Buried in Secrets (Carly Moore #4) - Denise Grover Swank Page 0,76
you know.”
I couldn’t hide my surprise. Last November, Lula had mentioned that her mother was likely getting out in the spring, but she’d never shown up and I’d assumed it had been a lie or her parole board had rejected her. “So Lula’s researching her own family tree?”
“Seems like it,” Carnita said.
That was news to pack away for another day. “Well, if Lula and Bingham have already started researching their family trees, I’ll just talk to them about my questions.”
“That’ll save you some time,” Carnita said. “The last time Lula was in, she told me they’d traced Todd’s family back to 1827.”
I wrinkled my nose in confusion. “I’ve never seen either one of them in here using the computers. When do they come in?”
“Todd has his own internet.”
Likely satellite internet, not that I was surprised since he had a satellite phone. Marco had talked about getting satellite internet but had put it off up until now since it was well over a hundred dollars a month for super slow service.
Turning back to the computer, I searched for Jim Palmer, Sr. next. There was more about him than his wife. Jim, Jr. had apparently learned about civic engagement from his father. The older man had a friendly smile and looked a lot like his son. His obituary showed he’d died a year after his wife, also a heart attack based on the same donation request.
On a whim, I searched for the First Baptist Church of Ewing and found few hits other than their website and a Yelp review page with a 2.6 rating. I clicked through to the outdated website. There wasn’t a list of church members, but there were some old photos of previous social events. On the page featuring an ice cream social from three years prior, I found a photo of several members of the younger Palmer family—Jim and his two kids, all three smiling and looking happy.
And there was my connection linking Pam to Jim.
Still, just because they attended the same church didn’t mean they’d had any kind of relationship. If the church was large, they might not have even known each other, although I suspected it wasn’t a mega church. Given the fact that Rob Crimshaw had earned a reputation for being an asshole, I doubted the two families were friends, but they probably knew of each other. It also put Pam and Jim within the same social circle, but I had a hard time seeing the younger insurance agent having an affair with the nearly decade older, unpolished Pam.
I turned to researching the Crimshaw family next, focusing on Rob. Not much pulled up on him, but there were several hits from twenty years prior. He’d been in multiple bar fights and acquired a few DUIs. His name often popped up in association with his father, Stewart Crimshaw. He’d been arrested multiple times for drug possession.
That would have been when Hank was in the thick of the drug game.
Stewart’s last arrest had been for possession with intent to deal, and not a sell to a few friends amount. He’d been carrying a large quantity of OxyContin. Hank had sworn he hated the stuff, so did that mean Stewart Crimshaw had been working for Bingham? Only, it had happened decades ago, back when Bingham was probably just getting started. Whoever he was working for, he’d gotten a ten-year prison sentence. I couldn’t find anything about him after that.
Had Hank lied to me about selling Oxy?
An unsettled feeling filled the pit of my stomach, but I reminded myself that he and Bingham had overlapped, with Bingham selling the stuff that Hank wouldn’t. The odds were greater that his supplier had been Bingham.
What had happened to Stewie? The last article was from eighteen years ago, so he should have been released by now. Had he come back to Drum?
I was about to do more research on Thad’s accident when the computer suddenly shut down and the lights went off.
“What the hell?” the man on the far end shouted, banging the side of the monitor.
“Did you forget to pay the electric bill, Carnita?” the woman next to me asked with a chuckle.
Carnita didn’t look so amused, almost like she was wondering the same thing. “It’ll probably turn back on in just a moment.”
But it didn’t.
“How about I go out and see if anyone else’s power went out?” I said as I closed my notebook and got to my feet.