I exhaled and slid the first box toward her, letting her know what we were looking for, and why.
We worked through several boxes without much luck, sifting through old forms, intake logs, client notes with black marker smudged across names, and several file folders with pages out of order. It was as if someone had scattered a bunch of pages across the floor and put them back together without any attempt to sort them.
“I visited Celia’s ex-husband, Lenny, and he told me he’d gone to Celia’s funeral,” I said. “After, he wanted to reconnect with Holly, but he was nervous to do it, so he followed her around, trying to work up the nerve.”
“That doesn’t sound creepy at all,” my mother said, with a smirk.
“Yeah, he should have gone about it another way. But the day she went to the old adoption agency, he said he saw a surveillance camera outside. When I stopped by, it was gone, but I could see where it had been.”
My mother moved a hand to her hip. “What do you make of it?”
“It’s hard to know how long the camera sat there, who placed it there, or why it came down, but I doubt whoever did it knew about the hidden room behind the bookcase or these boxes. I think they believed the paper trail had been destroyed.”
“Well, we still have a few boxes to go,” she said as she reached into the next one. “Maybe we’ll get lucky. If Holly’s murder ties back to her adoption, it’s a good thing the killer doesn’t know you found that hidden room.”
She blinked at me, and I blinked back, and for a moment we stared at each other, saying nothing.
“Georgiana, is there something you need to tell me?”
“Need to—no.”
“You’ve got the same look on your face you always get when you’re hiding something. Come on, out with it.”
As a private detective, I took pride in my skills.
A poker face had never been one of them.
“I think the killer knows I have the boxes. When I was taking them to my car, I found a note under my windshield wiper, warning me to stop the investigation if I wanted to live.”
My mother pressed a hand to her chest, her voice going up several octaves as she said, “Why didn’t you mention that from the start?”
“Because I get threatened all the time. You know that.”
“Have you told Giovanni?”
“He’s out of town. I’ll tell him tonight when he gets back. It’s fine. We’re safe here.”
“Just because you have a security guard out front, doesn’t mean you’re safe. The minute you drive out of this place you’re exposed, and I don’t believe for a second you wouldn’t leave if there was a clue you needed to follow up on.”
“I know. I’m being careful.”
I reached for the last box and tugged at the lid. Inside, I found shredded strips of paper, curled and tangled like dry weeds.
“What in the world,” my mother said as she looked over my shoulder.
I sank my hands into the shredded pieces and lifted a fistful. “Something tells me we found what we were looking for, just not in the way we expected to find it.”
“I’m sorry. I know how hopeful you were that you’d find answers. You will, but maybe just not here.”
Irritated, I tossed the shredded pieces to the side and dug deeper.
“Hang on,” I said. “I think I feel something under this mess.”
At the bottom of the box was a torn folder, ripped clean down the middle. Half the tab remained intact. The other half hung by a thin strip.
We set the folder on the table and began pushing the shredded pieces aside.
“It looks like someone tore the folder apart before shredding what was inside,” my mother said.
