Leftover Dead by JIMMIE RUTH EVANS Read Free Book Online Page B

toward the drawers containing the Jackson paper. “I’m willing to bet, though, we’re not going to find anything in either one.”
    “Maybe not,” Wanda Nell said. “But somewhere, I bet you, we’ll be able to find a copy of the missing Tullahoma paper. You just wait and see.”
    Jack grinned at her. “That’s just one of the many reasons I love you, darling. The Unsinkable Wanda Nell.”
    Wanda Nell shook her head at him. “Get to work,” she said, trying to sound stern.
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    Wanda Nell turned her back on him and resumed her examination of the Memphis paper. She went carefully through the whole week after April twenty-third, but she never found a mention of the murder, or any mention at all of Tullahoma. She stopped looking, rewound the reel, took it off the machine, and put it back in its box.
    Jack was now sitting at the table next to her, using the other reader. “Any luck so far?” she asked.
    “No. I’m up to the twenty-sixth, and nothing so far. How far did you look?”
    “Through May first.”
    “That was probably enough,” Jack said. “If there wasn’t some kind of mention by that point, there probably never was. Let me just go that far here, and then we’ll try to figure out what to do next.”
    Wanda Nell waited in silence while Jack finished examining his reel of film. After about seven or eight minutes, he leaned back, pulled off his glasses, and rubbed at his eyes. “Now I’m getting a headache from staring at that screen.”
    “Didn’t find anything?”
    “No, not a blessed thing. No mention of Tullahoma at all.” He rewound the roll, extracted it, and stuck it in its box.
    “Let’s go talk to Miz Lockett,” Wanda Nell said. “She needs to know there’s a box missing, and maybe she’ll know of another way we can find what we’re looking for.”
    “Let’s not make a big deal out of it, though,” Jack said. “I don’t want to stir up anything at this point.”
    “Okay.” Wanda Nell followed him out of the room, flipping off the light switch as she went.
    At the front desk Mrs. Lockett was checking out a stack of books for the mother and the two children. Jack and Wanda Nell waited, increasingly impatient, as the mother kept interrupting the proceedings to admonish her children. Finally, the woman started herding them toward the door.
    With a tired smile, Mrs. Lockett turned her attention to Wanda Nell and Jack. “Did you find what you needed?”
    “Well, no, we didn’t,” Jack said, sounding slightly apologetic. “The one reel of film we needed seems to be missing.”
    “Oh, dear. Where could it have got to? Maybe someone just misfiled it, and it’s in another drawer somewhere.” She came from behind the counter and started for the microfilm room.
    “We checked for that,” Jack said, and Mrs. Lockett halted.
    “You looked through all the drawers?” Mrs. Lockett asked, her head cocked to one side.
    “Well, no, not through all of them,” Jack admitted. “But I checked all the drawers for the Tullahoma paper. I didn’t check anywhere else.”
    “Then the box you need is probably somewhere in one of the other drawers,” Mrs. Lockett said. She came back to the desk. “If you don’t mind waiting a couple of days, I’ll have one of the high school students who works here during the week go through all the drawers on Monday to see if he can find it.” She smiled at them. “I’m sure it’s there somewhere.” She pulled a slip of scrap paper from a slot behind the desk and handed it to Jack. “Just put your name and phone number on this for me, and I’ll call you on Monday.”
    “Thank you, I’d appreciate that very much.” Jack glanced sideways at Wanda Nell before he picked up a pen from the counter and wrote down the information Mrs. Lockett had requested.
    Neither Wanda Nell nor Jack thought the student would ever find the missing box, but they weren’t going to tell Mrs. Lockett that. That wouldn’t serve much purpose at this