OOOO

See part 1 for disclaimer...

Part 10

Harm and Mac arrived at the mansion on Brookfield Drive, later that morning. Mac had told Harm nothing of the dream she'd had the night before. He had commented in the car that she was quiet, but seemed to notice nothing else. They were following behind a patrol car, which was being driven by the sheriff, who had obtained the search warrant from a county judge, that morning. It allowed them to search through the whole of the Drake household, in the absence of Colonel Drake's carer, Timothy, and remove from the premises any items that they thought to be of importance to their investigation. It wasn't warmly welcomed by the skinny man, but he made no effort to obstruct their search.

"Where would you like to start?" he questioned, with a slight huff.

Harm paused to think, but Mac immediately spoke up, "The colonel's office, please."

"The colonel didn't have an office at home," Timothy told them.

"But didn't he do work at home, after he could no longer make the trip onto base?" Mac asked.

"He hasn't lately, not in a long while," Timothy maintained, "He was much too ill."

"Where did he do work when he was able to?" Mac asked.

Timothy seemed to pause and regard Mac, curiously, then spoke up, "Go left at the top of the stairs. Along the hallway, second-to-last door, on the right."

Harm waited until they were on their way up the stairs, before he shot Mac a questioning look. She just shot one back at him, telling him to trust her. Harm let it go at that. They made their way to the left, along the hall and into the room on the right, Mac feeling more confident of the layout than Harm. She just knew that everything was the same as in her dream, although she technically had no way of knowing this for sure, having not physically been into the room before. Much was as it had been in her dream, but it was a bit emptier. Maybe she had seen it as it had been, as Cassandra remembered it? Once inside the doorway, Harm stopped her with a hand on her arm.

"What's going on, Mac?" he didn't know exactly what, but something peculiar was going on, here.

Before she was able to tell him anything, they were interrupted by Timothy, who apologised, "I'm sorry, I just need to get my driving gloves…"

He made his way to the bureau across the room, opened the drawer second from the top and took out a pair of gloves. After shutting the drawer, he exited the room, Mac watching him as he went.

"What is it, Mac?" Harm brought her to her senses again.

Without saying anything, she quickly hurried over to the bureau and opened the drawer that Timothy had just closed.

"There's nothing there!" she exclaimed softly to Harm, as if it should make all the sense in the world.

"What do you mean?" he asked her, confused, "What's supposed to be in there?"

Mac could say nothing, not for sure, but she was sure that the drawer had once been occupied by Colonel Drake's will.

"Huh," Mac noted to herself, bemused, completely ignoring the mystified Harm, "Now what?"

She turned around, to look at the rest of the room, but caught sight of Cassandra's room, through the door, which had been left open.

"C'mon," she bid Harm and he followed along in her wake.

Once inside Cassandra's room, Mac went straight to the bookcase, while Harm stood and looked around the room, taking in all of the objects that Mac already knew were there. Sure enough, the cross-stitched sampler was framed on the wall.

"Cassandra Lorraine Drake. Born 2:07pm, Saturday 15th May, 1989. Weighing 6lbs 120z."

Watching her methodical search, he was struck by some thing and commented, "You been in here before, Mac?"

He knew that she had not been, for she had stayed by his side throughout all of their trips here and he had been in none of the rooms along this corridor.

Mac only looked back at him and smiled, knowingly. Harm thought about it for another minute, as Mac looked through all of the books on the bookshelf, then picked one out, lifting it out, carefully. She turned to him, asking, "Do you have a plastic bag on you? We'll want to get this dusted for prints."

"Mac!" Harm was losing his patience.

"What?" Mac asked, her face all innocence, "Harm?"

Harm's mouth fell open as he hit upon the answer to his earlier question.

"Your dreams!" he exclaimed.

"Huh?" Mac asked, again mock-innocence.

"This was all in your dreams, wasn't it?" Harm asked, not knowing how he had jumped to the conclusion, just somehow knowing that it was the right one, "The dreams you had a few nights ago..."

Mac gave up the pretence and revealed, quietly, "No, not the ones a few nights ago. This one was last night."

"Was Cassandra in this one, too?" Harm asked.

Mac nodded and told him, "She let me in. I think she wanted to show me something."

"That bureau drawer?" Harm asked, "What was in it in your dream?"

"Rolled up paper," Mac told him, "A legal document, I think."

"Colonel Drake's legal will, I'm betting," Harm surmised.

Mac was a bit surprised by Harm's acceptance of all she had to tell him. After all, it had been a dream, a dream where everything was set out in more or less the same position as it was now, but still, none-the-less a dream.

