left her neighbor’s house, she thought about phoning Colin, but there was nothing he could do for her from California. So, she decided to call Isabel instead.
“Hey, Em, what’s up?” Isabel asked.
“I just had a visit from the police. Seems someone was peeking into my windows this morning while I slept, and one of my neighbors called the cops.”
“Do the police know who it was?”
“No, not at all. I went and talked to my neighbor to see if he could tell me anything, but no, he doesn’t have a clue either. Although, he did give me a pretty good description of the perp, older guy, white or Latino, gray hair, and that his license plate was from Virginia.”
“Gray hair? Virginia? I wonder…”
“What?”
“No, it wouldn’t be.”
“Wouldn’t be who?” Emily had to know.
“Jethro.”
CHAPTER 6
Emily asked Isabel if she was free around noon on that Sunday afternoon and perhaps would like to take a peek into the boxes in the storage unit. Isabel jumped at the chance. Emily promised to swing by and pick her up.
After Emily made sure all her doors and windows were secure and her laptop hidden, she drove to Isabel’s, keeping an eye out for anyone following her.
Am I going to have to be checking my rearview mirrors forever?
As she drove, her mind wandered to the unsettling events she was dealing with, namely the tail and the repeated break-ins. More and more it seemed it was probably the same person. It wasn’t like they were trashing the place, but things had been moved and she could tell they were searching for something. Evan had been dead for a year, so why was someone searching for something in her home now?
Jethro.
Was he the missing link? It seemed to fit.
The tail and the break-ins started after Isabel connected her with Jethro. As a favor, when Emily had become desperate to find out Evan’s real identity, Isabel had introduced her to Jethro, someone she had known for years in the FBI. He had recently retired and was now living nearby in Boise.
Isabel had brought Jethro to Emily’s home one evening to talk about Evan. Emily had shown him the photo from the safe deposit box, and had asked him to help her find out who Evan really was—and who the mysterious brunette cuddled up to her husband was. That was the night she had mentioned a hypothetical gun to him, although everyone, including Jethro, knew it wasn’t as hypothetical as she had intended it to be.
Suspicions were all she had. How could she prove he was the culprit? And why?
Emily pulled into Isabel’s driveway and honked a couple of times.
“Hey, Em,” Isabel greeted as she climbed in the car. “Thanks for inviting me. You can’t imagine how curious I’ve been since you mentioned the storage locker.”
“Hopefully we can find something useful, something giving us a lead in Evan’s murder.” Emily backed out of the driveway.
“I’m all for that.” Isabel fastened her seatbelt.
“Were you serious about suspecting Jethro as my stalker?” Emily drove down the wide winding streets of the upscale neighborhood.
“The description fits.”
“Yes, but it could describe a number of guys. Even your husband is Latino with graying hair.”
“True, but Alex and I don’t have Virginia plates.”
“That’s a good point.”
“If it is him, though, I wonder why he’d be tracking you.”
“The gun we told him about?” Emily wished she’d kept the gun a secret if she’d known it would cause her this much trouble, but she couldn’t get away from the fact that Evan had hidden it in the safe deposit box for a reason.
“Maybe.”
“Let’s hope something in the files will tell us.” Emily peeked one more time into the mirrors but saw nothing suspicious.
Arriving at the outdoor storage facility, Emily unlocked the padlock and pulled open the door. Armed with flashlights, Emily began with the boxes she hadn’t yet scoured, and Isabel agreed to recheck the ones she had.
Isabel grabbed a hair band out of her jeans pocket and pulled her long, dark hair back into a ponytail. File by file, document by document, with flashlights in hand, the two spent the next couple of hours reading through every piece of paper they found.
“Hey, I think I found something.” Emily held up a few sheets of paper stapled together.
Isabel stepped in for a closer look. “What is it?”
“It looks like a background check on Delia. Funny, it wasn’t in a file, just loose between a couple of folders.”
“I wonder if Delia knew Evan had checked up on her,” Isabel remarked.