Maritime Caper (Coastal Fury Book 12), Matt Lincoln [good books to read for beginners TXT] 📗

“No, his grandson came in, actually,” Martha said, raising her eyebrows as she remembered this. “I do remember thinking it was a little odd. Henry hadn’t mentioned that he was in town, though he had told me about a grandson in Charleston many times before. Apparently, he’d been staying with Henry for some time to help him out, and now things had taken a turn for the worse, and he wanted to take him back home with him. I didn’t think much of it, other than concern for Henry’s health.”

“You didn’t think to go check on him before he left town?” Tessa asked, no doubt thinking as I was that if Martha and Henry really were that close, she would’ve done so.

“Of course I did,” Martha snapped, clearly offended that we thought she was unconcerned for Henry’s wellbeing. “But the grandson said that they had an appointment for him in Charleston later that day, and they needed to get going immediately. Also, I guess Henry didn’t want us to see him not feeling so well. He’s a proud man. That much was easy to believe.”

The museum manager leaned back and scrunched her face up in thought some more, no doubt reevaluating the whole interaction with the grandson in a new light now.

“Did Henry ever show you pictures of his grandson or anything?” I asked her. “Did you have any reason not to believe that it was him?”

“No, none,” Martha said, shaking her head and looking up at me as if she was coming out of a daze, having been lost in thought. “I mean, he had pictures of all his grandkids in his office, but those were of them as children. I wouldn’t be able to tell if it were a different man at that age.”

“Have you had any contact with Henry since?” Tessa asked.

“Oh, no,” Martha sighed. “I’ve sent a couple of messages but haven’t heard anything back. I figured he’d reach out when he was feeling up to it. I didn’t want to pressure him or make him think I needed him to return to work before he was ready.”

“And given that there’s clearly someone messing with the museum, it didn’t occur to you that Henry randomly falling ill and not wanting to talk to you about it might be suspicious in any way?” I asked, finding this to be a stretch, as well, though the manager seemed genuine enough now that we’d gotten her talking.

“Oh, this was before all that,” Martha said, looking at me with some surprise. “I didn’t even think to connect the two. Not at all.”

“Really?” I asked, leaning forward in my chair with interest. “When was this, then?”

“Oh, maybe three, four months ago,” the manager said, confirming the timetable that Paulina had given us. “Though now that you mention it, this all started not long after that… But this is all so ridiculous. What would they want with Henry?”

“Well, I imagine that Henry was good at his job,” Tessa prompted.

“Yes, of course,” Martha said, looking a little offended at the suggestion that he wasn’t. “He’s the best in his field! He’s found so many artifacts over the years… he’s a real fountain of knowledge, and we really have been lacking without him. The guests loved him, too. He would go downstairs and lead tours sometimes, himself. He always had more to say than anyone else, and there was no beating his sense of humor.”

“Well, there’s your answer,” I said, giving her a sad smile. “If things started going awry here, wouldn’t Henry be the first to notice, or to try to stop it? Especially if his artifacts were involved in any way. If he’s anything like me, he’s very protective of them.”

“Yes, I told you that already,” Martha confirmed, looking very worried now. “Henry would die before letting one of his artifacts get desecrated like that journal. Oh, God, you don’t think he’s actually dead, do you?”

She placed a hand over her mouth and froze, staring at me with a look of terror.

“I don’t think so,” I said, giving her a small smile and thinking that at least she demonstrated a genuine concern for her friends and employees if anything. “But we’ll look into it, I assure you.”

“Why don’t you tell us about what’s been going on at the museum?” Tessa prodded. “When did that start? You said it wasn’t long after Henry left, right?”

“No, not long at all,” Martha said, shaking her head slightly and all of a sudden speaking in hushed tones again as if she was afraid that someone could be listening in on our conversation. “I told you, I don’t know much about that.”

“Why don’t you tell us everything that you do know?” Tessa asked coolly.

“Anything could be helpful,” I said kindly, combating Tessa’s demeanor with some warmth of my own. “Even if you don’t realize it. Sometimes the most mundane details end up being very important.”

“Well,” Martha said, shifting uncomfortably in her chair and folding her hands in her lap now. “At first, when you contacted us about Grendel’s journal, I didn’t think much of it. I wasn’t going to give it to you, of course, for the reasons I explained when you first sat down. But I might’ve let you come up here and take a look at it in a controlled environment. Especially once Henry got back into town, though I wasn’t sure how long he would be gone.”

“So no one contacted you until after we did?” Tessa asked, raising her eyebrows in surprise. “Really?”

“No, no one,” Martha confirmed, shaking her head. “Then, right as I was about to call you and offer to have you come up here and look at the journal—not take it, mind you, but look at it—I got a strange phone call of my own. It was a man, warning me not to deal with you or else there would be consequences for myself and the museum.”

“What kind of consequences?” I asked, leaning forward again in my chair,