“Did you look at it?” asked Josie.
“Not yet,” said Gretchen. “I’ll boot it up for you and you can take a look.”
“Okay,” said Noah. “We’ve got Eden possibly meeting with Thatcher Toland, definitely admitting to her best friend that she had watched at least one of his videos, and then going on some kind of trip to atone for her sins. Do we have any idea where she was headed?”
Gretchen handed Eden’s open laptop across the desks to Josie and went back to her notebook. “Her Mini Cooper was picked up on camera getting onto the Northeast Extension at Plymouth Meeting, right outside of Philadelphia. She got off on Exit 95.”
“She got onto Route 80, then,” Noah said.
Josie started by taking a brief look through the photos and documents stored on Eden’s laptop but found nothing of interest. She pulled up her internet browser next. A lot of people kept themselves signed in to email and social media accounts on their personal computers, but Eden had not done so. Josie went straight for the browser history.
“We have no idea,” said Gretchen. “If she was visiting any of her relatives, she’d likely take Route 80 to get there, but we don’t actually know if she ever made it onto Route 80. Philly PD did manage to get her on video stopping at the Wawa gas station and mini-market at that exit, right across from the entrance ramp to Route 80, but that’s it. She got coffee and a candy bar.”
“But that’s it?” asked Noah. “She disappeared after that until we found her at the dam?”
“Looks that way,” said Gretchen.
In the weeks before she left Philadelphia, Eden Watts had watched one hundred forty-two Thatcher Toland videos on YouTube. She had visited several online shopping sites, everything from Amazon to a site where you could purchase cat food and have it delivered to your home. She had searched for ‘how to make a Long Island iced tea’; ‘how to tell if your cat has allergies’; ‘what time does the Midnight City Rooftop Lounge open’; ‘best mascara that doesn’t run’; and a host of other mundane things that Josie would expect of a single, twenty-six-year-old cat owner. She had also browsed some real estate listings. The last item that Josie found in the browser history was the article about Nadine Fiore’s death. Eden had visited the link twenty-two times.
Josie turned the laptop around to show Noah and Gretchen. “Look at this. It seems like there is a very strong possibility that Eden was the one who sent Amber the article about their aunt’s murder.”
Noah and Gretchen leaned over their desks and took a quick glance. Settling back into their chairs, Gretchen said, “From the photos I saw of her apartment, it looks like she did have a printer. Plus, Lydia Norris believed if anyone sent it, it would have been Eden.”
Josie turned the laptop back toward her and went back to studying the real estate listings Eden had perused.
Noah asked Gretchen, “What about Eden’s phone?”
“I’ve got to write up a warrant for the records and to see where it last pinged. I’ll do that now, get it signed by a judge, and sent out, but we’re still looking at a few days to a week before we get anything from the carrier.”
One by one, Josie pulled up each listing that Eden had visited until she had over a dozen tabs open.
“We should get Lydia Norris’s phone records, too,” Noah pointed out. “Now that she’s been murdered.”
“On it,” said Gretchen.
Noah said, “I’ll write up a warrant to search her property in Danville, see if that turns anything up. These people were obviously up to something.”
“By the way,” said Gretchen. “Dr. Feist left a message. She’ll call us with the findings from Lydia Norris’s autopsy as soon as she has something. How about you two? What did you turn up yesterday?”
Noah recapped the day from Josie’s run-in with Thatcher Toland at Komorrah’s to what they’d found out from Amber’s neighbor about seeing a man fitting Thatcher Toland’s description speaking with Lydia Norris, as well as the meeting with Vivian Toland. “Thatcher hasn’t called yet, though,” he concluded.
Gretchen said, “If this is true—if it was him at Amber’s house—that means he was the last person to see Lydia Norris alive.”
Josie said, “I need Amber’s work tablet.”
Noah and Gretchen stared at her.
“Please,” she said. “Can you get me into it? Noah?”
“Sure,” he said. He fished the tablet from beneath some paperwork on his desk and turned it on. When he handed it to her, she placed it beside Eden’s laptop so she could compare the listings.
After a few minutes, she said, “Look at this. They both searched some of the same listings in almost the same time period.”
“What are you talking about?” asked Gretchen, standing and coming over so she could see the computer screens. Noah wheeled his chair closer so that he, too, could view the screens.
“Look at this. Amber searched for these properties in various parts of the state, all of them over a million dollars, a couple of weeks before she went missing. Right before that, before Eden took her mystery trip, she, too, searched for several of the same properties.”
“How many match up?” asked Noah.
Josie clicked back and forth across devices, trying to match them up. A couple of times, she accidentally closed tabs. Noah placed a hand on her forearm. “Let me do this. I’ll print them all out and match them up. You wanted to look into Russell Haven Dam, right?”
“Yes,” Josie said, relieved.
“You do that,” Noah told her. “I’ll take care of this. I already did some searches to see if any of these were connected to Nadine Fiore. I’ll make a list of the rest of them, and then I’ll start calling county clerk records’ offices and getting the actual records associated with them to see if there are any connections that aren’t immediately turning up.”
Gretchen said, “I’ve got a ton of reports to finish. Did you get anywhere with the numbers in Amber’s old diary?”
Josie shook her head. As Noah relieved her desk of the laptop and tablet, she found the diary and handed it to Gretchen. “I’m totally stumped, but if you want to give it a go, be my guest.”
“Paperwork it is, then,” said Gretchen, taking the diary. “Until Thatcher Toland calls.”
Noah grunted. “Don’t hold your breath.”
Thirty-Three