Chapter Ninety-Five

The euphoria Lila felt from Asher’s message had well and truly worn off by the time Lila awoke on Wednesday morning. He hadn’t opened her last message, but she had expected that much. Only today, tomorrow, then the day after left…

Yawning, she made her way downstairs, ready to demolish some cereal, and encountered her parents speaking in hushed whispers over cups of steaming coffee.

“Morning,” Lila smiled, giving another yawn.

“Good morning, Lila,” her Mum returned her smile, blowing on her cup before taking a sip.

“What’re you guys talking about?” Lila asked idly, moving past them both to open the fridge and retrieve the milk.

“Just plans for the day,” her Dad replied with an edge to his voice that halted Lila’s movements. She glanced back at him, but he was staring down at his cup as though it interested him deeply. Pursing her lips, Lila continued her morning routine. Did she dare ask? Eyeing her Dad again, she could see him pointedly looking away from her.

“Is it… about how to keep me at home?” Lila asked after a pregnant pause. She saw her parents exchange a look before her Dad placed his cup on the counter with a sigh.

“I was just telling Mum that you’re my daughter, through and through,” he said, though his tone wasn’t exactly pleased with this revelation. “You’ve got things to occupy you at home, yes?”

“Yeah, Dad. I’m not interested in going anywhere,” Lila responded earnestly. “Don’t worry about me.”

Lila’s Mum tutted before sighing as well.

“I’ll finish what I need to today,” her Mum said, her eyes flickering to Lila’s Dad for a moment, “then I’ll stay home with you for the rest of the week.”

“I’ll be fine by myself,” Lila insisted. Her parents both looked at her dubiously.

“Lila, the one thing that we do not want is for you to start looking into Piper’s death. This isn’t child’s play. I know your curiosity is growing – I saw it start yesterday. Like I said, some things are better left alone. The police can handle it,” her Dad warned.

“I wasn’t going to,” Lila responded defensively. It was the truth – she had other avenues of interest to explore anyway. Today, actually, once her parents left for work. Not that she was going to divulge that to them. It was lucky, in a way, that everything she needed to continue her inquiries was with her at home. It would keep her occupied, just like her parents wanted.

Besides, it wasn’t as though Piper’s death was relevant to Asher’s Mum. Except… maybe it was relevant to Marlene. She still hadn’t found anything for or against that.

“… Alright,” her Dad acquiesced, raising his hands as if in defeat. “I’ll trust you for now.”

“Thanks, Dad. Glad to know I’m on thin ice.”

He gave her a sharp look before shaking his head. “You sure are, when you say it like that.”

Lila laughed, pouring her cereal. Her parents seemed content as they finished their coffee over discussions of the weather, and the news that their interview at the show had been uploaded to the internet. Lila made a mental note to check that out later as her parents rinsed their cups and disappeared to finish getting ready to leave.

Sitting down at the kitchen table, Lila lifted one leg onto her chair and looked through the Facebook page for Channel 10. Sure enough, she saw herself and Daniel three posts down, their faces taut with nervousness.

‘Not the most flattering angle,’ Lila thought, pressing ‘Play’ on the video. It proceeded as she remembered, though she cringed at the sound of her voice. It really didn’t match with what she thought she sounded like.

“Ah, you found the video,” her Mum observed, jolting Lila.

“Sheesh, you scared me!”

“Sorry, dear,” her Mum laughed before nuzzling Lila’s cheek with her nose. “See you later.”

“Bye Mum, have a good day at work! Love you.”

Lila’s Mum smiled before departing the kitchen and walking towards the garage.

“And what about me?” her Dad asked, passing through the kitchen not a moment later.

“Of course you should have a good day at work, too. Love you.”

“Love you too, kiddo,” her Dad replied fondly, ruffling her hair. He also left the kitchen, and Lila turned her attention back to the video. She kept an ear out, awaiting the rumble of her Dad’s car. Lila had already figured that the best time to go searching would be as soon as her parents left. It would be far less likely that either Daniel or Clare would be up at that point, so she didn’t need to fear being caught by them. Although, even if she was caught by either of them, she did have some hectic blackmail at her disposal…

The video ended with Daniel’s attempt at the test of strength. As if on cue, she heard her parents drive away, the garage door closing with a note of finality. Lila drank the rest of her milk before rinsing her bowl and heading back upstairs to retrieve Asher’s lockpicks.

