Picture Them Dead by Brynn Bonner Page A

didn’t.”
    â€œThanks, Ron. Will you let us know what else you find out?” I asked.
    â€œI’ll let Mr. Jeffers know,” Ron said, “since he’s the landowner. He can pass things on, or if he tells me you’ve got his proxy, you can check in with me.”
    River nodded. “They’re acting as my agents. I’d like them privy to any information you’d be allowed to give me,” he said, and I saw the first hint of the decisive businessman he’d been.
    It wasn’t until we were walking to Esme’s SUV that the full impact of what we’d witnessed in the last couple of hours hit me. A young woman in the prime of her life had been literally struck down. The attack had been sudden and unexpected and presumably her killer was still out there, among us. My knees almost buckled.
    Esme reached over, pulled my hand through the crook of her arm, and patted it. “Don’t look back, Soph­reena. Just keep walking. Life’s got no reverse, we’ve got to keep moving forward.”
    Her warm hand was a comfort and I leaned into her as we walked.
    â€œWere you getting something back there?” I asked after I’d made the arduous climb back into her SUV.
    â€œMm,” Esme said. “Little something. Don’t have the first idea who’s sending the message, but I knew Marla Walker was dead and that she had kids. There’s something off there about relationships. Unfinished business or something unsettled, don’t know just what.”
    â€œThat’s pretty vague,” I mused, drawing a family tree in my head to better understand the Harper lineage.
    â€œSorry I can’t be more specific, Sophreena,” Esme said with a sigh. “I wish this thing was all or nothing, and mostly I wish it was nothing, since it’s costing me some precious things I might like in my life. But I don’t get any say in it, apparently.”
    *   *   *
    At the courthouse Esme and I took a few minutes in the lobby to plan. We decided on our usual strategy of divide and conquer. Esme would hit vital records, probates, and wills, while I combed land records and taxes.
    â€œOkay,” I said, “based on what I found out about the manufacture of glass caskets, I figure whoever’s in that grave had to have been put there somewhere between 1915 and, well, long enough ago to have become ‘old bones,’ as Ron put it. Also, there was that full-grown longleaf pine tree so close to the grave that the roots had grown into it, so it probably hadn’t been there at the time of the burial. I think we should narrow the timeline to, say, 1915 to 1950.”
    â€œThat’s reasonable,” Esme said.
    â€œAnd it sounds like the the Harper family owned the land back a long way, probably to land-grant days, but we need to concentrate on who was living there during our time period. Presumably that would be Charlotte Walker’s parents.”
    â€œSophreena, what are you forever preaching about presuming things?” Esme said, climbing into the saddle of her high horse.
    I sighed. “That presumption contaminates your research. Slip of the tongue. I should have said our working theory is that the Harpers who lived on the land during that time period could be Charlotte Walker’s parents and we need to be looking for the records that either verify or disprove that theory.”
    Esme nodded, satisfied she’d brought me back onto the straight and narrow. We decided on a meet-up time and each went on our merry way.
    Four hours and three trips to the vending machine later, we met back in the lobby and compared notes.
    â€œI think I found the right Harpers,” Esme said. “Oren and Sadie Harper.”
    â€œYes, that’s them,” I said. “And I verified how much River paid. Esme, that old farmhouse and a smidge over five acres of land went for a million and a half.”
    â€œDoesn’t