Will I open the door and see the shadow from my nightmares? Going through my things?
My eyes widen, realization hitting that the sick fuck could be going through my underwear drawer. The thought sends a tsunami of anger washing over me, and before I can consider the ramifications, I barrel through the door.
No one is inside.
I charge through the room, checking every corner before storming out onto the balcony. No one.
Chest heaving, I whip around and scope out the room, trying to figure out where an intruder could hide. My eyes pause on the closet.
I aim for it, sliding the door open so forcefully, it nearly comes off the track. My arm lashes through the clothing, searching for someone that isn't here.
But I know I heard something.
My breath catches when I turn, and my eyes sweep across my bed, forcing me to backtrack. Right under my bed is Gigi’s diary, lying on the floor and flipped open.
That must’ve been what the thump was, but how the fuck did it fall? My blood freezes when I look on my nightstand and see the diary I’ve been reading still there.
I had put Gigi’s other two diaries in my nightstand for safekeeping until I got to them. So how did one of them end up on the floor?
With another suspicious sweep of the room, I walk over to the book and pick it up, leaving it open. Skimming my eyes across the page, I pause when I take in the words.
Judging by the dates, it’s the last book she wrote in before she died. The three books span across two years, Gigi having died on May 20th, 1946.
The book was open on an entry two days before Gigi’s murder, May 18th. She’s expressing fear, but she doesn’t say of who. Clearly, she’s terrified of something. My heart thumps harder as I ingest her rushed words.
She talks about someone being after her. Scaring her. Who, though? Forgetting about everything else around me, I sit on the edge of the bed and flip to the beginning.
With each passing entry, her words become clipped and fearful. Before I know it, I’m nearly ripping through the pages, trying to find any inkling of who her murderer is.
But on the very last page, her last words are: he came for me. No lipstick kiss on the page. Just those four daunting words. I turn the page, looking to see if there’s more. Desperate for it, actually.
There are no more entries, but I do notice something strange.
A jagged piece of paper sticks out from the spine. I trace my fingers over it. A page has been ripped out of the diary.
Did she write down something important and decide it wasn’t worth the risk of anyone knowing? All three of these books are risqué, full of cheating and sex. Above all, full of love for a man that stalked her.
I look up, staring ahead but seeing nothing.
When Mom left, she left with the hopes that I’d listen to her advice and move out of Parsons Manor. But when she walked out of that door, the sickening smell of her Chanel perfume lingering in my nostrils, I decided I didn’t want to move.
Did Nana have a weird attachment to the manor? Possibly. But if this house meant so much to her, it doesn’t feel right to give it away. Even if that means I have an unhealthy attachment, too.
And now, that decision is only solidifying. There’s no way this book could’ve ended up on the floor. Yet it did. And I don’t know if it was Nana’s doing, or Gigi’s, but someone wanted me to read these entries.
Do they want me to find the person who killed Gigi? God, I can’t imagine how difficult it would’ve been to solve a murder in the 40s with such underwhelming technology. Is her murderer even still alive?
Maybe it doesn’t matter if he is or not. Maybe Gigi wants justice for her murder, and for the man that ended her life too soon to be exposed—dead or alive.
I exhale a shaky breath, my fingers tracing the four daunting words.
He came for me.
“Can you please explain to me why you’re making me hack into the PD’s database to look at crime photos of your murdered grandmother?” Daya asks from beside me, her fingers hovering over her mouse.
I’m tempted to reach over and push her finger down for her so she’ll finally click the damn button. Once she does, it’ll pull up Gigi’s records.
I sigh. “I told you already. She was murdered. And I think I know who did it, I just… well, I don’t know anything about him but his first name, and the fact that he stalked her.”
Daya eyes me, but eventually relents. She clicks the mouse—finally—and pulls up Gigi’s crime scene photos.
They’re pretty disturbing. Gigi had been found in her bed, with her throat slit and a cigarette burn on her wrist. They never found the killer due to insufficient evidence.
A lot of blame pointed towards the officers that responded to the call, citing that they trampled all over the crime scene. Evidence was lost or contaminated by the police force, and fingers were pointed, but ultimately, no one was held accountable for it.
Daya clicks through the photos, each one more disturbing than the last. Close up pictures of the wound on her neck. The burn on her wrist. Gigi’s face, frozen in fear as her dead eyes stare back at the camera. And her signature lipstick smeared across her cheek.
I swallow, the sight a stark contrast to the picture that concealed her safe. Her wide, smiling face so full of life and fire. And then her dead, cold body frozen in fear.
Whoever had killed her had scared her pretty bad. A niggling feeling tugs at the back of my head. Based on Gigi’s entries, her stalker didn’t scare her. In fact, it sounds like he did the exact opposite.
I shake the thought from my head. He was obsessed with her, and there were several entries nearing her death that indicated they weren't getting along due to his jealousy over her marriage.
His obsession must’ve been of the deadly variety.
Daya then clicks over to the police reports. Not just the ones released to the public, but documents from the investigation that were confidential.
Technically, the investigation is still open. It’s just gone cold.
We took our time reading through the documents, but in the end, the only thing we learned was the time of death, and the fact that Gigi fought and fought hard.
My great-grandfather, John, was immediately ruled out due to having several eyewitness reports seeing him at the grocery store during the time of the murder.
I bite my lip, the thought eliciting guilt, yet I can’t help but think it.
What if he was still an accomplice?
I shake the thought from my head. No. There’s no way. My great-grandfather loved Gigi, despite the fact that their marriage was falling apart at the seams.
It had to be her stalker.
It’s the obvious explanation. The stalker gained Gigi’s trust—somehow—made her feel comfortable enough that she relaxed around him. And then he killed her.
“There has to be significance to that ripped-out page,” I murmur, growing frustrated from the lack of evidence. I could never be a detective and do this shit every day.