Chapter 12: Trespass
"Miss! Excuse me, Miss! This is private property."
Brennan turned from her examination of the topography and made herself smile with as much innocence as she could muster at the man approaching her. He was a large man dressed in a blue uniform that spoke of private security. He was huffing a bit and seemed quite out of shape for someone who was charged with keeping the premises safe. Despite his words, his posture was not the least bit aggressive.
Brennan wasn't accustomed to charming people, like Booth was, but since she was alone and definitely trespassing, she'd have to give it a try if she wanted permission to continue her explorations.
"Oh, am I?" she said in her most innocent voice. "I'm so sorry. I didn't see any signs…" Except for the low fence with the large No Trespassing sign, she thought. "I was so taken with the beauty of this place." She made an expansive gesture towards the enormous house perched on the hill in front of them. Though not to Brennan's taste, the house and its surrounding gardens were very striking, so her pretense was at least credible.
When approached from the front, as she and Booth had done, one only saw a one story house with a few small windows facing the street. However, after Booth had knocked on the front door and gone in, she's scurried around to the back, gone down a steep slope and viewed the structure from the rear. The back of the house was a five story extravagance, made almost entirely of glass to give unparalleled views of the Bay. It flowed down the steep hillside and ended with a beautiful stone patio. At the end of the patio began an intricately landscaped garden with carved topiary and statues of roman gods and goddesses. Temperance was now in the middle of the garden, heading towards the place where it ended ten or so meters before the water's edge.
"Yes, that's why I make my rounds, Ma'am. Because once in a while people will come in here to look at the gardens, but the Sen….owner of the house, is a bit nervous about people wandering around his property. Security and all." The guard shifted uncomfortably. His manner seemed apologetic, as if he knew that a woman like the one before him was not really a threat, but he had to do his job anyway.
Brennan smiled in what she hoped was a friendly manner. "Oh, I totally understand. Someone told me about these gardens but didn't say anything about them not being public. Perhaps she didn't know."
"Well, she must have come by when someone else was on duty, because I patrol these grounds on a regular schedule. If I see anyone, I tell them like I told you and then escort them safely off the premises."
"Oh, you would have remembered if you saw my cousin Jane. She is very beautiful – a bit shorter than me, black hair, beautiful green eyes."
The man scratched his chin in a thoughtful manner. "Matter of fact, I think she was here three weeks or so ago. Looking around, same as you. She was pretty, but not as pretty as you, Miss."
Brennan bit her lip on the "I know" that was her standard response to such a compliment. She thought the man must be flirting with her and she needed to play along if she wanted more information about the visitor he was describing. The timing was right for it to have been Jane O'Malley.
"Three weeks!" she exclaimed with enthusiasm. "That's just when Jane was here! You must have been very nice to her because she told me so much about this place and never said a word about being kicked out."
The guard smiled. "Well, she asked if she could just walk around a bit and since I knew that no one was here that day, I didn't see the harm. She had this notebook and said she was making notes for a book about local wildlife – some kind of National Geographic thing, so I let her be. Just told her to be gone by dark and she must have left soon after because I didn't run into her the next time I went through." He stopped speaking but now had a confused look on his face.
"Is something troubling you?" Brennan hoped the curiosity wasn't very apparent in her tone of voice.
"Well…." He started hesitantly. "When I went back through an hour or so after I first saw your cousin, I didn't see any trace of her, as I said, which was good because it was getting dark and I knew that the owner and some friends were going to be arriving at the house that night. But then when I made a patrol later than night, I was approaching the house when I heard an odd sound coming from the garden. It could have been a bird but it also could have been a person. It was like a short shriek. Then I thought I heard movement in the bushes, somewhere over there. He pointed to the far end of the garden, very close to the shore. I called out asking if anyone was there, but didn't hear anything else. Frankly, it was the end of my shift and I was cold and tired, so I left it."
"That's perfectly understandable," Brennan replied automatically. Her mind was racing. Had this man actually heard the crime being committed without knowing it?
"Thing is, I checked the place that the noise had come from the next day. It had rained for a few hours overnight, so if there had been any tracks they were gone. However, the odd thing was that I found a notebook. Her notebook, it looked like. It was lying under one of those carved bushes. The cover was wet and some of the pages were ruined but the middle was in pretty good shape, so I saved it in case she came back looking for it."
"You did? How wonderful!" Brennan's hands actually itched to get her hands on the book. "If you would like to give it to me, I can get it to Jane. I would guess that it fell out of her bag and she didn't realize it until she'd already left."
"You don't mind sending it to her?" At Brennan's nod he continued, "I'll just run up to the house and go get it."
"Can I walk around just a bit more while you go? I promise I won't go anywhere near the house. In fact, if you could point me in the direction of where you found the book, I'll go there. My cousin has a way of finding the best vistas, so I am guessing she probably stopped for a bit to make notes and when she finished, she didn't put the book away, or dropped it or something." She flashed what she hoped was a charming smile.
"You can stay until I come back, just keep to the bushes so you aren't seen from the house. I don't want to lose my job. I found the book, down there." He pointed to a far section of the garden. A good place from which to watch the house without being seen.
Once the guard set off towards the house, Brennan made her way to examine the area the man had indicated. By the time he returned a few minutes later, she had removed the gloves from her hands and pocketed a few vials with soil samples.
When he handed her the notebook, Brennan took the offering in as casual a manner as she could muster. Given its exposure to the elements and the handling by the guard, not to mention the awkwardness of holding the book by its corner as it if were toxic, Brennan decided she'd just have to take it in her bare hands. She saw immediately that water had virtually destroyed the cover and many of the pages. She hoped Angela would be able to recover some information.
Unable to restrain herself, she opened the book and glanced inside. Apparently Jane O'Malley used some sort of shorthand. Brennan had wondered why the guard still believed Jane's cover story that she was writing about nature. If he couldn't decipher what she'd written though, he'd have no reason to believe otherwise.
She looked up at the guard, realizing that he seemed to tower over her because the area in which they stood was almost at the bottom of the hill but still was at a sharp incline. He stood maybe a meter from her and yet his feet were planted on ground a foot or so above where she stood. More information to give Angela.
"Well, thank you so much for your help. I should leave now before you get in trouble."
"Would you like to get a drink later? I'm off duty at eleven."
"That is so nice. I would love to, but I'm actually here with my boyfriend. Long romantic weekend. He dropped me off to see this place that Jane had spoken so highly of, but he's probably back waiting for me at the top of the hill." She hoped her face looked regretful.
With that, she waved and made her way back up the hill to meet Booth and tell him all that her investigation had revealed.