Page 12 of Little Empty Promises

“You’re not wearing them right now, though.”

“I don’t need to wear them all the time.My distance vision is excellent.It’s the things that are close that give me trouble.Can’t read the back of a soup can to save my life.”

I knew just how she felt.

Over the last few years, my near vision had begun to decline.

“Would you mind telling me your age?”I asked.

“That seems like an odd question.Why do you want to know?”

“I’m just curious.”

Whitlock turned, eyeing me like he was trying to figure out why I’d asked, but he remained quiet.

“I’ll be sixty-nine next month,” she said.“Can I go now?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Again, I’m so sorry about the mess I made.”

Whitlock shrugged.“Don’t worry about it.My vehicle is due for a cleaning, and now I have a reason not to keep putting it off.”

Samantha nodded and opened the door, blowing her nose into a tissue as she waved to us and headed to her car.

As she drove away, Whitlock turned to me.“Penny for your thoughts?”

“Based on the note you found and what was written on it, I’d first suspected Cordelia’s death may have been premeditated, that she was targeted somehow.Let’s say I’m right, and the note was left by the killer.It gives a description of a person who’s short, with curly hair, in their 70s, with glasses.At first glance, it’s easy to assume it’s a description of Cordelia because she’s dead.But she wasn’t supposed to be here tonight, closing the library.Samantha had been scheduled to close.When we were talking to her just now, it occurred to me that she also fits the description written on the sticky note.”I shrugged.“I don’t know.It’s like you say—maybe the note means something and maybe it doesn’t.”

“I want to believe it does.”

I did too.

I also believed it was possible someone had been hired to commit the murder.

The question was—why?

6

It had been two weeks since Cordelia’s death, and Foley and Whitlock hadn’t gotten much further in their investigation.Silas had finished his postmortem examination and confirmed the gun found next to Cordelia’s body contained bullets, but they were much smaller than the one recovered from her body.She had been shot with a different gun, a bigger gun with bigger bullets.And based on the bullet’s trajectory, it was impossible for her death to have been a suicide.

Many questions remained, pressing against the police investigation like a weighted blanket:

Who wanted to kill Cordelia, and why?

Was Cordelia the intended target?

Or was the bullet intended for someone else, a case of mistaken identity?

Was this the work of a hit man, a hired killer?

The who, what, and why of it all had flooded my thoughts in the days following her death.In speaking with my mother about Cordelia in recent days, I’d learned Cordelia was a simple woman who led a quiet life, both before and after her husband’s death.She wasn’t the type of person to make enemies.She had always been thought of as somewhat of a reclusive introvert by her neighbors.After Marlon’s death, she was even more so.

As for her murder, Foley wanted to lean into the theory that she’d been at the wrong place at the wrong time, and that she may not have been the intended target.They’d spoken to Samantha a couple more times, but their theory couldn’t be proven.I was still of the notion that the murder had been premeditated—whether Cordelia was the target, Samantha, or someone else entirely.I just couldn’t come up with a logical reason as to why just yet.Not that Iwastrying to come up with one.It wasn’t my investigation, so for now, I sat back, checking in with Foley and Whitlock here and there to see where they were at with everything.

As I sat at my desk on a cool weekday morning, pondering on stepping out and grabbing a snack and a hot drink, the office door opened.I looked over, eyeing the woman who’d just walked in.She had short, black hair, and her lips were painted with bright-red lipstick.I guessed she was in her upper seventies, and she was dressed like she’d just stepped out of an Old Hollywood movie—wearing a fitted black dress, and not one, but two strands of pearls around her neck.

She glanced at me and said, “Hello, I’d like to speak with whoever’s in charge here.”

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