“I see.” This was the break I was looking for. The Boxburys were now connected to Marcus Callaghini, who was connected to Nathaniel Monroe. My gut told me the “finance guy” Tom referenced was none other than Nathaniel Monroe. After all, from speaking with Matilda, I knew they were acquainted.
“So I guess it’s back to business as usual here in Bryce Beach,” Tom said, shaking his head. His disappointment that the deal didn’t go through was unmissable.
“Hardly,” I scoffed. “We still have an unsolved murder.”
“Well, they’re questioning some of the developer’s guys,” he repeated the news Chief James had shared with me. “I’m sure an arrest is forthcoming. They didn’t like her resistance to their proposal, so they offed her.” He drew his finger across his throat in a slitting motion.
“But why do that and still move the project to Moon Point? I don’t understand—she was the only one standing in their way. How could anyone kill an innocent, elderly woman?!” I still burned with rage that someone would dare murder her. I was going to bring her killer to justice if it was the last thing I did.
Tom shrugged. “You know the mob. They’re going to eliminate anyone who dares to get in their way. Even if they find a way around the obstacle. I’m sure they’ll pin the crime on one of their associates, and Marcus Callaghini will walk free. That’s the way these things work, don’tcha know. They won’t be able to prove his involvement.”
Hmph. Not if I had something to say about it.
August’s heat had relented just a tiny bit. The overcast skies made Evangeline excited to have lunch outside for once. The clouds made her tiny little gothy heart sing for joy, or as close to joy as she would allow herself to experience.
“How’s Falcon liking the job so far?” I settled in my seat at the picnic table and pulled out my salad.
“Well, he’s only been here for half a day.” Evangeline smirked. “What do you think, Jada? You’re his direct supervisor.”
“Oh, please. Like I’m really going to supervise the cataloguer who has more experience than me. Just like I supervised you!” She laughed as she stabbed a bite of tomato, pointed it at our boss, and then brought it to her mouth. We were all eating salads today, apparently. “But he seems to be adjusting fine. It’s not like we’re putting a lot of pressure on him.”
“He seems quiet,” I noted. Though everyone seemed quiet compared to me or Molly. Or Tom.
“I’ve talked to him a bit about his job at the state university library,” Evangeline shared. “Sounds like they have a real draconian director. She’s evil incarnate, apparently.”
“Well, no wonder he wanted out!” It made more sense to me now. I was sure he’d taken a pay cut to come here. Academic libraries generally paid better than public, plus he had tenure and a lot of seniority there, though he wasn’t the head cataloguer. They had a whole team of them, of course. Here he could be a big fish in a little pond instead of the other way around.
“How’s the case going?” Evangeline changed the subject, as though talking about Falcon was making her a little uncomfortable. I tried not to read too much into that.
I filled them in on what I’d learned from Matilda and Tom. “Did you know anything about the elder Carlton and his affair with Mrs. Monroe?” I asked Jada.
She shook her head. “Oh, no. His family didn’t talk about anything like that.”
“I’m trying to figure out how I would know if Boxbury Seafood is one of Nathaniel Monroe’s clients. I didn’t see their logo on the portfolio on the firm’s website like I did Marcus Callaghini’s company. Any ideas, Jada? Are you talking to Carlton anymore?”
She sighed. “No, we haven’t talked for weeks now. I know his mother is finally out of jail. She’s awaiting trial, though.”
“Right. Well, I’m not surprised she was able to make bail.” The possibilities were seemingly endless when you had as much money as the Boxburys. Though Mrs. Monroe’s riches didn’t prevent her from getting murdered…
I continued with my train of thought before it got completely derailed: “So would it be really weird if we just showed up out of the blue to question them about Mrs. Monroe’s murder?”
“Uh, yeah,” Jada scoffed. “I don’t think that would be a good idea at all. His family is in enough hot water.”
“You don’t think they had something to do with Mrs. Monroe’s death, do you?” Evangeline questioned.
