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My phone chimed. For one ridiculous second, I thought it might be Josiah. The little leap of anticipation in my chest was embarrassing enough that I was relieved when I saw another message from Mom instead. It contained a fourth photograph. Dad was holding up the rusty spoon beside the metal detector, grinning at the camera.

The caption read: Your father says he's keeping his first find.

I shook my head, laughing as I put the phone facedown on the table. At least Dad had found something he could keep without bringing it home in the RV's water tank.

I hoped.

Then I turned back to my manuscript. There was a mystery to solve, a fictional woman who still hadn't made it through the door, and a sheriff who had somehow found his way back into my life. I couldn't untangle everything in one afternoon, and trying to do so wasn't going to make the answers come any faster. One problem at a time, I told myself.

I started with the door and a woman who was definitely ordering tea.

CHAPTER TWELVE

PROPERTY RECORDS

MAX

I managed to get a little writing done after lunch, although not nearly as much as I’d hoped. My mind kept wandering back to the festival, to Harvey Sinclair’s stopped watch, and especially to the message I’d seen on his phone: You should’ve left it buried twenty years ago. It was the kind of sentence that practically begged a mystery writer to investigate, but I had to remind myself that real life didn’t arrange its clues as neatly as fiction did. The words might have referred to a secret, a business deal, an old feud, or something entirely unrelated to Harvey’s death. Until I knew more, all I had was a tantalizing fragment and a growing suspicion that the past mattered more than anyone wanted to admit.

I saved my manuscript, opened a new document, and typed Harvey Sinclair’s name into the county’s public property records database. If something had happened twenty years ago, property transactions seemed as reasonable a place to start as any. People could hide information in private conversations and destroy letters, but land changed hands through paperwork, and paperwork had a habit of lingering long after the people involved had forgotten - or wished they could forget - what it meant.

The first few searches produced little beyond routine purchases, tax assessments, and the usual assortment of mortgage filings. I broadened the date range and concentrated on the waterfront, where several redevelopment projects had transformed the older commercial district over the years. Hartwell Cove had always depended on the water, but the working waterfront had gradually given way to restaurants, boutique shops, and expensive homes with views that ordinary residents could no longer afford. The changes had brought money into town, certainly, but not everyone who had lived and worked there had benefited.

A company name appeared repeatedly in records from the period I was investigating: Cove Renewal Partners. It had acquired several parcels, either directly or through intermediary companies, and its purchases coincided with a series of foreclosures that had pushed longtime owners out of valuable waterfront properties. The transactions weren’t necessarily suspicious. Redevelopment was expensive, businesses failed, and property owners sometimes took financial risks that didn’t pay off. Still, the pattern was striking enough that I opened a spreadsheet and began listing the parcels, dates, lenders, and names associated with each transaction.

Chesapeake Shore Community Bank appeared in several of the mortgage records. That name meant something to me, not because I knew much about banking, but because I remembered hearing Harvey’s name connected with the institution. He had managed the bank, and he’d been in a position to know which loans were considered risky, which borrowers were struggling, and which properties might soon become available. That didn’t mean he’d done anything wrong. It did mean he might have known considerably more about the waterfront deals than the average person in town.

I leaned back and rubbed my eyes, looking over the names I’d collected. This was the sort of research I enjoyed when I was writing a book: the gradual emergence of a pattern, the little connections that made a fictional town feel real. The difference was that my fictional victims couldn’t be harmed by my assumptions. Harvey was dead, Owen Price was a real person with a real history, and the people whose businesses had disappeared might still be living with the consequences. I needed to be careful not to turn an interesting possibility into a conclusion simply because it made a good story.

Owen’s name appeared in a record linked to a marine repair business on the waterfront. I searched for the company separately and found an old business listing, a handful of newspaper references, and a property record showing that the parcel had once belonged to Owen’s family. The business had operated there for decades, according to one brief article about the town’s working waterfront. A later notice mentioned its closure, although it offered no explanation beyond financial difficulties.

The mortgage documents told a more complicated story. Owen’s family had borrowed against the property, and the loan had eventually gone into foreclosure. After the bank took possession, the parcel was transferred through an intermediary company before ending up among the properties associated with Cove Renewal Partners. The dates were close enough to suggest that the foreclosure had made the land available for redevelopment, but the records I could access didn’t establish that the bank had deliberately engineered the outcome. A struggling business could lose its property through ordinary financial processes, even when the result was devastating for the people involved.

