The Legacy: A Kimberly & Sykes Mystery Novel Read Free Page A

needed without having to meet him later this evening. She felt a pang of guilt about her clients. So many would be unhappy her appointments are cancelled because they relied so heavily on her help. All social workers carried a full client load, and many of Lauren’s clients had been on her files for so long they welcomed the routine. She shook the thoughts from her mind and reminded herself to stay on track. How was she going to track down the cast woman? Her father must have her name and contact info in his paperwork.
    Lauren called in sick to work. Once she had left a message on her boss’ voicemail she went back to her den to go through her father’s paperwork again. If the cast woman’s contact information was there, she would find it. Mike Kimberly was a prolific note taker and Lauren felt sure that he would have made a note about the equipment and what, if anything, he and the cast woman did with it. All she had to do was find it and give the information to Smith.
    Lauren leaned against the door jamb and surveyed the chaos she had left behind the night before. Papers covered every surface. As she looked at the disarray, her stomach fluttered. She knew the feeling well: it was the first ripple of panic. Lauren swallowed hard and rubbed her belly trying to make it settle down.
    Letting her eyes travel over the tossed paperwork Lauren reflected on when the courier first delivered them. She remembered groaning and grumbling when he kept going back to his van for more loads. With client files and personal papers of her own, she had enough to deal with. Lauren remembered feeling angry that in his last act, her father had managed to insinuate himself back into her life. He had refused to reconnect with her when she offered the olive branch yet, by taking his own life, he must have realised she would end up having to deal with his affairs. She had been so taken up in her feelings of victimized she forgot to tip the courier.
    Lauren moved from the doorway and into the den pushing papers aside with her foot to make a path to a spot in the middle of the room where she sat down on the floor.
    Scanning the wreckage around her Lauren looked for any slip of paper with her father’s handwriting. If her father left her any clues she was going to find them. 
    Packing a bag and running away to God-knows-where just isn’t an option Lauren mused. That was her father’s way of dealing with life and she still felt resentful that he left her and her mother struggling alone so many times when she was a child. Those memories are the reason she always told her clients that running away only delayed the inevitable: at some point, they had to come back and deal with the problem. From where she sat right now, she realized that her advice to them to ‘stay in the moment’ served them no purpose at all.
    Taking another sip of her coffee Lauren was surprised to find it cold. When she glanced at the clock she saw that her reminiscing and reflection had consumed over an hour. This dwelling on the past wasn’t doing her any good. Lauren knew there was nothing for it but to make a pot of strong coffee and work her way through all the papers again, this time repacking as she did so.
    Lauren had repacked eight of the boxes before she put her hands on a small package she had missed during her frenzy the previous evening. Wrapped in a piece of paper bound by a red elastic band she found two keys.
    The keys were not unusual; in fact, they looked just like her own door keys; tarnished and well worn. The paper wrapped around the keys was blank. Her father left a letter for her, such as it was, so why didn’t he leave a note indicating what the keys were for. They were obviously important enough for him to keep. Lauren’s face lit up with a smile as she caught herself trying to make words appear by sheer force of will. She gave her head a slight shake. Amused at her own behavior, she tossed the keys several times in her hand. “Hey dad! How about some