Detected virus in email - suggest delete - now all emails are gone!

Question for y’all. Appreciate any help. Computer at home has avast on it. Got home from work and found “warning message - virus detected on email from my email address.” Odd things: my wife did not get on my email from that computer and email was from Feb. 11 from travelocity to confirm flights. Not knowing any better, I hit “delete email.” This morning I lost all but 5/6 emails in my inbox. Everything before yesterday is gone. Verizon (my webmail folks) say it is an avast issue. Any thoughts, suggestions, or ideas what happened? Thanks so much.