Now the trick was to obscure all the photos she was actually going to use so Denny wouldn’t put two and two together. The whole town knew of the conspiracy theory surrounding the Rage family and the supposed threats from the Munleys and Dowells to wipe the Rages off the face of the earth. But how could she hide all the other photos she was going to get from Denny?
“Denny, how do you want me to do this? Pay you by the photo?”
“Heck, no. They’re not copyrighted; nobody owns them. We’re lucky my uncle scanned everything or you’d have to do that yourself from the old photos. You can get a thumb drive and copy all the photos you want from this batch. We sell them, too. Just use this—” he handed her a business card—“and say, ‘Courtesy of The Michael Pickens Photography Studio’ when you put your booklet together. That’s all you have to do. Of course, if you want negs or pics from recent years, that’s a different story,” he finished, grinning.
This was going to be so much easier than she thought, but now she’d just committed herself to one more project, and this new one promised to be a huge one. It also opened up a score of different opportunities, such as putting together histories or stories from the town’s past. Lots of items or booklets about the town’s history could be placed around the town in strategic places where everyone could see them on a walking tour and remember or learn about Raging Ford’s early days, the Freedom Tunnel, and that amazing iron ore mine.
And that gave Laura the idea about the Old Library out on the county road. What a great idea to renovate that Victorian-style building and make it a museum! It might even become a tourist attraction one day with folks from the county or kids on school field trips coming to see it. They could collect minimal entry charges to keep it going. Of course, it would initially take a lot of money and effort to get the Old Library cleaned up and polished, and she shoved that idea onto the shelf of future dreams in her mind to return to the task at hand: Finding out everything she could about the founders of Raging Ford.
•••
A new identity was coming. Change was always good, wasn’t it?
Such were the thoughts of one of the Raging Ford Bank and Trust Company employees on the way to work.
Boy, was there a feeling today of walking on air with so much energy! That new drug really worked! Feel like taking on the world! So what if it was more expensive? There were always more ways of getting money for it. Besides, there was still a big pool to dip from.
Not a care in sight. No pain, no worries, no bad thoughts.
Everything was going great! This was better than oxy! Oxy just took the pain away but never put you on top of the world. Sometimes it gave you nausea and made you dizzy. Not this one! Wow. And took no time at all to get going!
Wondering what drug it was that gave such a great feeling, the bank employee arrived at work and got right down to business. Smiled at everyone, and everyone smiled back. What a sunny day! They all looked happy, which was another good thing. Easier to feel happy in a sea of happy. Then you didn’t have to feel sorry for anyone who wasn’t as happy as you were. But then, who really cared, anyway?
Logged into the computer. Didn’t remember parking the car or where the car was parked, but no problem. The lot was small.
There were things that needed to be done today, but the pile of work seemed of no consequence. It was more fun to log into everyone else’s logins in the background and watch what they were doing. Oops! Almost hit the wrong key, but no worries! Here we go again. Funny to see how many employees were pretending to work and really on social media half the time. Very funny. Say something about it? Nope. Too much fun just to watch.
At lunchtime, employees clocked out in shifts, but it made no difference. Apparently, the new pills eliminated hunger as irrelevant. Awesome to slim down like this, being so happy and all. Who cared about lunch, especially when you already felt so great?
•••
By mid afternoon, however, the pile of ignored work loomed and cast a shadow over the happy morning. Why should anyone have so much work and worry about it not getting done?
The storm clouds of work became a slight headache and the wrist pain returned. Then other joints and muscles developed aches and cramps. A hand ran up and down over the face that now felt achy and drawn. The morning had been so great. This was just like the past couple of days! What was wrong? Why did this keep happening? Can you get refunds for this stuff?
Why did everyone at work seem so grouchy? They all looked like they were frowning and cross. It hadn’t looked that way this morning. What were they talking about? Some story about Jessica? What about her? Wait—what? Her car was found in a park?
Did someone say something about a suicide note? Or was that just something in a dream? Didn’t feel like a dream anymore. Getting grouchy. Pile of work. Wrist hurting. Jessica Wright missing. Head hurting. Too bad about Jessica. But who cares?
Snapping at another employee was not the norm. People might notice. This didn’t happen on the other stuff. Better watch out.
Maybe one more pill? Perhaps the dose was wrong?
But the supply was getting low.
Better make another call but had to find the piece of paper with the number and definitely had to hide it from everyone.
One more pill. Now that’s it. But nobody could know.
Nobody.
•••
By the time Laura got home shortly after six-thirty, her stomach was growling.
Upstairs, she found the cat sitting on her father’s recliner staring at a blank television screen.
She ignored the cat but mildly wondered if Isabella was actually watching something that Laura couldn’t see, tossed her bag onto the couch and tugged open the refrigerator door. After finding a suitable leftover, she warmed it in the microwave and plopped down on the couch, her eyes bleary from staring at a computer screen for hours, trying to pick out every picture of every person she could find in the file who had lived in Raging Ford at some point in the town’s early days. She had filled one thumb drive and most of a second one. Before she could get any further in her thoughts about what was ahead of her, a familiar ding told her someone had sent a text message on her phone.
