Deadly News by Jody Holford

Author:Jody Holford
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2018-06-28T22:34:53+00:00

Chapter 13

To avoid obsessing over what felt like an actual date with a guy who seemed as sweet as he was good-looking, Molly cleared her countertop and brought over the box she and Sam had taken from Vernon’s car. Carefully, she placed photos and newspaper articles on the smooth surface. Unfortunately for her, she could multitask, so thoughts of Sam and whether or not she should have agreed to dinner kept popping into her brain.

“Focus,” Molly said.

Tigger, thinking she was talking to him, yipped in agreement. She looked down at him. “You’re seconding the motion? Thanks, mister.”

He plopped his butt on the floor, waited a few seconds, then wandered over to grab one of his toys and nibble on it. “Some sidekick you are.”

There was a mix of items in the shoe-sized box. As she pulled it out of the backpack, the Post-it note Sam had grabbed from the car slipped. Grabbing it, she wondered if it had anything to do with the box. Knowing Vernon’s need to scribble his thoughts down, it could be nothing—just a scrap of paper he’d made a note on in his car. Macintosh…maybe he was looking for a new computer. Like her, he had a PC. Molly set it aside on the countertop and pulled the lid off of the box. There were several photographs of Vanessa as a teen—as Vernon had mentioned. She’d married into the Phillips family. Molly had already learned quite a bit about them.

The Phillips family was something of an institution in Britton Bay—which, aptly, had once been called Phillips Cove. In the early 1800s, while other men were settling in other areas along the Oregon coast, three brothers and their wives arrived in the small town just south of Astoria. From a wealthy family in London, the Phillips brothers decided that the small chunk of land overlooking the sea was a perfect spot to build the lives they wanted.

Molly picked up a faded and worn journal page and squinted to make out the words. One of the brothers’ wives was pregnant and all three of them had built homes beside each other. One of the brothers was working on a hotel, while another was building a saloon.

She was, quite literally, holding history in her hand. Setting the page down, she smiled as she picked up a grainy shot of two men outside of a building site, shovels in hand, smiling. There were a few letters between Vanessa and her husband, Charleston, but there were also fading photographs of Charleston’s father and grandfather. Quite the mix. Like a bunch of drawers were cleaned out and shoved into one box. She wasn’t even sure how to sort her findings. Remembering what she read online helped her fill in some gaps.

In the late 1800s, trading was happening further down the coast between indigenous people and European settlers. With that came the arrival of more families to the swatch of land the brothers had claimed for their own. Over time, the Phillips broods grew along with the town’s population.

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