"What?" Harm asked her, as he caught her staring at him, "Yeah, I believe you…You've given me no reason to think that otherwise…"

Mac just gave him a soft, grateful smile, which he returned with one of his own.

"So, what else did Cassie show you?" he asked, breaking the tense moment.

"This," Mac shook the plastic bag that now contained the book that Cassandra had showed her, "And something else…"

Harm followed Mac as she left the room, turned right and made her way back along the hallway.

Mac gently opened the door to what had been Colonel Drake's bedroom, peering inside first, before walking in. The bed that the colonel had previously occupied was now, of course, empty. Other than that, everything else was still in place. The large screen television, a table at the foot of the bed, all of the now-powerless equipment that had kept the colonel's deteriorating body alive.

"What?" Harm asked, "What did she show you, in here?"

"I can't remember," Mac told him, "My alarm clock woke me up before I could see anything…"

They stood there, a moment longer, before they left to look in the rest of the numerous rooms of the house.

OOOO

By early evening, they had seized many items of interest, including the blue hard-back book from Cassandra's bookshelf and several financial documents from Colonel Drake's filing cabinet.

OOOO

It turned out that Colonel Drake was an extremely wealthy man, all of it inherited, obviously not as a result of his military career! It seemed that he was the first in the family who had pursued a military career, most of his family concentrating on their money.

"Well, it was many years ago," Mac had later reasoned, "and they were originally from the north and claimed alliance to the union and the British ancestors from whom they were descended."

"Strange," Harm commented, in reply, "Wonder what would cause one generation to head in such a different direction?"

Mac just shrugged.

"Is our book still not back from forensic?" she asked.

They had submitted it straight after their search had been concluded and that had been two days ago.

"No," Harm told her, "They're backed up at the moment. They said perhaps tomorrow morning or afternoon, at the latest."

"Okay," Mac nodded, "Well, in the meantime, we're going to have to go back and ask General Basingstoke what he remembers of the colonel's will."

"After lunch," Harm stipulated. He had become a little alarmed at how distracted Mac had become, often forgetting that it had been a while since they had eaten, which had never happened before, Mac's life was usually strictly ruled by feeding rituals.

Mac only looked at him, checked her eternal clock then nodded.

"Okay," she agreed, "after lunch."

After a quick trip to a deli they returned to the base and questioned General Basingstoke.

"Yes," he told them, "I meant to contact you yesterday, but too much came up. I found the colonel's will tucked away amongst some other documents in my filing cabinet. I was sure that it wasn't there, but I guess that it was. I guess it's been so long since I've had cause to look in there, it holds my personal files."

As he told them this, he was rooting through the drawers of his desk. Finally, he pulled out a thin bundle of documents and sorted through them, pulling out the one he sought.

"This is it," he told them, "The colonel's last will and testament…"

"And what exactly does it outline?" Harm asked.

The Admiral read through it for a second, then summarised the print;

"I leave the contents and entirety of my estate to Timothy James Dowler, to be kept in trust until my daughter, Cassandra Lorraine Drake, reaches eighteen years of age…"

"And that means…" Harm trailed off.

They all knew what that meant. Because Cassandra had not reached the age of eighteen, the carer, Timothy now technically owned the colonel's estate. And that, in Harm and Mac's book, added Timothy back onto the list of suspects.

OOOO

When they questioned Timothy, the next day, he seemed to know nothing of this revelation.

"Do you know, Sir," Harm asked him, "what would happen to the colonel's estate, in the event of his death?"

"Yes," Timothy nodded, "the colonel told me many times. It would be inherited by the Miss Cassie."

"And in the event of Cassandra's death?" Mac asked.

Timothy just looked at them.

"The colonel couldn't have expected that," he maintained, "He never made any provision for that eventuality…I supposed, that everything will go to another family member."

"The colonel has no other living family," Harm told him.

"But Mrs. Drake did have a sister," Timothy revealed, "I believe she lives up north somewhere."

Their investigation had never revealed this fact.

After further chasing about, they returned to Timothy and told him, "Mrs. Drake's sister is deceased. She died of a kidney condition, mere months ago."

Timothy looked genuinely surprised to hear this.

Once they had left the Drake household, Harm commented, "He really did seem surprised to hear that. Do you think he knows that he's the one who is next in line for the inheritance of the colonel's estate?"

Mac merely shrugged. But she had a nagging suspicion that Timothy did. But she couldn't explain why she felt this.

OOOO