Paper Crafts Club Mystery Box Set Book 1-3

by Emily Selby

Jack glanced at her over his shoulder. A smile danced on his face. 'You most certainly are.'

  Katie welcomed the warmer hint in his voice. 'Sunnyvale is not normally like this.'

  'I would have never guessed.' He gave a sharp laugh. 'Coffee will be ready soon,' he said and looked at her in a way that made her heart flutter. Her cheeks flushed, and in a surge of panic she turned her face away from him. No way was she letting her feelings get in the way of this conversation!

  Katie cleared her throat and feigned a cough until she regained full control of herself. 'When do you think my flat will be available?' she asked as casually as she could. 'I miss my daughter.'

  'Likely tomorrow. Where is Julia? She's not with you in Sunnyvale?'

  He remembered her daughter's name! She glanced at him and hesitated for a second. Maybe it was time to signal her relationship status?

  'She's at her grandma's and with my ex-husband. He's a policeman in York.'

  Jack raised his eyebrows. His blue eyes twinkled behind the glasses.

  'Good to hear she's safe. You'd be worried sick if she was here.'

  'Of course. Like any parent. Do you have children?'

  It was too much of an opportunity to miss and Katie grabbed it.

  'No. I don't.' He paused and looked away. 'My ex-partner told me that apparently ambitious police officers weren't the best husband and father material.'

  Katie chewed on her cheek. She carefully considered her response. To be honest, she agreed with the statement, but then, Chris was a great dad. On the other hand, maybe "ambitious" was the key word here?

  'I don't like to generalise,' she said slowly. 'I can certainly confirm how difficult it is to fit shift work into family life. But I think policemen, being heroes, can be great dads, particularly for boys.'

  Jack smiled. 'My dad has always been great. He was my personal hero when I was growing up. His skills in handling troubled teens came handy when I was going through a difficult patch or two.'

  The neat and cool-headed Jack Heaton being a troubled kid? That was interesting. Katie arched an eyebrow. 'You were a troubled teen?'

  Jack laughed. 'Hard to believe, huh? I went through a period of truancy. I did a bit of silly drinking and misbehaving at school when I bothered to turn up. But my dad's biggest worry was when I was actually at home, on my computer. I was playing hacker.'

  'Hacker? Did you-'

  'I did some silly things like breaking into the school's IT system. My dad got angry and had a talk with me. He didn't preach, but he showed me that modern governments and various unsavoury people had access to means beyond my comprehension and could do really scary stuff. We talked about potential consequences. And he left me to decide which side of the law I wanted to be on.'

  His eyes glinted. Katie felt a little pang in her heart, or maybe it was her stomach–a butterfly climbing out of its cocoon? It made her feel a little fuzzy. She’d always had a soft spot for smart, independent boys who could figure out things for themselves.

  'You were a smart kid back then?'

  'Yeah, a bit too smarty pants, I'd say.' He laughed, and it made her knees turn cotton-candy again. She gave herself an imaginary elbow nudge.

  'What made you join the police service?'

  'Cybercrime. Around that time, I became interested in cybercrime. I took a degree in computer sciences and then dad and a couple of his friends talked me into shifting to law enforcement.'

  'We don't get much cybercrime here in Sunnyvale. We are more and old-fashioned murder type of town.'

  'Seems that way, certainly.'

  They laughed.

  'I was on a cybercrime team for a few years, and I still intend to go back to it. I'm normally based in the Midlands, but my dad is going through a cancer treatment and my mum has gone to spend some time with my brother and his family in Japan. They're due to have a second baby soon. I asked for a temporary transfer up here. So here I am.'

  So here he was. Charming and incredibly annoying at the same time. Katie clasped her hands and held them tight against her stomach. It seemed more butterflies were trying to hatch.

  'I'm sorry about your dad. I hope he gets well soon.'

  'The treatment is going okay so far. It's finishing soon. I invited him to stay with me in Manchester. We could have transferred his treatment, but he didn't want to go. His medical team is amazing, and he loves his house and garden. I think the gardening has helped him through the worst of it.'

