“Hey, no pessimism,” she said. “You were far more optimistic than I was at the beginning.”
“Until I realized what happened to Adele. My faith in people is nonexistent right now.”
“Her death is an apparent accident. Covering up an accidental death? That’s a crime, but it’s rarely prosecuted and often with minimal penalties. Candace? She was murdered because she wanted to tell the truth about what happened to Adele, and that’s because of you. Even if you didn’t know it, you brought Candace’s humanity to the surface, and she wanted to do the right thing. It’s easy to go along with the crowd, but we all have a conscience.”
She glanced over at Lucas. He still seemed disillusioned. “I think we should call Chrissy Swain. She knew Candace better than anyone.”
“She’s going to be heartbroken when she finds out what Candace did to Adele.”
“Maybe. But she also wants the truth.”
“Do we have to tell her now? She should know, but I don’t want to tell her. I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
“We don’t have evidence, and we don’t need to say anything until we do, but Chrissy will learn the truth.”
“Okay. Good. Just—let’s be careful here.”
Regan understood Lucas’s conflict. Sometimes, the truth wasn’t pretty. But it was real, and she had to show him it was better than keeping secrets.
Secrets got Candace killed.
They arrived at the library just after it opened. Lizzy wasn’t there, but Lucas texted her where they would be.
Regan closed the study-room door and Lucas called Chrissy. He put the phone on speaker.
When she answered, he said, “Hi, Chrissy, it’s Lucas Vega. I’m here with Regan Merritt, who’s been helping me with the podcast.”
“Lucas, hey. I just finished listening to the podcast from last night. You really are doing it. You’re going to find out what happened to my sister. Thank you so much.”
“We’re close,” he said. “But we need some help.”
“Anything.”
“A friend of Candace told us that she may have hidden her journal in the library, in a hollowed-out book.”
Chrissy said, “You think it’s still there, after three years?”
“Yes. If someone found it, they would have turned it in to the librarian, who would have turned it in to the police,” Regan said.
“Unless the person who killed her found it.”
“It’s possible but I think unlikely,” Regan said. “Lucas has received two threatening notes, and you know what happened to Taylor.”
“Was she killed, too?”
“That’s still being investigated. But I think if Candace’s killer found the journal, they wouldn’t care about the podcast. That journal is, potentially, the only evidence we have about what Candace was doing and might give us a motive for her death.”
“You’ve lost me.”
Regan couldn’t betray Alexa’s confidence, but she felt she should share part of what they’d learned with Candace’s sister. Lucas didn’t want to say anything, so Regan spoke vaguely of their theory. “We believe that Candace was aware of a crime and wrote in her journal about it. She wanted to go to the police, her friends didn’t, and that may have been the reason she was killed.”
“Oh, God, that…that would be awful. You think someone she knew killed her? Someone she trusted?”
“It’s possible. So if the journal is here, we need to find it,” Regan said.
“What do you need from me?” Chrissy asked.
“You knew Candace better than anyone. We need to make a list of her interests, favorite books, anything that we can use to narrow down our search. I’ll start,” Regan said. “My contact said that Candace was in the library researching gold mines in Payson. So books about Payson, Payson history, and gold mines should be on the list.”
“Right. Okay,” Chrissy said, “her favorite book in high school was To Kill a Mockingbird. She read it like a hundred times.”
Regan thought that book would be too small to hide a journal in, plus it could easily be checked out for a class or used in research. But she wrote it down. “What were some of her other favorite books?”
Chrissy gave them a list of popular YA fiction. “She was a nursing student, so anything related to that.”
Together, they brainstormed and came up with a detailed list of possible books Candace would have used to hide her journal.