She also favored orthopedic shoes in crazy colors to match her outfits. She was funny and smart and kind, and she'd gone along with Eleanor's goat yoga scheme because she'd never let a friend down.
Now it was our turn to help her.
"Susan does her best," I said. "She's a great sheriff, especially compared to what we had before. Just give her time. She's been dealing with a lot this week."
"She's good. I'm better," Jack said calmly. "I've had more experience. We'll find out the truth, don't you worry, ma'am."
Lorraine's eyes got a little shiny, but she quickly hid any emotion and waved us over to her dining room table. "There it is. What do you think?"
"It's old," Jack said. "Certainly looks like it could have been from the time of the murder. Tess, what do you think?"
I slid in between the two of them and glanced down at the ledger, and froze.
Jack's gaze whipped to mine. "What? Do you know something about this?"
I pointed to the handwritten inscription on the cover: Ledger, 1970
"That's Nigel's handwriting."
Now they both looked at me with varying degrees of skepticism (Jack) and excitement (Lorraine).
"How could you possibly know that?"
"Because I spent three years looking at his handwritten lists of what dances we should practice. See that double loop at the bottom of the capital L? I've never seen anybody else write an L like that in my entire life."
"Wait till you see what's inside," Lorraine said. She picked up a long wooden skewer, like one you'd make shish kabobs with on the grill, and gently opened the cover.
"Ta Da!"
It was a list of numbers, as she'd said, but the numbers all had names and dates attached.
"It looks like a list of who paid what for how many chips, or who cashed out what, at his gambling hall," Jack said slowly, scanning the page with its dense writing.
"Starting in January—apparently a lot of these fools had New Year's resolutions to lose as much money as possible," Lorraine said, snorting. "And it goes all the way through to September, where it stops abruptly."
I was almost afraid to ask. "When exactly does it stop?"
She gave me a fierce look. "The last record of monies taken is the day Earl left town for good. After that, it's just a wrap up list of debt totals. For collection or for writing off, I don't know. But I found Earl's name."
Her voice broke. "Over and over and over."
Jack gently took the skewer from her unresisting fingers. "And at the end?"
"At the end, Earl owed Nigel over five thousand dollars. More than enough to kill somebody for, isn't it?"
"Especially in 1970 dollars," Jack agreed, his face drawn in serious lines.
I was shaking my head before Jack finished talking, though. "No. No, I don't believe it. Not Nigel. He's one of the nicest men in the world. I mean, he teaches dance to little girls and boys, for Pete's sake. He gives free lessons and dance shoes to kids whose families can't afford to pay. No. I can't believe it. I don't."
Lorraine looked thoughtful. "Maybe he's doing penance?"
"We don't know," Jack said. "But the one thing we know, ears or no ears, is that Nigel lied. He told us Earl didn't owe him money."
I picked up two tissues and used them to carefully pick up the ledger by its edges, because I'd noticed something odd.
"Did either of you notice this weird ridge in the back cover? Like a lump in the binding or something?" I gently lifted the back cover and nodded at it. "It looks almost like… yes. Exactly like the back cover of my diary when I hid things in it."
"Do you think it's a clue?" Lorraine asked.
