Chapter 4 – Beneath the Ledger

They didn’t head out to Rayburn Creek that afternoon after all. Instead, they returned to the library’s Local History Room, where dust lived comfortably between cracked leather spines and rusted file cabinets.

Maya had already pulled the county assessor’s ledgers from 1937 - 1940—massive volumes the size of Thanksgiving turkeys, handwritten in the elegant, looping cursive of a lost profession. She slapped one open on the table.

“This is where Margie Dalton worked,” she said, brushing a bit of lint from the binding. “Filing land ownership records and tax assessments.”

Ronny leaned over the book. “And we think she might’ve known something she wasn’t supposed to.”

“Or she found something she was supposed to keep quiet.”

They flipped through pages slowly, the room filled with the sounds of paper turning and the soft hum of fluorescent lighting overhead. Most of it was as dull as expected—acres assessed, barns valued, poultry counts, even notes on storm damage. Then Maya tapped the page.

“There.”

A parcel marked under Ernest Dalton, her father, in the summer of 1939. Five acres transferred in July of that year—to a private trust called Oak Lantern Holding.

“That’s odd,” Maya said. “Very few people used trust names back then. It wasn’t common around here.”

Ronny traced the faded ink. “No mention of a buyer’s name?”

“None. Just the trust. But look here—” she turned the page. “In August 1939, the same trust buys an adjacent ten-acre tract that had been abandoned after a barn fire. The seller? A man named Josiah Collier.”

“Collier. From the map.”

She nodded. “What if this whole area—Collier Barn, Rayburn Field, and the Dalton place—was being consolidated? Quietly. Through shell names.”

“Why?”

Maya hesitated. “Bootlegging was mostly done by then, but the land might have been used for storage—or something that had to stay hidden. There were rumors of stash sites, even underground bunkers from Prohibition. Or... maybe it was just a place someone didn’t want found.”

Ronny sat back. His mind was turning faster than it had in months.

He thought of his grandfather—coming back mud-streaked and silent. He thought of Margie Dalton—her cautious smile, her job handling land transfers, and her initials sketched into a secret map.

And then Maya said something that stopped him cold.

“I also found something else. Her name—Margie E. Dalton—shows up one last time.”

Ronny looked at her.

“In the death records?”

She shook her head. “No. In the library’s old borrowing ledger. You know we used to hand-sign the checkout cards.”

Maya reached into a folder and pulled out a yellowed index card.
The book was Folklore of the Kentucky Hills, by Alvin Grayson.
Date checked out: June 5, 1939.
Borrower: Dalton, Margie E.
Never returned.

“I found it in the Rare Books Room,” Maya said. “Just sitting there, wedged behind a shelf.”

Ronny leaned forward. The book’s spine was cracked, and several pages had been dog-eared. One had faint pencil markings in the margin—a legend about burial mounds and lost caves used by river pirates in the early 1800s. Another page mentioned “hollow fences” and boundary trees used as navigation markers in the days before formal mapping.

“Is it possible,” he said slowly, “that Margie was piecing together a hidden place using both county records and old folklore?”

“It’s more than possible,” Maya replied. “It’s exactly what I’d do if I was trying to find something people didn’t want found—and couldn’t talk about openly.”

They both sat back, the air thick with dust and thought.

“Okay,” Ronny said. “We don’t go out there blind. Let’s pull topo maps, land surveys, and anything we can find on underground storage or burial sites near Rayburn Creek.”

Maya cracked a knuckle. “And maybe pack some snacks. This could take a while.”

As they stood, preparing for a dive into even deeper records, neither of them noticed the faint, oily fingerprint smudged into the margin of the hand-drawn map—the one that hadn’t been there that morning.