“Not a problem, no. But I discovered a piece of information that I wanted to run by you. It might be important.”
“Um, sure. We want to help, of course.” Rather than make me sit on the filing cabinet this time, she pulled a desk chair over from another cube.
“I understand that Tom Nolan worked here six or seven years ago,” I said, taking the seat. “Did you know him then?”
“You mean the deacon?” She turned away briefly to wishthe departing female staffer good night. “I believe he worked here once, but that was before my time. I only know him because he’s been helping Cody with funeral arrangements.”
“Would Cody be able to spare a moment so I can ask him?”
“He’s probably going to be on this call for a while longer. He’s trying to find a counselor for the kids. But, um, why don’t I check.”
Since he’d first spotted me, Cody had turned his attention mostly back to his phone call, listening intently it seemed, but I sensed him keeping an eye on Riley and me. As she stepped into his office, closing the door behind her, he placed a hand over the phone, gesturing for her to speak. She apparently filled him in and I saw him nod.
Riley returned to her desk. “He can answer your questions once he’s done with the call, but it’s going to be a few more minutes.”
“No problem.”
“Do you mind waiting on your own, though? I’m on dinner duty tonight.”
“No, please, go ahead.”
Riley took a minute to straighten the piles on her clean, spare desk, shut off her computer, and throw a nubby brown jacket over her sweater. As she wished me goodbye, a guy in a shirt sporting the Baker Beverage logo emerged from the door at the rear. It was my first glimpse of the bottling area—lots of stainless steel and a long U-shaped conveyor. The guy gave Cody a thumbs-up through the glass wall of his office.
“You headed home now, Riley?” the man called out, turning his attention to her. “I’ll walk out with you.”
After they were gone, I dug my phone from my bag. I’d flown out of the hotel in such a hurry, I hadn’t checked to see what might surface online about Nolan and Baker Beverage.
I clicked on my Safari button and typed “Tom Nolan sales Baker Beverage Distributors Lake George New York” into the search bar. Not much turned up. A link to Nolan as the deacon at St. Timothy’s. And a ghost link to the “About” page of Baker from six and a half years ago, featuring Nolan’s short profile from the time he worked there. And then a link to an article from an online site called theLake George Bulletin, written around the same time. I clicked on it.
Cody, then the sales manager at Baker, had won a huge award from the main soda company they did business with. In an interview with theLake George Bulletinsite, he spread the wealth around, mentioning a few members of his sales team, including Nolan.
I kept reading. Cody sounded like the golden boy, and he addressed how lucky he’d been to be mentored by Shannon’s father.
Blaine hailed from Texas, the item noted, and hadn’t been to the area until marrying Shannon Baker. “But I knew about the region,” Cody told the interviewer. “An army pal of mine had grown up here and he talked about it—how beautiful the lake was. And the Adirondacks, too.”
At that moment I heard a sound in my head as piercing as a car alarm. He’d been familiar with the area before moving here.
Something didn’t feel right.
Chapter 22
IBIT MY LIP, MY MIND RACING.CODY HAD BEEN INAFGHANISTANten years ago. Thousands of miles away from here. But he’d learned about the area back when he was in the army. Did that mean anything?
And if it did, had Alice discovered it? Over the weekend, she’d confirmed with Ben that Nolan had worked at Baker. And she probably turned to Google next, as I had, and would have soon lighted on the article in theLake George Bulletin. Surely she read Cody’s comment about his army pal. So when Alice called Cody on Sunday, she probably would have asked him to confirm that.
But according to Cody, Alice had simply asked whether Shannon had stayed at the retreat center as a teen.
I needed to raise both topics and see how he reacted.
I suddenly sensed a presence to my right, and when I twisted my head, I realized Cody Blaine was two feet away from me. I’d been so lost in thought that I hadn’t heard him emerge from his office.
“Must be interesting,” he said.
“Pardon me?”
He was dressed fairly spiffily—navy chinos, an untucked jean shirt, and an olive-green unstructured blazer—but his handsome face was drawn and his eyes were bloodshot. Was that from fatigue? Or had he turned to booze to drown his sorrows?
“Whatever you’re reading.”