She reached for it and saw it was Connor.
I’m at your back door.
I’m too tired to climb the stairs again. You know the code. Come on upstairs.
A few minutes later, she heard him on the stairs and cursed the energy she heard in his steps. She rose to meet him at the same moment her warmed-up supper was done.
“Have you eaten yet?”
“No, but you don’t have to feed me. I’m on my way home. Why are you so tired?”
“My eyes are tired and bleary. Yesterday, I spent the entire day and evening working on tax returns. Today, I’ve been staring at old scanned photo files at the Pickens Studio most of the day. I’m not sure I even recognize you, except by your voice.”
“Find anything interesting?” he asked as he sat in a chair at the dining room table and looked around, spotting something on the couch that puzzled him. “Why did you dump your purse out?”
“Too much and I don’t really know how much. And what are you talking about?” She turned in the direction he was looking and saw the cat perched on the back of the couch, waving its tail behind the bag and its contents, now in a scattered heap across the very spot where she had been sitting a moment before until the microwave beeped and Connor texted his arrival.
“Oh, I guess I wasn’t looking where I dropped it,” she responded, turning away from him and throwing a glare at the cat. She noticed the two thumb drives were sitting on top of the purse.
“Don’t let me stop you from eating. I like catching you off-guard. You do look wiped. Sit down.”
She let him serve her and noticed the cat was still pawing at the thumb drives.
“You know,” she said, “I
may not know exactly what I picked up today in the studio’s old files, but I have a very strong feeling that I’ve found something of great significance.”
While she ate her leftover chicken breast, he stood behind her and rubbed her neck and shoulders. She stopped eating for a moment and groaned.
“I think I want to take you home with me,” she said.
“I am home with you, but we’d have more privacy if I took you home with me.”
“Sit down and talk to me about these pictures for a minute.”
“You’re changing the subject.”
“I know, but I may need your help with this.”
“You need a bigger screen than your laptop,” he commented, taking the chair next to her.
She looked surprised.
“You haven’t cornered the market on making deductions.”
“You’ve been hanging around me too long.”
“Not nearly enough,” he returned, kissed her on the forehead while she took another bite of chicken, chewed and swallowed it.
“Know anybody who has a really big screen I could hook my laptop up to and look at these old photos on? Some of them are old and faded. I’ll need all the help I can get.”
“I think Max or Nicky could help find you one to borrow.”
She grinned her thanks.
“You have the best and most useful friends.”
“Well, they owe me a little, let’s just say.”
Laura looked the question.
“No.”
“Is it an open case?”
He narrowed his eyes at her, playfully tugged at her honey-colored tresses, green sparkles and all.
“It’s above your pay grade.”
“Then I’m sending you home, Sergeant.”
“Good. I don’t like the looks of all the chicken in your teeth anyway. Reminds me too much of the green teeth. I’ll pick you up after work tomorrow and we’ll go out to dinner, shall we?”
“That’s a yes if it’s another date and you can swing it.”
“I think I can. Oh, did you catch Charlie’s story about your shop?”
“You mean when he took pictures of you and the kids last Saturday?”
She made him wait while she pulled open her laptop and went to the website for the Raging Ford Bulletin.
The front page headlined the coming St. Patrick’s Day celebration, Second Treasures and Sergeant Connor Fitzpatrick stooping to have his “leprechaun” picture taken with the children in the shop. The story was about neighborhood bonding and the second picture, in color, showed an array of grinning children around him, all with green wax teeth.
twenty
Paul Dotson was very upset about Jessica Wright. She had been a friend, a nice lady, and they had spent a lot of time together at the trivia conventions. Away from their jobs at the bank, they were both carefree and had fun. Why did it have to end? And like this? He had a bad feeling about all of this and was now convinced she might be dead. She had discovered too much, tried to fix it all, and someone had found out. She had also likely run out of money.
She had become a liability.
Paul Dotson was also afraid.
He was good at figuring things out and maybe he could figure out what happened to her and maybe then the police could investigate and discover who had framed and harassed her. Her name should be cleared. He’d like to get his cleared, as well, but right now it seemed more important to get Jessica’s good name back.
The newspaper accounts of finding her car were all vague, as if they weren’t sure what had happened. No mention was made of a suicide note. He hoped it was because the police suspected that she didn’t kill herself and there was more involved besides just not finding a body. They obviously couldn’t tell the public everything. Sometimes they even didn’t tell the press that they were treating something as a suspicious death. They had leads to follow and probably knew more about what happened than Paul did, at this point.
He certainly hoped so.
