Second Honeymoon

Chapter 74

SARAH SHOOK HER head for practically the entire flight out to Los Angeles. After a while, I had to laugh.

“What’s so funny?” she asked.

“You,” I said. “You’re like my mother when I was a kid. I’d come home from school boasting that I got ninety-eight percent on my math test, and the first thing she’d say was, ‘Who got the other two percent?’”

Sarah had been savvy enough to do a title search for any property that Ned Sinclair might still own. But now she was beating herself up because—the other two percent—it didn’t occur to her to also check for property owned by other members of the Sinclair family. Especially Nora. Just because she’d been dead for years didn’t mean she still couldn’t own a home.

Sure enough.

It was a two-bedroom split-level in Westwood near the UCLA campus, where Ned had been an associate professor. Nora had bought it for her brother and, according to the diary, for Olivia as well.

Here’s the key, Mother, for the day when you get released.

That’s what Nora had told her during one of her visits to Pine Woods. The key was a token of optimism, something to keep Olivia’s spirits up. Nora wanted her mother to think that one day she might actually be set free.

Deep down they probably both knew it would never happen.

So it was only Ned who lived in the house. That is, he lived there until he was committed to Eagle Mountain Psychiatric Hospital.

But what had Sarah and me flying across the country was that the place was never sold. It still belonged to Nora’s estate.

Welcome to a very special episode of House Hunters.

“That’s it over there,” said Sarah about thirty minutes after we were on the ground in Los Angeles. She was pointing from the backseat of the cab we took from LAX. “The number’s on the mailbox. Two seventy-two.”

We pulled up, paid the driver, got out, and stared at Ned Sinclair’s last known residence. I expected it to be run-down and creepy, with overgrown grass and weeds. Instead, it was in great shape, well maintained and impeccably manicured.

That somehow made it really creepy.

“Nora’s estate probably provided for a caretaker on the assumption that Ned would one day be released,” said Sarah.

“Maybe,” I said.

She looked at me. “Why? You don’t think—”

“That he’s in there? Nah. He’s been killing in only one direction: east,” I said. “Lousy odds that he’d be commuting back and forth.”

The better odds were that Ned had made a stop at the house after springing himself from Eagle Mountain, only twenty miles away. Pack a suitcase? A shower and a shave? Grab a little travel cash?

The real question, though, was whether he’d managed to leave something behind—some clue, anything, that could help us track him down.

“I’ll let you do the honors,” I said as we approached the front door of the cedar-shake house with white trim.

Sarah removed the key from her pocket. It was still a little sticky from all the tape Olivia had used to adhere it to her diary.

“Tell me again there’s no chance he’s in there,” she said.

“Okay, there’s no chance he’s in there.”

We both laughed. Ha-ha. Then we both quickly took out our guns.

Just in case we were both wrong.