I ignored that question and rambled on, “I need to figure out if I can access that online journal, and if that doesn’t get me the answers I need, I’ve gotta find the book she was working on. I wonder if there’s any way I can get into her house and get the files off her computer. I’m sure Liz could help—”
“Speaking of Liz, she’s free to do some work for you now,” Evangeline noted. “She finished up the tweaks for the library website this morning, and it’s going live on Monday after I present it at the staff meeting. It looks amazing. You guys are going to love it!”
“How exciting!” Jada clapped her hands together.
“I’ll ask her about it this afternoon. I didn’t get a chance yesterday because Knox Monroe and his foster parents came in—”
“Monroe?” Jada’s eyebrow arched.
“No relation,” I explained. “It’s a common last name.”
“Did you get a chance to look at his artwork?” Evangeline asked.
“Yes!” I didn’t mean to exclaim it so loudly, but telling my boss about his talent had slipped my mind. “He showed me a watercolor of the cove, and it was absolutely breathtaking.”
“Wow, that’s great!” Our boss’s face lit up, as much as her sharp features would allow. “Is he coming back in soon? I want to talk to him about a project.”
“I’ll get his contact info for you.” I looked into my friend’s eyes, searching for a clue as to what this secret project entailed, but I came up empty-handed. “Aren’t you going to tell us what you’re up to?”
Evangeline’s mouth twisted up on one end. “Nah, I think surprising everyone is much more fun.” She rubbed her hands together as laughter pealed out of her mouth.
“I heard the new website is amazing!” I greeted Liz as I walked back into the YA area after lunch.
Her head popped up over the top of the monitor she was sitting behind. “Thanks, did you see it?”
“Not yet. I think Ms. Dupree wants it to be a surprise. She’s going to unveil it Monday in our staff meeting.”
“Okay, gotcha. I could give you a sneak peek…” She winked at me.
As tempting as that was, I knew the element of surprise was important to my friend. She had the website up her sleeve and apparently some other project she planned to get Knox Monroe’s help with. I only hoped he would be cooperative. He seemed pretty agreeable when I talked to him about art, but who knew how he’d be with Evangeline—she could be intimidating to adults, let alone young people.
“I do have something else for you,” I changed the subject. “Remember I was asking you about whether or not you could access deleted accounts on Pro Journal, and you were going to look into it?”
“Well, most things on the internet are never truly deleted,” she clued me in. “You just have to access the server where they’re stored. The big recycle bin in the sky.” She threw her head back and laughed like it was the funniest joke ever. I guess you have to be a computer geek to get that one!
“Do you think you could access the account I was telling you about?”
“Show me the photo of the login info again, okay?” Her expression morphed from amusement to her game face in a mere heartbeat.
I pulled out my phone and scrolled to the photo. “Here you go. I can text it to you if you’d like.”
“Sure.”
I had her number in my phone already so I sent it her way. “I’ll let you work. I’ve gotta do a story time for Molly at two, but after that, maybe you’ll have something to show me?”
“It might take me a bit, but I’ll do my best.” H
er warm brown eyes sparkled as she graced me with a confident smile. Then she returned her attention to the computer in front of her.
After story time, Liz was still engrossed in the assignment I gave her, so I logged back into my sleeping computer and started my own assignment: digging up as much as I could on the two Mr. Carlton Boxburys. I was shocked by my very first discovery on the Boxbury Seafood About Us page: the older gentleman I’d seen at Mrs. Monroe’s funeral was none other than the eldest Carlton Boxbury. I studied his face, gasping at how the snow-white hair, the long, thin nose, and the strong jaw matched those of the man I’d seen leave the church during my eulogy. There was no doubt in my mind he’d attended his former lover’s service.
I had to talk to Chief James about this. I dialed the Bryce Beach police department and was connected to the chief much faster than I anticipated. Then I remembered I needed to get Knox Monroe’s contact information from him anyway, so this was perfect. I could kill two birds with one stone.