I copied the relevant document numbers and wrote down the dates, adding question marks wherever I found gaps in the sequence. If I wanted to understand what had happened, I’d need more than a handful of digital records. Some of the older filings had been scanned poorly, and others referred to documents that weren’t available online. The county courthouse kept archived deeds and mortgage records, and I suspected a visit would tell me more than another hour of squinting at my laptop.

Before I could talk myself out of it, I grabbed my keys.

The courthouse was busy enough to make me feel anonymous, which was a welcome change from being the amateur sleuth who seemed to attract trouble whenever he went looking for answers. I signed in at the records desk, explained that I was researching historical property transactions, and gave the clerk the dates and parcel numbers I’d collected. She directed me to the public records area and showed me how to request the older files. Her instructions were matter-of-fact, and I followed them carefully, resisting the urge to tell her that I was investigating a murder. I had no official standing, and I wasn’t about to pretend otherwise.

The older files took time to locate. I spent most of the next hour comparing deed transfers with mortgage releases and foreclosure notices, working backward through the transactions to see where the properties had started and how they’d ended up in the hands of the redevelopment company. Several parcels had followed similar paths. An owner fell behind on a loan, the bank initiated foreclosure proceedings, and the property passed through a company that seemed to exist largely to hold or transfer real estate. Eventually, the land became part of a larger development.

There might have been perfectly legitimate explanations for all of it. A bank had a duty to recover money it had lent, and a redevelopment company could acquire properties through lawful means. But the repeated pattern raised questions, especially when the same bank official’s name appeared in records connected with several of the transactions. Harvey Sinclair might have been doing his job, or he might have used his position to help someone else. The paperwork alone couldn’t tell me which.

I found a particularly useful set of documents relating to Owen’s family business. One filing recorded the foreclosure; another showed the subsequent transfer of the parcel. A third referenced correspondence between the bank and the borrower, but the correspondence itself wasn’t included in the file. I noted the reference number and requested whatever related material the clerk could locate. When she returned with a thin folder, I felt a small surge of anticipation that quickly faded as I discovered how little it contained. There were dates, signatures, legal descriptions, and a few terse statements about outstanding debts. Nothing that directly accused Harvey of wrongdoing, and nothing that explained why Owen might have held a grudge against him.

Still, the records confirmed that Owen’s family had lost something tangible during the redevelopment period. Their business hadn’t simply vanished from town history; the property it occupied had become part of a process that shifted valuable waterfront land away from a longstanding local enterprise. If Owen believed the bank had treated his family unfairly, or that Harvey had played a personal role in the loss, the resentment could have lasted for decades.

I thought of the argument I’d heard about between Harvey and Owen, the disagreement over numbers and affordability, and Owen’s insistence on making his own decisions. At the time, it had sounded like a dispute between two men who disagreed about money. Now I wondered whether the argument had been the latest chapter in a conflict that began long before either man had expected to be standing in the same room again.

That was still speculation. I wrote it down as a question rather than a finding.

The phrase about leaving something buried nagged at me as I packed my notes. If the speaker had been referring to the redevelopment, Owen might have been a plausible person to investigate. But the warning could have concerned something else entirely, and the fact that Owen had a possible motive didn’t establish that he had killed Harvey. Plenty of people had lost money, property, or opportunities during those years. Some might have blamed Harvey; others might have blamed the bank, the developers, or the circumstances that had forced them out. A long-standing grievance was a reason to ask questions, not an answer to a murder.

And then there was the watch.

Harvey’s watch had stopped at 7:43, but that didn’t mean he’d died at that time. I had seen him alive after eight, which left a discrepancy that still needed explaining. Even if the property records eventually established a motive for Owen - or anyone else connected with the redevelopment - they wouldn’t resolve the timeline. I added that reminder to my notes in capital letters, then underlined it once. It was easy to get caught up in a promising lead and forget that a murder investigation depended on the evidence fitting together, not on one theory explaining everything.

By the time I left the courthouse, the afternoon had slipped away. I stopped for coffee on the drive home, more out of habit than a real need for caffeine, and opened my notes again while I waited. There were enough details to give Josiah something useful to investigate, but I didn’t want to send him a sprawling theory built on incomplete records. I needed to distinguish what I knew from what I suspected, and I wanted him to see the original document references for himself.