Page 60 of Crosshairs

29

He had problems. Sonny stood at his window, fingering the key to the Chamberlain house that he’d copied from the one hanging in the kitchen.

Cora had said she’d found diaries, and he’d only found one last night. Earlier in the day he’d searched her house to no avail. If there were more, and he believed there were, they had to be in the safe he’d found in her bedroom. Problem was, he had no idea how to get it open. He could bring in someone to crack the safe, but that meant involving another person. Instead he’d spent the afternoon researching how to break into a safe like the one in the Chamberlain house.

Sonny took a list he’d compiled from his wallet. He’d read most people used a date they could easily remember for a safe combination. He figured Miss Cora had used a relative’s birthdate. At least he hoped she had. Otherwise he’d spent the afternoon looking through public records for nothing.

But now he had four birthdates—hers, her sister’s, the nephew’s, and Ainsley Beaumont’s. He doubted she’d used her great-niece’s—the safe had been installed way before she’d been born—but he’d tracked it down all the same.

He pinched the bridge of his nose. What if he didn’t get the third diary? He had to have it. If Beaumont got her hands on it first, Sonny could kiss the fifty grand goodbye.

30

It was almost midnight when Linc went out to the Tahoe and grabbed the overnight bag and uniform that he’d picked up from his apartment. Back inside, he checked the locks before he climbed the stairs and stowed his things in a guest room. Linc would’ve preferred being on the same floor, but there were only two downstairs bedrooms, Cora’s and the one Ainsley was in.

He was too restless for sleep and remembered seeing a copy ofMoby-Dickin the library. It had put him to sleep in school, maybe it’d do the same thing tonight—if he could remember where Cora shelved the book.

While he searched, he admired the craftsmanship of the ten-foot ceilings and the beautiful hand-carved crown molding—mostly to keep him from questioning his presence in this case.

Without a gun, his options for protecting Ainsley were limited. He’d hoped talking to her about what happened with Blake would release him from the paralysis that kept him from using a gun, but it hadn’t. Fear still held him in its power. Linc knew without a doubt that if he drove to his apartment right now, he wouldn’t be able to get his gun off the shelf in the closet and strap it to his waist. He doubted he’d even be able to take the gun out of the closet.

He scraped his hand against his jaw. Today had proven his presence couldn’t deter an attack. If anything, he was a liabilityto this case. All he had to offer was his expertise. And what good had that been?

Linc turned as Ainsley entered the room. “I thought you would be asleep by now,” he said.

“I could say the same to you.” She cinched the long robe she wore over striped pajamas. “I heard you come down and thought something might be wrong.”

“No, just couldn’t face trying to sleep just yet. I remembered Cora had some of the classics and came down to find something boring. Then I couldn’t help admiring the room.”

She ran a hand over the smooth finish. “Gran says the lumber came from cherry trees on the property.”

“Too bad all that land wasn’t kept with the house,” Linc said.

“I think the family fell on hard times and barely kept the house after Robert Chamberlain was killed.” She sank into one of the wingback chairs in front of the fireplace and stared at the blackened hearth. “Gran left me here with Cora when she had errands to run and didn’t want me tagging along. I remember sitting in the library on cold winter days watching the flames and Cora sitting at her desk telling me stories about our family.”

Linc sat in the other wingback chair. When they’d dated years ago, Ainsley had told him how Rose had taken her in when her mother died and her dad opted to live in Jackson most of the time.

She turned to him. “Cora was in her seventies when she decided to learn how to use a computer. We used them at school, so I was her ‘expert.’” She laughed softly. “I couldn’t understand why she wanted to learn it so badly since I thought she’d die any day. Twenty-some odd years later, she’s still going strong. Or was until she fell.”

“When we were kids, someone Cora’s age seemed ancient,” he said, laughing with Ainsley.

“Not so much anymore.”

“Not when the person is as active as Cora or your grandmother.”

Ainsley leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes. “I have to get some sleep, but first, tell me about Cora’s book. She’d talked about writing one for years, and I didn’t realize she’d started it until I came home this time.”

Linc hesitated. He didn’t think Cora would mind if he shared the story she was writing and leaned forward. “Cora has completed the Chamberlain family history through the Civil War. Her great-grandfather couldn’t bear the thought of fighting against his country and joined the Union forces. We found old newspaper articles that show Robert Chamberlain was instrumental in uniting the town after the war and was a huge proponent of Reconstruction. He’d only just begun implementing his plans when he was killed by the mob.”

“Were there articles about his murder?”

“Haven’t found any yet. That’s one reason Cora wanted to find more of the diaries, hoping Charlotte’s writings would verify the stories that had been handed down through the family.”

Her eyes widened. “I remember one of them. Charlotte’s husband forbade her from helping former slaves to learn to read and write.”

He nodded. “That’s what Cora wants to verify. The story she’d always heard was that Zachary went into a rage when he discovered his wife helping with the freedman’s school here in Natchez.

“The night Zachary died, for some reason, Charlotte sent for her brother, Robert. From that point on, it gets muddled since there was little record of what happened. Evidently, after the sheriff arrived and found Zachary dead of a gunshot wound to the chest with Robert holding the gun, he took him into custody to stand trial. It was later that night that Zachary Elliott’s drunken friends broke into the jail and killed Robert.”

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