Until the time he felt it was safe, Paul would have to lie low, keep his disguise, and pay cash for everything. He had left his car off a highway in North Dakota, hoping someone would find and report it. Hopefully, it would buy him some time. Then he bought a bus ticket and came back to Minnesota because he had to see this thing through. It wasn’t right that he should abandon Jessica. He couldn’t do that.
And he also realized he was probably a suspect in her disappearance. He had seen Jessica’s logins and digital fingerprints on the accounts and left so he wouldn’t have to deal with it. To find out she was set up had been a horrible discovery. He wished so hard now that he hadn’t left in the first place. Maybe she’d still be here to laugh and joke with him. Maybe.
Now, with Jessica certainly dead, he was likely very high on their list of persons of interest. At least that’s what they called it on TV.
A person of interest.
What would his parents have thought of that, if they had still been alive?
After grabbing a quick lunch at a fast food place on the outskirts of Eagle Junction, where he had grown up, he took off, with his backpack, out to a rural, wooded area he knew well and where he had pitched his pup tent before and rolled up and stored it under a fallen tree during the day. No lights at night to draw anyone’s attention and nothing to see in daylight.
As he sat in the cool darkness of a March night in the woods in Minnesota, he thought about what he needed to do to help fix this mess.
twenty-one
After Connor left, Laura turned toward the cat, still perched on the back of the couch.
“So you think I’ve got something hot here, huh? Do you realize how upset I’ll be if that does not turn out to be true? I will have given up a promising evening with Connor, and at the very least, the best neck and shoulder massage I’ve had in years.”
But by the time she picked up the two thumb drives filled with photographs from the old days in Raging Ford, she looked about for the cat and saw it nowhere.
“Okay, where are you, Isabella? Which one do I look through first? Hey, where did you go?”
Figuring the cat was no longer interested, Laura sat down at her laptop, plugged in one of the thumb drives, blinked her eyes a bunch of times and started going through the photos.
The first ones were of her mother in high school which she had made a point of capturing, at least as long as Denny Eldridge was still wandering in her area. Besides, she’d never seen that many pictures of her mother. The photos had been boxed up and stored in her Great-aunt Rose’s house in a spot that was neither too humid, dry, hot, or cold. She’d been afraid to take them out lest she damage them.
After Rose died from cancer, she had opened the special container once, pulled out a few and saw that they were mostly photos she’d seen before, so she put them all back. As it was beginning to look more and more like she was definitely going to stay in Raging Ford, maybe she’d plan a trip to Maryland in early summer, spend a few days with her friend Kayla who rented her aunt’s house, and arrange for some of the furniture and mementos, such as the photos, to be packed and shipped to Raging Ford via PODS.
To cover her real project, she would need sufficient family photos to work on in her apartment. She could put some on display either in a shadow box or a scrapbook, tapping yet another market for her thrift shop: crafting lessons.
As Laura scrolled deeper and deeper through the photos, she would stop, zoom in, see if she could recognize any features in the person, and if not, move on. Photo after photo, row after row, column after column. Some JPGs had actual people’s names as the filenames, many did not. She scrolled to the bottom of the list…4,752 photos. Yikes. She sure wanted to finish this up, though. She went back to her last spot and kept going.
It was hard with some of them, as the pictures were very dated and old-fashioned and the men wore
a lot more facial hair than the semi-scruffy looks of today. The big mustaches and some beards obscured a lot of the features, making it difficult to identify anything distinctive that might have been passed down to the townsfolk of today.
Laura didn’t miss the Rage family members, though. There was even a picture of a distant relative of hers, a granddaughter of Samuel Rage, who had gone to the Old Library one day and was never seen again. Laura sat back and remembered the tale her mother had told her of Lorelei Rage. In fact, Laura and her friends used to sneak into the Old Library through a back staircase from a tunnel running under the county road to a set of steps on the other side that opened inside a shed. The small hut was right next to the busy fish and tackle shop that still sold worms and dry ice and repaired fishing poles for a decent price. The tunnel was the only way into the library once it was closed and padlocked after the New Library was built. When the shop closed around twilight, nobody saw the kids sneaking into the shed.
They had gone there one too many times and thought they had actually seen Lorelei’s ghost. Ian had led the group screaming and running back down the stairs and through the tunnel to the other side of the road and none of them had gone back again.
She looked at Lorelei’s photo. What a pretty girl she had been. Laura had her hair but not her other features. Lorelei must have taken after her mother. She had dark eyes and thick eyelashes framed by the honey-colored hair pulled back in thick braids. Such a tragedy that they never found out what happened to her. Maybe this research would help prove that Lorelei was another victim of the conspiracy against the Rages.
She marked the photo number on a tablet to print later and continued on her way through all the pictures, most of which would not help her unless she could see them on a bigger screen than her laptop.
It was well past nine o’clock when her iPhone dinged and she saw a text from Connor.
Knew you’d be up. Tomorrow at 7 pm sharp. Be ready. Don’t stay up too late. C
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