Page 97 of Cold Case, Warm Hearts

Maybe Christiansen was right. Maybe she should leave Coventry and not look back.

But she wasn’t going to do that. Because she needed to know what happened to her mother. She needed to know what her father thought she might uncover.

And now there was Garrett.

She put in a call to the Barnetts, but the phone in their little room at the nursing home rang and rang. She tried the front desk, and though they answered and were friendly enough, they wouldn’t give Aspen any idea where the Barnetts had gone or when they would be back to their room.

Frustrated, she left a message for Mr. Barnett to call her when he returned home.

She spent the rest of the morning setting up her new computer and downloading files from the cloud, thankful she’d stored almost everything there. She searched the county records for her father’s name and found the record of his purchase of the Rattlesnake Road property and how much he paid.

Wow.

Seeing the sum in black and white paused her fingers on the keyboard.

He’d bought the house for over four hundred thousand—in cash.

He must have been saving for years and years. Which meant he’d been planning to buy the property for a long time. Why?

The obvious answer didn’t make sense. Maybe Jane Kincaidwasthere, buried somewhere on the property. But if that were the case…

The coffee inside her gurgled and churned.

The only way Dad could have known where Jane Kincaid was buried was if he’d buried her himself.

And if he had…

No. No, her father was not a killer. He was a kind, gentle, tender man. He would never have hurt Aspen’s mother. Never.

There had to be an explanation that didn’t implicate her father in her mother’s death.

She snapped the laptop closed.

It was after lunchtime—not that she’d had the stomach to eat—when she pulled up her ride-sharing app and called for acar. Twenty minutes later, she stepped into the library, spotting Deborah behind the circulation desk.

Aspen approached Garrett’s aunt, smiling when the older woman caught sight of her.

She rounded the desk and met Aspen in the lobby. “Garrett told us what happened last night.” She took Aspen’s hands and squeezed. “I’m glad to see you’re okay.”

“I am. Thank you.”

Deborah’s lips pinched tightly. “You don’t have any idea who it was?”

“I wish I did.”

Deborah shook her head. “Probably just a couple of drugged-up teenagers. We have our share of those in town, I’m afraid.”

Aspen didn’t dare believe the attack had been random, but she didn’t say so. “I was hoping you could answer a couple of questions for me.”

“How can I help you?” she asked, leading Aspen toward a deserted area.

“I have two questions. First, do you remember where my parents lived after they had me?”

Deborah stopped at the end of a row of shelves. “Not exactly. I lived in Plymouth, so I didn’t go there much. Sorry.”

Aspen was disappointed, but she moved to her second question. “Do you remember where my father worked or, if not, at least what he did for a living?”

“He laid concrete.”

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