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“Whoa,” I said, turning back. “There’s an interesting connection.”
“What’s that?” Jack and Carver both asked, leaning over so they could read for themselves.
“Guess who is a poor relation of Cynthia Vance?” I asked. “First cousin on her father’s side.”
“Lorna Dewberry,” Jack said. “Little pieces of the puzzle.”
“Could be just a coincidence,” I said. “But it’d be an awfully big one. Where does she live?”
“Her address is listed just across from the church. The old Pickering house if I remember right,” Jack said. “Let’s double check though.”
I listened as he made a call and asked Reverend Thomas if Lorna still lived in the house listed in her file. Jack hung up and smiled.
“The Reverend said she does still own the old Pickering house, but she’s been renting it out to a young couple. Lorna moved back to her parents’ place when her mother died last year.”
“Her parents’ place?” I tried to place where it was in my head. “She grew up almost outside the county line, didn’t she? Out past your parents’ tobacco fields?” I asked Jack.
“Yeah, her father’s fields connected to mine. Though the Dewberry’s haven’t worked the land in almost twenty years. It’s not a working farm anymore. Just a house—and a big barn.”
My eyes widened, but Carver was already on the ball. “I’m looking, I’m looking,” Carver said, typing furiously on his keyboard. “Only car registered to her is a six-year-old Focus. No white Cadillac.”
“Go deeper,” Jack said.
“Patience, young Skywalker.”
“It makes sense,” I told Jack while Carver whistled under his breath. “She’s the right size, and it would be more plausible for her to go visit Reverend Oglesby than it would for Wormy.”
“Where’d she get the drug to inject him though?” Jack asked.
I chewed at my bottom lip and held up a finger. “She’d have to be in it with William Vance. They used to be related through marriage, so they knew each other, and William has access to Augusta General and the drug.”
“You think they have a thing going on between them?”
“Romantically?” I asked, not able to imagine Lorna being passionate about anything but the church. “I don’t know, but anything is possible I guess.”
“Let’s say she has the opportunity,” Jack said. “We still don’t have means or motive. Where did the money come from that was given to Doc Randall? Why would she help her cousin’s ex-husband, who left her for another woman?”
I blew out a breath. It didn’t make sense.
“Well that’s something, anyway,” Carver said. “I think we found a possible match on the car. A white Cadillac was registered to an Opal Fife. Hell of a name.”
“Lorna’s grandmother,” Jack and I said simultaneously.
“She died more than ten years back,” Jack continued.
“Makes sense. The car hasn’t been registered since then.”
Jack and I looked at each other, and I could tell we’d come to the same conclusion at the same time.
“Jesse Fife was Lorna’s maternal grandfather,” Jack said.
“Why is that name familiar?” Carver asked.
“Because he’s standing in that photograph that George Murphy tried to swallow. I’ve got Lewis checking to see if he can find open bank accounts under his name.”
“Gotcha,” Carver said. We all pushed away from the table and hurried out to the car.
“You think she’ll be there at this time of day?” I asked Jack.