Once she descended the stairs again, Asher’s lockpicks firmly within one of her pyjama pockets, Lila’s confidence in opening her Dad’s filing cabinets without Asher waned. How was she supposed to do this?

She stopped in front of the study, picking at her nails. Since she was alone this time… she figured she might as well video what was going on. Just in case Asher noticed something that she didn’t. Plus, it might help her not feel so lonely in this endeavour.

“The time is 8.13am, on the 5th of July, 2023,” Lila said after pressing ‘record’ on her phone’s camera. She placed her phone into her pyjama’s breast pocket after ensuring that the lens was where it should be.

“I’m recording this just in case. Uh. Hi, Asher from the future.”

Lila winced – why was she so lame?

“I’m about to open the study in my house. It should be unlocked, so bear with me…”

Lila twisted the door handle and opened the door without any resistance. It was dark in here, so she turned the light on.

“Alright, the method to my madness is… looking through what’s available without breaking out the lockpicks. There might be something freely available that could help.”

She felt silly, talking to herself, but also a bit braver. Everything in here seemed as it usually was – it still overlooked the copious amounts of banana trees Lila’s Mum was cultivating in the front yard. The two desks remained much the same too, with Lila’s Dad’s desk being buried under an avalanche of obscure paperwork, and the desk that belonged to Lila’s Mum being much tidier, upon which were several accounting books, an abacus, and an older model desktop computer.

“I’ll just flip through what my Dad has on his desk…”

Lila did so, but nothing seemed relevant to the Forestglade Private Hospital. In fact, most of the papers on here, overflowing his in-tray, were invoices from and to various companies – with at least one side being her Dad’s PI agency. Lila wondered why they weren’t sitting on her Mum’s desk, but figured it may have once lived there before her Mum pushed it off in frustration. That sounded like her Mum, anyway.

The other papers pertained to old cases – dated back to 2021 or even further back. Many seemed to be about cheating husbands or wives, from the looks of these documents. Was her Dad in the middle of archiving these? Or were these cases still ongoing? It seemed unlikely that they would be though, given the age. She left them as they were for now – she didn’t see Ivaan or Tabitha’s names in them, either way.

She briefly looked at his computer. It was a newer model than what her Mum had, but she didn’t know his password. All the kids were able to use the computers in here, but under the ‘Family’ login. She narrated as such to the empty room before moving on to his unlocked desk drawers.

Rifling through the first, Lila only spied reference material, like what she’d found regarding open-source searches from a while ago. There wasn’t anything in here that interested Lila today – except, perhaps, a document outlining a method to organise one’s theories about a matter. That was interesting.

She showed the camera and read through it aloud so she could put it back before moving on to the next drawer. This was full of stationery – bull clips, empty cardboard folders and appropriate tube clips, plastic sleeves, pens, sticky note pads, and other assorted items. Closing this one and opening the last, Lila saw that this contained several folders labelled with various reference numbers, hanging in suspension files. These also looked old. She glanced over at the papers on his desk. At least some, if not all, file reference numbers matched with the documents she’d just looked at.

‘Shouldn’t these really be locked away?’ Lila thought, closing this one with a dejected sigh. Then, she realised why they were all from around the same time period. These would’ve been generated around the time of COVID lockdown orders. He probably just hadn’t brought them back into his PI office since the cases were completed whilst the world had shut down.

She posited this theory aloud, to keep a record of it, before spinning around.

Behind her were three imposing-looking filing cabinets – all of them locked. She knew them to be so from her past frolicking in his office while he was away.

“Guess… it’s show time,” Lila muttered nervously. With a quivering hand, she pulled out the lockpicking set. How many times had Asher practiced without her? A whole bunch? None at all? Now that the camera was rolling on her investigative actions, she felt like she really should’ve practiced before coming in here.

“Sorry. Haven’t practiced. This might be really frustrating to watch for a pro like you.”

Opening the kit, Lila looked down at it. What were the tools he mainly used, again? For some reason, all she could remember was the shape of his hands and the deftness of his fingers as he worked.