  Butterfly life cycle under control, Katie grabbed at a neutral topic. 'My grandmother was the same. She would spend hours in the garden tending to the vegetables and flowers. Even when she was very sick with arthritis then with bronchitis. She would always be out in the garden.'

  A moment of silence followed. With the topic turning towards family matters, Katie wasn't sure how to bring it back to what she wanted to talk about: Sofia's strange behaviour the previous night, or–more importantly–the progress of the murder investigations. Katie braced herself, ready to ask about unlawful entries and the like.

  Jack's phone rang, and he answered it. Obviously, he had a job to do, and so did Katie. She retreated to her office and turned on her computer.

  The flashing icon of a new email caught her eye. It was the public contact address, used for general enquiries, and sometimes silly pranks, nothing serious and not used very often. But Katie's job was to sift through the messages and pass on anything that required police attention. Zac Greenberg's name flashed in the subject line before the icon disappeared. She opened Outlook to check it.

  "Zac Greenberg - murder" the subject line read. The sender’s name was Bart Barrington.

  She gasped and rushed to the door.

  Jack was still on the phone. She waved him to draw his attention. He nodded and finished the conversation promptly.

  'You need to see this,' she called.

  He followed her into her office. She ushered him to the computer and stood behind him, looking over his shoulder, tension building in the back of her neck.

  'I assume you have a good antivirus program installed?' he asked, hovering the mouse over the email.

  'As usual,' she replied, stifling the joke growing in her mouth. It wasn't the time for jokes.

  He opened the email but there was no text, only two attached jpeg files. Katie held her breath.

  'Photos, interesting,' Jack muttered and clicked on the files. She watched as the photos loaded line-by-line.

  In the first one, two figures appeared on the brown-grey background of a winter forest. One of them was tall and slim, dressed in jeans and what looked like a heavy-weather green jacket. The other one was short and stocky and wearing a dark raincoat. The taller man was standing with his back to the camera, his hands around the shorter man's neck.

  The second photo showed the same tall man leaning over the body of the shorter one.

  'I see,' Jack muttered again. 'Here's the date and time,' he added, scrolling to the bottom of the screen. 'Twenty-ninth of September. 10.30 am.'

  'The time of murder, you think?'

  'May well be. It fits with the forensic evidence. Very handy.'

  'What do you mean?' Katie ventured a question.

  'Someone made an effort to take those photos with the time stamp. Obviously, to use as a piece of evidence.'

  'Against who?'

  'Good question, 'Jack replied, staring at the screen. He clicked to enlarge the part of the photo with the heads and contemplated it in silence for a while.

  Katie strained her eyes, but she didn't recognise either of the people in the photo. The person doing the strangling had shoulder-length dark brown hair tied in a ponytail, and a slim build. It could have been a man or a tall woman. The other's man face was red, with bulging eyes.

  'Do you recognise either of these people,' Katie asked. 'I've no idea who they could be.'

  'The guy who is being strangled is almost certainly the guy you found in the stream.'

  Katie flinched at the memory. 'I didn't get to see him.
He was in a bag,' she said gratefully.

  'Yeah. I recognised him by his clothes and his build.'

  'Okay, so this is not Zac's murder. Why does the email subject line says it is?' Katie was confused.

  'Well spotted.' Jack nodded and closed the photo to look at the email again. 'If you look at it, it actually reads "Zac Greenberg - murder",' he pointed. Katie's cheeks flushed. She saw what she wanted to see?

  'So, what's Zac's name doing here?' she asked quickly to cover her embarrassment.

  Jack clicked on the first photo again and pointed the mouse to the brown-haired person. 'We'll have the image analysed but to my eyes, this is Zac Greenberg. I think he's murdering the other chap. We've identified him as Ash Stanley'

  Jack clicked to print the photos.

  Katie considered the weight of what she had just seen and heard.

  'I'm struggling to make sense of it,' she said slowly. 'Isn't this email from Bart Barrington? The person who supposedly wanted to find the Japanese puzzle box? Or rather someone who pretended to be Barrington?'

  'That's right. We suspect that it was actually Ash Stanley who pretended to be Bart Barrington. The real Dr Barrington recognised him. '

  She shook her head repeatedly in hope this could help drive away the confusion.

