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As a compromise, she’d left the engine running. Now she stood by the barn door to keep an eye on the vehicle while Ryan searched the stalls and the hayloft.
“Find anything?” she called over her shoulder.
She knew full well that he’d have announced it if he had. But asking the question distracted her from the image seared in her brain: Grover Anderson, a trim Black man with close-cropped gray hair, sprawled in a supine position on the floor behind his comfy couch with a hole in his forehead.
A loud thump sounded behind her and she turned. Ryan had jumped from the hayloft rather than use the ladder. Now he stood, wiping hay from his borrowed pants.
“Actually, yeah.”
“Files?” Her heart ticked up in anticipation.
He shook his head and dangled a key from his finger. “A key.”
“Great, you found a key in a haystack. But what’s it a key to?”
“A filing cabinet. I’m almost certain.” He drew closer and showed her.
She had to agree the tiny silver key looked like it would open a standard-issue filing cabinet. “Where was it?”
“Hanging on a hook.” He jerked his chin toward a small room at the back of the barn. It took up the side wall behind the unused stalls. “I’m guessing the filing cabinet is in there.”
“What is that room?”
He shrugged. “Beats me. Want to come check it out?”
“No. If someone is still lurking around the property, our running car is awfully tempting. I’ll stay here. But please hurry.”
“Will do.” He headed to the back of the barn but turned on his heel and came back. “Almost forgot, I think whoever killed Grover came by boat, and probably left that way, too.”
“Why do you say that?”
“There’s a small dock at the bottom of the hill. I could just make it out from the window in the hayloft. Traveling by water under cover of night is a lot less risky than driving through a small town on the only semi-major road in the county. There would be far fewer potential witnesses on the estuary.”
She nodded. “It makes sense. But then, where’s Grover’s car?”
He shrugged and started toward the back of the barn again.
A moment later, he called, “I found it.”
“The filing cabinet.”
“No. The car. You have to see this.”
She hesitated, uneasy about leaving the Subaru unattended. But curiosity got the better of her, and she walked to the back of the barn. Ryan stood in the doorway, gesturing toward a small, British racing green classic convertible lit from above by a spotlight mounted to a cross beam.
“I don’t believe it. Do you know what this is?”
“A very cute car.”
“It’s an Austin-Healy Sprite. See the fixed headlights on the hood? This car is nicknamed the Frogeye in the United Kingdom and the Bugeye here in the States because those headlights look like, well, bulging eyes.”
“Never heard of it.”
She shook her head. “You wouldn’t have. Fewer than fifty thousand of this model were produced.” She walked into the bay and ran a loving hand down the side of the car. “Hello, darling,” she purred.
Ryan laughed. “I didn’t know Grover was a car guy.”
She scrunched up her nose. “A real ‘car guy’ probably wouldn’t bother with a Sprite. It was always more of a niche vehicle. A curiosity. Was Grover a bit eccentric?”
