“What if the file wasn’t lost? What if it was stolen?”

The import of her question suddenly struck Jerry and he turned pale as he realized why Ashley was so upset. Jerry’s face crumpled.

“Once he found your file he had the names of everyone who knew that you were Casey’s daughter, including my father’s name.”

Ashley reached across the table and held Jerry’s hands. “He won’t get away with it. We’ll get him. He’ll pay. But we need proof. So, tell me, where did they store my file?”

Elite Storage owned a 186,000-square-foot warehouse in an industrial park in North Portland. Wide, metal overhead doors opened onto loading docks at set intervals around the building. Jerry and Ashley drove past several moving trucks parked at the loading bays. The office was located in the northeast corner of the warehouse. A balding, middle-aged man in a plaid shirt and khakis was doing paperwork when Ashley and Jerry walked in. A sign on his desk identified him as Raymond Wehrman.

“Help you?” he asked.

“I’m Jerry Philips, Mr. Wehrman. My dad was Ken Philips. You store our old law office files.”

“If you say so. We handle about seventy percent of the law offices in town.”

“I’m not surprised that the name doesn’t ring bells. My dad passed away and I’m a one-man outfit now. But you store Brucher, Platt and Heinecken’s files, don’t you?”

“Oh, yeah. That’s a big firm. I recognize that name.”

“This is Ashley Spencer. The Brucher firm handled her adoption twenty-four years ago. I’ve been representing her in a probate matter and we needed to see the file.” Jerry handed the man the document Judge Gish had signed ordering Miles’s attorney to hand over Ashley’s file. After Wehrman read the order he looked up. “Why are you here? Doesn’t the firm’s lawyer have to give you the file?”

“Yes, but he told us that the file is missing.”

“From our warehouse?”

“Yes. We were wondering if you could try to find it. It’s very important.”

“Even if it’s there, I can’t give it to you. I can only give it to a lawyer from the Brucher firm.”

“That’s okay,” Ashley said. “We just want to know if it’s here.”

The man checked his watch then looked at the piles of paper that covered his desk. He stood up.

“Let’s go see what I can find. I’ve been sitting behind this desk all day and I can use a break.”

Wehrman led Jerry and Ashley down endless rows of twelve-foot-high shelves illuminated by overhead fluorescent lighting until they arrived at the shelves rented by the Brucher firm. Wehrman pulled over a ladder and climbed up to the shelf that should have held the file with the record of Ashley’s adoption. After several minutes, he slid the ladder to another section. Finally, he gave up and climbed down.

“It’s not here,” Wehrman said.

“What does that mean?” Jerry asked.

He shrugged. “Any number of things. The file could still be at the law office. You know, they thought they sent it over but the problem happened at the firm. Or we could have misfiled it, which doesn’t happen much, but does happen every so often. Or someone could have checked it out and forgotten to return it.”

“If someone did take it out of the warehouse would there be a record?” Ashley asked.

“Yeah, we have everything on computer now, even the old stuff. Cost us a fortune.”

Back in his office, Wehrman typed in Brucher, Platt and Heinecken. Then he typed in the title of the file.

“Says here we received the file seven years ago.” He hit more keys. “That’s funny.”

“What is?” Ashley asked.

“The file was never checked out. It should still be here.”

“If I gave you a year and a name, could you find out if the person checked out a file in that year?”

“Sure. I’ll just run a search.”

Ashley told Wehrman the year Ken Philips, her father, Terri, and Tanya Jones were murdered and gave him a name. A short time later, Wehrman had her answer.

“Miles Van Meter checked out a file that year but it wasn’t yours.”

“I didn’t think it would be,” Ashley said.

Miles had been speaking for almost an hour when Jill Lane, the owner of Murder for Fun, came to the podium to rescue him.

“We have time for one or two more questions. Then Mr. Van Meter will sign your books.”

A middle-aged man in the front row raised his hand. Miles pointed at him.

“Mr. Van Meter, I went online and found the itinerary for your first Sleeping Beauty book tour. Did you know that there were unsolved murders like the Maxfield murders in two of the cities on your tour, Cleveland, Ohio, and Ames, Iowa?”

“No, I didn’t, but I spoke in twenty-six cities and it would be strange if there were no murders.”

“These were pretty similar, though. Do you think you were stalked by a copy cat?”

“I hope not.” Miles smiled and held up his hands in an attitude of prayer. “Please don’t make me feel like Jessica Fletcher on the old Murder, She Wrote TV show. Did you ever notice how a murder occurred every place she went? I always wondered why the cops didn’t suspect her of being a serial killer.”

The audience laughed and Miles grinned.

“We’ll take one more question,” Jill Lane said.

A woman stepped out from behind a stack of books in the rear of the store and raised her hand.

“Miles,” she said as she walked toward the speaker. Van Meter looked puzzled for a moment before breaking into a smile.

“I don’t believe this,” he told the audience. “We have a special guest, Ashley Spencer. Ashley, what in the world are you doing in Seattle?”

There had been a buzz in the audience when Ashley appeared. Some people recognized her from photographs in the book or from seeing her on television. As soon as Ashley’s identity was confirmed the crowd broke into applause.

Ashley stopped several rows from Miles and held up his book. “I finally read the copy of Sleeping Beauty you signed for me. It was really good.”

“That’s high praise, coming from you.”

“I did have a question,” Ashley said.

“Ask away.”

“You were very considerate of my feelings and never asked me what happened in my house on the evening my father and Tanya were killed.”

“I knew it would have been tough for you to go over that.”

“So you got all of your information about that night from the police reports and the court testimony?”

“Right. I think someone already asked me about that.”

Ashley opened her copy of Sleeping Beauty. “Here’s my question. In the first chapter, you wrote, ‘Ashley lay on her bed waiting to die. Then the door to the guest bedroom closed and Maxfield, dressed in black and wearing a ski mask and gloves, was standing in Ashley’s doorway. She believed that he had come to rape and murder her. Instead, after watching her for a few seconds, he whispered, “See you later,” and went downstairs. Moments later, Ashley heard the refrigerator door open.’ ”

Ashley closed the book and looked at Miles. “How did you know that the man who broke into my house said, ‘See you later,’ before he went downstairs?”

Miles shrugged. “I think it was in a police report or you might have testified about it.”

Ashley had been smiling. Now the smile disappeared and was replaced by a look of cold hatred.

“No, Miles. I never told anyone that the man who killed my father spoke to me before he went to the kitchen. I was so traumatized by the attack that I blocked it out. In fact, I didn’t remember that it had happened until I read your book for the first time, this week.”

Miles kept smiling. “Well, you must have told someone.”

“That’s what I thought at first-that I told somebody but had forgotten-so I read every police report that mentioned me and I read the transcripts of my preliminary hearing and my trial testimony. Then I talked to Delilah Wallace and Larry Birch. Neither one remembers me telling them that the killer spoke to me.”