‘Pull yourself together,’ she reprimanded herself desperately. Now wasn’t the time to lose her head.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

She selected a pick and the tension wrench – or, at least, what she thought was the tension wrench. It looked the most different out of all the others, anyway – so it must be important.

Now that she held them, she wasn’t exactly sure what to do with them.

‘This is… so embarrassing,’ she thought to herself before inserting the tools into the first filing cabinet. Her hands were clumsy, the feeling entirely foreign to her. How was she supposed to know when and where she was supposed to move these instruments?

She tried to remember when she had opened Marlene’s computer room. What did she do? She’d… waggled it, but Asher had described it more as a jiggle.

Frowning, Lila continued her attempt at unlocking the filing cabinet. It didn’t give. She really should’ve practiced.

“I’m so terrible. Sorry. Uh, skip ahead, I guess,” Lila said awkwardly as she flexed her fingers. She couldn’t give up, even though it was very tempting. They had no hint as to why her Dad was hired by Asher’s Dad. For all they knew, it was incredibly pertinent to Tabitha. For all they knew, the secret behind her disappearance was hidden within these filing cabinets. At the very least… maybe she’d figure out why that folder from the farmhouse was so important – and its relevance, if any, to the mysteries falling before her feet.

With renewed determination, she rolled her shoulders. She’d get in. She had to. She was the only one who could do this. She couldn’t rely on Asher, even if he was in the country. It was too risky for him to try.

This time, her struggle to get it open didn’t bother her. It was like her new perspective had turned it from an obstacle she couldn’t overcome to a puzzle within her means to crack.

And, after ten minutes, it opened.

This filing cabinet was filled to the brim with various folders labelled with reference numbers and names, like the ones in the suspension files.

“Oh God, I don’t even know where to start,” Lila muttered, bringing a hand to her forehead. She had no idea how the reference numbers worked – were these organised by year? Names transposed into numbers? Were they random?

The best she could do at the moment was look through the names that she could see. With a resigned sigh, she set about flicking through the folders.

After about ten more minutes of mind-numbing searching, Lila was satisfied that there was nothing in here that was relevant to Ivaan. In fact, it looked like the documentation that she was searching through was somewhat alphabetised. Her Dad was nothing if not organised…

“Looks like the last folders have the last name starting with ‘G’,” Lila observed, closing this filing cabinet. She paused.

“Should… probably take Marlene’s advice and lock it,” Lila added begrudgingly. “But… how?”

She narrowed her eyes and began tapping her fingers along the top of the filing cabinet, the rhythm churning her thoughts in her mind. Keys… turned one way to unlock. So… in theory, turning the other way should lock it, right?

Lila inserted the tension wrench and the pick into the lock, rotating in the opposite direction. It took a few minutes of concentration, but, with a click, Lila was sure it had worked. She removed the tools and wiggled the cabinet, trying to open the drawers. It seemed locked – or, at least, locked enough that her Dad shouldn’t notice the difference.

A small smile grew on her face as she moved on to the next cabinet. Opening it took far less time than the previous and she pulled out the top drawer with a metallic jangle, peering at the folders here. None of these stood out, either.

“Looks like the last folders are for the letter ‘O’,” Lila noted, closing the bottom drawer with a sigh. Surely… if there was something in here, it’d be in the last cabinet. She locked this one, too, before turning her attention to the final one. Her heart began to pound loudly in her chest, the anticipation building within. Just what was her Dad investigating for Asher’s Dad?

This lock gave her more trouble than the others. For a moment, she thought that perhaps it was broken. But, just as she was contemplating this, the lock gave a satisfying click.

“Hope… you’re ready,” Lila whispered, more for herself than for the benefit of the recording. She skimmed the folders in this cabinet, which was more sparse than the other two. If her guess was right, Asher’s Dad’s matter, if it was here, would be at ‘W’.

Her hand rested on the tab for ‘W’. What if she was wrong? Or, if she was right, what if there was nothing? Then… all her efforts would be for nought, and she’d have to explain that to Asher. The frustration at constantly remaining at square one for the biggest, most important mystery that had been served upon them – it had been eating away at her. Why couldn’t they find anything about his Mum?

‘Concentrate, Lila,’ she reminded herself, taking a deep breath. ‘Otherwise, you won’t find anything.’

