The Homewreckers(34)

She glanced over at Mo, who was signaling for her to finish her explanation.

Hattie’s shoulders sagged as she looked directly into the camera.

“We run into these kinds of problems all the time on the coast here in Georgia. Heat and humidity are like a playground for termites. In an old house like this one, that hasn’t been lived in or maintained in years, once your structural integrity has been compromised, you’re screwed.” She made a sweeping gesture at the wall behind her. “Let’s just hope the ceiling joists are still intact. Because if not…” Her voice trailed off.

Mo signaled for her to continue.

“We didn’t have the luxury of inspecting this old house before we bought it. The place had been condemned. So we’re kind of flying blind here. We might have foundation issues. We might have a problem with the ceiling beams. Our budget for the project, all in, is $150,000, but if we have to pour a new foundation and reframe this whole back wall, as well as the ceiling, that could put us tens of thousands of dollars in the hole. And we won’t really know the extent of any of that until we tear down these walls and get a peek at what’s behind them.”

She picked up the sledgehammer and slammed it into the wall again. “Hammer time.”



* * *



“Hey, Hattie, take a look at this.” Cass held out a small blue billfold. The leather was faded and stiffened with age.

Hattie was sitting on the back porch, sipping from a bottle of cold water, while the camera crew was repositioning to shoot the next sequence. Mo sat nearby, reading his email.

Hattie took the wallet and turned it over. “Where’d you find this?”

“Donnie, one of the carpenters, found it in the bathroom wall,” Cass said, pointing toward the back wall, which was now completely open to the back porch. “Beneath that big razor blade slot, on top of, like, hundreds of old rusty razor blades.”

Mo looked up. “Razor blade slot?”

“You find them all the time in old houses,” Hattie explained. “Usually in the back of those old-timey metal medicine cabinets that were recessed into bathroom walls. I noticed the slot in there was unusually large, but I really didn’t think much about it.”

“I wonder how the hell a wallet got stuck in that slot,” Cass said. “Let’s see if there’s anything in there.”

Hattie opened the billfold. “Well, we’re not gonna get rich off this thing.” She pulled out three faded one-dollar bills and two fives, along with two tiny plastic-encased woolen squares attached by a narrow green ribbon. Inside each of the plastic squares was the image of the Virgin Mary, with an image of a heart in flames on the reverse.

“Is that a scapular?” Cass asked, leaning closer to examine it.

“You lost me,” Mo said. “What’s a scapular?”

“It’s like a religious icon,” Cass said. “Catholics have different ones for different things. You get them blessed by a priest and then they’re supposed to protect you from evil, I guess. I got one when I was confirmed. Zenobia has one like this that my grandmother gave her when she had me, in her billfold. It’s pretty old-school. What else is in there, Hattie? Is there any ID?”

Hattie plucked a driver’s license from one of the billfold’s credit card slots.

“Holy shit,” she whispered. Wordlessly she handed the license to Cass.

“Oh my God,” Cass murmured. “Lanier Ragan. That’s gotta be our Lanier Ragan, right?”

“Look at the photo,” Hattie said. “That’s absolutely her.”



* * *



The two women stared at each other, and then down at the driver’s license.

“I guess that scapular didn’t work so good for Mrs. Ragan,” Cass said. “’Cause if we found that wallet in the bathroom wall out here, something evil definitely happened to her.”

“I never believed she’d just up and leave her little girl like that,” Hattie said.

Hattie was still going through the billfold. She plucked out a small photo, a picture-perfect studio portrait; the vivacious young mother, the tall, broad-shouldered husband, beaming down at his wife, one hand resting lightly on her shoulder, the other resting on the shoulder of a little girl, maybe three or four years old, a blonder version of her mother, dressed in an identical white blouse and red plaid jumper.

“Look at this,” she said, showing Cass the portrait. “Is this the saddest thing ever?”

“Slow down,” Mo said. “Who is this woman? What are we talking about here?”

“Lanier Ragan. She was an English teacher at our high school, St. Mary’s. Everyone loved her. We all wanted to be her, you know? And one night, she just disappeared,” Hattie said.

Mo’s eyes widened. “Tell me more.”

Cass was looking down at the family portrait. “It happened when, junior year?”

Hattie snapped her fingers. “Sophomore year. I remember it was wintertime. We had a candlelight vigil for her, out in the school courtyard, and it was so cold I thought I’d freeze to death.”

Mo grabbed his laptop and opened his search engine. “Tell me the woman’s name again? And the year she supposedly disappeared?”

“Lanier Ragan.” Hattie spelled out the last name. “Not supposedly. She did. Disappear. I guess that would be winter of 2005.”