A Score & A Decade

Chapter 10

"Are you sure that you looked everywhere for the bracelet?" Zoe asked.

"Yes. I told you, Eric wore the bracelet everywhere. He was very fond of it and was disappointed when he lost it." Louise replied.

"Was there anything else he wore that would have distinguished him from other men?" Zoe asked, just to be sure.

"No," Louise answered, shaking her head.

"Well, thank you, Louise. You've just helped me a ton." Zoe said gratefully and took leave with a huge smile on her face.

Back at her office, she had placed all the pictures on her desk and was looking at them, placing what she had just learned into her story.

Roselle had made a bracelet for her dad, so she would recognize it anywhere. He wore it everywhere. If the Parks weren't new residents but had had an eye on the Rodneys for some time, then they would have noticed a grown person wearing a colourful, rainbow bracelet all the time. 

Louise said that the bracelet almost always fell when Eric was gardening, and if the Parks had been watching them, they would know that. They could have easily picked it up and walked away with it when Eric's back was turned.

Suppose that's what they did. They might have heard talks here and there that Eric was going to London. So they must have waited till he was gone and then one evening in the park, they introduced themselves as 'new residents' as an excuse. 

Later on, while Louise and Harrietta were looking at those dresses down the street, William, who was similar in build to Eric, must have slipped on a brown wig and the bracelet and gone to Roselle. Roselle, who would recognize the bracelet anywhere, saw it on a man who had the same build and hair like her father and without a second thought, went with him.

Now, the question was, how did no one find out where Roselle was? Ah. The divorce. It must have been staged. Diana moved out. She must've taken Roselle along with her and then the two of them were out of the picture. William had made sure to leave no traces on himself so that even though he might be a suspect, there would be no real evidence against him. The whole thing was shoddy like Church had said. Shoddy but still genius.

But how had they managed to just disappear off the face of the earth? Unless they hadn't. Maybe they were still there, hidden in plain sight, under a different name. The technology wasn't great 30 years ago, so tracking would have been poor. They could easily have changed their identities and it wouldn't have been hard. But how would she ever find their new identities?

A dead-end, just like Church had said. She banged a fist onto the table in frustration and a piece of paper fell onto the pictures from on top of a file. It was the picture her mother had sent her. She picked it up and was about to put it back when she stopped. Wait a second. The light from above made her mother's white patch on her face look whiter. But that wasn't what she was staring at.

With shaking hands, she placed the photograph next to the Polaroid of Diana Park. Her heart stopped. Her knees went weak and she sank into her chair. How had she not noticed this before? 

No wonder Diana Park had looked familiar to Zoe, she was her mother.