Page 68 of Shadows Reel

“Well, it isn’t here now.”

“Thank you, Gary. Now go eat that turkey leg. And Happy Thanksgiving.”

“You too, Joe. And my best to your family.”

Joe disconnected the call and lowered the phone to his lap.

“You heard,” he said.

“It’s interesting. That means either she got rid of the books—which doesn’t sound like Lola—or somebody took them.”

“Who would take romance novels?” Joe asked. “Who would even want them?”

“That isn’t necessary,” Marybeth admonished him. Like a true librarian.

“Sorry.”

The missing book bag obviously took her aback. She paused, deep in thought. While her mind worked, her eyes sparkled. Joe loved to watch her puzzle things out in real time. He found it wildly attractive. And he knew better than to interrupt her.

“Give me your phone,” she said.

He handed it over. She called up the photo app and scrolled through the Kizer crime scene in reverse chronological order. She grimaced in anticipation when she viewed the shots of the interior, not knowing when images of the burned body would begin. He intended to warn her when she got close.

But she didn’t get that far.

“Here,” she said, jabbing at the screen with the tip of her fingernail with aclick. “Do you see this long-billed cap on his table? And the jacket hung over the back of the kitchen chair?”

She turned the phone to Joe and he looked at it. It had appeared to him at the time that the items were haphazardly placed there, as if Bert had entered his home and tossed his cap on the table and draped his coat over the chair.

“Okay,” Joe said, raising his eyebrows. “That’s a long-billed fishing cap with black under the brim. The black helps with the sun’s reflection off the water. Some guides really like ’em.”

“This indicates to me that he’d come home before the bad guys arrived. He took off his coat and hat and then he answered a knock at the door. He probably wasn’t expecting company, is my guess.”

Joe nodded. “That’s what Norwood thought, too. There was half-eaten bacon and eggs on the counter,” he said. “Maybe Bert thought it was a prospective client coming to see him.”

“Maybe. Now this coat. Was it a fishing jacket?”

“It said ‘Simms’ on the sleeve,” Joe said. “So, yes, it was a fishing jacket. That doesn’t seem odd for a fishing guide.”

She looked up. “The man I saw yesterday morning in thealcove of the library was wearing a cap like this and a jacket like this. Do you think it’s possible it was Bert Kizer?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you have a recent photo of him? I know the one in your phone isn’t probably something I could use to identify him.”

“True,” Joe said. “And please don’t try.”

“Here,” she said, handing him back his phone. Marybeth dashed inside the house and returned with her laptop. The glow from the screen illuminated her face as she quickly logged on and tapped out passwords on a series of screens.

Joe recognized the layout of the Wyoming Department of Transportation website. He often accessed the site to identify hunters by matching their driver’s license information with their hunting licenses. He’d caught a few out-of-state hunters pretending to be residents that way. The violators had been motivated to commit fraud because nonresident licenses cost much more.

“How do you have access to that?” he asked her.

“Don’t ask.”

A few more taps and she found what she was looking for: Bert Kizer’s motor vehicle license photo. She studied it.

“I think it was him,” she said. “The man who left the photo album at the library was Bert Kizer. I’m ninety percent sure of it. And I think the album belonged to his dad, who’d been in the Band of Brothers during World War Two. He probably kept it in that footlocker you found under his bed.”