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“You said the housekeeper found him and called the authorities?” Henry questioned.
“Yes,” Taylor confirmed.
Henry nodded, then pulled off. Grabbing his phone, he swiped across the screen. “This is the call that came in the morning Cedric’s body was discovered.”
`Henry tapped at the screen and held the phone back toward Taylor and Derrick so they could hear it.
“911, What’s your emergency?”
A deep voice came on the phone, with a gravely quality to it, and they heard the deepness of it vibrate through the phone. “There is a body at 24 Dartmouth Place, the penthouse. It looks like an overdose.”And then the line clicked.
“Hello?”the operator asked, but the line was dead.
Taylor looked to Derrick. “Maybe the housekeeper freaked and asked someone else to call?” he offered, clearly at as much of a loss as Taylor.
Taylor shook her head. “No, because Todd said—” Taylor stopped, her eyes growing wide. She replayed the conversation from months and months ago in her head. It came into her memory like a blurry photograph.
“Tay, what is it?” Derrick asked.
Taylor looked between her husband and Henry. “They moved the body,” she said, barely audible.
Derrick squinted at Taylor’s words, and then his own eyes widened in recollection. “Oh my God,” he said slowly.
“I need information and I need it now,” Henry demanded.
“When I, back when they…” Taylor swallowed and took a breath, starting over again. “When I was brought back, they told me Cedric was in a private morgue. Then they told me they had moved his body, to try and cover up the overdose, and then he was discovered,” Taylor explained.
“Who did? Who told you that Cedric was discovered by the housekeeper, Taylor?”
“It was Todd,” Derrick said. “He told me when he came to get Taylor.”
“He moved the body,” Taylor said still in disbelief. “If he moved it, then he would have seen his head,” Taylor said, her mind still running wild as the facts filtered in.
“And would have seen that it had a giant hole in it,” Derrick agreed.
Henry turned back and put the SUV in drive. “I am going to look into this more,” Henry said. “You two need to go back in to work today and pretend that everything is hunky-dory.”
Taylor’s mind was yet again in a whirlwind, but Henry’s demands sidetracked her. “Did you sayhunky-dory?”
“Yes,” the man said curtly.
“That was weird,” she said.
“Just go about your day,” Henry said tersely.
“What about Todd?” Derrick asked Henry.
“I need to look into it more,” Henry said.
“But she is going to be there, with him,” Derrick said. He turned to his wife. “Maybe you should go home for the day.”
“No, then it will look weird,” Taylor said.
Derrick shook his head. “We could say you got sick, or I got sick,” he pushed. “I don’t think—”
“Derrick, I’m not going to do that,” Taylor said. “I’m going to be in the office surrounded by hundreds of people, and I am sure a security detail, right, Henry?”
“Ian and Mick will be with you today. Rog and Sam will be with you, Derrick.”