Chapter 46
Scott moved a chair beside the desk and sat beside Tori. Just like in the pickup, her light floral scent wrapped around him. Clean smelling. That’s what it was. And very intoxicating.
He watched as she opened file after file. “Try searching for a key word, like the company name or even DNA,” he suggested.
“I did. Nothing came up.”
“Do you remember the username you saw at the office?”
She nodded. “I think so.”
“Try it and see if anything pops up.”
Tori typed in Jenny T, and ten files appeared. She groaned and clicked on them one by one. He was about to despair of finding the passwords when Tori clicked on the seventh file. Her eyes widened. “I think this is it.”
He leaned in closer to the computer and tried to ignore the way her nearness increased his heart rate. “That looks like a whole list of passwords that aren’t even in order. Why didn’t she lock the file? Anyone could’ve found this.”
Tori shrugged. “Most people don’t think about someone hacking into their home computers.”
“Do you see anything that resembles the DNA login?”
She scrolled down the list of usernames and passwords.
“I’m pretty sure the username is Jenny T .
. . but she used that a lot and she didn’t always identify what the username was attached to.
Like that one.” Tori pointed at a line on the screen.
“It’s just initials, probably in a code only Jenny knew. ”
“Sort the list alphabetically—that’ll group all the Jenny Ts together.”
Tori did as he suggested and stared at the screen again, then ran the cursor down each row, stopping at the next to last row. “That might be it,” she said.
“Let’s try it.”
Tori highlighted the password and copied it, and then she typed in the ancestry page. When the page appeared, it asked for login information, and she typed in Jenny T for the username and then pasted the password she’d found. They both held their breath when she hit enter.
The ancestry website opened up to Jenny Tremont’s profile page. “O-kay! Where to first?”
He stared at the tabs. “Now that we can get in, why don’t we go back to Oak Grove and research the site there? Ben said he emailed Jenny’s case file, and I’d like to read it.”
“Amy can help me with the ancestry site—she’s good at this sort of thing.”
“I’ll call Ben and let him know.”
Tori glanced at the laptop. “Ask if we can take the computer with us.”
He nodded and quickly dialed the sheriff, putting him on speaker. “Have you heard from Drew?”
“No,” Ben said. “Did you have any luck with the computer?”
“We got into the ancestry site and decided to return to Oak Grove to do our research. Tori wants to take the computer with us. She’d like for Amy to go through it.”
“My IT specialist didn’t find anything of importance on it.”
Tori spoke up. “Then you don’t mind?”
“Since I’ve unofficially invited you into the case, I guess there’s no harm in you looking through it. I’ll drop by your place later.”
Tori grinned at Scott.
“Good deal,” Scott said into the phone. “See you at the house.”
“Wait—I think you need to get Tori a phone ASAP,” Ben said before Scott could disconnect. “Just in case.”
“I agree. See you in a bit.”
Scott hung up and slid the phone in his back pocket. He turned and caught Tori chewing her thumbnail. He couldn’t imagine how she felt.
She dropped her hand, wiping it on her pants leg, but the concern in her face remained. “Someone took him, didn’t they? And Ben thinks I need a phone in case the person who took him tries to get in touch with me.”
“You need a phone, but don’t borrow trouble yet.”
“We both know Drew wouldn’t voluntarily go off without his phone. It’s attached to his hand.” Tori looked up into his face. “Earlier when you found the tracker, you said someone took Drew by mistake. What did you mean by that?”
He didn’t want to tell her what he was thinking.
Her eyes widened. “Collateral,” she said softly. “But what could I have that they want?”
“Maybe it’s not what you have, but what they think you have.”
“And we won’t know what that is until they contact me.”
“I’m afraid so.” He stood. “You ready to go? There’s a phone store in town. We should be in and out in thirty minutes.”
She grabbed the computer. “Put this password in your phone—I don’t want to take a chance of losing it.”
Forty-five minutes later Scott escorted Tori out of the phone store and opened the truck passenger door. The rep had downloaded everything in the Cloud from her old phone onto the new one and even connected her watch to the phone.
“I added a locator service and sent you an invite,” Scott said once they both were settled in his truck. “Accept it and make sure your ‘share my location’ is turned on.”
Tori saluted. “Yes, sir.” A minute later she said, “Done. Does this mean I can tell where you are as well?”
“Yep.”
She was quiet as they drove, probably worrying about her nephew. A few minutes later when they pulled into the driveway at Oak Grove, Caleb’s vehicle was in the driveway. Scott hoped Drew was here in spite of knowing that Caleb would’ve called if that were the case.
“Maybe he’s here,” she said and scrambled out of the pickup as soon as he put it in park. Amy opened the door before she reached the porch.
“Have you heard from Drew?”
Amy shook her head. “I was hoping you had news.”
“We don’t.”
This had to be killing her. He squeezed Tori’s shoulder. “Ben will find him.”
Her chin quivered, then she straightened her shoulders and handed the computer to Amy. “This is Jenny’s. Can you look through her files? See if you find anything that will help us find Drew or understand why he was taken.”
