“The file on the ladies’ Christmas luncheon from . . . five years ago. I volunteered to help again, and . . . I wanted to review what I did before.”

He bent down and flipped through the hanging folders. No doubt they’d once been perfectly alphabetized, but no longer. Several were out of order.

He’d have to start at the beginning.

Ten files back, he found the one she’d asked for and pulled it out. “Here you go.” He set it on the table, next to a much larger file. “What’s in that one?” He rested a hand on it.

“The meal program schedule. I ought to clean it out. We don’t have . . . to keep the old assignment sheets. You can file it again for now, though, if you like.”

He picked it up, but the sheets inside were askew, and a number of them were sticking out. The folder wouldn’t slide back in unless he straightened out the contents.

Back at the desk, he opened the file and took out the first few sheets of paper. After tapping them into a neat pile, he set them down and continued the process, building up a tidy stack.

As he lifted the fourth set of papers, two paired names caught his eye—one person he and Kimberly knew, the other someone he knew.

Small world.

Picking up the pace, he continued tapping and stacking the sheets into order. Kimberly hadn’t been exaggerating. The ones in the back were from several years ago and ought to be discarded. They weren’t—

He froze.

Two more paired names he recognized jumped out at him.

Coincidence . . . or something more?

“Everything all right, Dave?”

At Kimberly’s question, he tried to tamp down his unease. “Yes. I was, uh, noticing how outdated these papers are. Why don’t I go through the file for you and get rid of the old ones?”

“I don’t want to take you away from your work. You have more important things to do.”

Maybe not.

“I don’t mind. It won’t take long.” He set the file on the desk and began to go through it page by page.

By the time he finished, his pulse was racing.

Maybe he was wrong. Maybe what he was seeing didn’t mean what he thought it meant. Maybe he was overreacting.

But he wasn’t going to make that call. If what he suspected was true, this was out of his league.

So as soon as he put the file back and escaped to his office, he was dumping this startling turn of events straight into the lap of Sheriff Cox.

An hour after she dived into answering emails, five minutes after typing the last response, and several spoonfuls into Eleanor’s delicious soup, a new message popped up on the screen beside her with a tiny ping.

Grace glanced over . . . and her heart missed a beat.

The email was from the forensic botanist.