Free Picture Them Dead by Brynn Bonner

something else. I hoped to get back to Morningside in time to go out to Cottonwood to talk with Lottie Walker again. She might be a little on the ornery side, but I had a feeling she was the key to finding out who the occupant of that glass casket was. I wanted to go without Esme, but I didn’t want to have to explain to her why I didn’t want her along, which was because she had no patience whatsoever with difficult people. Today was my chance, since she’d be tutoring kids at her church all afternoon. Kids were the exception to Esme’s irritability. She had all the patience in the world when it came to the wee ones.
    I’d spent two hours the previous evening poring over the copies of the records Esme and I had brought from the courthouse and the copy of the deed River had brought over yesterday afternoon. I hadn’t found anything useful for identifying the Forgotten Man, but I now knew quite a bit about the Harper family’s history in America.
    Whoever Lottie Walker was, it was unlikely that she was the natural child of Oren and Sadie Harper, but clearly she had some sort of relationship to them. Why else would they have left her everything they had in this world? My single goal for this afternoon was to find out what Lottie Walker’s birth name was. That would put me on a new trail. Anything else I found out I’d count as a bonus.
    *   *   *
    I managed to snag a prime spot in the parking deck right next to Terminal A and hustled inside so I’d be there to greet Dee. I joined the crowd at the bottom of the escalator and milled around, vying for a spot where I could see the top of the platform.
    I spotted Dee’s blond hair, styled in a new pixie cut, and called out to her as she descended. I’m not normally a big emoter, but Dee brings out the kid in me, and we were both squealing and hugging like teenage girls at a boy-band concert.
    â€œIs that your only bag?” I asked, eyeing her compact carry-on.
    â€œYep, this is it,” she said.
    â€œOnly you could pack enough for two weeks into that tiny bag,” I said.
    â€œI pack like the engineer I’ll soon be,” Dee said. “Everything has at least two functions and I can buy things here if need be. It’ll still be cheaper than paying to check a bag.”
    Dee had an undergraduate degree in economics and had worked a short stint in New York as a financial analyst before deciding she was on the wrong career path. She’d found she was more interested in her brother’s profession than her own. Brody was an architect, and the more he talked about his work, the more Dee became unsatisfied with hers. So she’d quit her job and gone to Chicago to get a degree in architectural engineering. She and Brody had plans to open a firm together in North Carolina once she graduated.
    â€œWe have our Genealogy Club meeting tonight,” I told her once we were in the car. “You’ll have to come. We’ve put together a really cool scrapbook for Marydale and Winston. It’s beautiful, if I do say so myself. Lots of exotic papers, and I did all the calligraphy for it. All modesty aside, I do have a beautiful hand.”
    â€œYou do,” Dee said, “all modesty way aside, but is it supposed to be a surprise? How did you get all the stuff without Mother knowing? She knows the inventory in that shop like it’s hardwired into her brain.”
    â€œRoxie ordered it all for me,” I said, “off the books.”
    Dee’s cousin Roxie came over from Chapel Hill every Thursday to keep the shop so Marydale could have a weekday off. She was a sweet gal, but a bit of a scatterbrain. When Marydale announced she was getting married Roxie had been floored and blurted out, “But you’re old,” before her brain could stop her tongue. She was never going to live it down.
    â€œOh, Roxie,” Dee said. “Bless her heart. Yeah, I’d love to come to