Maggie handed the envelope with Brian’s name on it to Hannah, saying, “I can’t look.”
Hannah reported, “It’s him and Phyllis, and can I just say, whoa, I know he’s your brother, but I can see why he was so popular.”
Maggie swatted her friend with a folder, saying, “I could have lived quite happily not knowing that.”
There were several photos of Knox’s wife, Anne Marie, obviously wasted and posing in what she must have thought were provocative ways.
“She looks better with clothes on,” Hannah said. “I know I’m skinny, but she’s scary skinny. You think those boobs are fake?”
“She’s in a coma right now,” Maggie reminded her. “Have some compassion.”
“You’re right. Sorry, Anne Marie,” Hannah said to the ceiling. “I hope you get better soon, so you can get back to whorin’ and snortin’.”
Maggie said, not for the first time, “We are both going straight to hell.”
“Well, if we do I bet it will look a lot like this room,” Hannah said, gesturing around her, “This is the creepiest place I’ve ever been in.”
After they had seen all the photos they could stand Maggie put the envelopes aside. The first folder she looked in held a sheaf of letters to “G” from “S.” Written on lined notebook paper with a blue ballpoint pen, Maggie thought it looked like it was written by an adolescent hand. She didn’t read the letters, but closed the folder and put them aside, intending to examine them more closely later on.
In the next folder was a stack of completed and notarized AKC registration forms with matching medical records representing several different litters of purebred dogs which Maggie now knew didn't exist. Drew's signature did not appear on any of the documentation, but his predecessor's did.
“That’s a relief,” Hannah said. “I really didn’t want to start over with a new vet.”
The next folder revealed documents for a loan made to Brian Fitzpatrick from Eldridge Financial Corporation, Inc. It listed as collateral his home and life insurance policies on both his children and his wife Ava. There were also copies of those policies. On the date the loan was made, baby Timmy
was two months old. The amount of the loan and usurious interest rate made Maggie sick at her stomach. A receipt was attached showing the balance had been paid in full, on a date soon after Brian had disappeared. Maggie wondered why Brian needed so much money and how he was able to pay it back so quickly.
There was a file on Knox Rodefeffer that contained a lot of newspaper clippings about some incident that happened when he was in college. Maggie also put that aside to examine later.
One file had transcripts of what looked like phone conversations along with tapes, and one had pages and pages of e-mail correspondence print outs between “hotnwild69” and “jailbt4u.” Maggie quickly put those aside as well.
“Why did we think we needed to look at everything?” she asked Hannah. “I feel kind of sick now.”
“You made me do it,” Hannah said. “That’s my story.”
“What should we do now?” Maggie asked. “We can’t just leave it here, and we can’t give it to Scott. It would be inadmissible I think, because of how we found it.”
“If any of this stuff got out, it would hurt a lot of people,” Hannah said.
Maggie chewed her lip while she thought a minute, and then made a decision.
“Okay, we take Ava’s pictures for sure, and Brian’s stuff, the letters, and the file on Knox. I sure don’t want Doris Machalvie to see Doc’s pictures. Anybody you want to protect?”
Hannah chose Ed’s father. “He was really good to Sam when he came home from the war,” she said. “I don’t want Ed to ever see these.”
“What about the fire chief?” Maggie asked.
“Well, now we now know why he blamed your wiring when Theo burned your house down,” Hannah said. “He was being blackmailed.”
“That explains it,” Maggie said. “These photos would devastate his wife. We’ll take them too.”
Hannah frowned.
“Doesn’t it feel like we’re playing God here?” Hannah said. “Maybe we should burn all of it.”
“Technically speaking, this is all evidence,” Maggie said. “We shouldn’t be tampering with any of it. One of these people might have killed Theo.”
“So we can take the dead ones for sure, because we know they didn’t do it,” Hannah reasoned. “That covers Ed’s dad and Chief Estep. Unless Ed killed Theo because of what he had on his dad.”
“I think it’s more likely Ed would expose Theo for being a blackmailer. That seems more his style. I never thought for one moment Ed killed Theo.”
“Oh, me neither,” Hannah said. “I’m wondering what the police would think. He’s already a suspect, and this would give him one more motive if they could prove he knew about it.”
“The cops always think the worst,” Maggie said, “of everybody.”
“Not Scott,” Hannah said.
Maggie shook her head, but
didn’t respond.
They sorted the files and envelopes into piles representing people they did or didn’t know, then dead people, and people they wanted to protect.
“I don’t care what happens to Brian, but this would kill my mother and father,” Maggie said, putting his envelope and file in the pile to take.
Hannah was still not completely convinced they were doing the right thing.
“But what if we’re questioned about taking this stuff?” she said, in kind of a whining voice.
“Why do you think I brought the gloves?” Maggie asked her, irritated. “This is no time to chicken out on me.”
Hannah just sat there.
“What?” Maggie asked her impatiently.
“I’m worried we’re going to get in trouble. This isn’t just about us protecting our friends and families from being embarrassed, this is dangerous. Somebody may have killed Theo over this stuff, and now we have access to it. I don’t want to get whacked on the head the next time my back is turned.”
“Okay, we take the stuff that may hurt the people we love, we leave everything else, and we immediately go to Scott and say, ‘Caroline told us about this room, blah blah blah.’ He’ll tell Tiny Crimefighter, and then the county will come and get everything else.”
Hannah looked dubious but she said, “Okay.”
They heard a noise. It was kind of a thump, which could have been snow sliding off the roof, or someone in the house. The hairs stood up on Maggie’s neck and Hannah’s face lost all its color.
“What was that?” Hannah whispered.
“I don’t know,” Maggie said. “Let’s get out of here.”
