Damien leaned back in his chair, propping his feet on the desk as he chewed a pencil, trying to make sense of his conversation with Robert Melton's daughter. He'd been fighting the last six months, pulling out every investigative trick he could come up with to obtain a search warrant for the Melton place, but Robert stood firm in his convictions.
Robert maintained Keith Walker's innocence despite whatever foolish notion Damien conjured up. The old man remained sure of it. So sure of it in fact that he threatened Damien's job if he so much as came near him again. Robert dies, and his daughter does a complete one-eighty. Where the hell was she six months ago?
Curious about Ms. Adams, he'd placed a call to a private investigator friend of his, even though a detective himself, he could only gather so much information on his own, red tape and all. So far, he'd found out that she'd moved to the area and obtained a driver's license this past Monday, and she'd previously lived and worked in San Diego, California. He also learned that her parents were listed as Tammy and Rick Adams. Not Robert, which didn't necessarily mean anything.
As he had no reason to suspect Robert's daughter of anything, lies or otherwise, opening an investigation into her past wasn't so easy. No, Damien suspected she'd told him the truth anyway, Keith had very likely gotten home a few hours after leaving, but two hours seemed like plenty of time to do... something, to all of these women.
And Damien was adamant about finding out what that something might be.
Tomorrow would be a good start; though he suspected he'd likely come up short. Ms. Adams appeared so sure they wouldn't find anything incriminating at the ranch, which meant they probably wouldn't. Either there was nothing to find, or they'd already gotten rid of the evidence. He'd bet on the latter himself because he didn't buy the doctor's innocence, he, like any other good cop, didn't believe in coincidences.
Damien realized it would take time to hear back about his inquiry into Madison's background, so after filling his captain in on the latest development, he stopped off at the crime lab and put together a small team for the following day's excursion. Afterward, he met up with Julie for dinner before going back to his place to let off some steam.
Madison and Keith spent the bulk of the evening together at the clinic. In addition to making sure that absolutely everything was in order, and properly labeled, Madison asked Keith to pull the invoices for the entire ranch. Anything they ordered or bought in the last six months, she wanted a copy of the receipts.
She also told him to make copies of his bank statements for the time in question, and she did the same for herself, even though she'd only been a part of the ranch for a few days, as well as going back through the records she'd filed and pulling her father's financials. If Lancaster PD wanted to dig around in her father's affairs, she'd make sure they got more than they'd bargained for.
She wanted to show them that not only did the ranch have nothing to hide but that they were idiots to be looking in Keith's direction, to begin with. She'd keep them bogged down with paperwork for the next few months if nothing else, and that alone made her smile. Madison didn't like being pushed around, the ranch belonged to her now, in the short time she'd been there it had become her home, and the staff, her people, she wouldn't let anyone try to intimidate her or anybody she perceived as valuable to her.
And Keith was definitely valuable to her, probably even on a deeper level than she'd first realized.
While they'd worked, Madison attempted to resume their earlier discussion about ghosts, seeing as they both agreed that they were being haunted, and none too subtly at that! Keith told her that the painting had a lot to do with it, but he still wanted to wait and hear back from an old friend before explaining how he arrived at that conclusion.
For now, the painting would remain at his place, and Madison would stay as far away from the cottage as possible. Keith assured her that whatever mystical force this turned out to be, it didn't seem to affect him without her around. And since his reasoning appeared to be sound, Madison didn't object or question him further, she trusted him to keep her in the loop if and when he found anything out.
She didn't, however, mention the talisman she'd found in her father's safe, or tell him how she'd sent pictures of it to her friend back home. Frankly, it hadn't even crossed her mind. Madison hadn't connected the two, the charm was simply something she was interested in. Whether or not it contained a supernatural power didn't really concern her. With everything currently going on, she'd put off looking through the last couple of folders from her father's safe as well.
