The day was half over, and the notes scattered all across the kitchen table weren’t telling Ronnie anything she didn’t know. Any number of people could be in on the conspiracy, but they either wouldn’t know any more than Adam Monroe or would lie to her face. Ronnie didn’t have time to interrogate every grocer, janitor, and granny in town if George Fabel was already in the process of burying the truth for good.
Two generations ago, Kristian Larson and several others put a bunch of money into Earnest to pull it back from the edge of becoming a ghost town. By the time the steel mill and railway station closed down, Earnest was successful enough to survive without them. Town Hall was so grateful that they renamed the town after Larson; Mister Larson himself moved into a new manor outside of town and lived there until his death.
But somewhere in that timeline was Keith Graham, a painter who had worked out of a studio on Main Street. He had been, by all accounts, a very close friend of Kristian Larson, but he’d done something so terrible it would make everyone who saved the town look bad if it got out. Now, a later generation was in a frenzy trying to keep the secret.
What friend would do something that awful? How did a painter get so threatening that his entire existence had to be erased? Why give up so quickly on “setting history straight”?
Had they bribed him? Threatened him?
The other unspoken possibility dangled over Ronnie’s head like a butcher knife.
Michelle McKinney knew something, but she’d disappeared with George Fabel. Where could they have gone? There was nowhere in town they could hide without risking discovery, especially if Missus McKinney was supposed to be on a spa retreat. But they’d hid the paintings and letters in town, so they weren’t willing to let the evidence too far out of their sight, and if they were looking for the lost “gold” of Larson, they couldn’t have gone far.
Kristian Larson had owned a home just outside of town; they might be there. The only person who could point Ronnie in that direction fast enough was Elizabeth Fabel. Leaving her notes where they were, Ronnie ran out the front door and grabbed her bike.
Missus Fabel was the only person in the store when Ronnie arrived. How did this place stay open? Who was buying the flowers? When the old lady saw that it was Ronnie who’d entered, she scowled.
“The house where your father lived,” Ronnie spurted out. “Where is it? I think that’s where they’re hiding.”
Elizabeth Fabel rolled her eyes. “More of this? Young lady, I have half a mind to call your parents and scold them for letting you off the leash? In my day, children would never bother their elders over this kind of nonsense.”
“I need to know. They’re going to destroy the evidence.”
“My older brothers renovated and sold my father’s house to a nice family from New York many years ago. It broke my heart to see it go, but there’s nothing in there for adventurous children.”
“Not in the house? What about the old studio? The painter had a studio somewhere around here?”
Missus Fabel tutted. “I don’t know who is feeding you this information, but this whole block has been renovated multiple times since those days.” She gestured around. “Not a splotch of paint left anywhere. What could you possibly hope to find by ransacking my shop?”
Comprehension dawned on Ronnie. “They gave it to you to keep a close eye on it. And that’s why your son is so paranoid about the security footage.”
“Excuse me? What on Earth are you going on about? What is your mother’s phone number? I’m going to give her an earful about…”
What was Ronnie missing? She wracked her brain while Missus Fabel picked up an old corded phone and continued to admonish her. If not the shed and not the studio and not the manor home, then that only left…
“The steel mill.”
“Young lady, do not interrupt me when I’m– Where do you think you’re going!?”
Ronnie didn’t need directions. Nolan had seen the abandoned steel mill hundreds of times during car rides into and out of town. She grabbed her bike and took off.
It might have already been too late, but she had to try.
She could feel the seconds pressing down on her as she weaved through other people on the sidewalk. It took fifteen minutes just to get to the edge of town where the sidewalk ended. From there, she had no choice but to ride on the road, a completely new experience. Ronnie knew how much people hated bikes on the road; her parents (Nolan’s parents?) could complain for hours every time they saw one. But Ronnie had a good reason, so it was different for her.
Before long, she was huffing. Sweat ran down her face. The hills weren’t too bad, but there were so many of them. It took forever for her to even see the tall spires of the abandoned building in the distance. She pushed herself even harder even though her legs hurt.
