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Back Murder Past Due Save as PDF
Chapters (36)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Page
  3. Acknowledgements
  4. ONE
  5. TWO
  6. THREE
  7. FOUR
  8. FIVE
  9. SIX
  10. SEVEN
  11. EIGHT
  12. NINE
  13. TEN
  14. ELEVEN
  15. TWELVE
  16. THIRTEEN
  17. FOURTEEN
  18. FIFTEEN
  19. SIXTEEN
  20. SEVENTEEN
  21. EIGHTEEN
  22. NINETEEN
  23. TWENTY
  24. TWENTY-ONE
  25. TWENTY-TWO
  26. TWENTY-THREE
  27. TWENTY-FOUR
  28. TWENTY-FIVE
  29. TWENTY-SIX
  30. TWENTY-SEVEN
  31. TWENTY-EIGHT
  32. TWENTY-NINE
  33. THIRTY
  34. THIRTY-ONE
  35. THIRTY-TWO
  36. THIRTY-THREE

For example, Julia could have seen Jordan Thompson leaving as she herself arrived, rather than the other way around. Peter could be lying about speaking to someone through the door, or it could have been any one of the others in the room when Peter came to speak to Godfrey. Justin could have killed Godfrey, run out of the room terrified by what he had done, and then sat on the bench in the square until I found him.

Then there was the unknown factor: Mr. X or Ms. X.

Godfrey seemed to have angered enough people in his life that there were probably others in Athena who might have wanted to kill him.

But how to find out who they were, that was the question.

I glanced at the inventory of Godfrey’s papers lying on my desk. I knew one place to start.

Sighing, I picked up the inventory and began jotting down the box numbers that contained correspondence. It was going to be a long day.

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-TWO

I worked my way steadily through Godfrey’s correspondence, stopping only for lunch and the occasional insistent demand for attention from Diesel. At some point Rick Tackett appeared to change the locks on the office door and the storeroom, but until he came to offer me the new keys and take the old ones away, I hardly noticed him.

He stood in front of my desk for a moment, surveying the boxes. “Lotta stuff here. What are you gonna do with it?”

“Keep it in storage until I have a chance to go through it all and catalog it. But that’s going to be a while. I have a lot of other things to see to first.”

“Seems like a lotta work for just a bunch of paper,” he said.

I shrugged. “Someone may be interested in them at some point, want to do a dissertation perhaps. You never know what kinds of interesting stuff you’ll find in a collection like this.”

“Is it valuable?”

“Possibly,” I said. “Like anything, it depends on how much someone would be willing to pay for it. I doubt the college would want to sell the collection, though.”

Rick nodded and turned away. I watched him go, somewhat surprised by the conversation. This was the first time I had heard him express any curiosity about anything archival in nature. In the past when he’d delivered packages to the office he had never asked even one question.

It was probably because of Godfrey’s murder, I reasoned. I went back to my work.