“Good afternoon, Vincent,” I began.
“Sunshine, to what do I owe the pleasure?” came his deep, smooth voice. I could almost picture him lacing his fingers together on top of his desk, balancing the phone on his shoulder against his ear.
“First, I need to know how to get ahold of Knox Monroe. We have some community service for him at the library.”
“Oh, right. Can you take down his foster mother’s phone number?”
“Yes, of course.” I poised the pen over my pad of paper with the library’s logo at the top and took it down as he gave it to me. “Thanks, I’m going to pass that along to our director, who has a special project for him.”
“Excellent. I think keeping the boy busy is in everyone’s best interests right now.” He cleared his throat. “What else is new? Did you hear there was an arrest made in the Monroe case?”
“What?!” I gasped. I wasn’t expecting him to say that. I thought I would be the one with the bombshell news.
“Yes, one of Marcus Callaghini’s associates. Just like we talked about.” I could hear the smile in his voice. “So, no surprise there.”
“I heard Callaghini was moving his project to Moon Point,” I shared the intel I’d gathered from Tom.
“Yes, I heard that too. Well, it’s for the best. I don’t know what evidence the state police have, but apparently they’ve connected one of Mr. Callaghini’s associates to Mrs. Monroe. And he doesn’t have an alibi for the night of her murder.”
“I’m not sure if that explains everything,” I said.
“No? What makes you say that?”
From the beginning, I warned Vincent that the state police would miss something critical, just by virtue of their lack of knowledge about our close-knit community. Having Mrs. Monroe’s daughter spill her guts to me was surely going to crack the case wide open. I worked to keep the gloat out of my tone as I detailed my findings for the chief.
“I had a chance to sit down with Matilda Monroe, and I learned some very interesting things I’m sure she didn’t tell the police. Plus, I discovered something else the police might not know.” Having clues the police hadn’t been able to uncover themselves made me deliriously happy.
“Is that right? Well, Ms. Baker, are you going to fill me in?”
“I think you’ll find this rather fascinating—everyone knows Willa Bryce Monroe had an affair with Carlton Boxbury, right?”
“I suppose that is a bit of town lore, yes,” Chief James agreed.
“Well, first of all, I spotted him at her funeral, which is noteworthy in and of itself, but that’s not all.”
“He was at her funeral?”
“Yes! I saw him with my own two eyes during my eulogy,” I explained.
A tinge of frustration colored the chief’s voice. “Why are you just now telling me this?”
“I surely wasn’t the only one to see him. Though, I didn’t know it was him until today when I did some research, but I did the research because of what Matilda told me. Did you know that Willa ran off with him to Europe for several months, and while she was gone, Matilda got pregnant by his son?”
Chief James was silent for a moment, processing the information. “She told you this?”
“She told me she was shipped off to the West Coast to have the baby and never knew if it was a boy or a girl. It was whisked away right after delivery…”
“Interesting, but I’m not sure what this has to do with her murder…”
“Hold on, there’s more.” I sucked in a breath, trying to figure out the best way to summarize the rest of my intel. “The whole situation is the reason she was estranged from her children. But I also found a publishing contract in her office. It was for an untitled work—Willa Bryce Monroe Memoirs—by a Harrington Publishing Company. We need to find that manuscript. I think it’s going to have very important clues.”
“The state police already took all the files off her desktop computer. I’m sure if there was anything pertinent to the investigation, they would have found it by now. I’m still not seeing the connection to the developer,” Chief James said.
I sighed. There was a connection, right? I hadn’t just dreamed it. “Well, first of all, Nathaniel Monroe, Mrs. Monroe’s son, is Marco Callaghini’s financial advisor,” I filled him in. “And I suspect he may be Carlton Boxbury II’s advisor as well. And guess who the leader of the Moon Point town council is?”
“Oh…now that is very interesting, Sunshine. Great detective work!”
