A storefront already displaying mock-up T-shirts:
VANISHED IN THE VALLEY
Mystery Mountain Week – Sylva, NC
Deck stared at the screen.
“You’re tellin’ me they’ve made a festival out of this?”
“Ghost walks and souvenir shirts,” he muttered. “That’s bloody obscene.”
Lucy nodded. “The Chamber just posted. Ghost walks. True crime tours. ‘Last Known Route’ scavenger hunt tied to Lauren Pierce and Sara Parker. Vendors are setting up. They’re expecting hundreds.”
Frannie reached for the coffee tray she’d set on the reception desk earlier and handed one to Lucy.
“Lord have mercy,” she muttered. “Now that woman’s talking about Caroline Simms again.”
Lucy glanced up. “Who’s Caroline Simms?”
Frannie went still for a second. “You don’t remember Caroline?”
Lucy shook her head. “I was in middle school eight years ago.”
“Pretty little thing,” Frannie said. “Dark hair. Sweet as she could be. Worked down at the diner for a while. Always had that baby on her hip.”
She glanced toward Eleanor.
“Whole town talked about it for years after she disappeared.”
Deck lifted his head from the legal pad in front of him.
“Eight years ago, she vanished after dropping her baby off at the Mercer house,” he said. “Her car turned up the next morning out on Highway 23.”
Lucy frowned. “And David Mercer was the last person to see her alive?”
Deck leaned back in his chair.
“That’s what people believe.”
Silence settled over the office for a second.
Frannie shook her head. “I still remember seeing that little boy in the grocery store after. Broke your heart.”
Eleanor lowered her gaze to the legal file but did not see a word of it.
Another woman. Another story everybody had already decided they knew.
Lucy’s phone buzzed again.
She glanced down, then winced.
“Oh,” she said quietly. “Okay. No.”
“What now?” Eleanor asked.
Lucy hesitated, then turned the screen around.
A comment thread scrolled beneath the clip of Eleanor on the courthouse steps:
