Chapter Seventeen #2
Cassandra looked ready to fight even harder at the rudeness but stopped. She must have noticed the shift in Blake’s tone.
“Yeah. Missy’s laptop had a little panda sticker on it,” she said a moment later. “I only noticed it because it was covering the logo.”
Blake’s mind stalled for the second time since walking into the coffee shop. She didn’t explain to the second person either what had caused it.
She turned on her heel and went back out into the hallway. Cassandra’s footsteps hurried behind her.
“You’re just going to yell at me and leave?” she asked. “Why? What’s wrong?”
Blake didn’t answer her. She didn’t answer Corrie’s questioning look from behind the counter either. There were only two people she acknowledged.
“Sorry, I’m going to have to cancel this time,” she told Kyle, his face nothing but confused. She didn’t wait around to explain more.
Instead, the second person she acknowledged came to her side without a word.
Liam followed her to the truck and had it started, no explanation needed. Even when Blake asked for him to drive them to her house, he did so without follow-up.
There was police tape still across the back door, but it had been repaired, so it was still locked when they searched the house to make sure no one was inside. Then Blake went with purpose to the guest bedroom that used to be her sister’s study.
She went to the desk, took a key from the top drawer and unlocked the side bottom one with it. She set her eyes on a panda sticker covering a logo.
Before she did anything, she finally gave Liam an explanation.
“After going through all the paperwork and legal things it took to adopt the kids, to take over the house and to sort out her life insurance and get my head around all the new bills, accounts and leftover debt, I let the easier stuff rest.” Blake waved a hand through the air.
“This room became where I put things I wanted to look at more closely when life settled down. A few months ago, I had a burst of inspiration and decided to come in and finally start combing through Beth’s things and boxing up what I wanted to save and donating what I thought she would be okay with. ”
She reached into the bottom drawer and put the object she was aiming for on the desktop.
Her finger traced the panda sticker on the laptop’s cover.
“Cassandra said that Missy’s laptop had this same sticker covering the logo. I’d almost feel like waving it off as a coincidence, but this particular sticker is a one of a kind. I know because Beth sent me a picture of it after she made it. For her laptop.”
“Her laptop,” Liam repeated.
Blake nodded.
“A few months ago I came in here and the laptop wasn’t where I remembered putting it,” she said.
“I thought maybe I had just been distracted last time, but now I think it definitely had been moved. That would have been around the time Missy died. She—or someone else—could have put it back before her death.”
Blake clapped, finally having two pieces of their very confusing puzzle attach.
“We’ve been having a hard time finding Missy’s laptop because it wasn’t hers to begin with.”
Liam’s voice was low, and it rumbled deep. If she hadn’t already come to the same conclusion, she would have gotten chills at the new turn of events.
“The laptop we’ve been looking for was Beth’s.”
Blake nodded again.
“And whatever is on it was important enough that Missy must have been sneaking around here the day she died, and who else knows when.”
Liam came around to her side. He looked down at the electronic as if it might answer.
“But why? What’s the connection between Missy and Beth?”
Blake hadn’t had the mental space yet to really think about that. Had there been any crossover between Missy and Beth? Just like Kyle, Blake felt the discrepancy between what she should have known and what she did know about her sister.
“I didn’t even know Missy,” Blake thought out loud. “Other than what was in the papers or Lola told me. Which was about her death and the accident—”
“The accident at the steel mill,” Liam interrupted, “where, according to Theo, Missy’s friend Hector Martinez was almost killed by the furnaces overheating.”
Adrenaline surged through Blake’s entire being.
“Which is the accident that Beth investigated. Kyle just told me that Beth had a loud fight with Mr. Grant at the steel mill about some safety suggestions regarding the furnaces. Her car accident happened after she left that day. Everyone assumed she had gone to the steel mill that day to finish some paperwork. I never heard that she talked to—let alone yelled at—Mr. Grant.”
Blake’s mind was spinning.
She whipped her head up to stare into his eyes.
“What if that’s what Missy was doing with the laptop?
What if Missy was looking into Hector’s accident?
What if that’s what actually caused her death?
And, if any of that’s true, what does that mean about Beth?
Did she find something she shouldn’t have during her investigation at the steel mill?
And if she did, does that mean that her death wasn’t an accident either? ”
Had someone killed Beth to keep her quiet?
Had the same someone killed Missy?
Blake didn’t know when it happened, but Liam’s hand was over hers. The pressure felt grounding in a way.
His words even more so.
“Don’t worry. No matter what, I’m going to take care of this.”