“You bet.” She hugged Tori. “I’ve been praying.”
Tori muttered something he didn’t catch before she followed Amy into the house. Scott was right behind them, and the rich aroma of onions and garlic reminded him he hadn’t eaten anything since sharing the cheese and crackers with Drew. “Something smells good,” he said.
“I made spaghetti for dinner while I was waiting for you,” Amy said. “I hope that was okay.”
“Perfect. Where’s Caleb?” he asked.
“In the kitchen.” Amy nodded down the hallway.
“Good. We need to do some brainstorming, and I need some coffee.”
He strode to the kitchen, where Caleb was making coffee and a spaghetti sauce simmered on the stove. Looked as though it’d be a bit before they ate, so he grabbed a protein bar from the cabinet.
“Figured you’d want some caffeine,” Caleb said with a grin. “And while the three of you discuss the cases, I’ll walk the perimeter and make sure no one has accessed the back side.”
“I don’t think anyone can gain entrance to the property from there, but it won’t hurt to check.”
A few minutes later, Tori and Amy gathered in the kitchen with him. He sipped the coffee, letting the hot liquid explode on his taste buds. Nick and Taylor definitely knew their coffee. “We need some notepaper . . . Nick probably has some around here, but it’d be in his office—in the basement.”
“I have some, and I printed out information on Livingston Oil Corporation,” Amy said. “Be right back.”
Scott remembered Tori telling him that Amy was always prepared. When she returned, she handed them each several sheets of printed paper. He flipped through them. Amy had printed out bios of the four Livingstons as well as the Livingston Oil Corporation annual state filings.
“Very good. Why don’t you take notes.” When Amy agreed, he said, “Let’s get down everything we know about Walter Livingston’s death and Jenny Tremont’s.”
“You think the two are related too,” Tori said.
“I don’t know. Let’s look at that.” He turned to Amy. “Let’s make notes about Walter first. Who was working or had anything to do with the Livingston Company twenty-two years ago when Walter Livingston was killed?”
“His brother, Richard,” Tori said. “At Walter’s death, he gained control of the company.”
“I thought they were equal partners,” Scott said.
“They were until Richard and Valerie divorced,” Tori said. “She got half of Richard’s shares, making Walter the major stockholder.”
“Richard gained from his death. Put that down,” he said to Amy. “How about Valerie? Did she benefit in any way?”
Tori nodded. “According to Donna, Walter left part of his shares to her in his will. Which puzzled me—she and Walter were engaged for a time before she threw him over for his brother. If it’d been me, I would’ve been done with her.”
“Maybe he wanted to keep the shares in the family?” Amy said.
Tori frowned. “Why not give them to Eli?”
“Maybe Walter was still in love with her,” Scott said. “Who controls the company now?”
“We had to do some digging since the company isn’t publicly traded,” Amy said. “But according to the Mississippi Secretary of State business registry, Richard has controlling interests, even with the shares Walter left to Valerie.”
“Put that in the notes . . . and that we need to interview her,” Scott said.
Tori laughed. “Have at it—I doubt she’d even talk to me. Remember at Two Cups?”
Scott did. Valerie definitely had her claws out when they ran into her at the coffee shop. “Do we need to dismiss Valerie as a suspect?”
Amy paused her writing. “What would her motive be?”
“She wouldn’t need one,” Tori muttered. “But don’t write that down.”
Scott noticed Tori checking her phone again. “Nothing from Ben?” he asked when she looked up.
“No. How about you?”
He glanced at his phone and shook his head. “Sorry.” He was at a loss for what else to say.
Tori took a deep breath and released it. “Okay, who else?” Silence fell in the room. “Come on, y’all, we have to figure this out.”
Scott cleared his throat. “Besides Richard and Valerie, there’s Donna.”
Tori nodded. “And Eli would’ve been too young.”
“I never knew Walter, but I know most of these people,” Scott said, “and it’s hard to see any of them killing him, even Valerie. Moving on to Jenny. Do you know of any enemies she had?”
“None that I can find, although according to Valerie, Stephanie and Jenny had words at work the day she died. Stephanie downplayed it, though. And Donna indicated Valerie and Jenny argued a lot.” Tori looked at the notes she’d made.
“Here’s what I have—Jenny was in Walter’s old office, she’d submitted her DNA to an ancestry site, and the night she was killed, she asked Drew to bring a package she’d hidden at his house. ”
Amy stood and stretched. “I get why she probably hid the money at Drew’s house—no one would think to look for it there. But how? If Drew is telling the truth and there’s no reason to think he’s not, wouldn’t they have seen her bring it in?”
“Drew said she still came over to the house to make sure he had clean clothes to wear,” Scott said.
“That means she was in and out of the house often, probably when they weren’t there—it’d be easy to slip it in.
But maybe it’s not about the money. Drew was at the house the night of the murder.
He found Jenny’s body. Maybe he found something else. ”
“But what?” Tori asked.
“I don’t know,” Scott replied. “But I’m sure there’s something he held back.”