Chapter Thirteen

Natalie woke up early the next morning with the hope that she could sneak out of the hotel and back to Llanfair without anyone seeing her. But that hope was dashed as she ran right into John as he was coming out of his room.

"Natalie," he said surprised. "I thought we agreed to meet at the station…"

"We did."

"Then…" Suddenly realizing that she was wearing the same clothes from the day before, John's brow furrowed in concern. "Did you spend the night here?"

Sighing she looked down at the floor. "Yeah."

John was just about to ask if everything was okay when Roxy came down the hallway, looking concerned. Actually ignoring John and not bothering to make any comment, Roxy went straight to Natalie. "Marcie just told me you spent the night here, is everything okay baby?"

Forcing a smile, Natalie nodded. "Yeah, I had just had a few beers and didn't want to risk driving home."

Though he knew Natalie had hardly touched the one beer she'd ordered, John kept silent. Roxy remained silent too for a bit as if trying to decide if she believed her, but finally she smiled. "Well as long as you know you can always stay here… either back in Johnny Mac's room, or any other one."

Rolling her eyes, Natalie smiled and handed her back the room key. "All right Roxy. Listen are you busy?" Natalie asked, remembering that her and John had planned to interview her today.

Roxy shook her head. "Why? Did you want me to do your nails?" Roxy picked up Natalie's hand and examined it. "Cause you could really use a manicure."

Understand what Natalie was thinking, John broke in. "Actually Roxy, we were hoping to ask you a few questions."

Dropping Natalie's hand like a hot potato, Roxy looked nervously between them. "From my experience it's never a good thing when a cop says that to you… Is this about the incident at the docks? Because I really don't know how I ended up without my shirt…."

Though mentally cringing, John shook his head. "It's nothing about you, we just need to ask you a few questions about Walter."

At the mention of her husband's name, Roxy's eyes narrowed. "What the hell do you want to know about that bastard? He's been dead for over twenty years."

Seeing this wasn't going to be easy, John opened up the door to his room and motioned for her to enter. Sensing Roxy's hesitation, Natalie smiled at her. "Please Roxy?"

Sighing, Roxy followed them into the room and looked around. "Been awhile since I've been in here… you know Johnny you could really use a woman's touch around here, my Natty here has great style and I'm sure she wouldn't…"

"So anyway Roxy," Natalie started just wanted to get this over, "as you know I have been helping John with his father's case."

Roxy solemnly nodded. "I remember, you almost got yourself raped by that George guy to get him information… you know if that isn't love I don't know what is…."

John cut her off. "Well when we looked at some of our leads your husbands name came up."

"You mean the lying, abusive, bastard I was married too."

John sighed. "Yeah him. Well we were just wondering if there was anything you could tell us? Anything illegal that he was involved in, any shady business partners he worked with? You know, stuff like that."

Suddenly Roxy's whole demeanor changed and it was one of those rare moments where she became serious. "I don't know anything about what Walter was involved with. When he wasn't slapping me around, I was off someplace getting drunk and avoiding him. I can't help you."

Standing up, Roxy moved toward the door but stopped. "Down in the basement storage there are a whole bunch of old boxes of Walter's things. Maybe there is something in there that can help you." Quickly turning away, Roxy left the room.

Once the door was firmly shut behind her John glanced over at Natalie. "She really hated him didn't she?"

"Yeah." Standing up, Natalie also moved toward the door. "We should head down to the basement and go through those boxes." She said as she started to leave, but stopped when John called out to her.

"Natalie, wait."

"Yeah?"

"Are things that bad at Llanfair?"

Natalie's shoulders sagged and she shut the door again. "It's not that things are bad there, there's just so much I can take. For the past five months it's been a madhouse there - Tess and Nikki suddenly popping out and taking off, Nash and Antonio arguing and fighting any chance they get, Dorian coming over and hanging off my father, sudden appearances by Dr. Crosby and Dr. Jamison ready to analyze the crazy family. There's just nowhere to go to escape it you know? And any day now Jess or Tess is going to have the baby, so in addition to that there will be 4am feedings and a baby crying all night."

"So why don't you move out?"

