“When we spoke on the phone, I assumed the yearbook was from your own senior year. But I’m guessing that’s not the case.” She laughed. “Otherwise I really need to know which face cream you’re using or the name of your plastic surgeon.”

Jessica smiled. “No, my senior year was a little later.” She held up the parcel. “My father was class of ’86.”

“Oh, really? What’s his name? I’ve worked here forever, so maybe I knew him.”

“Tony Shaw.”

Debbie’s brow creased. “Nope, it’s not ringing any bells. Then again, we do have one of the largest student bodies in the district, so that’s a lot of names to remember when you’ve been here as long as I have.”

“What about Jason Pryce? He was a friend of my father.”

“Now that name is familiar,” Debbie said. “Black fella? Very handsome? If I recall correctly, he was on one of the sports teams. Baseball or basketball, I think.”

“Sounds about right,” Jessica said.

Back in the car, she pulled the yearbook from the envelope and opened it. It had belonged to someone named Jimmy, and the inside front cover was filled with messages written by fellow students.

Good luck at college, Jimmy!

See you around big guy, all the best for the future!

Hey Jimmy, don’t forget: life moves pretty fast!

The last comment was a line from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. It had been one of Tony’s favorite movies and would have been the big summer hit the year he graduated high school.

Jessica and her father used to have what they called “Movie Fridays” once a month. Popcorn, pizza, beer. A choice of movie each. Tony loved anything from the ’80s and anything by John Hughes. Especially Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Jessica suspected Tony had always secretly wanted to be just like Ferris—wisecracking, with a hot girlfriend, and always breaking the rules and never giving a damn. The reality was he was way more like Ferris’s best friend, Cameron—a little uptight and frustrated, like a coiled spring waiting for a release.

Her heart leaped when she read the scribbled dedication in the yearbook, but it was signed by someone with the initials BF—not by Tony.

Jessica flipped through the glossy pages until she came to the seniors with surnames beginning with P and quickly found Jason Pryce. Debbie Klug had been right. Pryce was still an attractive man now, from what she’d seen of him on the television, but he’d been an absolute heartbreaker as a teenager. According to his short bio, he was a star of the track team rather than basketball or baseball, but there was no doubt Debbie Klug was thinking of the same person.