Page 52 of Secrets in the Stacks

Sam brought her a cookie and stood watching the group mingle. “I feel like we’re spinning our wheels here. Drew is convinced that either Jeff or his wife did the deed for a shot at the money. Now, with the inheritance going to Darby, either that ruins the motivation or Catherine changed the will without telling the family.”

“I don’t think it’s her parents. Besides, without selling the house, Darby’s not sure the inheritance is very much. Unless the accountant really does have a vested interest in her selling.” Rarity pulled her sweater closer. She’d been cold all day. Which either meant she was getting sick or the air conditioner was set too low. Or both. “Darby said they freaked out after she told them about the break-in. And if they had killed Catherine, why would they come to the funeral?”

“Drew mentioned you had doubts. And since he can’t find Jeff or his wife, it’s kind of a moot point anyway.” Sam ate the rest of her cookie. “Dating someone in law enforcement is harder than I thought it would be. He works a lot of nights. He’s always getting called in on his days off. And he carries a lot of stress about things that he can’t talk about. I’m having coffee with Jonathon tomorrow morning. He’s afraid I’m giving up on Drew.”

“Are you?” Rarity thought her friend’s concerns were a little harsh.

Sam pointed to the cookie tray. “I’m not giving up, but I swear I’m going to eat my way through our early dating years. I might gain so much weight he doesn’t want me anyway.”

“If Drew’s like that, and I don’t think he is, he’s not worth it anyway.” She glanced at her watch. Break was almost over. “I’ll come over for a cookie too. I need to stretch my legs.”

Darby finished up with Erin, then returned to the circle, pulling her legs up underneath her on the couch. She looked tired. After Rarity got her treat, she called the group back together, and as people were moving back to their chairs, she returned to the whiteboard. “Who’s got a report on their journals?”

Malia raised her hand. “I loved reading them but didn’t find anything to report. There wasn’t anything she mentioned being scared of, no discussion about when her husband was killed, and nothing about her time before Sedona. Sorry that I came up with nothing.”

“No problem. You read the books you were assigned. You can’t read something that isn’t there.” Rarity marked Malia’s name off the list. “Anyone else find the same thing? Which is nothing?”

Holly nodded. “Most of my journals were just stories about her life here in Sedona. But this book—” She held up her hand and showed a journal. “This one reads like an outline. It’s a list of dates, times, people, and a list of numbers with each one. I’m not sure what it’s all about, but it looks like this was a really early journal for her. She mentioned that they had started going to the church and said how nice everyone, especially Shirley, was to her and Jeff.”

“So sweet of her.” Shirley beamed at the compliment.

“Wait, I didn’t finish.” Holly kept talking. “Then she says that if they only knew that she’d brought possible death and destruction to the town, no one would like her.”

“Well, that’s a little over-the-top.” Shirley leaned forward. “When they first moved here, Catherine was edgy. Looking over her shoulder all the time. She hated for Jeff to be away from her for any length of time. But as time passed, she relaxed. Jeff could hang out with the other kids, go on Senior trips with his class and he even went away to New Mexico for college. We chalked it up to losing her husband so traumatically. But now, with this new information, maybe she had a reason.”

Rarity glanced at Darby to see how she was taking the news, but she looked fine. Engaged even. “Thanks for the update, Holly. Can you leave that separated out for me? And please, everyone, please leave your completed journals here on the table. Either Sam or I will run them over to Drew’s tonight. If you haven’t heard, we’re storing them at his house, just in case. Anyone else have something from the journals before we go on to other items?”

Shirley held up a hand. “I think I found something similar to what Holly was describing. Lists, names, and an unhealthy obsession with William Henry Taft.”

“The president?” Darby shook her head. “I don’t believe it. Grandma didn’t even vote. She said they were all crooks.”

“The president was William Howard Taft, not Henry,” Sam corrected Darby. When the rest of the group stared at her, she shrugged. “What? I had to memorize the presidents for a school project one year and got a little obsessed with the subject. Anyway, who is this guy, Shirley?”

“He was the CEO of Agricultural Norms. And ten other agricultural companies in the years leading up to him running the Iowa-based company,” Shirley answered.

“And for another update from me, I think he’s the one Lloyd Jones wants to write Catherine’s exposé on.” Rarity added to Shirley’s answer.

“That can’t be true. According to the journal, Catherine was the only one interested in the story. She was being stonewalled from everyone. She even mentions having a partner bow out of the investigation.” Shirley pulled a book out of her knitting bag. “I have the journal here.”

“Do we know what this Taft guy looks like?” Rarity asked as she took the journal and set it aside. She used to look at customers like they might buy something. Now it looked like she needed to determine if they were going to kill someone before she could sell them a book. “Maybe someone has seen him around town?”

Everyone shook their head but Holly, who held up her phone. “I just looked him up. According to the site, Taft left Agricultural Norms just before Catherine moved here. Maybe she thought he killed her husband and was getting ready to come after her. It would explain the paranoia about bringing death to Sedona.”

“Is there a picture?” Rarity leaned forward, trying to see what was on the phone.

Holly turned it back to herself. “No, but companies like having their CEO and leadership team on their websites. Let me do some research, and I’ll see what I can find. Then I’ll text it to you guys. That way, you can watch out for him. He could be Catherine’s killer.”

“Well, it’s not my folks, no matter what Drew Anderson says.” Darby wrapped her arms around herself.

“Okay, so we are doing great. We have two new pieces of information. Well, maybe more than two. We know Lloyd Jones broke into Darby’s house and Catherine’s study, probably trying to get these journals.” Rarity pointed at the two journals set apart from the others she was going to give to Drew tonight. Then a thought hit her. She picked up the journal that Holly had produced. “Did anyone else have a journal that looked weird? I mean, not like the others? Catherine wrote in story in most of the journals I had. She didn’t write in lists like this one is filled with.”

Shirley raised her hand. “I gave you one last week like that. I just assumed it was some of her early tries at journaling and she wasn’t very good at it. I think it had a green cover?”

“Okay, I’ll look through them when I get to Drew’s and try to find it.” She looked around the room. “Anything else?” When everyone else shook their head, she went back to the whiteboard. “Two, Catherine was an author or maybe a journalist or a writer or all three. She was working on an exposé article. Could that have been what killed her? She got too close?”

Malia raised a hand. “But she wasn’t working on an exposé article when she died. She didn’t write the story. She stepped away from it after her husband was killed.”

“True, but maybe there were rumors. Maybe she’d told someone. She’d told Lloyd, because he knew the story.” Rarity tried another angle.

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