be worth a few hundred. After that, he got Arnie to give him any papers he was going to toss and he’d go through them. We used to tease him about him and his slow dollar. We thought the only thing he’d found was baby pictures and old income tax returns. Nothing worth even putting in a flea market, much less on eBay.”
Dwight heard the “But” in her voice and saw the troubled look on her face.
“There was more?”
She nodded. “He was doing better than any of us ever realized. You gave us his wallet back Friday night, remember? Val was looking through it this morning. There was a little bankbook in the secret compartment. He opened a new account just last winter with a seventy-thousand deposit. We had no idea he had more than two or three thousand, okay? He must have found something really great in the books or papers and he never said a word to us, just sold it and hid the money. Like he was becoming a miser or something.”
“You don’t know what he found?”
“Whatever it was, he must’ve got it from Arnie and thought if he told, Arnie would want a cut. Like Arn’s ever gone back on his word once he’s made a deal.”
By now, Fish had finished unloading the back of the truck and had wandered over with a manila envelope. “Here’s more pictures Braz had from the new place,” he said.
“Mind if I take a look?” Dwight asked as they stepped back outside.
“Keep them,” she said. “He’d already looked through them. It’s just pictures of the woman in her night things.”
Dwight glanced inside and saw what were clearly amateur photos. Most were blurry and taken from such odd angles that her face wasn’t clear in any of them. He closed the envelope and tucked it in his jacket pocket to look at later, then went back to his car for latex gloves and an instant camera.
“Why bother?” asked Mrs. Ames as he snapped pictures of the hasp, the hammer, and the condition of the shed. “There was nothing in here worth stealing.”
“This your hammer?” asked Dwight as he lifted it by two fingers, being careful not to touch the handle.
“Naw,” said Fish before she could answer. “Arnie’s got all ours with him in the other truck.”
While Dwight was bagging the hammer, Fish stuck his head in the doorway, looked around, and said, “Hey! What happened to all them pictures for the haunted house?”
“What?” said Tally Ames. She took another look. “Didn’t Arnie put them in the other barn?”
Fish shook his head. “I stacked ‘em right back there. All those skeletons and ghosts and people on fire.”
“Now, who would steal junk like that?” Tally wondered.
“You’re sure it was junk?” asked Dwight.
“Believe me, I’m sure,” she said. “We’re not talking old masters or even old primitives on oil and canvas, okay? This looked like some kids had been given a lot of leftover house paint and some old pieces of plywood to paint Halloween decorations on. That’s it. There were about thirty-five of them, and Arnie and the boys were going to use them to decorate the outside of our haunted house. Braz thought it was all scrap lumber and old half-empty cans of paint when they opened up the locker and he put his flashlight on it. I think he got it for like thirty dollars and Arn gave him thirty-five for the lot since they’d be useful.”
The main part of the compound had been neatly mowed, but weeds were high around the side and Dwight soon saw where two vehicles of some sort had recently driven in there and turned around. Ragweed and goldenrods had been snapped off or crushed down and were barely wilted.
“Any of your people park there?” he asked.
Both Mrs. Ames and Fish shook their heads.
“Who knows you have this place?”
“All our own people have been out here moving equipment in and out,” she answered. “And some of the independents know about it. Braz told Skee, the guy runs the duck pond? His wife was like a grandmother to Braz. And Skee probably told the world if it sat still long enough.”
Dwight laid a ruler across the tire tracks and took careful pictures, but he knew he was just going through the motions. The tracks appeared to be the width of standard tires, the weeds hadn’t held any tread marks, and if there had been shoe prints in the dirt immediately in front of the wooden steps, their own shoes had obliterated them.
Bostrom’s Bigfoot U-Store was out on the bypass at the edge of Dobbs, and Bob Bostrom himself was standing in the doorway when Deputy Mayleen Richards got out of her patrol car. He was about her height, of slender build, with brown hair and brown eyes that were wary at first.
“Your feet don’t look very big to me,” she said in greeting.
The wary look disappeared and he laughed. “That was my dad. Size thirteen triple E. I got my momma’s feet, thank goodness. What can I do for you, Officer?”
When she explained and showed him the receipt he’d given Braz Hartley a couple of weeks ago, he led her into his small office and pulled out a file drawer. No computers here.
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Now I remember. Young black guy showed up here wanting his granddaddy’s stuff back.”
He described the man’s outrage in a vivid, almost word-for-word reenactment for her.
“He said, ‘Gibsonton, Florida? This white bastard trucked my granddaddy’s pictures to Florida? How you got the right to let him do that?’
“I told him, ‘The state of North Carolina gave me that right when your granddaddy let the rent run out on his locker and the certified letter I sent him came back.’
