Page 37 of Little Empty Promises

If she had, what had she seen and overheard?

I shifted my focus to the windowsill.

A pen rested on it.

I picked it up, noticing it was almost out of ink.

I closed the blinds and continued looking around the room.Nothing caught my eye.Nothing of significance, anyway.I moved through the house, opening drawers and cabinets, hoping to hit the jackpot, to find she’d left behind a series of journals, a note, or a clue, anything to explain why she’d been murdered.

The drawers and cabinets revealed no such thing.If shehadleft such items behind, there was no doubt the police would have found them already.From what I’d been told, their search of the house was a bust.They’d found nothing of interest.

I entered the sitting room, which looked a lot more like a dedicated library than a room one would sit and relax in.Except for a large rug and a curio cabinet, the room was devoid of furniture and had been outfitted with bookshelves.The shelves contained so many books, there wasn’t a single empty space among them.

Serious book lovers with tidy library rooms tended to arrange books in a variety of ways, including:

Alphabetically.

Stacked.

By genre.

By height.

By author.

By color.

Upon closer inspection, Cordelia had first organized the books by genre, then by author, from A to Z.She preferred mysteries overall, with the genre accounting for over half the books in her library.The remaining books were a combination of classics, nonfiction, memoirs of famous people in history, a little poetry, and a handful of books on knitting.

Given I didn’t have anywhere pressing to be, I decided to pull some of the books off the shelves, just to see if there was anything inside them.I made my way from left to right, pulling out a stack of books and flipping through them before placing them back where they belonged.I did so with precision, though I supposed it didn’t matter.

Marlon was dead.

Cordelia was dead.

And I didn’t get the impression Claudette shared the same passion for books that her sister had.

An hour passed, and I was beginning to regret my decision.

I’d found nothing of significance, and I’d just started on the mound of mysteries, which I estimated might take another two hours to flip through.

I considered stopping, but I was no quitter, so I pressed on.

I’d gone through all the authors with A and B surnames and had just started on the C’s when I noticed just how many of them there were.This was due in part to all the Agatha Christie books in her possession.Several of the titles had more than one copy, which confused me at first.Then I looked a bit closer, noticing the duplicate copies weren’t the same.They were different editions, published in different years.

A couple dozen books later, I opened a copy of Agatha Christie’sThe Pale Horse.To my surprise, a few pieces of folded notebook paper slipped out, fluttering to the floor.I leaned down, grabbing the pages.The first thing I noticed was that in the center of the top of each page, it said:

From the Desk of Cordelia Bennett

I then noticed the pages had been numbered.I stacked them together in order and began reading.

JUNE 4, 2024

Argument 7:20 p.m.

Glass decoration is thrown, it shatters against wall and breaks, she cries 7:25 p.m.

JUNE 18, 2024

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