“Everything’s going to be fine, Bellerina. I feel it in my bones,” she whispered.
Hearing these words from her mother on many occasions in her life, Belle knew that Rachel Abbot felt a lot in her bones. Her bones were very busy sensing intuitive communications other mere mortals could not interpret.
However, unlike much of what Rachel Abbot did and said, when her bones spoke, they were rarely wrong.
Belle didn’t know what to make of that.
But since it was her Mom’s bones speaking, for the first time in a long time, Belle felt a very tiny, nearly imperceptible but still there, smidgeon of hope.
Chapter Seven
Shredded
Olive
Olive Mayfair closed her office door on the private investigator and turned back to her cluttered desk.
It was after eight o’clock in the evening and even though she had two days before the deadline Jack gave her on the Abbot report, she wanted to get it done so she could get what she’d learned out of her mind and move on.
She could, of course, simply give him the files but that wasn’t Olive’s way of doing things.
Jack was a tremendously busy man, indeed, impossibly busy.
Therefore, even though she knew he would read every single page of the investigator’s file after he read Olive’s synopsis of its contents, she was still going to write her summary.
She sat at her desk and stared at the thick file with distaste.
Then she opened it to the first page, a copy of a divorce decree, which she flipped over and saw the first of many medical reports.
Olive turned to her computer and started typing.
Belle Abbot’s divorce from Calvin Cole had been granted under what amounted to irreconcilable differences.
Olive was not surprised Cole had divorced his very clumsy, accident prone wife.
Indeed, according to the reports that Olive carefully studied with growing disgust, Belle “slipped” in her kitchen twice, the bathroom four times, in the garden thankfully only once and she’d fallen down the stairs alarmingly often.
During these “accidents”, she’d suffered cuts, contusions, concussions, a sprained wrist and several broken ribs.
Olive thought, sarcastically, that it was abundantly clear that Belle was a danger to herself and Calvin Cole was well quit of her.
Surprisingly, Olive thought with cynicism, Belle Abbot had not visited a hospital even once before her marriage to Cole. In fact, she’d lived a carefree, accident free, hospital and doctor free, albeit active and far wandering life.
She’d even climbed to Machu Picchu with her mother when she was eighteen without managing, in her extreme clumsiness, to tumble down the narrow, treacherous mountain paths.
At a quarter to ten, Olive closed down her computer and walked the short distance from her office to Jack’s carrying the file with her report in, all of it in a large, sealed envelope marked “Urgent. Private and Confidential.” like it was a piece of putrid rubbish.
She had never met Belle Abbot but Olive liked her all the same. Firstly, she’d selflessly saved the lives of many children and their bus driver. Secondly, she’d not talked to the press about this act of heroism or the recent business with Jack and his brother at all.
Not one word.
Even when she was painted as a somewhat dim bulb manipulated at the hands of Bennett Brothers, she did not speak. Instead, she kept her silence and her considerable (to Olive’s way of thinking) dignity.
Therefore, it rankled even deeper than it would naturally do that Belle Abbot had endured a four year marriage to an abusive husband.
Olive set the report, front and centre, on Jack’s desk. He was spending more than his normal amount of time in Cornwall but Gillie would have the file couriered to him the next day.
Considering its contents, Olive would usually hand deliver it to him even in Cornwall.