  'Let me get it straight. Zac murdered Stanley, but someone watched it happen and took photos. And then sent them to the police from the murdered guy's false email account? That's just crazy!'

  'Agreed. We need more evidence to make it clearer, but this is what I suspect had happened.'

  'But why would anyone send these photos?'

  'Normally, this would incriminate Zac Greenberg, but since he's already dead, it's a bit strange.'

  Katie blinked. A sudden thought crossed her mind. 'Hang on a sec. Normally, this sort of thing would be used to blackmail people, but the potential blackmail victim, Zac, is dead. So, what's the purpose of this email? To confuse us? Because otherwise, the only thing I can come up with is that the person taking photos is Zac's murderer. But that means either there was a fourth person involved, who is now trying to tell us about the guy taking the photos. Or Zac's murderer is a half-wit who snitched on himself.'

  Jack turned around and looked at her. His blue eyes glinted again. 'Interesting hypotheses.'

  'Do you have another one?'

  'I prefer to have more data on which to base my hypothesis,' he answered. Katie cringed. She kept forgetting about the logical side to him. No hunches, evidence only. A hot wave crept on her cheeks under his inspecting gaze. Oh, the embarrassment!

  'Hey, look–there is another email,' she called out, relieved to see a way to break the uncomfortable silence.

  An incoming message flashed on the screen. Jack switched to Inbox view.

  'Another one from our ghost,' he commented. 'And another photo. Let's check the IP this message was sent from before looking at the photo, shall we?'

  She didn't mind, of course.

  'So?' she asked after a few more clicks that revealed a long string of numbers and letters.

  'It's a local IP address. I was just about to give Dr Barrington a ring, but he's probably busy in his clinic anyway. As suspected, someone’s using the victim’s mobile phone to send us those lovely pictures. Let's see what's in this one. Close your eyes in case of any gruesome pics,' he told Katie. She duly did.

  After a couple of clicks and a few seconds waiting, which Katie assumed were the picture loading, Jack groaned.

  'That doesn't make any sense at all,' he said.

  'Can I look?'

  'Yep. Nothing scary here. Just a photo of a phone.'

  Katie opened her eyes. The image on the screen was indeed an image of a mobile phone. There was some text on the phone. Jack clicked to enlarge it. They both leant closer, their heads nearly touching. Katie felt his warmth on her cheek and the musky smell of his aftershave. She forced herself to focus on the text.

  'There’s... something,' he read slowly with difficulty. 'Hard to read, fancy hand-writing. Is this the sort of thing you do with your dip pens?'

  Katie froze and gulped. 'It depends,' she said pushing away the imagined image of her dip pen sticking out of Zac's neck. 'I think it's a fancy print rather than hand-writing. But I can't read the title either. It looks like an old legal document. There are some names there. Look!' She pointed to the place on the screen.

  Jack enlarged the photo.

  'I'm glad we print everything these days,' he said. 'It looks like an agreement between someone whose name I can't quite decipher and an old friend of ours, Harold Bower. The other name begins with an M or N. Or maybe it's an A. It's a very bad picture. It might be a photo of a photo,' he said and shrank the image again. 'We can enhance the image. We could also check with Harold or Michael Bower. They may have a copy of it. What's the address on the document?'

  'S– something Drive,' he continued reading.

  'I think it's number one, Stream Drive,' Katie said, feeling her cheeks burning again. This time it was excitement. Or maybe curiosity.

  'Do you know the place?'

  'Stream Drive is the road running along the stream. Where I found the second body.'

  'How far is the house from where you found the body?'

  'Number 1 must be the house just around the corner from Dunbar place. It's been empty, abandoned for ages.'

  'Who's the current owner?'

  Katie shrugged. 'Apparently, it's complicated. But I'm sure someone in town would know, if you’re open to listening to'–Katie couldn't help inserting a tiny sting into her comment—'gossip and hunches, with little logical evidence. Why is this agreement now being sent to us?'

  Jack pressed his lips together. His eyebrows shot up. 'I may need to,' he said, his voice clipped. 'Was there any problem with the house?'

