Drue ran her finger over the black-and-white print, marveling that the official dissolution of a family could not only be reduced to a single page, but that it would end up here—in the attic of her grandparents’ house, along with a handful of other documents that her mother had deemed important but not important enough to keep close by.

The second folder contained a dozen or so yellowed newspaper clippings from the St. Petersburg Times, all of them apparently about the mysterious disappearance of an attractive local woman whom the press had dubbed “missing local beauty.” Drue’s interest was piqued by the fact that the missing woman, twenty-six-year-old Colleen Boardman Hicks, had vanished after shopping and dining at a local department store, Maas Brothers, which had once stood only a few blocks from the present-day law offices of Campbell, Coxe and Kramner.

She carefully set both folders near the attic stairs so she wouldn’t forget to take them when she went back downstairs.

The third crate had a label scrawled in Sherri’s familiar handwriting. BRICE’S CRAP. Drue laughed out loud. The box was full of books and papers. Law books, loose-leaf notebooks and half a dozen composition books, all bearing the name Brice Campbell on the inside covers. She rifled idly through the contents of the crate, stopping when she found a thick black binder. A typed adhesive label on the front had faded, but the type was still legible.

COLLEEN BOARDMAN HICKS—Missing Persons. 8-20-76.

This had to be the same “missing local beauty” whose disappearance had been chronicled in the old newspaper clippings.

Drue leafed through the three-inch-thick binder. There were page after page of typed police reports, handwritten notes and carbon copies of more reports. A pocket on the inside back cover of the binder held yellowing black-and-white photographs.

She stared down at the binder. She knew virtually nothing about police procedures, but the book she was holding looked a lot like official police business. But what was it doing here, in her grandparents’ attic?

When she heard a faint scrabbling sound coming from the far end of the attic, she tucked the folders and the binder under her arm and scrambled down the ladder as fast as she could go.

Downstairs, she typed “Colleen Boardman Hicks” into her phone’s search bar. The screen filled with dozens of citations.

She clicked on the most recent article, published six months earlier in the Tampa Bay Times.

FORTY-YEAR-OLD MYSTERY REMAINS UNSOLVED. She skimmed the article, which confirmed that Colleen Hicks had never been found.