Why would the old woman lie? he kept thinking. What’s she trying to protect—or who? Carlyn said she couldn’t find the same records at the University of Virginia, even in their historical collections; she said the books had been taken from the shelves. Was Agnes responsible for that? Would she really go that far? If so, would she leave the grave registries on the shelves here in Endor and risk someone stumbling across them? That made no sense—she would have destroyed them, and she would have pulled the cards from the catalog too.

Suddenly his whole idea seemed doubtful; what he probably needed to do was to find Agnes and press her until she admitted the reason for her lie. But he had no way to apply leverage to the old woman—if she was determined to keep her little secret she could do it. Besides, there was no sense second-guessing himself now—he had come this far, and he might as well have a look while he was here.

Halfway to the card catalog he crossed the open doorway of a dimly lit room. He stopped and looked inside; the glow emanated from a half-dimmed light focused on a table in the center of the room. He stepped into the room and shined his flashlight along the walls, illuminating the hundreds of photos and magazine covers of Victoria Braden that covered the room like confetti. He looked at the table in the center of the room and saw a large old book with a leather cover. He stepped to the table and took a closer look; it wasn’t a book at all—it was an album or scrapbook of some kind, and the table was covered with loose photographs, newspaper clippings, scissors, and glue. He picked up one of the clippings and read the headline: “Victoria Braden Comes Home.” He turned the scrapbook back to the very first page, then bent over the table and began to read.

Minutes passed.

“Unbelievable,” he whispered. “So that’s what this is all about.”

He flipped the pages back and forth, studying every photograph and notation. He was so absorbed in the text that he never heard the footsteps slowly approaching from behind; he never heard the thick feet plant themselves solidly in a wide stance; he never heard the muscular hands tighten their grip on the baseball bat and slowly raise it overhead; and he never heard the flat, crunching thud of the wood as it crushed the back of his skull.

His lifeless body slumped forward on top of the scrapbook. A powerful pair of hands gripped his collar and pulled him off the table and onto the floor, then began to slowly drag his body across the smooth linoleum toward the loading dock.

“I’m getting too old for all this digging,” Agnes groaned.