She was always on the lookout for impropriety, and her business model was sound: 1) she only charged small sums, 2) she never went back to the well, 3) if they refused payment, she shrugged it off and moved on to the next mark.

According to Megan, over the course of the year, Jennifer had made upward of $4,000.

“Don’t you get scared that someone is going to hurt you?” Megan asked her repeatedly.

The petite brunette would always flash her the same coy smile and say, “Who would hurt little ol’ me?”

Someone did hurt her. Badly. Cause of death was blunt force trauma to the base of the skull.

::::

“Time’s up,” I say, putting up my hand.

My dad puts the file down. He is breathing heavy. Smiling ear to ear.

“I’m glad you’re getting so much satisfaction out of this young woman’s murder.”

He shakes his head, fights down the smile.

“No, no, it’s terrible what happened to her,” he says. “But a little sixteen-year-old girl blackmailing a bunch of cheating businessmen — I mean, come on, that’s something.”

“True, but it also got her kind of killed.”

I know the prospect of finding out who killed this girl all those years ago and bringing him to justice is only half of his excitement. It’s the thought of the answers to a decades-old mystery sitting in a box on the table — at his mere fingertips.

The box and the mystery remind me of the case of the mysterious missing boxes.

“So, Pops,” I say, still unsure how I want to phrase what’s coming. “Do you remember when I was trying to evade those guys staking out your house way back when?”

“Of course I do. Fricking fireworks and Murdock sitting on the car’s front bumper. It was amazing.” He continues on about how he jumped on my Vespa, dressed as me, and sped away, leading the goons on a wild chase.

I interrupt him, “Right, well, when I was downstairs grabbing the blue tarp, I noticed two boxes underneath. They were the only two boxes down there.”

He nods along.

“I was downstairs last night, checking on the progress of Basement Organizational Extravaganza or whatever, and I couldn’t help but notice that the boxes are gone.”

“Boxes, boxes,” he mutters, his hairy caterpillar eyebrows kissing. “Boxes…”

I glare at him. I’d been playing poker with my dad for over twenty years and I knew his tells backward and forward. I watch for him to scratch his nose. To thrum his fingers on the table.

He does neither.

“Oh, right, the boxes,” he exclaims. “I moved them.”

“Moved them?”

“Yeah, they were getting in the way.”

I want to ask him what they could possibly have been getting in the way of; they were the only thing in the entire basement that wasn’t in the way.

I don’t.

“Where?” I prod.

“Where?”

“Where did you move them?”