“Thank you!” His praise sent a shockwave of giddiness through me. Chief James wasn’t the type to give out meritless praise, after all. “And my own associate is working on recovering the deleted online journal account we found the login information for on Mrs. Monroe’s computer. Maybe it will tell us more about her memoir. If it’s not on that computer in her office, it has to be somewhere.”
“Maybe she hadn’t written it yet,” Chief James conjectured.
“In any case, whatever insight we could get into what was going on in her personal life would help the case, would it not?” Work with me here, Chief!
“What if the state police already have the right guy?”
Now it sounded like he was playing devil’s advocate. Didn’t it make sense to leave no stone unturned? Especially with the mob lawyers defending this suspect—who knows how they might try to weasel their way out of a guilty verdict? We needed to look at the case from every angle. I couldn’t stand the thought of Mrs. Monroe’s murderer walking free.
I saw Liz’s head pop up over her monitor again, a beaming smile spread across her face. “Vincent, I’m going to let you go. I believe my associate has had a breakthrough on the journal recovery.”
“Keep me posted, Ms. Baker,” was all he said.
As soon as I hung up the phone, Liz came rushing over to me. “I did it; I did it, Ms. Baker! You’re never going to believe what all is on there!”
A thrill rushed through me, my soul soaring to unfathomable heights. This was big. Big, big, big!
Thirteen
I set myself up on the sofa with my laptop and the login Liz gave me to access Mrs. Monroe’s deleted online journal, then surrounded myself with purring furry beasts. Paige and Bond had full bellies, and they were all too content to cuddle up with me while I indulged my curiosity and devoured Mrs. Monroe’s clandestine words. But first, I decided to text my best friend because I missed the heck out of her, and I wanted to see how her canine kingdom was faring.
Me: Molls!!!
Molly: Yes?
Me: How’s it going?
Molly: Does this answer your question?
I opened up a picture of Murphy and Natty all curled up together asleep in a doggy bed.
Me: Oh my gosh, that is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen!
Molly: I know! Everything is perfect. How did story time go today?
Me: Pretty good. No one cried!
Molly: That’s always a plus. I’m going to come back in tomorrow.
Me: Why? Evangeline s
aid you could have the whole week off.
Molly: I think you know why…
Me: Um…you miss me?
Molly: Something like that.
Me: Alright. I will fill you in on the case tomorrow, then.
Molly: What else are we doing?
Me: What do you mean?
Molly: You know what tomorrow is…
Me: ???
Molly: You’re a pain, you know that?
I squinted at her text “You know what tomorrow is,” trying to figure out what she was talking about. Maybe it was a special program she was doing. Checking my calendar seemed like a good idea all the sudden. Maybe I had a program I’d forgotten all about. I had gotten pretty wrapped up in the case.
I didn’t see anything noteworthy about tomorrow, so I settled back down with my laptop, sucked in a deep breath and began to read.
And read.
And read…
September 15th
Today I saw Carlton for the first time in almost forty years. I made the decision to attend the food vendor expo for the first time since my husband died. It is time to start selling my honey again. The new hives at the other property are producing so much, ‘twould be a shame not to capitalize. Those little bees are working their behinds off!
He clearly wasn’t expecting to see me. The look on his face when I strolled in, wearing the same navy and white polka-dotted frock as when I met him at the expo all those decades ago… Why, it was priceless! Of course, I’m older now and walk with a cane. He is still a tall and handsome figure; his hair has turned a lovely shade of silver-white. The years have been kind to him, and somewhat to my dismay, his guilty conscience hasn’t eaten away at his countenance.
I wanted to talk to him, but when I approached, he quickly struck up a conversation with a few men standing in proximity—no doubt seafood moguls like himself. They all stunk to high heavens like fish. Oh, they might have tried to cover it up with cologne, but that odor seeps into your pores. It was the same smell I remember from all those years before.
Dangerous Curves Boxed Set 1: 3 Cozy Christian Mysteries Page 43