Page 40 of Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

I pulled out a shirt and looked at the tag. “It’s a size small, but it looks like a woman’s small, not a little girl’s small. Which means she could have been any age between ten up to adult.”

“The stuff on her walls makes it look like she was a little girl.”

“Maybe,” I conceded. “Maybe not. I don’t think girls grew up as fast when our parents were young.”

“I don’t know about that,” Dixie said. “Maybe they were just better at hiding it fromtheirparents.”

“Maybe…” I dropped the shirt into the open drawer.

“It’s definitely creepy,” Dixie said. “Maybe that’s why no one comes out here.”

“I don’t see anything personal other than the decor and the faded photos on the bed,” I said, picking up a few of the photos. They were so faded it was impossible to make anyone out. “No school papers. No yearbooks.”

“Yeah,” Dixie said with a frown. “That’s weird.”

I dropped to my knees and after I turned on the flashlight on my phone, I shined it under the metal frame of the bed with the photos.

“Anything under there?” Dixie asked.

“Nothing but cobwebs and dust bunnies,” I said, trying not to sneeze as I made a sweep with the flashlight. I got to my feet and lifted the mattress off the bed frame. Dust went flying and the mattress sagged. “Do you see anything?”

“No…wait! At the foot of the bed!”

I dropped the mattress and moved to the end of the bed, then lifted it again. The fabric of the box spring was in tatters, and it was apparent a piece of paper had been hidden inside it.

Dixie pulled it out and carefully unfolded it as I lowered the mattress.

“Anything useful?” I asked.

She glanced up, then handed it to me. “Maybe.”

I took the paper and pushed out a breath as I silently read the note.

L, meet me at the creek behind your barn at midnight.

T

“There’s no date,” I said. “This could have been written two days before she left town or two years.”

“Or it could have been Magnolia’s aunt’s note,” Dixie said. “This could have beenherbed.”

I picked up a few photos from the lavender bedspread. “True, but Lila Steele strikes me as a no-nonsense woman. It seems more likely this was her bed. We can ask Magnolia her thoughtson the matter, but I say we move forward with the presumption this was Lila’s note.”

“So we focus on finding out who T was. They would have been her friend,” Dixie said.

“Maybe, maybe not. It could have been an enemy trying to patch things up, for all we know.”

“So if we can figure out who T is, we can find out what they know.” She pointed to the paper. “It looks like a guy wrote it. The handwriting’s not pretty at all.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But we definitely need to keep an open mind. About all of it.”

“Based on her age, we know the year she likely graduated. We just need to figure out who would have gone to school with her.”

“We can go to the library,” I said. “They’ll have copies of the yearbooks from years past.”

“There’s a faster way,” Dixie said with a raised brow.

Groaning, I shook my head. “If Maybelline catches wind of this…”