AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘Oh, he’s such a lovely man. He helped me out no end when I first moved here from America. He lives next door, on a houseboat.’
‘You live on a houseboat?’
‘Yes, by the quay in a place called Walberswick, a little town just next door to Southwold. Have you been there?’
‘Er, no. I’m new to this part of the world.’
‘Oh, you’ll have to visit. It’s amazing. Are you considering moving here, by any chance? You won’t regret it. The people are justsofriendly.’
Too friendly, thought Callum, knowing that it was an unkind thing to think. It wasn’t their fault he’d got himself into a bit of a predicament.Just a ‘bit’?Callum furrowed his brow at the thought that it was turning out to be quite a major one. He cared for Thea, and her nephew, Toby. What would happen, what would they think, when they found out he’d been deceiving them by not telling them about the photo, and what he was really doing there?
Callum shook his head. He knew they were getting off-topic, but he had to ask, ‘So, who is this Ray character?’
‘Oh, he’s a retired police officer.’
Oh god, thought Callum, this just gets better and better. She was good friends with a retired police officer. His mind was racing. He thought of his dad and his double life. Were there laws against bigamy? He didn’t know, but he imagined there were. You couldn’t be married to two people. Why had it only occurred to him now that his father had broken the law? Good god.
‘Ray also runs an heir-hunting business.’
‘A what?’
‘He finds long-lost relatives of the deceased – heirs. He might see an obituary, and someone might have died without a will. He tries to track down long-lost relatives. He looked into the case of the abandoned bookshop once, but he couldn’t find any leads regarding the owner.’
That’s because the owner wasn’t dead, thought Callum. Once again, he thought that perhaps enlisting Lexi’s help was not going to turn out a good idea after all.
‘I’m going to make a list of all the people we can invite to the grand opening.’
Callum stared at Lexi’s smiling face. This was going to become a circus, if he wasn’t careful, and the clown at the centre of it all, him, was going to live to regret it.
‘Now if you need any extra helping hands at the bookshop, I know lots of people who would love to help out too.’
Callum thought of Ray, and the reporter who was a friend of a friend, and quickly held his hands up. ‘No, I think we’ll be fine.’
‘Well, if you do change your mind …’ she trailed off.
I’m pretty sure I won’t, thought Callum. ‘Now, about the reason I’m here.’
‘Oh, yes. You wanted to see if we’ve got any archived material, old newspaper articles, about the bookshop?’
Callum nodded enthusiastically. ‘Yes, please.’
‘We have copies of local newspapers in microfiche format, but I’m afraid you can only search by date, not for a particular article in the newspapers.’
‘That will do.’ Callum smiled. At least it was something.
‘I’ll show you where the microfiche reader is.’
Callum followed Lexi to the back of the library, where the machine sat on a desk in a corner behind the library bookshelves. She said, ‘Did you say you wanted to search local newspaper archives from twenty-five years ago?’
He nodded. It was around the time Henry had disappeared from Thea’s life. Would it have made the local news? Would he find an article about Thea’s family, about Henry?
As Callum sat down in the chair, Lexi said, ‘Say, wasn’t that around the time the bookshop owner disappeared?’
Callum looked up at Lexi. She’d put two and two together. ‘Yeah.’
She smiled ‘I thought so. I’d be interested if you find out anything. I’m sure Ray did a search way back when. Let me know if you find anything – I’d be interested to know.’
Callum looked at her and decided he was not going to share whatever her found.
