“Neely Kate…” I pleaded, but she ignored me and rolled her desk chair back to its usual place. She had tears in her eyes as she booted up her computer.

For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why she was so upset. I considered trying to talk to her, but decided to give her a little more time.

After I’d scanned more pages, I glanced up at my friend, who was intent on her work. “Neely Kate.”

Thankfully she seemed less upset when she turned to look at me.

“Would you come look at this and let me know what you think?”

She walked over and sat in the chair next to me. I opened the journal to the page that had caught my eye and handed it to her, pointing to the top left corner of the page. “Look at this random word.”

She leaned over the journal. “Bill.” It was scrawled in tiny letters, so small I hadn’t noticed it before.

I turned to her in excitement. “She mentioned a Bill earlier. She said he was worried things were going to go bad.”

She shook her head. “But why would she write his name at the top of the page like that?”

I flipped several pages ahead and found another word in the top left margin, written in that same tiny scrawl. “The.” I pointed to it. “Who randomly writes the word ‘the’?”

“I don’t know.”

I turned several more pages and found another word. “Proof.”

She gasped. “Oh, my stars and garters. It’s a message.”

We continued through the book until we found: Bill the proof is in the other journal in the room

Neely Kate jerked the book away from me and frantically searched the book for another hidden word. “What room?”

“I don’t know,” I murmured. “Maybe she didn’t finish her sentence. Or maybe she knew Bill would understand the message.”

We were silent for a moment.

I sighed. “She had another journal. I bet that’s where we could find all the missing information. The extortion scheme. Who probably killed her. Who my father is.”

She shot me a glare. “Your daddy’s your father. And that book could be anywhere. I say we focus on talking to people who can help us now.”

I thought about it for a moment. “You’re right. Finding that journal is gonna be like looking for a needle in a haystack. We should talk to Dirk. We planned to anyway. And maybe he’ll be able to tell us who Bill is.”

Neely Kate twisted her lips to the side. “Dirk sounds like he might have been involved. She talked about placating him. And Miss Mildred said he was a foreman.” She went back to her desk and started typing on her computer. After a few moments, she turned to me. “2345 Crescent Drive. I think we need a field trip.” She grabbed her coat and her purse and walked back to the table.

“How are we gonna get him to answer our questions?” I asked as I stood.

She picked up her Taser and put it into her purse. “I’ve always wanted to use one of these. Maybe we should give them a test drive.”

I had a sneaking suspicion I was going to regret Joe giving her that thing.

Chapter Nineteen

“We’re only gonna talk to him,” I said for what had to be the hundredth time as I pulled my truck up to the curb. But Neely Kate seemed exceptionally bloodthirsty, and truth be told, I didn’t trust her all that much to behave. “Let me do the talkin’ this time.”

“That hardly seems fair,” she grumbled.

“It all happened twenty-five years ago, Neely Kate. He’s bound to be old and incapacitated. He’s probably wheelin’ around an oxygen tank.” I took the keys out of the ignition. “So just be careful with the elderly gentleman.” All we needed was for her to Tase him and give him a heart attack.

“Sure.” But she didn’t sound like she meant it.

We walked up to the front door of the rundown brick ranch home. I stepped in front of Neely Kate and knocked. When no one answered, I waited a moment and knocked again.

An elderly woman next door poked her head out her front door. “He ain’t home.”

“Mr. Picklebie?” Neely Kate asked.

“Mr. Picklebie,” she spat out in disgust. “Ha! He ain’t no mister. And if you’re lookin’ to collect yer money, good luck to ya.”

Collect our money? “Do you know where I can find him?”

“He’s down at the pool hall, probably bettin’ his money away. Again.”

Oh, crappy doodles.

Neely Kate stared at me. “Elderly gentleman, huh? We have to go there.”

I didn’t answer, but my mind was reeling. Did I really want to risk seeing Skeeter? Other than the morning I’d run into Skeeter when I went out to breakfast with Mason, this would be our first public encounter since I started my role as the Lady in Black. How would he react? It was probably the worst idea of all ideas since the beginning of time, but I found myself saying, “Yeah. Let’s go.”

We headed for the truck and I pulled away from the curb in silence.

“It’s a public place, Rose. There’s nothin’ wrong with you goin’ to the pool hall. We’ll go find Dirk Picklebie, get our answers and leave. You don’t even have to talk to Skeeter. Shoot, he’s probably not even there.”

I doubted it. I’d learned enough about Skeeter’s work habits over the last two months to know he made Mason’s workaholic tendencies look like a cute hobby. “I’m still in charge of asking the questions.”