You Drive Me Crazy novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: The Folder

I should have closed it.

My name was on the tab, in a man's handwriting, in a room I had no business being in at dawn.

I opened the folder.

The first page was a bill of sale, dated three months ago.

Seller, a collector in Raleigh.

Buyer, Cade Renfro.

Item, one 1968 Ford Mustang fastback, with a line under it in the collector's own hand.

"Purchased from Mara Tolland, Concord NC, seven years ago, $41,000."

Under it was a sticky note in Cade's writing.

"He wouldn't sell for six years. Paid 3x. Got her name and town from his invoice."

I read it twice.

The pages under it were thick and gray, stapled in sets.

Every set had a letterhead, Pruitt & Lowe, Investigations, and a date.

The oldest was seven years ago.

"Subject: Mara Tolland. Last known employer Haskell Motorsports. Last known address, Statesville NC. Subject's father deceased. Subject reported to client to have family shop in Ohio."

I put my hand over my mouth.

I had told him that.

The night in the motorhome, with a glass of cheap whiskey in my hand, I told a man I'd known three months that my father's shop was in Ohio, because I was twenty-four and had learned never to tell a driver where I lived.

I had made it up to sound mysterious.

The next page said, "No results in Ohio. 211 shops canvassed."

The page after it, a year later, said, "No results in Ohio. Expanded to Indiana, Pennsylvania."

Seven reports.

Seven years.

Every year he had paid a man to look in the wrong state, because I had lied to him over a whiskey.

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