Both of the men were smiling, and they had their arms around each other. They were dressed in boots and cargo shorts, and looking more closely, I could see that they each were wearing an assortment of trinkets: bracelets and necklaces and other things they must have picked up on their travels. Terry Lawrence even had a large, triangle-shaped earring hanging from his right ear.

“Could you send this to my phone, George?” I asked. I wanted to download it now, while we still had Wi-Fi. “And any other photographs you find.”

George nodded. She also showed us the photograph that had supposedly ended DeSantos and Lawrence’s partnership. It was a beautiful image, a shot of a canyon angled in such a way that the formation seemed to go on forever. But truthfully, I still liked the photographs I had seen of people more. Like the one of DeSantos and Lawrence. I felt like there had to be more clues inside that photograph that I just wasn’t seeing yet.

“Anything else, George?” I asked.

“I found Terry Lawrence’s obituary,” said George. “If that helps.”

“What does it say?” asked Bess.

“Not too much,” said George. “It says that he continued taking photographs for most of his life, until he eventually lost his sight. He moved to West Virginia to be closer to his children and his three grandchildren and died in 2010. That’s all, really.”

I leaned back into the soft sofa. None of this was as clear a lead as I was hoping for. Bess, George, and I all went quiet for a few moments. George started typing away on her laptop again, brow scrunched as she sorted through information. Bess and I went back to our pastries and coffee, both of us trying to work through the mystery.

After a while, I noticed that someone was talking fairly loudly on the other side of the coffee shop. I sat up and looked behind me. There was a small crowd of people gathered on that side of the shop. Some of the people were sitting and some were standing. They were all looking toward someone in the middle of the group, and when the crowd shifted, I could see who was in the middle of it all: Emily.

“What’s wrong, Nancy?” asked Bess, who must have noticed me changing my position to see what was going on.

“One second,” I whispered back. I wanted to hear what Emily was saying, and I didn’t want her to see or hear us just yet.

It was difficult to fully understand her, but it sounded as though Emily was retelling the story of Jacob’s disappearance. I heard her once more insist that the photographs in the exhibit were cursed. I watched the expressions of the people in the crowd. Some of them seemed skeptical, but others were nodding along with everything Emily said.

“We should all call the police,” Emily said. “We should demand that they shut down the museum now, before anyone else goes missing.”