11th hour

Chapter 20

Nigel Worley slammed around behind us, crashing the last of the iron trivets against the stove.

When Nigel had left the room, Conklin put a picture of the recently decapitated woman’s head in front of Nicole. Her eyes widened at the sight of that decomposing face and she pushed back from the table.

“Do you know this woman?” Conklin asked her.

“I’ve never seen her in my life.”

“This is one of the two heads your parents discovered yesterday morning,” I said.

“It’s revolting. It’s horrible.”

“She was walking around last week, Nicole. Then her head was cut off with a saw.”

“I find this unfathomable.”

“What is your relationship with Harry Chandler?”

“I’m his caretakers’ daughter. That’s all. Do you want my opinion of him?”

“Please.”

“He’s been accused of horrible things before, but I know him to be a good man. He has been very kind to my family. We’ve been good to him too.”

“Your father seems to dislike him.”

“Oh, all that growling means nothing. He thinks my mother is starstruck and he hates that.”

“You were sixteen when you came to live here?”

“That’s right.”

“And the reason you moved from London?”

“My parents had a romantic notion about America. As soon as we arrived, I fell in love with this city and this house. I’m kind of an expert on the Ellsworth family. Harry lets me live in number two at no charge,” Nicole explained, “and so I give lectures about the house to the tourists in exchange for free rent.”

I said, “So you know everything about this house, Nicole. Everything except that the backyard was basically a cemetery.”

The young woman’s face colored.

The direct approach wasn’t working, or maybe Nicole knew as little as she said she did.

Before I could fire off another question, my phone rang.

I glanced at the caller ID, got up, and took the call in the pantry.

Claire said, “I spoke with Dr. Perlmutter. She said looks like all the skulls are female. We’ve got a little multicultural mix going on here. Two of the skulls plus the head of our Jane Doe makes three white women. We also have one female of African background, one Asian, and two undetermined.”

“Their ages?”

“Approximately twenties to forties.”

“How long have the heads been in the ground?”

“It’s hard to be precise, Lindsay. But yes, they could all have been buried in the last ten years.”

Since Chandler bought the Ellsworth compound.

I hung up and called out to Conklin, asked him to join me in the pantry.

Conklin can read me like a map.

He knew that I felt pressure from Brady to work on Revenge and that at the same time, I was committed to the Ellsworth case. I wanted to do both.

I told him about my conversation with Claire.

He said to me, “I’ll work on Nicole.”

I nodded, said, “Good. While you do that, I’m going to use my famous charm on the movie star.”