They put everything they weren’t taking with them back the way they found it, more or less, and gathered up everything they wanted to take. Maggie shut the safe but didn’t lock it.
“It will save them time,” she told Hannah, who looked ill.
They checked the room for anything they’d missed or left behind, turned out the lights, and descended the way they’d come, as quietly as they could, listening for more sounds but hearing nothing.
They wheeled the ladder out of the closet back to the library and then put all the boxes of Eldridge Point merchandise back in. Hannah found a grocery bag in the kitchen in which to carry the evidence they were taking with them.
There was another thump, and it sounded like it came from upstairs.
“There’s someone in the house,” Hannah whispered.
“Maybe it’s Willy Neff.”
“Maybe it’s the murderer.”
“Don’t say that!”
“Hurry.”
They quickly put their coats and boots back on and pulled their yellow gloves off, replacing them with woolen ones. Maggie felt paranoid but resisted the urge to go back and check their trail through the house. She used the entryway rug to wipe up the water from the snow that had come in with them, locked the front door behind them, put the key back up behind the lantern, and ducked back under the police tape. Hannah took their bag of blackmail to the truck.
Even though they wanted nothing more than to get as far away from the lodge as possible, Hannah quickly let the dogs out and fed them. Maggie stood in the driveway between the truck and the barn, watching for anyone who might leave the house, but saw no one. After putting the dogs back in their kennels, Hannah and Maggie ran to the truck, got in, and quickly locked the doors.
Once they were back on Pine Mountain Road, Maggie remembered to tell Hannah Caroline said she should go ahead and find homes for the dogs if she could. Hannah just shrugged. Maggie could tell her friend was worried, and when Hannah was worried, she got quiet. Neither said more than a few words to the other all the way down the mountain. The weather got worse as they descended. Hannah was an excellent driver, and had a lot of experience driving on bad roads, as Maggie had, but it was still a scary descent.
Once in town, Hannah pulled in behind Maggie’s car in the alley behind the bookstore and waited for Maggie to get out.
“Are you mad at me?” Maggie asked.
“No, I’m scared,” Hannah said. “And you might as well know right now I’m telling Sam everything.”
“Okay, okay,” Maggie said defensively. “If Sam says we should do it differently we will. I will wait to hear from you before I destroy anything or call Scott.”
“Good,” Hannah said, and took a deep breath, letting it out with a whoosh. “Sam will know what we should do.”
She smiled at Maggie but still looked worried. Maggie took the grocery bag with her and waved to Hannah as she left, saying, “Be careful.”
Inside her bookstore Maggie saw there were no customers and her staff members weren’t doing any work. She checked the weather forecast, saw it was only going to get worse, so she sent everyone home and closed the store.
Alone in the place with the music turned off, Maggie could hear the wind howling outside, and suddenly the building felt too empty. She was still mad at Scott, so she called her brother Patrick and asked him to come over, saying she had something she urgently needed to show him. She was relieved when he arrived, even though he immediately helped himself to half the case of baked goods, piling everything up on a tray along with an extra-large hot chocolate. Maggie made him bring it all upstairs to her kitchen after she carefully locked up the deposit and set the alarm.
“Why are you so freaked out?” he asked her as they went up the stairs.
“Wait and I’ll tell you.”
Patrick followed her down the long hallway of her apartment and sat on a kitchen chair with his tray of goodies in front of him on the table. Maggie sat the grocery bag of blackmail evidence on the table and put the kettle on while she told him about Caroline’s call, and what she and Hannah had done.
Patrick pulled everything out of the bag and looked through it while Maggie made tea and talked. When she got to the part about the photographs of Ava on the wall, and he looked at the photographs, he got really quiet. Maggie showed him the loan documents and explained how Brian used life insurance on his newborn son, wife, daughter, and home, as collateral on a loan. Patrick stayed silent, but Maggie could see him clench and unclench his jaw.
When he saw the phot
os of Brian and Phyllis he shook his head, saying, “Good ole Phyllis.”
When he looked at the letters he said, “That’s Sean’s handwriting,” immediately, and Maggie realized that’s why it had looked so familiar.
“So ‘G’ must stand for Gwyneth,” Maggie said, and they both curled their lips and said, “Ew.”
“I don’t want to read them,” Patrick said, putting them aside. “And you shouldn’t either.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“Yeah, right.”
“No wonder he spent every summer up there with them,” Maggie said. “He was always nice to Gwyneth while we all hated her, but I never thought it was anything more than that.”
“Sean always was a weird duck,” Patrick said. “I never saw him have a date in high school.”
“He must have been pining for Gwyneth the whole time.”
Patrick looked thoughtful for a moment and then shrugged, saying, “That’s one explanation.”
He sat the folder on Knox aside, saying he didn’t care about that idiot. He also didn’t want to see the photos of Doc, Ed’s father, or the fire chief.
“Burn it all,” he said. “They’re worse than dirty, they’re dangerous.”
Maggie told him Hannah was going to ask Sam what they should do.
“Why should Sam decide?” Patrick demanded. “This is about our family, not his.”
Maggie agreed, but said, “It won’t hurt to listen to his opinion, even if we do ignore it afterward.”
Patrick agreed Ava should see the loan papers, but their mother and father should not.
“And we burn the pictures of Brian and Phyllis,” Maggie said, and Patrick shrugged.
“It would only
prove something she already knows.”
“What about all of Ava’s pictures?” Maggie asked.
Patrick was studying the photograph taken through Ava’s bedroom window.
“Patrick,” Maggie prompted. “I asked you a question.”
“Let’s give her back the ones he obviously stole, like her baby pictures,” Patrick said, “and burn the cut up ones and the ones he took without her knowing. They’ll freak her out.”