They didn’t speak for the first ten miles.
Ronny kept both hands on the wheel, eyes flicking between the road and
the rearview mirror. The confrontation with the fixer had shifted something—the
stakes were no longer theoretical. They were being watched. And now,
whoever was behind this... knew that Ronny and Maya wouldn’t back down.
Maya sat quietly, holding the black leather journal they had unearthed
with Margie’s box days earlier. She had flipped through it several times
already, scanning pages, reading passages aloud. But something about
today—about seeing the grave, the photograph, the man with the shovel—made her
read differently.
She turned a page, then stopped.
“Ronny,” she said. “Pull over.”
He eased the truck onto the shoulder near a stretch of farmland and
turned off the engine.
If something happens to me, someone must know where to look.
He thinks I don’t understand what I’ve seen—columns, codes, ‘donated’ land
that never shows on the rolls.
But I’ve made a copy. I marked it with my initials. It’s in the spine.
The green book. County plat book, 1935 edition. Local History Room.
They’ll never think to look there. But someone will. Someday.
Ronny looked at her. “She left the original map. But she also left
proof.”
“She copied the ledgers. Or the list of land deals,” Maya said. “Whatever
it was she found, she hid it inside a library book. One that’s probably still
sitting on the shelf.”
Ronny sat back. “The 1935 Henderson County Plat Book. Green spine. Local
History Room.”
Maya nodded. “Unless someone’s already taken it.”
He fired up the engine. “Let’s hope Henderson still has a sense of
irony.”
By the time they reached the Henderson County Public Library, the
sky was beginning to dim, and the automatic lights flickered on inside the
building’s eaves. They parked out back and entered through the staff
door—Maya’s keycard still worked.
The Local History Room was silent, the smell of old paper and microfilm
thick in the air. Maya led the way.
She moved straight to the section of bound plat books—oversized volumes
stored on a low shelf near the back corner.
There it was. Green spine.
Henderson County Plat Maps – 1935
She pulled it out, heart pounding.
The book was heavy, bound in thick, pebbled leather. The edges were worn.
A few sticky notes from decades ago still clung to the margins. Maya opened the
front cover carefully, then slid her fingers along the inner spine, feeling
for—
“There.”
A small tear in the seam. Just wide enough to slip a few folded sheets
inside.
She pried it open.
Inside were six folded pages, still crisp, sealed inside a
protective wax sleeve. On the front:
“M.E.D. – Copy #1”
Ronny unfolded the first page. His eyes scanned the table of names,
dollar amounts, and acreage codes.
“What is it?” Maya asked.
“It’s a list,” he said. “Dozens of transactions. Land swaps, donations,
under-the-table sales—all tied to fake trusts. Oak Lantern Holding. Green River
Limited. Pioneer Land Group.”
He flipped to the second page.
“And here—look—next to each line: a set of initials. J.D. W.E. J.C.”
Maya read them aloud. “Josiah Dawes. Wayne Ellis. John Collier.”
“And here,” Ronny added, tapping the corner of one sheet. “Margie wrote
it herself—‘ledgers altered at request of Collier. Witnessed by W.E.’”
Maya’s breath caught.
“This is it,” she said. “This is what got her killed.”
Ronny nodded slowly. “And now we have it.”
They stood in silence, staring at the proof that had waited eighty-six
years to be found.
Then Maya whispered, “You realize... this doesn’t just prove a murder. It
proves corruption. A pattern. Maybe even embezzlement.”
Ronny folded the pages carefully and slid them back into the sleeve. “She
wasn’t just trying to survive,” he said. “She was trying to bring them all
down.”
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