I paused for just a second to gain my composure and then thumbed down through the pile to the eighteenth. I pulled it out. It wasn’t front page news. The story that had grabbed the headline was the arrival of several federal agents who had been newly assigned to the missing girl cases. I looked closer at the faded yellow photo. Two men in severe black suits were shaking hands with another man. I glanced down at the picture caption. The other man in the picture was Mayor Landon Gregory. On closer inspection, it was easy to see that it was, indeed, Everly’s uncle.

I flipped through the pages and saw no mention of a death on Phantom Curve. Then it occurred to me that the paper had probably been printed in the early hours of the eighteenth. I needed the nineteenth. I reached back inside and grabbed the next paper. It was the twentieth. There was a short mention of the clean-up of charred debris from the truck, but there had to be more. I looked through the entire stack. The nineteenth was the only paper missing.

I could hear Alice singing along with the radio and decided she wasn’t too busy with customers for a quick question. She had her elbow on the counter as she perused a magazine. She looked up. “I don’t know where my manners are. Would you like some coffee while you look through the papers? Just be careful not to spill.”

“I’m fine, thanks. I had breakfast before Everly and I walked over here.” I walked to the counter. “Alice, I was looking for a specific newspaper, and it’s not where it should be. Is there someplace else—”

“No, dear, you must have just missed it. Every paper is in place. Let’s go look.” She glanced back at me as I followed her down the narrow corridor. “You certainly are a pretty little thing. And that complexion. You should rub coconut oil into your skin every night. You’ll be glad when you’re my age.” She chuckled as she stepped into the newspaper room. “Now, let’s see where that paper is.”

I led her to the box on the table. “I was looking specifically for the paper from August 19th, 1999.”

She leaned into the box and flipped through each paper reciting the dates as she went through the stack. “August 18th, August 20th.” She paused and went back through and then to the bottom. She straightened and looked genuinely puzzled and a little upset about the missing paper. She glanced around the room as if the paper might just have flown from the box unseen.

“When you showed me the boxes, you said something about the 1990’s being popular today. Maybe there was someone else in here before me?” I suggested.

“Yes, but—but my nephew knows better than to remove anything from my collection.”

“Was your nephew looking in this decade too?”

“He must have been. The box was sticking out. The one I pushed back.” She looked down at the front of the box. “Yes, it was 1999.”

I lifted the box top to show her the fresh handprint.

“Well, look at that. I’ll have to call him later and give him a piece of my mind.”

“Do you think it’s possible for me to get a hold of him and ask if I could see the paper?” There were thousands of papers surrounding us, and the one paper I needed to see had left the room for the first time in sixteen years. It couldn’t just be a coincidence. I’d found my first real clue.

Alice didn’t have to mull over my request. “No, dear, I don’t think that’s a good idea. I’ll give him a call later and tell him to bring it back. Check back here next week. Was there anything else you wanted to see?” she asked with an edge of disappointment. It seemed she was hoping I’d spend more time looking at her vast collection.

“No, I just really needed to see that one. But thanks so much for letting me see your papers. It’s wonderful how you’ve managed to collect them all and keep them in such perfect order.” My compliment seemed to wipe away some of her disappointment. I helped her return the box to the shelf and followed her back to the front of the store.

I desperately wanted to know her nephew’s name and had to think fast. “Alice, I can save you the trouble of contacting your nephew. I work at the Bucktooth Sawmill. Maybe he works there?” I asked hopefully.

“Oh my, a pretty thing like you with all those dirty, smelly sawmill workers? That Hal Stevens, I always credited him with more manners than sense.”

I decided to ignore the usual conclusion jumping that I shouldn’t be working amongst a group of men and the automatic assumption that I had no true job skills. “Does he work there? I could just ask him.”

She waved her hand. “Gosh no, Hal would never let my nephew work there. Alcott is sort of the black sheep of the family. But his sons work at the mill.” She laughed. “They’re sort of the gray sheep, if there’s such a thing.”

“Alcott?” I asked, and steadied my hands in my pockets. Could there be two Alcotts, I wondered briefly.

“Alcott Wolfe. Jem and Dane are his sons.”

“I see.” My throat was suddenly dry, making it hard to talk. The coconut fragrance had started out pleasant, but it was closing in on me, and I was feeling as if I desperately needed fresh air. “Well, if you could find the paper, that’d be great. Thank you again.” I walked out onto the sidewalk and gulped in the cool, clear air. It was my first clue, and it was a doozy. Alcott Wolfe was somehow connected to my dad’s death.

Chapter 12

Jem

With Finn out on sick leave and only Hal’s nephew, Stan, a complete numbskull who only had a job at all because he was Hal’s nephew, to help out on the water, I was having a hard time getting the day’s work finished. Out on the pond, I could usually clear my mind of any of life’s crap that liked to follow me around, but this week, I’d been preoccupied with something that was irritating the shit out of me. Our newest office helper, the girl who’d been stuck in my head since the first moment I saw her in the granite ravine below Phantom Curve, had hardly looked my direction all week. And it wasn’t just an attempt to ignore me. It seemed, suddenly, that she flat out despised me. I was sure Everly had filled her head with all kinds of details about Jem Wolfe and now, Tashlyn had made her mind up that I was trash to be avoided. Or maybe I’d just been kidding myself and she’d hated me all along. There just wasn’t that much to like.

I’d left Stan in charge of gathering debris to send to the chipper, a job that didn’t need as much supervision, and I climbed off the logs to take a lunch break. There were only two hours left until the end of the work day, but there had been too much for me to do to take the break earlier. I preferred the later lunch. It meant everyone else was already back at the job, and the break room would be empty. Most of the time, I wasn’t in the mood to listen to everyone’s bullshit.

I headed across the yard toward the main building. Most workers were busy inside the mill. Steam from the machinery moistened the air with its sticky, harsh smell. A truck had carried in some massive, specially ordered eighty-foot logs, and the high-pitched screams of the saw in first cut to remove bark echoed off the surrounding peaks.

Tashlyn’s slim silhouette went past the front window. Stevens had her running circles to get the office organized. He seemed pretty damn pleased with himself for hiring her. Couldn’t blame the guy.

I walked in through the back door of the break room. Hadn’t really prepared myself to run into her, but there she was, standing in the light of the fridge and that unexplained glow that seemed to follow her around naturally. She was wearing worn and tattered cowboy boots over her tight jeans, and my eyes went straight to her perfectly sculpted ass.

She reached inside the fridge but hadn’t looked around to see who’d entered. I crossed the room. I wasn’t big on giving a lot of thought to shit. Especially when it was something that had been twisting me up inside, and her cold shoulder treatment had been doing just that. My mind was made up right then to talk to her, and there was no room to question my decision.