Madison suddenly became concerned about the contents of the safe though, while she figured it didn't contain anything that might be construed as incriminating in any way, she still didn't want someone to assume her father was some sort of lunatic. After sharing her concerns with Keith, he came up with a viable solution, one that ultimately surprised her.
"Why didn't you show me this, to begin with?" Madison asked as Keith lugged the safe down into the basement.
"I wanted to make sure I could trust you." He replied with a wink.
Keith pushed the false panels in the basement powder room aside and hefted the safe and all its contents with ease, into the safe room. Annoyed, Madison pushed past him and walked into the small ten by five space. While certainly not a large room, it came well equipped and shed light on one of the bigger mysteries Madison had stumbled upon.
The room had a table that spanned the length of it, two giant monitors sat on either side, broken up to show video footage of every common room in the house, as well as each of the barns, the clinic, Keith's cottage, barring his bedroom suite, and the common rooms of the staff housing as well.
In the middle of the screens sat two computers, a desktop hooked up to the security system, and a laptop, which explained why the computer in the office had hardly ever been used. Her father apparently had all the technology he needed downstairs in his little hidey-hole. Two chairs occupied the room, which suggested to Madison that Keith often spent time down here as well, and under the table, hidden by a rug, he showed her a steel door.
Keith flipped a switch cleverly hidden under the table and Madison heard what sounded like a locking mechanism disengaging. Keith easily opened the hatch on the floor and led her down a narrow set of steps into a storm cellar.
The storm cellar, which sat under the house, looked like one big open space, probably the size of the kitchen, filled with crates and boxes. Keith explained that they had enough food and water down there to hold over a small army for a couple of months if needed as well as boxes of books and magazines for entertainment.
When she dared to ask why her father had felt the need for the safe room, let alone the secret lair, as she called it, Keith shrugged. "Paranoid I guess. He never really explained it to me, then again, I never really asked either."
"It doesn't seem... odd, to you?"
"Not really. But that's probably just me."
Madison didn't understand how he could be so cavalier about her father's paranoia, but as she looked around the cellar, impressed by what she saw, at least she admitted that her father never half-assed anything. The cellar had electricity, and running water she realized after spotting a spigot in one corner, and she also noted a couple of boxes labeled bedding. Once again, he'd thought of everything.
"God," she sputtered, opening one box and finding stacks of cash in small bundles. "Did he expect a damn apocalypse?"
Keith walked over to where she stood, peeking into the box himself, he laughed. "That's certainly just like Robert, ready for anything."
Madison wanted to laugh too, she really did, but she found the whole situation more sad than funny. What kind of life did her father really have if he was this paranoid? And what did it have to do with the contents of his safe? She realized the two were tied together somehow. She also wondered what Keith's part in all of this was.
Keith apparently had a hand in everything. He seemed integral to every last part of the ranch and her father's life, so much so that Madison wondered just how long they'd known each other. Keith didn't look that much older than her, but Molly said he'd been around for at least six years.
God, there were still so many things Madison didn't know, so much she didn't understand. She had a ton of questions and none of the answers. Keith had told her he trusted her, so perhaps now would be a good time for him to start filling in some of the blanks.
Once they got back upstairs, Keith handed her a piece of paper rolled into a tube. "What's this?" she asked as she slowly unrolled it on the countertop.
"It's the blueprints for the entire property, Robert had two copies made, the original one with the safe room and cellar on it were destroyed, and this is the copy he registered with the county."
Madison studied them for a moment, saw that they were exactly what he said they were, and rolled them back up. "What am I supposed to do with this?"
"Give them to the technicians tomorrow, that way they don't feel the need to go looking for anything extra. I don't necessarily think they'd expect to find false panels in a bathroom, but you never know. Better safe than sorry."
Madison agreed, and in doing so, she wondered if that made her a bit paranoid too. What did she honestly care if someone looked in her father's safe? She hadn't seen everything in it, but she'd yet to find anything that would interest the police.
Plenty of people collected weirder things than stories about werewolves and vampires. She really shouldn't listen to that little voice in her head, the one ringing with all those warning bells. But something deep down kept whispering to her to be careful. Not everything was as it seemed.
