Thursday
Ginny inserted the thumb drive with Professor Craig’s files on it into her computer and opened the menu, scanning the images (vacation pics), the financial files (no obvious clue there), and audio files (classical music). The specialized family tree files, while fascinating in their own right, were just lists of who begat whom. The e-mail files held more promise. She read through them, but found nothing that caught her attention.
Ginny sat back and stared at the screen. That was the point. Would she recognize evidence of murder if she saw it? He was the victim, so the only thing that was likely to be on his computer would be something to do with motive and that covered a lot of territory. Who stood to benefit from his death?
She flipped back over to Professor Craig’s files. Lots of clients, all with folders and subfolders. Would the date/time stamp help her? Was there any reason to believe the motive was recent? It was, technically, a poisoning. That meant not just pre-meditation, but careful thought and preparations. You don’t just grab a poison and dump it in someone’s coffee. Well, none of the best poisoners did, anyway. The perp would have to get his (her?) hands on the poison, covering her (his?) tracks carefully so the trail would not lead directly back to him. Who had access to that virus?
She grunted in exasperation and turned back to the motive. Ginny was able to eliminate more than half of the entries based on a summary Professor Craig included at the top of each folder. Happy clients didn’t commit murder.
Of the unhappy (or unspecified) clients, Ginny eliminated anything over five years old on the grounds that no one bent on homicide would wait so long.
That left forty-two client files, one of which was Hal’s. She left that one for later.
An hour (and one incipient headache) later, Ginny had found the following:
In addition, there were two threats of legal action; Samuel Adams and a person styling himself the Earl of Morton, demanding Professor Craig cease and desist from using that title though, as far as she knew, Professor Craig had never introduced himself to anyone as the Earl of Morton.
Ginny wasn’t surprised to find acrimony among genealogists. They were, after all, human. But none of the conflicts seemed important enough to kill someone over.
On the other hand, buried in the middle of the Work category were two names she recognized.
In a folder labeled Elaine Larson, Ginny discovered an increasingly heated correspondence, revealing Professor Craig’s plans to fire Elaine. Ginny knew how devastating losing that job would have been to a single mother. For Elaine Larson, this death was fortuitous indeed.
The second folder had to do with Fiona Campbell. Donald Craig had applied for membership to the Texian Scottish Society. He had explained his interest and his connection, hoping to be allowed access to private files in the keeping of the Society. The reason given for denying him was that the percentage of his blood that could be proved to be pure Scots was insufficient to meet the Society’s criteria. The decision had been appealed and the deciding vote was cast by Fiona Campbell. Her words were both rude and caustic.
Ginny felt the blood flaming her cheeks. That woman had done the same thing to her, only on the grounds that Ginny hadn’t been born in Scotland. Her blood was pure enough, but her timing was off. Apparently, Scottish Society membership was a matter of whim, with the power to give or withhold in the hands of a few people who clearly had personal agendas and weren’t afraid to use them.
She took several deep breaths. Had it been the other way around, Professor Craig murdering Fiona Campbell, Ginny could have understood it, but this didn’t help at all. It was merely evidence of the vile, petty, vicious nature of the woman who was now head of the local genealogy society.
She closed Professor Craig’s files and found herself staring at the Suspects List.
She refused to believe Mark Craig had flown to Dallas, killed his uncle, and flown back to Tennessee, and where could he have gotten his hands on that virus? She would consider him a viable suspect only as a last resort.
But that left a lot of other possibilities.
There were too many people with motives. Hundreds, maybe, that she didn’t even know about. Professor Craig had a talent for making enemies. She should concentrate on means and opportunity. That meant she needed to talk to Jim. Which she did not want to do.
She closed the rest of the files, pulled the flash drive out of the port, then went to get ready for her date. She hoped Hal was in a good mood because she certainly was not.
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