“W… Looks like WADE comes first,” Lila narrated in a quiet voice, pushing aside the WADE file with her index finger. She froze.

WAGNER.

But… there were two Wagner files. Which one was the right one? Or were both of them wrong?

She pulled out the first one. WAGNER – CMS 2122046. There was an A4 sheet of paper stuck to the front of this one with general details listed.

“Wagner, Helen. Missing husband… suspected infidelity… services requested May 2022,” Lila read aloud. She slipped this file back where it had been sitting and picked up the next one. WAGNER – CMS 2223007.

She almost didn’t want to read it. They were so close to answers, but now that they were in the palm of her hands, she was overrun with anxiety. What would she do with the answers? What should she do while Asher wasn’t here? It didn’t feel right to go full steam ahead without him.

She inhaled deeply, engaging her breathing exercises to prevent hyperventilating. Freaking out wasn’t helpful. Looking at the damn thing would be, though.

“W-Wagner, Ivaan. On behalf of Forestglade Private Hospital… trace suspected misuse of funds… trace missing analgesics… services requested August 2022.”

Hold on… August last year? Asher’s Mum was certainly still around in August last year. So… the investigation her Dad was working on was entirely irrelevant.

“Sorry, Asher, but… it doesn’t look related to your Mum at all,” Lila sighed, her voice heavy with disappointment. She almost put it back before stopping herself.

“… But it might be related to the folder from the farmhouse.”

She hoped the file would be a treasure trove of information – maybe even containing the same information she had upstairs. But, when she opened it, she found only two documents. The first was a list of corporate roles, with a small description of their functions. There weren’t any names that she could see, but the first role was CEO.

“Chief executive officer… oversees the operations of the entire facility. Involves planning, staffing, budgeting and creating and implementing policies…”

Lila took her phone out of her breast pocket, opening her camera. The video was still rolling, so she slowly moved it down the page and through the rest of the document. She placed it back into her pocket before picking up the second one.

It was a fact sheet for… analgesic opioids.

“According to this, analgesics are medications that relieve pain,” Lila said after a moment. “Though, you probably already knew that.”

It listed several examples with short explanations of each – codeine, fentanyl, methadone, morphine, and oxycodone. She saw several markings surrounding the explanations, but these seemed to be for her Dad’s thinking process, rather than proper notes. She couldn’t glean anything from them, anyway, though she did notice that codeine was crossed out, whereas both fentanyl and morphine were highlighted in yellow.

She again took her phone out and filmed these pages at a decently slow pace before placing it back into her pocket.

“There’s nothing else… so I’ll put it back and double check the ‘W’ section,” Lila stated, doing just that. No other WAGNER files were lurking in this filing cabinet. She reluctantly closed and locked it before lowering herself into her Dad’s desk chair. So, her Dad was investigating two things – the misuse of hospital funds, and missing analgesics. It also seemed like her Dad was narrowing down what specific analgesics, or at least figuring out what the missing ones did.

The recesses of her mind stirred as she continued to mull it over. Those types of allegations seemed to be more relevant to hospital staff. It would be hard for a patient to commit money fraud, though stealing analgesics might be possible… however, if a patient was stealing from the hospital, it would probably be pretty easy to trace – especially if they were still a patient. It wasn’t as though they could go far.

But wouldn’t a hospital go through those kinds of medications quite quickly? A few missing here and there would probably be a write-off in most cases – that they had been given to patients and not recorded properly, or they were duds, or something similar. So… it would need to be significant enough to become a concern requiring a PI… What would that threshold even be?

Lila sighed again. She didn’t feel smart enough for this. Asher would be. He might even have insider information as to the operations of the hospital and know what the threshold would be. Thinking on it, though, perhaps the question of missing analgesics was a side note and the main concern was missing hospital funds. An avenue provided to her Dad as a ‘while you’re already investigating something’ kind of task… or vice versa.

She pensively folded her arms across her chest, which caused her phone to pop out of her breast pocket and land squarely on her thighs.

“Shit, sorry,” Lila said hurriedly, picking it back up. It had managed to turn off the video, which was fine given her phone felt like it was on fire. She checked the time – it was almost 9am. Clare and Daniel might wake up soon for breakfast.

