Faye Longchamp 01 - Artifacts

is, calling Joe a vagrant? He’s got a lot of nerve, considering that he’s the alcoholic owner of a business that’s going down the tubes. He’d better be nice to me, because someday he may need a place to sleep and I may not be taking any more vagrants at Joyeuse.”
    As her car made its asthmatic way down the road, she worked at being objective. Was Joe a killer? No. Was he dangerous? Yes, in a way. Despite his personal loyalty, he was capable of serious lapses in judgment and, as Wally had pointed out, she had a lot of secrets.
    Faye decided to deal with any problems Joe presented as they came. She’d sacrificed a lot to keep her home and she was probably going to lose it anyway. She drew the line at sacrificing Joe’s friendship.
    She reminded herself that she had a lunch date with a charming and powerful man who, inexplicably, seemed to like her a lot. And he was interested in helping her regain what was rightfully hers.
    She pulled into the four-slot parking lot of the Sopchoppy Library. It was housed in a tiny building but it had Internet access, so it wasn’t tiny at all.

    Faye was proud her small-town library had Web access, but the Internet had proved to be singularly unhelpful in locating more information on Abby. There was no additional information to be had. The girl had simply vanished.
    After a few months, the newspapers had dropped the story. Not a scrap of physical evidence had ever turned up. There had been plenty of news to report while the search was active, but it was all negative. The bloodhounds smelled nothing. The roadblocks uncovered nothing. Her father’s offer of a $20,000 reward for information generated hundreds of crank calls, but little else. Dragging the rivers and creeks, searching the coastal marshes and offshore islands—all yielded no trace of Abby or her clothing or the jewelry she always wore.
    And there was nothing else to look for. Her beach house showed no signs of robbery or forced entry. Her brand-new convertible still sat where she parked it. The rest of her jewelry still lay in her childish jewelry box with its dancing ballerina. When, after fruitless months, the search was called off, there was nothing left for the newspapers to write about, so they stopped.
    A collection of slender orange and black books caught her eye and she slid one off the shelf. This was a small-town library. The librarian allocated five feet of scarce shelf space to back issues of the yearbook for Micco County’s combined elementary and high school.
    1964. Faye picked up the volume documenting Abby’s last year and enjoyed its old book smell. Individual pictures of the senior class were prominently displayed, the students’ accomplishments listed below each of their photographs. They were arranged alphabetically, so Abby’s “W” surname would have landed her near the end of the class. For the same reason, Douglass Everett was placed toward the front.
    Faye read the list of honors beneath Douglass’ face. They were short but choice: Summa Cum Laude graduate, National Merit Finalist, valedictorian. It seemed strange that titles like “Most Intellectual” and “Most Likely to Succeed” were beneath other faces with far paler credentials until Faye realized that Douglass’ honors were all earned, not elected. His was the only black face on the page and any fool knew that, in that era, he would have won no popularity contests. Nobody could argue with his grades or his SATs, so he was, however grudgingly, allowed those honors.
    Faye turned the page and found that Sheriff Mike had been class salutatorian, then turned it again and found that Abby, by contrast, was no scholar. Her achievements peaked when she was elected chaplain of the Future Homemakers of America. Apparently good at winning elections, Abby was also chosen Sweetest and Most Punctual. She peered at the camera over her shoulder in the same eerie senior portrait that Faye had seen on a hundred front pages, but this time it was uncropped. A single earring was visible and thirty-some-odd years in the ground hadn’t dimmed its loveliness. Here was proof that Faye had found the woman who had been the focus of the largest search for a missing person ever seen in western Florida.
    She flipped the page back to get another look at Abby’s classmates. One of them, after all, might have murdered her but, to Faye, they all looked like children, not killers.
    Then, dead in the center of the page, a face grabbed her attention.