Intrigue (Elvis Presley Story)

Chapter 4

"A message from my father?" Elvis's mouth tightened into a grim line, controlling any outward expression of the pain that stabbed through him at the mention of his late father.

"What do you mean?"

She laid a brown leather book in his hands and pointed to a sticky note on the cover, penned in Vernon presley's distinctive handwriting. For olivia. "Take a look inside."

"This was my father's?"

"Mine, actually. I thought I'd lost it. But I guess Vernon found it. He made several entries-some are comments for me, but others don't make sense. I just found it this morning."

She hugged her hands across her stomach "Maybe I'm being hopeful and reading more into it than what's there. But it's as if your dad's trying to tell me something, but in secret, so I wouldn't find it right away. Almost..."

A despairing sigh eased from her chest. "Almost as though he knew something was going to happen to him, and he was leaving bits of advice and making a record of----"

Her verdant gaze fell to the book and she hugged herself a little more tightly. "Of I don't know what."

Elvis began to skim the journal. Pain receded into curiosity, and curiosity tapped into something harder at the core of him. He'd always been driven to find the truth. The Truth about his father's murder, in particular, wouldn't let him rest until he had answers.

"Forgive him for what? Reading your diary?"

"I think it's more than that." The tip of her tongue snuck out to worry her bottom lip again.

Stop noticing things like that. Elvis thought to himself.

Re-channeling his powers of observation, Elvis propped his hip on the corner of her desk and kept reading. Unlike olivia, he refused to hope that this was any kind of break in a case that had stalled to the point of growing cold. But if there was anything that might even remotely point them in the direction of his father's killer, or the reason why some bastard thought his father had to die, he intended to find it.

He could tell something had upset olivia. At first he thought it was just embarrassment that he caught her wiggling her sweet little backside at him while she crawled across the floor-and for a split second he worried that she'd caught a glimpse of his unwitting admiration before he covered his suprise with an amused grin.

He was relieved when she turned to face him and she was the same old olivia. But the fact there was a mess, and olivia was in the middle of it, reassured him that this was the same girl who'd become part of his family when she started to work for his father five years ago.

"I hope there isn't anything too personal in this one," Olivia added.

This one? There were more journals? More information he could sort through?

Shortly after the funeral, they spent two weeks going through anything of his father's that the homicide team hadn't bundled up for evidence. They'd found nothing. Frustrated beyond imagining and feeling as if he'd failed his father, Elvis had dived into his work at the precinct. But he'd never stopped poking around where he could, analysing anything, no matter how insignificant, that might lead him to the truth.

Was olivia's journal a fresh lead? Or just a sentimental journey that would cause him fresh pain?

As he read through each comment his father had written, Elvis became aware of olivia tapping her foot on the carpet. Olivia showing inpatience? Somehow he'd imagined gentle, sweet and quiet was the extent of her personality. He ignored the foot-tapping and read on.