  'No idea, apart from my own surprise that the Bowers haven't bought and bulldozed it yet. It's a lovely plot.'

  'Harold Bower's name is on the document and Michael is a key suspect in Zac's murder now. Interesting...' Jack exhaled loudly rubbing his clean-shaven chin. 'Interesting,' he repeated after a while and clicked on the picture to return it to its normal size.

  Katie started at the photo. She could see the dark brown, rounded line of the phone case lying on the table. It reminded her of something. The screen crack in the top left corner also looked familiar.

  Katie cleared her throat. 'That’s Michael's phone.'

  Jack glanced at her. 'Are you certain?'

  Katie reached to the screen. Her hand brushed on his arm and it sent a subtle tingling all over her body. She forced herself to focus again. 'The wooden case, and the crack in the top corner. Get him to show you. He's quite fond of his phone case.'

  Jack rubbed his chin again. He watched her for a few seconds carefully. Then he nodded.

  'Michael Bower. So, it runs deeper than just planting the vials. Someone clearly has a bone to pick with our Michael.'

  'Why?'

  'I'm not sure. There seems to be a lot more that I can see. Layer upon layer. Obviously, some old stuff.' He tapped his finger on the screen. 'Zac killed Ash Stanley. What was Ash doing there? He's known in this area, pardon-me, was known, as someone who operated in the grey zone. Not entirely illegal, but not legal either. There were suspicions he was involved in the counterfeited goods trade. He's definitely had connections for that, his family has been in the business so to speak. This might have been one of their deals. That would make sense.' Jack paused his monologue and nodded.

  'And they're trying to frame Michael?'

  'Maybe. Or maybe not. We need to check those old documents. I'll ask the Bowers if they have the original document. What confuses me more, is that this email was definitely sent from Sunnyvale. I’m guessing a public space. Maybe a free Wi-Fi hotspot in the local cafe, your local library or wherever you have people accessing the Internet.'

  'The community centre?' Katie said, a sudden thought flashing through her mind.

  'For example. I'm sur
e this is a very clever criminal, trying to direct the attention to anyone and everyone in this town.'

  Katie tucked the annoying loose strand of her hair behind the ear and began twirling it. This was interesting turn of events. The criminal using public Internet access points...

  'Jack, something’s been bothering me since last night.'

  Jack looked at her, his eyebrows raised. He nodded. Katie took it as an encouragement to speak. She told him about Sofia entering the crafts room without the key.

  Jack listened with his eyebrows still raised. 'Was the door locked? Do you normally lock it?' he asked when she finished.

  'Yes, we lock it. But I think Miriam, our president was supposed to do it after the last meeting. Normally, she's pretty good with locking up after us, but she's been a bit distracted lately - some family problems. If you like, I'll ask her.' Katie said nervously pinching the hem of her cardigan.

  Jack's gaze followed her hands. He watched her. Being aware he was watching her tugging at the cardigan, made her do it more. She hated herself for it. She hated herself for not checking her facts with Miriam last night.

  'Why don't you give her a call now?'

  'Good idea!' Katie said, hesitated. 'But it wouldn't make much difference to the situation. If the door had been left open, anybody could have walked to use the club’s computer or the Wi-Fi.'

  Jack looked at her with a glimmer of what, admiration?

  'Good thinking, Watson,' he said, smiling.

  Lord, he had a cute smile.

  'I was thinking more about the safety of the equipment you keep in the room,' Jack continued. 'But as you rightly pointed out, either scenario doesn't make much difference to the murder investigation. It just means that anybody could have used it. Is your Wi-Fi hotspot the only one in the building?'

  'We have our own network, and there are a few more in the building. There is even a free Wi-Fi hotspot in the reception area. We can also use a laptop during the sessions. It’s specifically for our club.'

  'Is your network password protected?'

  'Yes. We restrict the password to our members, which means we keep the note with it in the room. Although we do change it every few months. The free spot in the reception is sort of password protected, but it's on the notice board. There are still people who don't have the Internet access at home and they come to the community centre to send emails and browse for jobs and things. The centre also runs IT classes for seniors.'