She cast a quick glance around the office, trying to see if there was something else she could look at. She pulled the built-in closet door aside – but it was entirely empty. So, with nothing else to do or poke at, she tiptoed out of the office.

Lila softly closed the door behind her, straining her ears to try and hear whether her siblings were up and about. She heard nothing so continued on nonchalantly.

“Oh, morning,” Clare’s voice stopped Lila in her tracks entirely. Lila slowly turned to the direction of the voice, her breathing halting. Clare was in the kitchen, a bowl of cereal in front of her.

“H-Hey, Clare,” Lila stammered, stepping backwards. Clare tilted her head in confusion.

“What’s up with these weird ass vibes you’re giving me?” she queried.

“N-Nothing,” Lila insisted with another stutter. “Just… tired.”

“You look it. Have you had breakfast yet? Did you want me to fix you something?”

Lila shook her head emphatically. “I had breakfast a little while ago, when Mum and Dad were still at home.”

“Oh. I didn’t see you in the living room – were you lurking somewhere else down here?”

“Um… I was just checking on my shoes. By the front door.”

“Checking on them?” Clare raised an eyebrow at Lila. “What, in case they walked off?”

“No. I was just… thinking about getting new shoes.”

“If you do, they’ve gotta be online only for a couple days, at least,” Clare replied sternly. “You have to stay at home, remember?”

“Yeah. I remember.”

“Are you gonna hang around downstairs or go back to your room?” Clare asked, spooning some cereal into her mouth with a loud slurp.

“Uh, I was gonna go back to my room,” Lila responded robotically. Clare continued to look at her suspiciously before nodding.

“Alright. If you want to talk, about Piper or anything else, I’m here.”

“Thanks, Clare.”

Lila turned on her heel and tried to look casual as she walked towards the stairs. She wasn’t sure that she managed it, but Clare didn’t call her back for more grilling.

Lila closed herself in her room with a relieved exhale. That… could’ve gone worse. She was glad that Clare was still practicing her reduced nosiness – Lila wasn’t confident that she’d come up with a convincing enough lie about why she needed to use the office. After all, she had her own laptop that she could use rather than the shared computer.

She gradually sat down in her desk chair, eyeing her pile of textbooks. What did it all mean? Now that Lila knew that her Dad’s investigation for Ivaan wasn’t related to Tabitha, a new question emerged. Did her Dad not know anything about Tabitha’s disappearance after all?

There were so many threads in Lila’s mind – she needed to organise them somehow.

Lila tapped the edge of her laptop as it booted up. She’d make a new document, listing everything and see what she could figure out.

But where to begin?

She gently teased the folder out from under her textbooks. Forestglade Private Hospital blueprints, list of employee names at the corporate level, and some money orders. Then, her Dad had a list of roles at the corporate level explaining their functions, and a document listing out analgesic drugs. He was investigating missing funds and missing medications… did all of these documents tie in together?

Lila spent some time writing down these points and her discoveries before the beginning stages of a throbbing headache interrupted her. She really wasn’t cut out for this on her own. Especially when it related to Asher’s Dad’s hospital. She could theorise why her Dad had those particular documents – that the roles, from what she could see, had specific abilities and those abilities might help in committing fraud or stealing medications, and to know what the medications did and perhaps understand why they were taken. She could also theorise that most of the documentation surrounding his investigation was either on his case management system, hence CMS, or otherwise kept on his person.

But beyond that, she was at a loss. Perhaps the next thing she could try and figure out was why the folder and the photos had ended up in her belongings. Clearly, Marlene wanted her to have them. But why? What was Marlene trying to tell her? If it had been Lila, she would have destroyed the photos at the very least – they’d taken so many, of almost every inch of Marlene’s personal living space.

So… why find them again and give them to Lila? Plus, Marlene must have known enough about the folder to also know to give it to Lila… out of everything else in Asher’s drawer, amongst his school belongings. Had Marlene been the one to place the folder inside the abandoned farmhouse after all? Was that why she’d taken the photos of the farmhouse out of their stack? To lure them there? Why?

Lila clutched her forehead as a searing sting of pain shot through her. The headache was coming in full force now. It’d… be better to pack everything away for now. Before someone else came in here to ask her why she looked so miserable again.