Bjornolf noticed her trembling a little.
“I’ve never seen a dartboard like this,” Anna said.
“It’s one of those electronic ones.” Nathan motioned to the scoreboard. “It keeps score on an LED screen and has voice commands and makes sound effects.”
Anna shook her head. What happened to doing things the old-fashioned way?
Jessica unhooked the dartboard and set it on the floor to expose a wall safe. “He figured if anyone ever searched for his safe, they’d look in his office or bedroom. Maybe the living room. But a basement? Behind a dartboard? No one would think of that.”
Heavy-duty gray wall safe. Standard dial combination.
“You don’t happen to know the combination, do you?” Bjornolf asked Jessica.
“I only know one of the numbers is six. I was watching him when he saw me and told me to run back upstairs. He was angry, but I’m sure he didn’t think I could ever figure out the other numbers. That was the only time I ever got close when he was unlocking it.”
Bjornolf got on his cell phone to Hunter. “Okay, we’ve got six as the first number of the combination. Any ideas for the rest?”
“Give me a sec.” Hunter started talking to someone nearby. “Rourke, in your investigations, have you come across any numbers that might have been used on a safe?”
The speakerphone was on as Rourke responded. “Yeah, often wedding dates or birth dates. Sometimes owners won’t change the combination on a safe after it’s installed and it’ll be all zeroes. You said the first number is six?” Rourke paused. “Bingo. Try one and then five. The numbers correspond to the month and day that the Evertons’ daughter was born.”
“It worked,” Bjornolf told Hunter. He pushed the lever down and pulled the safe door open.
Inside the safe, bundles of money were stacked on one shelf. A huge stack of papers rested at the bottom of the safe. Bjornolf pulled out the papers and said to Hunter, “Thousands of dollars’ worth of cash stashed in the safe. I can’t imagine why someone who owns a Christmas tree farm would have this much cash on hand.”
The papers included birth certificates, a marriage certificate, titles to vehicles—including the work vehicles used by employees at the farm—and the deed to the tree farm.
Bjornolf said to Hunter, “Just going through the papers now.” He handed some of the documents to Nathan and Jessica.
They carried them over to the pool table, spread them out, and began concentrating on the birth certificates and the Evertons’ marriage certificate. “Everton was Roger Wentworth, married to Dorothy Slade on the marriage certificate. And here’s a birth certificate for Angela Wentworth. Then a death certificate dated three years later for Angela Wentworth,” Jessica said, her voice soft and upset.
Anna looked at the death certificate. “She died when you would have been just a toddler. Did your adoptive mom ever talk to you about it?”
Everyone looked up from the documents they were reading and studied her. Jessica took a deep breath and nodded. “Just once. I was looking through some pictures my mom had taken of me at Christmastime with Santa, and I came across some photos of Mom holding a toddler I didn’t know. I asked who she was. My mom said she was her daughter born three years before they adopted me. It happened when they lived in Portland. Mom was at the mall shopping. A nanny was watching Angela and she got away from her. She ran out into the street and a car hit her. My mom gave me a sad smile and said then they adopted me. She wouldn’t talk about it after that.”
Jessica sorted through the papers she’d been looking at. “No birth certificate for me. No adoption papers. Nothing. I don’t even know if my first name is really Jessica.”
Nathan looked unsure. Anna joined Jessica and pulled her into an embrace. “We’re all trying to learn the truth. You’re not alone in this.”
Jessica nodded and gave her a hug back. “Thank you.” Then she wiped her eyes and went back to looking at the papers with Nathan. She paused and glanced at Anna and Bjornolf. “Nathan talked to me about the dead men.”
Anna and Bjornolf looked at him.
He let out his breath and shrugged. “She smelled the dead bodies, too. Like we did. I told you. When she and I went on that walk that time. I thought she might have been here at the time. Heard something. No one has asked her.”
“And?” Bjornolf asked.
Jessica sighed. “I overheard a couple of men talking with Dad. I stayed home from school because I had a bad cold that day and was in my bedroom playing a video game, but you know how our hearing is. They asked Dad how well he knew my Uncle William. He said he was his half brother. They asked if he knew anything about Uncle William’s business.
“He said sure, Uncle William was into pharmaceuticals. They wanted to know if he was involved in anything illegal. My dad said for them to follow him outside because he had to get some work done, and they could talk while he worked on some new plantings. That was it. He must have gone to get his coat and gloves and stuff, and then left with them, shut the door, and was off.”
Stuff? More like a gun, Anna suspected.
“When was this?” Bjornolf asked.
“It was a Monday morning. We’re closed on Mondays to give the farmhands a break for working over the weekend. Dad catches up on work even when we’re closed. So we didn’t have any customers.”
“How did your dad and William get along?” Anna asked.
“It was weird. They hated each other but needed each other for jobs… somehow. Not sure. Dad worked for Uncle William before he got the tree farm. So they were kind of okay back then. But then Uncle William cut Dad out of their father’s will, and Dad said he wasn’t going to work for his older half brother any longer. I… don’t think he knew William was having an affair with my mom. If he knew, I’m certain that Dad would have killed Uncle William.”
Anna nodded. “I’d have to agree with you there.” She examined the deed to the farm while Bjornolf was searching through some old papers having to do with plants in the Amazon. They were dated thirteen to fifteen years ago, shortly before Jessica was adopted by the Evertons. After comparing handwriting on documents written, signed, and dated by Everton, Bjornolf could tell Everton was not the same person who had written the list of rainforest plants.
Anna touched Bjornolf’s arm and he saw the worried look in her eyes. “The Everton farm belonged to an Oliver and Jenna Silverstone,” she said quietly.
Silver. Gray wolves. They often used gray, grey, or silver in their names.
“The deed’s old,” she said.
He scrutinized it. “It is. But why would Everton have this old deed and not the one that shows he and his wife now own the property?” The situation looked more sinister than he had first suspected. “Hunter,” Bjornolf said over the phone, “I’m scanning the deed and sending it to you.” He waited.
“Got it. We’ll check into the deed as soon as the county courthouse opens this morning,” Hunter said.
“Sounds good. What do you make of this?” Bjornolf asked Anna, showing her the papers listing the rainforest plants and their chemical properties.
“What if the Silverstones were doing research on plants in the Amazon?”
Bjornolf agreed. “Hunter, we’ve got more. Listen to this. In the documents we found, someone made a detailed report of plants in the Amazon. Chemical properties, common plant names and botanical names, what they might be used for. There are weeks of detailed reports collected over two years, with breaks in between dates for several months, and then more reports as if the researcher left the Amazon, then returned and continued with the studies for another few months.”
Bjornolf read a small portion of the notes to Hunter to give him an idea.
“
“
“
