Left to Vanish (An Adele Sharp Mystery—Book Eight) by Blake Pierce (books to read for 13 year olds .txt) 📗

Blinking to herself, Adele returned to the file and did aquick word search. Robert. He had died three years ago, leaving hisfortune to his wife.

And suddenly, Adele froze, her eyes glued in the dark tothe glowing screen.

Four lines on the spreadsheet. Four assets still in RobertChurchville’s name, yet to be relinquished to his wife due to some sort of taxbarrier. Adele hungrily scanned the listed items on the estate tax document.First off, some sort of Aston Martin. Another, an old trust fund. The thirditem on the list, though, caught Adele’s attention.

A small summer country house in France.

She blinked, staring. She looked at the item, clicking,following the thread. And then she stopped. The country home resided in theAquitaine region of France. The same region Signora Calvetti was said to have asummer home.

Adele’s fingers trembled, but she clicked quickly over tothe second victim’s details. This time, instead of scrolling by purchaseamounts and expected asset allocations, Adele simply searched for the wordAquitaine.

A second passed as the spreadsheet loaded…

Then….

A detailed description of a small country home in the heartof France. A vacation home.

Adele leaned back, the chair rigid against her spine. Hereyes wide.

“That’s it,” she muttered to herself. “Holy shit. That’sit.”

She blinked, shaking her head in equal parts relief andpending delirium. She winced against the headache, feeling her stomach twist.

Both victims had small country homes in the South ofFrance. Both victims had summer homes near the other. A connection. Tentative,perhaps. But Adele knew Aquitaine. It wasn’t a particularly large region. Acoincidence?

Adele lowered the lid of the laptop, her fingers tremblingagain.

Couldn’t be a coincidence. She had to sleep, and then talkto Paige. This had to be the break in the case they were looking for. Thethread that would lead them to the killer before he murdered anyone else.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

 Elke Schmidtstepped down from the veranda, inhaling the morning air with a contented sigh.She walked barefoot around the marble circumference of her family swimmingpool, pausing to make sure the children had turned the jets of the Jacuzzi offthe night before. She glanced over her shoulder toward the enormous home they’dmoved into five years ago, smiling and acknowledging the stone stucco and blackshingle roofing. The house was perhaps a bit larger than they needed. But it allowedfor the entertaining of guests and hosting of dinner parties. In fact, thatvery night they’d be hosting a get-together with some of their close familyfriends.

In one hand, she gripped the porcelain handle of a smallcoffee mug. A generic pink cartoon heart was painted on the side of the thing,and steam wafted up from the confines of the white cup. She inhaled the scent ofthe coffee and took a delicate sip, wincing against the sudden heat. Shestrolled across the edge of the pool, toward the black gate which led out ontotheir property. In the distance, she spotted the small barn for horses they hadnever bought. A pipe dream, her husband said. They didn’t have enough time totake care of the horses. Still, hopefully one day.

Mrs. Schmidt didn’t mind walking alone, along her propertyline, beneath the trees and toward the old barn. This was a safe neighborhoodafter all. A neighborhood for the wealthy and the well off. Few places inGermany were as safe as this one.

She felt the damp grass from the sprinklers beneath hertoes, and she hummed softly to herself, reciting one of the piano pieces herdaughter had been practicing the previous day. She took another steaming sipfrom her coffee mug as she strolled through the trees now, moving across the well-maintainedyard and then past a small incline along the creek behind the house. Now, shecould just make out the top of the roof, over the incline, and through thetrees. It was harder to see the pool from this angle.

Mrs. Schmidt simply enjoyed the sensation of her toespressing in the dirt, smiling to herself at the three-course meal she hadplanned for the party tonight. She would cater at least half of it, but still,she made a mean Sauerbraten.

That’s when she spotted movement.

Elke frowned, staring up toward the old barn.

Something fluttered behind one of the trees ahead, and sheheard the soft thump of footsteps, and then something moved past another treeand stopped.

Her breath came a bit quicker now and her eyes narrowed,fixated on the tree.

“Hello?” she said, softly, her voice extending over thegrass.

She frowned.

One of the neighbor kids? A couple of times she’d beenforced to speak with the Bauers next door about their children camping in thebarn.

She sighed in an exasperated fashion and moved quickly towardthe barn. Best to catch them red-handed.

“I see you there!” she called out. She had seen a flutterof motion, which had now gone still behind one of the larger oaks. Still,children couldn’t often tell when adults were bluffing. “I see you there, comeout!”

She quickened her pace, striding purposefully and frowning,some of the coffee sloshing over her knuckles with a steaming hiss. She wincedand quickly sucked on the back of her hand, gently angling the mug so it didn’tspill further.

“Come out,” she demanded. “Peter, Luka? Is that you?”

She rounded the tree, all bluster and annoyance, stillsucking at the back of her thumb.

And froze.

She stared for a moment and then yelped in surprise, theblood draining from her face as she dropped her coffee mug and it shatteredagainst one of the protruding roots beneath her feet. She gasped, but the sounddied as a hand suddenly lashed out at her.

Not a child at all. Not a neighbor. In fact, in a briefmoment, she spotted a man with a mustache and dull, gray eyes. She had neverseen the man before in her life.

“Miss me?” he growled as he lurched at her.

He was wearing a strange outfit. It took her a moment torealize it wasn’t a bathrobe. In fact, it looked more like an old monk’s habit.Something black dangled from his right hand, and swished about as he lunged ather.

Elke screamed and darted back. The man was fast, but shespent most mornings, after her walk and coffee, going for runs in the woods.She was