…I don’t know. It seemed to me like she got scared."

"Scared how?"

"The last few times I visited, she kept telling me somebody was going to hurt her." Caleb's voice dropped, and he glanced around the small patio and sidewalk beyond like he was checking whether anyone else could hear. "She'd grab my arm and say it real quiet, like she didn't want anyone else to know she was saying it. 'Somebody is going to hurt me, Caleb. You have to watch out.' Stuff like that."

"Did she ever say who?" Rachel asked.

"No. Never a name, never anything specific. I asked her a couple times, but she would just shake her head and change the subject. Or she'd forget she'd even said it a minute later." He shook his head slowly and Rachel could see that he was getting unsettled over it all. "It was sort of creepy, I won't lie. But she said plenty of things that didn't make sense toward the end. She talked about people who'd been dead for decades like they were coming to visit, for God’s sake. So I chalked it up to that. I didn't think it meant anything real."

"But you called me anyway," Rachel said.

“Yes, I did.” He looked slightly embarrassed, but shook it off quickly. “And I did it because something about it stuck with me even after she passed. I just couldn't shake it." He looked at her directly now, some frustration creeping into his voice. "But I want to be clear: I never said I thought somebody murdered her. I asked you to look into it because I had a bad feeling and nobody else was taking it seriously. It just seemed…weird. That's it. I didn't have proof of anything then, and I still don't."

"I understand that," Rachel said gently. "I'm not accusing you of anything, Caleb. I just need to understand the full picture, and that includes understanding exactly what you knew and when. So far, you’re the only person we’ve spoken to that doesn’t have a vested interest in Ashford Glen. I figured you could shoot straight without any filter."

He exhaled, some of the tension leaving his shoulders. "Well, that’s about it. I mean, I don't want it to sound like I had some big theory I was sitting on. I didn't. I still don't."

Novak had been quiet through most of the exchange, working steadily through his burger, but he set it down now and wiped his hands on a napkin. "Did your grandmother know Howard Pelham? Any connection you're aware of? Maybe from before Ashford Glen?"

Caleb frowned, considering it. But he eventually started to slowly shake his head. "Not that I know of. I don't even think I ever heard the name before you brought it up just now."

"What about her life before the diagnosis?” Novak asked. “Anything from decades back that ever came up? Old grudges, old friendships, anything like that?"

"Not really. She talked a lot about my grandfather—mostly about their years together, raising my mom. She'd mentioned working as a lifeguard when she was young, back before she met him, but that was ancient history to me. I never thought much of it." Caleb shrugged and eyed them both warily, as if he felt he was disappointing them. "I'm sorry, I wish I had more."

Rachel filed the detail away without reacting to it, the mention of Ruth as a lifeguard settling somewhere in the back of her mind alongside everything else she hadn't yet made sense of. She doubted it would be useful but it did help her to build a more accurate picture of one of the victims.

She glanced at her watch and saw the time slipping toward what Caleb had left of his break. "This has been really helpful," she said, though in all honesty, it hadn’t been. "I know it's not easy going back over all of this."

"It's fine. I want you to find whatever there is to find…and now, I mean, if there’s someone behind this. Like, someone who is killing people…." Caleb trailed off here, gathering the wrapper from his burger and balled it up. "I just want to know what happened to her.”

Caleb shook both their hands before heading back toward the store, his lanyard swinging as he walked. Rachel watched him go, turning the conversation over in her mind. He'd been consistent across the board and she hadn’t picked up anything evasive in how he'd answered. But she also knew grief made people careful in ways that could look identical to honesty. She’d seen it more times than she could count in her line of work.

"What do you think?" Novak asked, gathering their trash from the table.

"I think he's telling the truth, as far as he understands it." Rachel stood and pulled her bag over her shoulder. "But I want to keep him on the list for now. Not because I think he did it. Just because we don't know enough yet to take anyone off."

"Yeah, I’d agree with that."

Her phone buzzed as they started walking back toward the car. She pulled it out to see an email notification from Miriam Colt, the subject line reading Records and Footage — Ashford Glen.