Page 56 of Scarred By Sin

“That’s it?” Brook asked again as she had trouble coming to terms with such a decision. She was from a small town herself. Not all were the same. “The sheriff and his deputies just ignored the fact that a respected man just up and vanished, leaving his eighteen-year-old daughter to carry on without him?”

“Cal Brennan insisted that Nestor would never do something like that. He was vocal about it, went to Sheriff Caulfield personally, and demanded the department follow through. Cal and Caulfield were friends for decades, so the sheriff obliged to some extent. Filed the missing person report, conducted some interviews, and checked the usual places. But there was no evidence of foul play, no body, no witnesses, and after a few months, it went quiet.”

A missing person who was already considered eccentric, a community that had already written its own explanation, and a sheriff who had followed procedure without the resources or the pressure to dig deeper. It wasn’t negligence, per se. It had been the reality of a department with limited manpower and a case that hadn’t presented as criminal.

“It must have been horrible for Gwenyth,” Brook said as thoughts of her own teenage years came back to haunt her. “Eighteen, alone on this property.”

“She was always a loner, even in high school.” Gentry rubbed the back of his neck as his gaze flickered to the staircase. “I was a few years ahead of her, so I didn’t know her personally, but you’d hear things. She didn’t have friends. Didn’t participate in any extracurricular activities. Came to school, sat in class, went home. After Nestor disappeared, she just stayed on the estate and never came back out. It wasn’t until years later that stories about her mental state started circulating. People in town would hear things from Porter or Cal, little comments about how she was having a rough stretch or how she wasn’t doing well.”

“And the town’s opinion?”

“Split down the middle.” Gentry picked up his mug again but didn’t drink from it. He held it between his hands the way people held things when they needed something to anchor them during a conversation that they’d rather not be having. “Half the folks agree with Dale that she needs more support than what she’s been getting. A proper facility, medical care, someone with the training to manage her condition…whatever that might be. The other half believes she’s earned the right to live however she wants. Unfortunately, the trust only has so much money left in the account.”

“Which Dale wants control of so he can sell off this property.”

Gentry nodded, and the expression that crossed his face carried a deep disappointment that he didn’t bother to conceal. Whatever professional neutrality he was obligated to maintain, his personal feelings about Dale Ellingham’s motives were written clearly enough for Brook to read without effort.

“Sheriff, did you ever hear of anyone having a grudge against Nestor? Any conflict, any dispute, anything that went beyond the usual small-town gossip?”

Gentry didn’t reply right away, and Brook sensed he was sorting through decades of memory, separating what he’d heard firsthand from what had been passed along through the layers of a community that talked more than it listened. The house creaked above them, a sound that had become so familiar over the past few days that Brook barely registered it anymore, though Gentry’s gaze shot briefly toward the ceiling before settling back on her.

“There was one thing," Gentry murmured as the recollection became clearer. "To be honest, I hadn't thought about it until you asked. When I was a young deputy, I remember Nancy Pruitt coming into the station one afternoon to speak with Sheriff Caulfield. She was upset. I wasn't in the room, but word got around the way it does in a small department. Apparently, Nestor had been calling their house late at night, pressuring Owen to provide prescription pain medication without a physician's authorization. Nestor had hurt his back. No, shoulder? I don’t right recall. Anyway, she claimed it had been going on for months, and Owen was losing sleep over it."

Brook straightened in her chair, grateful when the baby shifted off her bladder.

"Caulfield spoke with Owen directly, and Owen downplayed the whole thing. Said it was a misunderstanding, that Nestor promised to go see Dr. Baskins.” Sheriff Gentry waved a hand in the direction of town. “He used to be our town doctor back when there were town doctors. No formal report was ever filed, though. Caulfield handled it as a conversation, not a complaint, and as far as I know, the calls stopped after that."

"What kind of pain medication was Nestor requesting?"

“I never heard the specifics.”

Brook leaned sideways to pick up her coffee from the floor. At first, she was afraid that she wouldn’t be able to pull herself back up. She managed, though she doubted she came off as graceful. The foyer was darker now than when Gentry had arrived, and the shadows on the staircase had climbed past the landing toward the second floor.

Owen Pruitt hadn’t mentioned late-night phone calls or requests for pain meds when speaking with Sylvie. Neither had the man’s wife, for that matter.

“Is that the kind of thing you were looking for?” Gentry asked as he studied her.

“It is.” Brook continued to hold her mug, not wanting to risk not being able to retrieve it next time around. “I’ll send Sylvie to have another conversation with the Pruitts. But Sheriff? If there’s anything else, now would be the best time to share it with me.”

25

Sylvie Deering

July 2026

Saturday — 9:47 am

Sylvie pulled the SUV to the curb in front of the Pruitt residence and killed the engine. The same vinyl siding, the same two-car garage, the same flower bed where the marigolds were still thriving, though the petunias had given up entirely. The morning sun was already pressing down on the neighborhood, and the scent of fresh-cut grass drifted through the vents from wherever that distant lawn mower was running. The garden hose was still coiled near the garage in the same loose pile as before, and the flag beside the front door hung limp in the windless morning.

Theo sat in the passenger seat, his tablet resting on his knee. He’d been reviewing his notes from the Ward Seldon interview during the drive. The original plan had been for Brook to join her on this visit. That changed an hour ago when Dale Ellingham’s car appeared in the estate’s driveway. Apparently, he’d run into Sheriff Gentry at the diner in town, and the sheriff had shared enough about the investigation’s direction for Dale to come searching for Brook directly. She’d stayed behind to handle him, and Theo had met Sylvie at the SUV without needing to be asked.

“You lead,” Theo said as they walked up the concrete path. He sidestepped an uneven portion of the cement. “You’ve already built the rapport.”

Sylvie rang the doorbell.

The dog immediately started barking from somewhere inside. Nancy Pruitt’s voice soon followed, muffled through the door, directing the dog to hush. The door eventually opened, and Nancy stood behind the screen with her reading glasses pushed onto the top of her head. The delicious scent of something baking drifted out from behind her, cinnamon and butter, and Sylvie caught the faint hum of a radio playing from the kitchen. Nancy recognized Sylvie immediately, and her gaze shifted to Theo with a brief, assessing expression before she pushed the screen door open.

“Ms. Deering. Please, come in.”