BooksBarbecue
Back 3 a.m.
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  67. 3:46 a.m.

“Right,” he said. “Because I never read anything about that.”

“So, she either kept it with her at all times,” said Billy.

Ingrid thought back to what Jennifer wrote in her journal. “Or she found a much better hiding spot.”

::::

“She wrote that in her journal,” my dad barks. “Right before she started blackmailing guys, she wrote that she found the perfect hiding spot and Markus would never find it.”

“I know,” Ingrid says. “And it was the perfect hiding spot.”

::::

“You don’t have any clue where she might have hidden it?” Ingrid asked.

“I don’t know,” Markus said, shaking his head. “I must have looked everywhere. Must have searched the whole house twenty times.”

Billy smiled and said, “Your room.”

“What?” asked Markus.

“Did you ever check your room?”

His eyebrows scrunch together. “My room?”

“I bet she hid it in your room. Why would you ever look for it there?”

“I guess I wouldn’t.”

Ingrid jumped up. “Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“Your mom’s house.”

—

Ingrid followed behind Markus’ white F150 for sixty miles, until they reached his mother’s house in DC.

The house was in a middle class neighborhood, painted tan with mint-green trim, its only distinguishing factor from the house on either side.

Jennifer’s mother met them at the front door. The years hadn’t been kind to her. The pain of losing a daughter, perhaps the guilt of driving her daughter into her dangerous hobby, was evident in her white hair, wrinkled skin, and in each labored breath.

“What’s this all about?” she huffed, holding her chest.

Markus took her aside and after a whispered conversation, she disappeared into the house.

They wouldn’t see her again.

“Follow me,” Markus said, leading them into the house, through the foyer, into a hallway, and finally into a bedroom. “This was my room.”

There was a bed at the center, a small dresser, a mirror, a small bookcase.

“Not much has changed,” he said. “Same bed, same dresser, same bookshelf. They took all my crap off the walls of course, but same layout.”

Billy said, “Okay, if you were Jennifer, and you were gonna hide a journal in this room, where would you put it?”

The three of them glanced at one another and then started searching. Closets, beds, under furniture, lifting up carpet, looking for holes in the ceiling, the wood trim, behind the doors. Every nook, every cranny.

After twenty minutes, all three stood in the center of the room.

“Nothing here,” Markus said.

Ingrid let out a long exhale. “Well, thanks anyway.”

“Hold on,” Billy said. “Did you say the bookshelf is the same?”

Markus nodded.

“What about the books?”

He nodded again. “Yeah, I mean, it’s just an encyclopedia set. I didn’t want to lug them off to college and it’s not like my kids would use them; everything is on the internet now.”