Page 52 of Sadie's Guarded Harbor

“One more room to go.” Sadie pivoted toward the bedroom. The door was ajar, and she bumped it open with the toe of her boot.

The unmade bed was pushed against the wall. A television sat on a corner stand, a dresser took up most of the far wall, and a desk finished off the space. He moved in behind her. She checked under the bed while he opened the closet. Clothes jammed together on one side of the closet, a wooden filing cabinet on the other side. “No one’s here.”

“Didn’t the server mention something about another entrance? One accessible from outside?”

“It’s the door at the end of the hallway.” He pivoted out of the bedroom. Wind carried in from a small slit around the edge of the door. “It’s not closed all the way.” He flung it open and stepped out onto the fire escape. He scanned the area below. Footprints marred the thick snow—one set coming and one set going. “We need deputies canvassing the area. Those prints could be from Curtis, but if they’re someone else’s, we have to know if anyone saw who they belong to.”

He tipped his head toward the interior of the apartment. “The place needs searched. I’d classify this as a suspicious death.”

“Agreed.”

Wanting to give himself a few more minutes before viewing Curtis’s dead body again, he moved back into the bedroom and stopped in front of the filing cabinet in the closest. “Do you want to do the honors, or shall I?”

She wrinkled her nose. “I’ve had enough of filing cabinets to last a lifetime. You go for it. I’ll make the call to get deputies to search the area while I look through the rest of the room.”

He gripped her bicep, giving what he hoped was a reassuring squeeze. “You doing all right?”

Sadie sighed. “Fine. Let’s just get this over with.” She grabbed her phone and rattled off the information to the dispatcher, then silence fell upon them.

He turned back toward the storage and pulled open the top drawer. “He’s got a ton of papers stuffed in here. Nothing’s in an actual file. It’s just jammed inside.”

“Business or personal?” Sadie asked from the other side of the bed. “His office was a disaster downstairs. Maybe he stores some of the paperwork from the bar up here.”

He grabbed a fistful of loose papers and flipped through. Some receipts, some notes on food distribution. A computer printout caught his attention. Names lined the side of the page with notes on each. “Holy shit.”

“What is it?” Sadie crossed the room to stand behind him.

“He’s got names of people from the town written down with snippets of information on each of them.”

Her body pressed against his back as she tried to catch a glimpse of what was in his hands. “What kind of information?”

“Who they’ve dated, where they work, people they have beef with.” He flipped over to the next page. “Same here.”

“You said the bar was a good place to gather gossip. Looks like you weren’t the only one who thought so.”

Disgust swirled in his gut. “I wanted to learn about the citizens of the town so I could help. Not keep tabs on them touse for whatever the hell this is.” He shook the paper, anger pounding through his veins.

Sadie gripped his shoulder. “What if he used it for blackmail?”

He turned, facing her. “What do you mean?”

“Think about it. He was getting money from Shawn on a monthly basis. What if Shawn didn’t want to be a part of the bar, like Curtis claimed. What if Curtis had dirt on Shawn and used it for extortion?”

“Have to be one hell of a secret to get that kind of cash from Shawn.”

Sadie shrugged. “If the secret was big enough to kill over, it would be big enough to cash in on. Maybe Shawn didn’t want to pay anymore. Curtis wouldn’t have liked that.”

Thoughts pounded against his skull. What Sadie laid out made sense, but it didn’t feel right.

A knock sounded from the front of the apartment. “Wells. Pennel. You here?”

“Is that the sheriff? What’s he doing here?” Sadie asked, confusion etched on her brow.

“I don’t know anything anymore. Let’s see what he wants.” Tommy led the way back down the hall to the kitchen.

His dad examined Curtis’s body from a few feet away. “Sonofabitch.”

“Our thoughts exactly,” Tommy said. “What brings you here?”

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