through on Sundays when I was a kid, daydreaming about a better life. I looked up at the enormous home. Lillian had been right; it had the look of a place that hadn’t seen visitors in a very long time. The paint peeled. The moss-covered shingles on the roof looked weary. And while the grass had been mowed and the beds weeded, the garden didn’t appear to be loved the way the neighboring yards did. I stared at the empty driveway and looked at my watch. Five minutes early. I sat on the stoop, waiting for Lillian to arrive. My heart fluttered thinking about how I might be one step closer to understanding why Daniel Ray had disappeared.
Moments later, a gray Volvo sedan barreled into the driveway; a woman with bobbed white hair sat behind the wheel. She stepped out of the car and greeted me with a warm smile. “You must be Claire.”
“Yes,” I said, walking toward her with an outstretched hand. “Thank you so much for meeting me here. I hope it wasn’t an inconvenience.”
“Not at all, dear,” she said, staring up at the old house, then exhaling deeply. “My, I have missed this place.”
“You raised your family here?”
“I did,” she said. “Two sons.”
“When did you and your husband move out?”
She paused for a moment. “My first husband died,” she said. “Some time ago. I remarried last year.” She sighed, looking up at the house. “I haven’t been able to bring him here. Of course, I want to share it with him, as I want to share everything with him, but I worry that I may need to keep this place to myself.” She shook her head. “Too many memories.”
“I can understand that,” I said.
“Well,” Lillian said, “listen to me blabbering. You’ve come to look for information, and I’d like to help you find it. My father had the most interesting career. He was a partner in the largest law firm in Seattle—Sharpe, Sanford, and O’Keefe—but he always had time for the little guy. He took on cases even when he knew he wouldn’t get paid for them. He was a good man.” She walked to the front door of the house, inserting a key into the lock. “Here we are, home sweet home.” Her voice echoed against the lonely walls.
I followed her inside, brushing a cobweb from the doorway. The hardwood floors creaked beneath my feet. Everywhere furniture was covered in white fabric. “It must have been a wonderful home to raise a family in,” I said, imagining the sound of little boys’ laughter in the air.
“Yes,” Lillian said, reminiscing. “We had so much happiness here.” She pointed to a hallway ahead. “My father’s records are down this way. He was fastidious about his files. Kept copies of every document relating to each case he ever took on. Few attorneys bothered with such documentation back then, but my father cared about details. Besides, there had been too many strange incidents with the police department. Corruption, Father believed.” She nodded. “He always kept records in case anyone tried to falsify a document.”
She stopped in front of a room at the east end of the house. I watched as she began to turn the door handle, pushing against it with her frail arm, but it stuck. “That’s strange,” she said. “It’s almost as if something’s blocking the opening.”
“Let me try.” I reached for the handle and gave the door a solid shove. Whatever lay behind it was heavy, but I pushed hard until the offending object budged, opening up enough space for Lillian and me to squeeze through.
Lillian gasped. “My God. What’s happened in here?”
Glass lay on the floor in jagged shards. “Be careful,” I said, pointing to a sharp piece right in front of her feet. A window had been broken; it didn’t have the look of an accident. On the floor lay dozens of overturned boxes, spilling out reams of paperwork and files.
Lillian raised her hand to her mouth. “Who would do this?”
I held out my arm to steady her. “Someone who wanted information your father had.”
She shook her head in disbelief. “All these years, the house has never been tampered with, not once, and now this?”
I knelt down, pushing some of the papers, ankle deep, aside. I picked up a page, holding it up to Lillian. “The State vs. Edward Ainsburg.” I sighed. “Talk about looking for a needle in a haystack.”
I attempted to sort through the paperwork before rising to my feet again. “Whoever was