anything.”
“It doesn’t cost a thing to have him check,” Zach said. “That was a good spot, Savannah.”
“It could be nothing.”
“Or it could mean everything. I’d hate to tell you how much of my time I’ve burned over the years looking for clues that weren’t there. This is part of the procedure. You keep digging into things, no matter how unrelated or impossible they might seem at times, and every now and then you hit pay dirt.”
“I don’t know how you do it,” I said.
Zach laughed. “Do you think I could make a puzzle?”
“Don’t sell yourself short.”
“Only if you promise not to do the same thing yourself. There’s real skill in what you do. You’ve got a mind that works in ways mine never could.”
I stifled a yawn. “I’m beat.”
“It’s just past five,” Zach said.
“The level of my exhaustion has nothing to do with the hands of a clock. I made up a puzzle this morning, and I’ve been working on this all afternoon. My brain’s fried.”
“Why don’t you go back to the hotel? I’ll be along later.”
“You could always come with me,” I suggested.
“Sorry, but I quit early yesterday. If I do it again, Davis is going to think I’ve gone soft on him. Go ahead. Take a long shower, order up some room service, and I’ll call you a little later.”
“I know I should argue with you, but I’m too tired. Don’t forget to call.”
I grabbed my things, and I was just about to leave when the door burst open. Steve looked excited as he showed us an envelope in his hand.
It appeared that I’d been right about something, at least.
We suddenly had another clue.
ZACH CAREFULLY REMOVED THE NOTE FROM ITS ENVElope, slid it into a clear plastic sleeve, copied both sides, and then handed the duplicates to me.
The note simply said, “
And that was all that was written on the front.
As I was turning to the copy of the back, Steve asked Zach, “How did you know it would be there?”
“Don’t give me any credit. It was all Savannah’s idea.”
Steve nodded. “That’s good police work.”
“It just made sense that something was missing,” I explained.
“Trust me, it’s a lot harder to see what’s not there than what is.”
I shrugged as I studied the copy in my hands.
There was no number or letter sequence there, and aside from a smudge or two, the paper was blank.
“It’s not from him.”
Zach looked surprised. “What are you talking about? It matches his handwriting perfectly.”
“But there’s no sequence on the back.”
Zach looked at my copy, and then retrieved the original. After a moment of silence, he said, “It’s there, but the copier missed it. The paper must have buckled.”
I took the offered plastic sleeve from him and flipped it over. I didn’t know if it was my imagination, but I could swear I felt an electric shock when I touched it. I had to look hard, but I finally found the missing entry, so softly written that it had been easy for the copier to miss.
I walked to the machine, set the darkness to its fullest setting, and then made another copy of the original.
Faint, but clearly there, I saw a letter and number sequence on the paper as if I’d willed it to be there.
5E.
It was our missing letter.
But I still didn’t know what it meant.
Chapter 10
“SAVANNAH, YOU’RE A HARD WOMAN TO TRACK DOWN.”
I’d gone back to my hotel, enjoyed a long and hot shower under those lustrous jets of water, and I was waiting on my room service order to arrive when my phone rang.
“Uncle Thomas, how are you?” My uncle, my mother’s little brother, was all the family I had left besides my husband and his clan. He lived in Hickory, about an hour and a half drive from Charlotte, and oddly enough, about the same distance from Parson’s Valley, the central point of two ends of a line.
