“Possible. Look at this.” Susan turned the laptop around, and the screen showed a bewildering array of black plastic pieces. “This is aghost gun. It has components that anyone can print to assemble one. All you need is a 3D printer.”
Courtney clucked. “The irony is, my company sells 3D printers.”
Julia turned to Susan. “This is a dumb question, but what about the bullets? You don’t print those, too, do you?”
“No, those you buy, and as I used to tell my students, ‘There are no dumb questions, only dumb people, and I’m not looking at one.’”
Julia smiled. “I wonder if the police will investigate the gun shops and see who’s bought bullets lately.”
“The answer is everybody,” Susan shot back, pursing her lips. “This is gun country.”
Courtney nodded. “I’ll ask the detective when he calls back.”
Julia’s gaze fell on her phone, which gave her an idea. “Court, where’s your grandmother’s phone? I wonder if she took pictures of the objects she found.”
“Damn, you’re right, I bet she did, but the cops have her phone. Her laptop, too.”
Mona brightened. “Hold on, she sent me pictures from clean-ups.” She picked up her phone. “I think I even have some from last weekend.”
Susan started scrolling her phone. “Wait, she sent them to me, too. It was a group text. Here we go.” She held up the phone and showed them a series of pictures, a bent fork lying in the grass, a deer antler, and a beaded Taylor Swift friendship bracelet.
Julia eyed the photos. “Do you think she put these things in her basket?”
“Hard to say. That stuff was special.”
Mona nodded. “The basket was acollection.”
Courtney sighed, her gaze still on Susan’s phone screen. “It’s so sweet to see what she thought was interesting. All these little things that people overlook, she treasured.”
“Just like the daisies,” Julia heard herself say.
Courtney caught her eye, with a sad smile.
Susan checked her phone. “She sent those pictures last Sunday at 3:20, while she was still at the clean-up.”
Julia’s thoughts skipped ahead. “Courtney, did she back up her photos, like in the cloud?”
Courtney’s eyes lit up. “Shedid, she told me. She was computer literate for her age.”
Mona shot Julia a look, on Ageism Watch.
Julia let it go. “Court, do you know her password?”
“No.” Courtney grimaced. “I bet she kept them in her phone. She used Notes.”
“I use Notes, too, but I have a written password list. You don’t think she wrote it down anywhere?”
“She could have. Let’s try to find a list before we start guessing.”
“Okay, if she had a list, where would it be?”
“In her desk upstairs, in the guest bedroom. Even if she paid a bill down here, she filed it upstairs. Any junk mail, receipts, or random crap, she threw away. She always said, ‘When in doubt, throw it out.’”
Julia rose. “Let’s go.”
15
The women spent the next few hours searching a white wicker desk that held medical files, bank statements, a deed, and printouts of gardening blogs. They found no password list or the missing basket, so they widened the search to Kay’s bedroom, the kitchen, the living room, and even the car, but still had no luck.
