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I was aware of the others commenting on that and other topics, but all my concentration was on the wad in front of me. The plastic wrap raised the degree of difficulty considerably.
As it slowly revealed the paper, I muttered, “Looks like a journal or diary...”
At last, we had this one flattened — sort of — and held by more knives.
It wasn’t nearly as easy to read as the printout, with the handwriting loopy and small. Diana used her phone camera to zoom in and add more light.
Jennifer typed in what we found as we deciphered it.
“Okay, here’s what I have,” she said as I sat up, arching my back against being scrunched over the sheet.
“It starts with the boring stuff about a recipe for scalloped potatoes—”
“With nutmeg,” Diana inserted.
“—then it says, I probably told my boy too much today, with hints about his paternal line. That decision was made long ago for many reasons and with careful consideration for his well-being. It is a good decision. I know he is curious, but he doesn’t need that to be happy. And my boy being happy is what matters most.”
“This could refer to what Brenda said Keefe told her about what his mom said,” Mike recapped. “You think he found it after she died? Maybe searching for any hint of his father’s ancestors.”
“And this was all he got,” Jennifer said. “That’s sad.”
“I was remembering something Penny said and I thought it was about Keefe’s mom, that she danced close to the edge and couldn’t know he’d get so interested. I wonder if that’s what this entry’s about.”
“Sounds a little like she’s arguing with herself,” Diana said.
All that was true. So was something else.
“One more wad to unwad.” I moved down the counter to the last piece we’d found.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
This was harder than the printout, easier than the journal. It hadn’t been wadded up as long as the journal, but it had plastic wrap over it.
“What is it?” Jennifer asked as I placed a second knife on a freed edge and the non-blank side began to be revealed.
“It looks like an old newspaper article,” Mike said. “A clipping. But it’s shrunk to fit on the page and it’s really hard to read from here.”
“Not easy from here, either.” Diana used her phone camera again.
When she turned on the flashlight to supplement the light, a spattering of words in sub-heads caught my eye.
“May I use that?”
I didn’t really wait for a yes, but was looking through the lens in a second.
I returned the phone to her and sat back, coming up against the welcomed support of Tom’s chest as he leaned over my shoulder to look.
“I think — I think this is a copy of the original newspaper article with the posse member who’d chased Oscar Virtanen.”
****
We couldn’t read every word, but all agreed that, based on what we could see, I was right.
Diana took pictures and video of it, zooming in methodically and sending it all to Jennifer to see what miracles she could perform.
“This is has got to be what he found in the museum boxes,” Mike recapped.
“I’d bet on it,” I said. “This could make Clara Atwood rearrange her priorities.”
