GOLDEN || S. REID

𝟾: 𝙲𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚌𝚎𝚗𝚝 𝙲𝚒𝚝𝚢, 𝙲𝙰

"So are you going to really tell me why you're going to Virginia or am I just going to have to default to Riley's theory that you're chasing down Dr. Reid?"

Eliza and Julia had taken the Sunday off from, well, everything in order to make a trip out to Thomas's beach house. Though, technically, it was Eliza's beach house now. For some reason, her dirtbag of an almost-husband kept most of his more personal financial records here.

"I'm one-hundred percent sure I'm not going to Virginia to chase down Dr. Reid," Eliza rolled her eyes. "At this point, you and Riley are more obsessed with him than you think I am."

She opened the door toward the back of the house, flicking on the lights to reveal the walls lined with file cabinets as well as the copious amount of Playboy magazines Thomas had hoarded while he was alive. Eliza couldn't believe her eyes, picking up a booklet before dropping it back down on the pile, coughing as the dust blew upward into her face in a cloud. Not her smartest move, she'd admit.

"This room alone is like every thirteen-year-old boy's fantasy," Julia commented, tossing a different lewd magazine aside. The topic of Spencer Reid and Virginia had been dropped for now. "I mean, I don't think I've seen an actual financial statement since the first drawer... If the rest of the house is like this then we should just burn it."

"God, I hope there's not more. More than half of this stuff is disturbing as is." Eliza heaved a stack of magazines to the side. She tried not to pay too much attention to the contents but with everything just laid out and bare, it was hard not seeing that her would-have-been husband was into heavy BDSM.

The box meant for financial records barely had anything in them, the two girls only having found two decently thick statements regarding old abandoned warehouses as well as plans to transform them into fabric export buildings. If Eliza showed up to Virginia with virtually nothing, she'd be rendered useless and once again, all the blame would fall upon her. She needed to find something incriminating, something that would pin the crime to her dead fiance and only her dead fiance.

Eliza had started on the left side of the room while Julia steadily worked her way down the right. In the center of the room were more magazines on a foldable table, film canisters strewn messily across the stacks they were settled on. She couldn't find a camera so she just assumed it was more porn. She figured that she really didn't want to know and scooped as many as she could into her hands, dumping them into an empty cabinet nearby.

"Oh, I think I've found something," Julia called out, hand reaching toward the back of the cabinet. She yanked out a bound leather notebook, stumbling back only slightly as it came loose. She showed the front over to Eliza, the golden initials TSA in the corner glinting off the fluorescent lighting.

Thomas Stanley Abernathy, Eliza thought, abandoning her cabinetful of film canisters. Julia handed her the journal without another word, going back to rifling through the rest of the metal cabinets.

Eliza undid the leather rope, letting the soft material dangle from her fingers as she thumbed the book open. The very first page had Thomas's contact information, his full name listed as well as the address to this very beach house. From what she could tell, it was a normal jurnal that detailed his life. Nothing really stood out to her, but then again, she didn't exactly pay attention to the words written. Some key dates she noted were Christmas, also known as the twin's birthday and her own birthday, though that was a common date as well.

She tied the journal back up, deeming it as useless. Still, she threw it in the box. Maybe she'd find a reason to sit down and read through it at a later time. Julia closed another cabinet shut, exhaling heavily as she found nothing but even more pornography.