A hundred or so years later, she wobbled up to the fence surrounding the building. Kneeling down beneath a “Condemned: Do Not Enter” sign, Ronnie peered through the rusty chain links to scan for signs of life. No lights were on, as far as she could tell from this distance, and there were no cars in the old lot, but the place was big enough that it wouldn’t be hard to hide a car.
Ronnie glanced up at the sign, her stomach in knots. Even from here, the building looked unsafe and dangerous. It was boarded up because teenagers sometimes snuck in to do underage drinking. A few years ago, one of them got cut and needed a tetanus shot; it was all over the news for a couple of days.
She turned away from the building and leaned up against the fence, which rustled under her weight. Her whole body was trembling. If the truth was in there, she had to go in, but if she got hurt while she was inside, nobody would ever know where to find her. Ronnie needed some time to catch her breath.
A car passed by and a strange glimmer in the woods across the street caught Ronie’s attention. Fear grabbed her heart. A camera!? Someone was spying on her! She held perfectly still, but the strange glare didn’t move. When she turned her head a smidge, the twinkle shifted. Ronnie glanced briefly back at the steelworks behind her before stepping closer to the street for a better look.
There were no other cars coming, so Ronnie left the sidewalk and ran across the road to the bank on the other side. Through the trees was an old, dilapidated house. Next to the house was a familiar car hidden partially under a blue plastic tarp. Ronnie walked up gingerly, doing her best not to kick up leaves, and knelt down to check the license plate. Bingo.
But what was Michelle McKinney doing here instead of at the steel mill?
Taking off her shoes to be even more quiet, Ronnie walked up to a nearby window and peaked inside. It was hard to know for sure through the curtains, but she couldn’t see any movement inside. The next window showed a different empty room. The one after that: movement and muffled talking inside. Ronnie knelt down and held her ear up to a hole in the glass.
“I keep telling you that we’re not going to figure it out,” Michelle McKinney was saying. “The police already know that something is going on. It’s only a matter of time before someone finds us here.”
“Nobody is going to check this house,” the man replied. “Nobody even remembers that my grandfather owned a home near the mill. Besides, I’ve almost got it.”
“No, you don’t. Admit that this was all a waste of time so we can burn the journal and forget about it.”
“If it were your family, you’d understand, Michelle.”
Ronnie chanced a look inside. The two were standing by an old safe covered in scuff marks. George Fabel – local attorney – was standing knelt over a table with an open book and flipping through pages so furiously that they were starting to rip.
Kneeling down, Ronnie considered her options. Was there a payphone nearby she could use to call the police? She hadn’t brought any quarters with her. Kicking down the door to confront them could only end badly; it was two on one, and she was a thirteen-year-old girl. Riding all the way back to town in order to alert someone would give the crooks plenty of time to finish their mission and flee into rural South Carolina.
Getting them out of there would let her grab the journal and figure out what the big deal was. Crawling on her hands and knees, Ronnie picked up a small rock and inched away from the building. She drew her arm back and hurled it as hard as she could toward a small metal shed a short distance from the building. The resulting bang echoes through the woods like a shotgun blast.
Ronnie quickly ducked back beneath the window to listen to the whispered bickering inside. Missus McKinney was saying that they had to go, but Mister Fabel insisted that it was just an animal. The alderwoman grew frantic and started collecting her things before George Fabel said, “I’ll check it out, then. Stay here and lock the back door.”
There was some rustling, then footsteps, and finally a closing door. Michelle McKinney sighed very loudly. After a moment, Ronnie heard the woman walk away, and she glanced up to confirm that the room was empty. The journal was gone from the table, but there was a bag lying where it had been.
Ronnie placed her hands on the window and pushed up. It was unlocked but stubborn from years of abandonment. She was only able to get it halfway open. That would have to do. No time to spare.
Heaving herself up and over the windowsill, Ronnie squeezed into the room. There was a gentle thump from her socks whens he hit the ground. She only had moments to execute her plan, but she was inside.
you dont use a blowtorch if there are things you dont want to burn inside
What a cliffhanger!