"There's no where else for me to go. Rex doesn't have the room, Kelly is still living in the carriage house, Dad, Kevin, Nash and Duke are all staying at Asa's and we just sold the cottage to your brother and Marcie. And until the money from the sale goes through I can't start looking for a new place."

"Why don't you move in here… I mean to the hotel?" John quickly corrected himself.

Natalie shrugged. "I don't know, with everything that's happened, I guess I wasn't sure if I'd be overstepping, you know suddenly moving into your building."

John rolled his eyes. "Natalie, that's ridiculous. Roxy has the room here, and it sounds like you really need to get out of Llanfair."

"I'll think about it. Now come on lets go look through those boxes." Changing the subject, Natalie quickly turned and left the room giving John no chance but to follow her.

She led the way to the basement of the building and toward the storage area where she knew Roxy kept her stuff, but both of them suddenly stopped in horror, amazed at what a disaster the area was.

"This is going to take us hours," Natalie moaned, now dreading the task that awaited them. "Especially since we aren't even sure what we're looking for."

Rolling up his sleeves, John walked over to the mess and started to shuffle through the closest box. "How about you take that side and I'll start here?"

"Okay."

For the next few hours they went through a bunch of the boxes before them, looking for anything that could help them. They had been at it nonstop, going through clothes, books, old dishes, just a whole bunch of junk when Natalie heard John snot with laughter.

Curious, Natalie looked up from the box she was searching through. "What's so funny?"

Smiling, John turned toward her and began to read. "Natalie has a very short temper and is often defiant during class time. She also has a problem with authority and as a result has missed a lot of class time as she spends a lot of time at the office…. Why does this not surprise me?"

"Was that written by Mrs. White?"

John looked over the old report card he was holding and shook his head. "No, a Ms. Lewis."

Natalie shrugged. "Yeah well, they both hated me."

Still smiling John put down the paper and continued looking through the book. A few minutes went by, and then suddenly he was laughing again.

Annoyed, she looked back up at him. "What now?"

Once again he began to read. "Dear Mrs. Balsom, I wanted to make you aware of a situation we had today with your daughter Natalie. During the lunch recess, Natalie got into a fight with fellow student Daniel Mathews. They were both sent to the office and I told them that they had to write a letter of apology to one another before I would allow them back in to class. Natalie however refused to do so, and used some unacceptable language to convey her displeasure. As a result of this we will be keeping her in at all recesses for the next month. Sincerely, Mr. Johnson, Principal." Remembering the scene in Dr. Crosby's office where Natalie wrote the note telling him where he could go, John could easily imagine a younger Natalie in the same situation.

Natalie rolled her eyes. "I thought we were looking for stuff on Walter, not taking a trip down memory lane."

John continued to go through the box, shaking his head as he found a few letters of suspension from her high school. Finally, a small strip of photographs caught his eye. Pulling them out he realized they were from one of those photo booth things that could usually be found in malls. The pictures were of a younger Natalie, probably sixteen or seventeen with some guy. In the first three the pictures she was smiling happily, and in the forth kissing him.

"Who's this?" John asked with a small hint of jealously creeping into his voice.

Natalie looked over at what he was holding, and made a face. "Seth Anderson. You can just rip those up." Seeing the confused look on John's face, she sighed and continued. "He was my boyfriend in high school… also part of the reason I always seemed to end up in detention. When I found out about being a Buchanan, I was angry and wanted revenge. Seth came to Llanview with me to help."

"What happened?"

Natalie laughed bitterly. "He fell for Jessica."

"He actually left you for her? The guy's not only blind, but also an idiot."

Natalie smiled at the compliment but didn't say anything. John was just about to ask her more about his guy when Natalie suddenly spoke, "I've got something!"

Dropping the stuff he had been going through, John went over to her. "What is it?"

Natalie held up some paper. "A few months before his death Water purchased a safety deposit box at this bank. This is the transaction record. But John, look at the date he took it out…"

Looking over her shoulder, John read it aloud. "That's the day after my father's death… there's no way that's a coincidence."

"We have to go access to that box, there could be something there."

John nodded. "Yeah, but how are we going to do that? We don't have a key and I don't think I have enough to persuade a judge for a warrant…."

Natalie's shoulder sagged as she realized he was right. But, then her eyes lit up and she smiled. "I've got an idea…."