Ha! What an understatement!
"Hey, Keith?" she asked, pulling a pizza out of the freezer and putting it into the oven she'd preheated before going downstairs with him.
"Yeah?"
"My father seemed really interested in the paranormal, why is that? You said he got that painting from a relative in Germany, I saw his passport, he'd been in Europe for a little while, did he know the painting had a supernatural element to it? Is that why he'd gone there?"
"Wow, um, that's a lot of questions," He said, sitting down at the table and taking a sip from the black thermos he seemed to always have on him.
"Oh, trust me, I have a lot more, those are just the ones that came to mind first."
"Alright," Keith laughed. "I'll see if I can't answer as many as possible while you eat."
"Aren't you going to have some too?"
"Bizarre as this might sound, pizza isn't really my thing, I'll eat something when I get home."
"You mean you actually have something in that fridge of yours other than blood?" Madison teased, wrinkling her nose as though grossed out by the very idea of it.
Keith shook his head, ignoring the jab. "Your father and I spent almost a year in Europe together researching his ancestry."
"Wait..." Madison cut in, remembering something. "You two went together? But that was almost eleven years ago."
"Yes, 2006."
"How long ago did you meet my father?"
Keith gulped, hoping she didn't notice. He figured they'd have to have this conversation sooner or later, but he really opted for the latter. It hadn't been this hard to talk about his past with her father. Robert seemed to just know. And, thankfully, it hadn't bothered him in the least. He wasn't so sure Madison would feel the same way.
"I met your father in 1998."
After a brief pause in the conversation in which he watched Madison doing the mental math, she seemed momentarily distracted when the timer for the oven buzzed loudly. Thankfully it gave Keith enough time to catch his breath and swallow his nervousness while she cut the pizza and came to the table with a couple of slices and a bottle of water.
"Okay, so you met my father in 1998? You must have been pretty young; when did you start working for him?" She asked between bites, making steady eye contact all the while.
"1998."
Madison stopped chewing, cocking her head, "What?"
"Let's just say I'm older than I look."
She studied him for a moment, not sure what to make of his answer or if she should ask for a better explanation. Luckily for Keith, because his nerves began twisting into knots, Madison decided to let it go, at least for now.
"Alright. Fine. I guess men are allowed to be finicky about discussing their age too. Moving along."
Keith sighed inwardly realizing it wouldn't be long before she asked another question that would bring her closer to the truth.
"You said you guys traveled there to research his ancestry, why?"
"A person isn't allowed to be curious about their heritage?"
"Sure they are. But my father took a DNA test, and he hired a private investigator to dig up his lineage, dating all the way back to the 1200s. Isn't that enough?"
Keith nodded, "For some people, yes, it might have been enough. But once Robert realized he still had living relatives, however distant, in Germany, he decided he wanted to meet them and get a first-hand account. I was a little curious too, so we did it together. You're making this out to be some kind of top-secret mission, Madison, and it's not nearly as fascinating as it seems."
Madison didn't agree. It was more interesting to her than he'd ever imagined. She'd grown up wanting to be part of a huge family and knowing she had an extended network of relatives out there thoroughly intrigued her. How many of them were still alive? What were they like? Did they still live in gypsy colonies? Or were they more sophisticated? Did they really practice witchcraft and magic?
She had a million questions. If only he knew.
"And all of this paranormal stuff? Where does that come in?"
"Didn't you read any of the stuff in your father's safe?"
"Some of it. There's a lot there, and most of it's kind of repetitive, like different accounts of the same stuff. It didn't really make any sense to me."
"Then you must not have read all of it," Keith responded, getting up from the table. "Madison, you're from a long line of gypsies, your heritage is surrounded by folklore and legends, all of that so-called paranormal stuff, it's all a part of your ancestry. Go through the rest of the safe, I promise it'll all make sense. I'm going home, I'll see you for breakfast."