“Seriously. Look at this.” She handed him a folder labeled Harry. “Was your grandpa a private investigator or something?”
“No. He was retired military.”
He flipped through the file folder and found several typed papers along with a couple photographs. One of them was of an old vinyl record cover. It had a picture of a younger looking Harry, wearing a cowboy hat and holding a guitar.
“Harry has a country album.” Eliana leaned against his arm to take one of the papers from him. He tried to focus, but between trying to wrap his mind around what all of this meant, while also feeling Eliana’s soft skin pressed against his arm, his brain had gone to mush. “Listen to this:‘Harry made a one-time country album in 1968. His song “My Heart Ratatats for You” only got playtime on his local radio station for six months. He performed three times at the county fair.’”
She pulled out another file, this one for Troy Rogers. It contained copies of bank statements and a ledger. “It says Troy embezzled upwards of seven-hundred thousand dollars from his company over the ten years he worked there. When the owner discovered it, he offered early retirement and swept it under the rug to avoid scandal.” She looked up with dread. “Do you think this is true?”
He thumbed through the files, disturbed to recognize so many names on the tabs as residents of The Palms, mostly from the bungalow side, but a few from memory care and assisted living.
Eliana set down the Troy folder and pulled out one labeled Winnie.
“I don’t know if this is a good idea—” he started, but it only held one small piece of paper on it that said, “In progress.”
“What do you think that means?” She stared at him like he might have an answer.
“I don’t know.” Unease settled over him.
She found Horace’s folder next.
“This is people’s private business—” But she’d already read it.
“This one’s true. It’s about Grandpa Horace and Smitty. It details their business feud from so many years ago.”
He recalled the details of their business dealings coming out last year after Smitty and his wife Lydia moved to The Palms. Before that no one had known about their friendship-turned-rivalry.
“And if this is true, that means …”
“The rest of them might be true,” he finished. The file burned his hands as if he’d pulled a pan from the oven without hot pads.
Eliana pushed the box away from her. “Was your grandpa the nosy type?”
“This goes beyond nosy and straight to creepy,” Asher said, feeling disloyal even as he said it. “But my grandpa wasn’t nosy or creepy. He hated secrets, though. He believed they tore relationships apart and made the world worse.”
“Maybe he was on a vigilante crusade to reveal everyone’s secrets. Or …” Her mouth turned downward.
“What?” he asked with dread.
She whispered, “Do you think he was blackmailing people? Troy would probably pay to keep people from knowing he’d embezzled money from his work.”
“Not everyone blackmails people to solve their problems,” he said sharply.
Boom. His words dropped like a bomb in the middle of the room, and their easy rapport from earlier was blown to bits. He waited for her to say something cutting and rush out of the room. But she only swallowed hard and then turned toward him with a blank expression. “That’s fair.”
He rubbed his temples. He didn’t want to get into a fight with her again, not when she’d been so helpful all morning. “No, I’m sorry. We don’t know why he had this, and we can’t rule out anything.”
“I’m sure he wasn’t a blackmailer, not if he was anything like you,” she continued, sounding contrite.
He lifted his brow. “Oh, so blackmailers are only young, intelligent influencers now?”
“Yes.” She sat primly with her hands in her lap, but then relaxed against the wall with her legs crossed. Did she realize her knee was pressed against the outside of his thigh? Was she as aware of every single movement of his body as he was of hers?
Her phone buzzed and she pulled it out of her pocket, while Asher stuffed all the folders back into the bin. This felt a whole lot like Pandora’s box, and though in the fable hope remained, a whole lot of destruction wreaked havoc on people’s lives first.
“My grandma just texted to see if I could bring you soup. She says she’s waiting to hear from you with your address.” She peered over her phone at him.
“She’s making you deliver it?”
