I looked at the layout. The Kincaid block was bolder by about four points, and the Hollister text sat lower on the page, visually smaller whether Ruby intended that or not.
“Swap the Hollister block to the upper left,” I said. “And bring both fonts down a size. Make them the same weight, so neither one looks bigger.”
Morgan looked at it, then looked at me. “You're useful.”
“I try.”
She laughed, I set down my coffee, and we worked through the display setup for forty minutes. She talked while she worked, mentioned the regional press interest Rachel's article had stirred up, a comment thread somewhere about the rodeo's history that had gotten testy, and a blogger who'd started asking questions about land records.
“Is there anything to it?” I asked.
“Maybe.” Morgan pinned the corner of a banner flat. “People are paying attention to this town in a way they weren't a few months ago.”
I photographed the displays as we talked, adjusting angles, catching the light on the painted text. Around us, Mustang Mountain moved through its morning. Locals nodded to each other, stopping on the sidewalk to debate bunting colors. Two older men argued about parking logistics in a way that suggested they'd been having the same argument for years. Three separate people said good morning to me by name. I hadn't introduced myself to any of them.
When we were done, Morgan asked if I wanted to visit the archives at the library with her. I didn’t have anything else to do for a while, so I followed her down the street.
Claire Hollister was already there when I came in, a cardigan over her shoulders despite the heat, a box of her aunt's papers open on the table next to her. We'd met briefly, in passing and both times she'd struck me as a person who noticed more than she acknowledged.
“Bella.” She didn't look up from the page she was reading. “Come look at this.”
She had two photographs laid side by side. One was a formal portrait, stiff and over lit the way studio photos from the thirties went. A woman in her twenties faced the camera, a baby in her arms. The other was a candid, grainy and slightly blurred, of two men standing at the edge of a field with their backs to the camera.
“My aunt believed these were taken the same season,” Claire said. “Based on the field condition and the dress. But I can't prove it, and the portrait has no date stamp on the reverse.”
I picked up the candid. The grain pattern had a particular quality. It was finer in the shadows, blown slightly in the lighter areas. Whoever had taken the picture hadn’t used a flash. It was natural light, probably late afternoon.
“I’m guessing this was shot west-facing,” I said. “See the shadow direction. Long shadows, so late in the day, but the light source is behind them. Late summer, maybe early fall. Look at the field. It appears it was cut recently but it's still green underneath.”
Claire watched me. Morgan stood next to her, doing the same.
“The portrait,” I continued, setting the candid down, “is indoor lighting, but there's window light contaminating the left side. Same season would match. The woman's dress is lightweight cotton, no layering.”
“So it could be the same year,” Claire said, like I'd confirmed something she'd already suspected.
“Could be.” I straightened. “What are you looking for?”
She told me about a hidden romance and that she suspected a child had been born who appeared in the birth records her aunt had marked in their old family Bible. There was more, too. The Walker debt journal entries that Jace had taken to Slade and Tanner suggested someone had been making payments they didn’t want public.
“I don't need a reporter,” she said. “I need someone who can read images the way I read text.”
She put a third photograph on the table. It was a copy, printed from a scan, of a page from the Walker journal, the same one Jace had shared. I'd never seen it, but I'd heard about it.
I looked at the handwriting. The notation style—the way certain figures were grouped, the position of the date stamps relative to the entry text.
“Whoever kept this ledger was meticulous,” I said. “This isn't shorthand, it's a system. He or she meant for someone to read it later.”
“That's what I think.” Claire pulled out a sheet of her aunt's notes. “And this annotation here—” she pointed to a line in the copy, “—this matches a marginal note on one of her land records. Same phrasing. 'Both parties aware.'“
“What do you think it means?” I bent down to take a closer look when the door opened.
Rory came in, her phone clutched against her chest.
“Ruby said you might be here.” She looked at Claire, then the table. “Am I interrupting?”
“No,” Claire shuffled some papers together and offered a smile.
Rory walked around the table to stand next to me. She looked at the photographs for a moment. “Can I show you something?”
