Carly waited several minutes before returning to Internado’s street. This time, as she drove past his house, she aimed the jammer at his garage and held the button down. The light turned green. Much better.
With step one completed, she returned the rental van and drove to the marina. Once onboard, she removed her disguise and sat at the kitchen table to review the contents of the white envelope. Her curiosity had been piqued. Why would her grandfather hide a case from her when they’d collaborated on everything?
She read the copy of a clipped newspaper article on the death of a twenty-three-year-old woman named Rose Aurora. The article wasn’t dated nor was there anything identifying where this story had been printed.
He’d jotted notes at the bottom of the newspaper article.
R. police — no leads
Evidence file — no fingerprints
Hair strands found in motel — no match
Skin cells under fingernails — no match
Cold case
Photo
Her gaze lingered on the word “photo”, which Pierce had underlined. C’mon Grandpa, you’ve gotta help me out here. Though she doubted she’d find anything, she accessed Stone Investigation’s client files and checked the database again. No matter how many different keywords she used, this case had not been logged. It didn’t exist, except on the written page.
This could have been resolved decades ago. She reread Grandpa Pierce’s notes.
Client Alice Murphy, 67. Raised child as daughter. Erin Murphy, 39. Aunt, not mother (murdered, CC). Has Alz.
Wants Erin to know. KILLER?
For her grandpa’s sake, she decided to give the search one more try. Pulling up the people-search database, she plugged in the name, “Alice Murphy”.
There were thousands of Alice Murphy’s scattered across America. This’ll take me twenty years. She added “Erin Murphy” to the same search and the possible matches dropped to seventy-eight. Determined to lower that number, she added Virginia, Maryland, and D.C. to the geographic field. The number of matches dropped to twelve. This, I can work with.
If these didn’t pan out, she’d widen her search to the East Coast. She spent the afternoon pouring over data, narrowing her findings to three possible Alice-Erin pairs. There was a phone number for an Alice Murphy in Silver Spring.
“Hello,” said a woman.
“I’m looking for Alice Murphy.”
“Wrong number.”
“Do you know an Erin Murphy?”
“What’s this about?”
“I’m following up for a coworker who was in communication with Alice.”
“I got this cell phone number about six months ago and can’t help ya.”
Carly called the second Alice Murphy, but after twenty rings, she hung up. There was a corresponding number for Erin Murphy, so Carly called her.
“Hello,” said a woman.
“I’m looking for Erin Murphy.”
“You got her.”
“Ms. Murphy, your mom, Alice, was in communication with a coworker of mine and I’d like to follow up with her.”
“’Bout what?”
