Fahrenheit 501 by Diane Vallere

Author:Diane Vallere [Vallere, Diane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Cozy Mystery
ISBN: 9781954579262
Google: X90xEAAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 58273766
Publisher: Author
Published: 2021-10-25T13:00:00+00:00

* * *

Forty-five minutes later, Detective Madden and his team were back at the castle. I called him after getting sick, and he confirmed that the names from the yearbooks were murder victims. Two of them, from 1955 and 1966, had died similarly, but their deaths hadn’t been connected to the jean jackings in Philadelphia until now.

After blowing his mind with my discovery in the yearbooks, Madden told me to wait for him to arrive. Dante kept himself out of the investigation by leaving on foot. Since a lack of vehicle would have raised questions about how I’d gotten there, I couldn’t offer him the use of my car.

The study had been dusted for fingerprints once, and the thorough cleaning job had eradicated anything the police might have missed. Madden seemed undaunted by the newly organized room. He led me to the clubroom while two uniformed officers collected the evidence in the study. We sat in leather wingback chairs, and I gave him my narrative account of finding the yearbooks.

“They were out of order,” I said. “The dates on the spines weren’t chronological. That’s what caught my eye. The other times I was in the study I was focused on all the jeans in there, but today, I looked at the books. I found the missing photos, and when I called my contact at the paper to see if there was anything unusual about the names, he told me all but one were murder victims.”

“Did he tell you anything else?”

“I’m pretty sure at that point, I knew more than him.”

“Did you tell him anything else?”

“No. I called you. How does this relate to the boys who were abducted in Philadelphia? Are these men—were these men—found in their underwear too?”

“We don’t know. Cell phone and traffic camera technology don’t date back to the earliest of those crimes. There’s a fifty-year gap between the last two yearbooks—”

“But the presence of that yearbook says these crimes were done by the same person. You’re investigating that angle, right?”

“We’re not ruling anything out.”

“I don’t want to sound like I’m trying to do your job, but don’t the missing photos indicate premeditation? Like the victims were chosen ahead of time?”

“We don’t know if the photos were cut out before or after the murders.”

That slowed my gyrating mind. “If they were cut out after the murders, then that would mean…” My voice trailed off. I tipped my head away from Madden and tried to conjure up a plausible scenario for that. “The killer commits a murder of a somewhat random nature, and then takes the victim’s jeans, and then goes out and finds a yearbook with the victim’s picture in it and cuts it out? That seems more than crazy.”

“It does.”

One of the uniformed officers who’d arrived with Madden stood in the doorway. “We found something else,” he said.

Madden stood, and I followed. The officers led us back to the study. A black and white employee directory from an international bank sat on top of the desk. Madden glanced at the officer, who nodded, and then he flipped it open.

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