Page 36 of Luck of the Devil

“Yeah.”

He leaned back and took a sip of his coffee. “At least we have a rough timeline to work with. We should confirm she was at church on Sunday morning. You said she kept a calendar, but did she have a planner? She might have written her Monday and Tuesday activities in there.”

“Good point. I’ll check her email first. You can search the pen drawer and the buffet for the phone number while I pull it up.”

He stood, taking his coffee cup with him as he headed to the kitchen drawer I pointed to.

I woke up the laptop, then clicked on the email icon. When the login page came up, the autosaved login and password filled in the fields. To my surprise, she only had twelve unread emails. That was a remarkably small number considering she’d been dead a week. Most of the emails were part of a historical society email chain. Another was a recipe newsletter, and there was a reminder for a dental appointment last Friday that had been sent out the day before. Late Friday afternoon, she’d received a follow-up email to reschedule her missed appointment.

That one struck me as odd.

Malcolm had already rifled through the pen drawer and moved into the dining room—I could hear him pulling out a squeaky drawer in the buffet.

“She missed an appointment with her dentist last Friday,” I said, raising my voice so he could hear me. “And they sent an email for her to reschedule. She would never purposely miss an appointment, which makes me think she wasn’t planning on leaving so quickly on Tuesday. That or she thought she’d be back by Friday.”

“You think something spooked her?” he called back.

“Maybe.” I took a sip of my coffee, hoping the mix of whiskey and coffee would work its magic soon, then rethought my answer. “She was upset when I said I couldn’t go to the historical society luncheon on Tuesday. I’d just gotten the Hugo Burton case, and it was the only time his wife could meet with me. Those meetings are at least an hour to an hour and a half. I don’t think she would have planned to go to the meeting if she was leaving town in a hurry.”

“Who’s to say she was in a hurry?” he asked, still in the dining room. “What if part of the reason she was upset you didn’t take her was because she wanted to tell you about her plans?”

Guilt shot through me. I couldn't deny it was a possibility.

“You had no way of knowing,” he said behind me, leaning into the door frame.

I twisted in my seat to face him.

“And you canceled for a legit reason.”

Malcolm walked over to the coffee maker and refilled his cup. “The real question is, what made her decide to call a number she’d just received within the last two days?”

I pushed out a sigh. “Good question.”

Malcolm returned to the table and poured more creamer into his cup without sitting. “You said she’d been anxious and safety conscious. Maybe she got mixed up in something dangerous or realized someone was out to get her.”

Releasing a short laugh, I said, “She always wore her seatbelt, even if she was driving in a parking lot. She unplugged her appliances if she was leaving the house for more than four hours. She threw out milk the day before its sell-by-date. She was the epitome of careful.”

She’d always been that way, but she’d become even more vigilant after Andi’s death.

“Maybe so, but there’s no denying she called a two-day-old burner after she talked to you. It’s suspicious as hell. Especially for a woman like your mother.”

He was right. So why had she called the number? And who did the number belong to?

I did another scan of her email, this time looking for anything threatening, but came up with nothing.

Unless she’d deleted it.

I pulled up her archived emails, but there was nothing there either.

I opened her text message icon, but there were only a few texts, all spam or from stores she’d likely signed up for. My mother hated text messaging and refused to use it.

I told Malcolm my findings.

“Do you think someone came to her house?” he asked.

“Maybe? But I don’t know how we could verify that. She doesn’t have a camera doorbell. It was too high tech for her. And I don’t think the neighbors have one either.”

A grin cracked his lips. “Are they busybodies?”