Blake nodded.
“A few months ago I came in here and the laptop wasn’t where I remembered putting it,” she said. “I thought maybe I had just been distracted last time, but now I think it definitely had been moved. That would have been around the time Missy died. She—or someone else—could have put it back before her death.”
Blake clapped, finally having two pieces of their very confusing puzzle attach.
“We’ve been having a hard time finding Missy’s laptop because it wasn’t hers to begin with.”
Liam’s voice was low, and it rumbled deep. If she hadn’t already come to the same conclusion, she would have gotten chills at the new turn of events.
“The laptop we’ve been looking for was Beth’s.”
Blake nodded again.
“And whatever is on it was important enough that Missy must have been sneaking around here the day she died, and who else knows when.”
Liam came around to her side. He looked down at the electronic as if it might answer.
“But why? What’s the connection between Missy and Beth?”
Blake hadn’t had the mental space yet to really think about that. Had there been any crossover between Missy and Beth? Just like Kyle, Blake felt the discrepancy between what she should have known and what she did know about her sister.
“I didn’t even know Missy,” Blake thought out loud. “Other than what was in the papers or Lola told me. Which was about her death and the accident—”
“The accident at the steel mill,” Liam interrupted, “where, according to Theo, Missy’s friend Hector Martinez was almost killed by the furnaces overheating.”
Adrenaline surged through Blake’s entire being.
“Which is the accident that Beth investigated. Kyle just told me that Beth had a loud fight with Mr. Grant at the steel mill about some safety suggestions regarding the furnaces. Her car accident happened after she left that day. Everyone assumed she had gone to the steel mill that day to finish some paperwork. I never heard that she talked to—let alone yelled at—Mr. Grant.”
Blake’s mind was spinning.
She whipped her head up to stare into his eyes.
“What if that’s what Missy was doing with the laptop? What if Missy was looking into Hector’s accident? What if that’s what actually caused her death? And, if any of that’s true, what does that mean about Beth? Did she find something she shouldn’t have during her investigation at the steel mill? And if she did, does that mean that her death wasn’t an accident either?”
Had someone killed Beth to keep her quiet?
Had the same someone killed Missy?
Blake didn’t know when it happened, but Liam’s hand was over hers. The pressure felt grounding in a way.
His words even more so.
“Don’t worry. No matter what, I’m going to take care of this.”
Chapter Eighteen
The laptop didn’t appear to have anything of note on it. At least none that were accessible to them. Half of the files were locked and encrypted and fell under the name of Beth’s former job. Though none of them were labeled as Grayton Steel Mill.
“From what the press release after Hector Martinez’s accident said, it was caused by human error,” Blake had said, not for the first time since they had gone through Beth’s laptop. They had also paid more attention to the details of Beth’s former office, looking through materials Blake had yet to organize.
Liam had never really known Beth Bennet, but he got the feeling that she had been against bringing her work home with her. They had only found a few papers that seemed to be work-related. The rest were mailer odds and ends and things pertaining to the kids.
“A claim that Hector didn’t dispute,” Liam pointed out. “Not even his mother who took him with her back up north tried to make anyone believe otherwise.”
Blake was still staring at the laptop.
They had been at it for over an hour since arriving at the house. In that time Blake had seemed to settle a little. Or had at least started masking all the emotions she must have been going through better than she had.
