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

know that for sure,” Ethan said quickly. “And the police know what’s going on now. All we do know is that these people somehow have access to your home and to this area of the museum. Can you think of any way that could be the case? They would need to have keys, wouldn’t they? Or to have taken yours at some point and possibly made copies?”

“I… I don’t know,” Martha stammered, shaking her head. “I just don’t know.”

She buried her face in her arms, and her shoulder began to shake again with her sobs, and Tessa sighed and looked back at Ethan again.

“Maybe we should just go back to the bed-and-breakfast now,” she suggested with a shrug.

“Not yet,” Ethan said, shaking his head as he looked at his phone again. “The police are there talking with Paulina now, and I don’t want to invite ourselves to set up shop there for a witness protection situation until she knows exactly what she’s getting herself into. Besides, I have a few more questions about this place.”

Ethan knelt down beside Martha along with Tessa and put a hand on her shoulder.

“Are you okay?” Tessa asked the old woman, giving Ethan a weary look. “Do you think you could answer a few more questions about the situation?”

“I… I can try…” Martha sniffled, raising her head slightly and wiping her nose on the sleeve of her purple sweater.

“Thank you, Martha,” Ethan said, giving her a warm and inviting smile that Tessa knew well by then. “We really do appreciate your cooperation. So, my first question would be, who all has access to these drawers?”

He gestured back at the wall of steel-cut drawers opposite them. Only the one remained open.

“Just Henry and me,” Martha said with another sniffle. “And I give the keys to Pierce sometimes so he can look through them.”

“Do you think Pierce could be working with these people at all?” Ethan asked. “How long has he been working for you?”

“Oh, no, that would be impossible,” Martha said, shaking her head and scoffing at the notion. “Pierce has been here for almost two years now. He’s a good kid, and he wouldn’t get wrapped up in anything like this. Besides, he keeps asking me why I’m giving you the run-around, and he’s been annoyed with the whole situation. I don’t think he would do that if he knew anything. Why draw more attention to it?”

“Understood,” Ethan said with a nod, seeming to be satisfied with this defense of the manager’s intern. “So then, only one option remains. Well, two, really. Either they took the keys from Henry, and he’s not with his grandson after all, or they’ve found some other way to infiltrate the museum.”

Martha gave another sob at this suggestion, though to Tessa’s relief, she didn’t bury her face in her arms again.

“Oh, Henry,” she cried, shaking her head in disbelief. “How did I not see it before?”

“It’s alright,” Ethan said, patting her shoulder awkwardly. “As you said before, he left before any of this happened. You had no reason to connect the two events.”

“What about the key card?” Tessa asked, suddenly remembering that Martha had to use one to get into the door leading to the library. “Have any of those gone missing? Who has cards that let you get into this room?”

“That’s right. Those aren’t as easily duplicable as regular old keys,” Ethan said thoughtfully. “Or at least, I imagine they wouldn’t be. I don’t pretend to know much about technology.”

“Oh, no, all our employees have them,” Martha said matter-of-factly. “And they're not duplicable, as you said. I would know if someone used anything other than the existing key cards to get in here. So would the security guards.”

“Alright, so they had to have taken the card of someone who works here,” Ethan mused. “Would you be able to tell who opened the door at any given time? What if they took Henry’s card?”

“Yes, there’s a log of who scans their card and when,” Martha confirmed, narrowing her eyes as she thought about this. “Though I honestly can’t remember the last time that anyone had to check.”

“So you don’t regularly look at those logs?” Tessa asked, exchanging an excited look with Ethan. Perhaps if they did look, Henry would show up as being on the premises when he clearly wasn’t.

“No, why would we?” Martha asked with a shrug. “We’re a small operation, and no one really cares much about us. I hadn’t even thought to check.”

“Would these people know that?” Ethan asked excitedly.

“I don’t know how I would be able to answer that question,” the manager scoffed. “I’ve never even seen them. I just read the messages they leave for me at home.”

“Right, understood,” Ethan said with a curt nod. “Well, can we take a look at these logs? Where are they kept?”

“Right over here on this computer,” Martha sighed, heaving herself up and crossing over to an old desktop on a table that was tucked behind one of the bookshelves. Tessa and Ethan quickly followed her over there as she turned on the machine.

“What are we looking at?” Ethan asked as the manager maneuvered her mouse over an application at the bottom of the screen and opened it, revealing a long stream of white characters set over a black screen.

“This is the log,” she explained, scrolling down to the bottom and pointing at a long number on the last line. “These numbers here are our employee ID numbers. This one is mine, and here’s the timestamp. This shows that my ID card opened the door to the library not too long ago when I brought you in here to look for the journal.”

“Do you know Henry’s ID number?” Tessa asked.

“Not by heart, but I can look it up,” Martha said, maneuvering her mouse over to yet another application and opening it to reveal all the museum employees’ faces next to their corresponding names and numbers.

Tessa saw Martha herself, followed by Henry, Pierce, the security guards, and a smattering of