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“No, it was . . . special. I can’t remember everyone’s name, but I was touched they all came to meet me.”
“You know, I’ve given Nora a hard time about the genealogy stuff over the years. How many great-great-great uncles and their farmland do I need to hear about? But I guess the joke was on me, because she’s the one who made this possible.”
Sloan smiled at Nora. “She did, indeed.”
Nora pointed to the boxes stacked on the dolly. “You found them?”
Ellis shrugged. “I think. I didn’t go through every box, but the couple I looked at had the pictures.”
Nora turned to Sloan. “Annabelle’s pictures.”
“Here,” Ellis said. “Look at these.”
He opened the lid from the top box and pulled out an envelope filled with photos.
“This first box has a bunch of Preston. Look.”
Ellis pulled out a photo and handed it to Sloan.
“Look at my brother’s eyes.”
Sloan took the photo. She saw it now as she looked at Preston Margolis. Her birth father’s eyes were haunting as they stared back from the photo, as if Sloan’s eyes had been Photoshopped into the image. They spent an hour perusing through the first box and passing photos back and forth, reminiscing about the images they found. Sloan listened to stories about Preston and Annabelle.
Finally, Ellis looked at his watch. “It’s just past six. Why don’t we go for a sail? It’s a gorgeous evening.”
“Yeah,” Nora said, collecting the photos and returning them to the box. “I think Sloan needs a break.” She looked at Sloan. “Are you up for a little cruise on our boat? We can look through the rest of Annabelle’s photos tomorrow.”
“We’ll show you the town from the creek,” Tilly said. “It’s the best way to see it, and Ellis is a wonderful tour guide.”
“I’ll bring that bottle of rosé,” Nora said.
Sloan smiled. “I’d love that.”
CHAPTER 27
Indianapolis, Indiana Sunday, July 28, 2024
RYDER HILLIER SAT IN THE TERMINAL OF THE INDIANAPOLIS INTERNATIONAL Airport. She was the host of Unsolved, the most popular true crime podcast in the country. She dropped one new episode each week that was downloaded millions of times and listened to by hoards of adoring fans. Ryder mostly covered obscure cold cases whose victims her listeners had never before heard of. But she occasionally tackled well-known stories like the JonBenét Ramsey murder and the tragic death of Julian Crist, the American medical student who fell to his death under suspicious circumstances in St. Lucia. Her biggest story to date had been breaking, covering, and then playing a crucial role in solving the Westmont Prep killings in 2020. The murder of two prep school students in Pepper-mill, Indiana, had taken the country by storm. The solving of the case, due to evidence Ryder uncovered through her podcast, captivated the nation and made Ryder Hillier a household name. Soon after, and riding a once-in-a-lifetime wave of popularity, Ryder signed a lucrative deal with the world’s biggest streaming service for the exclusive rights to Unsolved. Since then, she’d become one of the biggest podcasters in the country, and Unsolved showed no sign of slowing down.
Along with the big contract came a big promise: Ryder would deliver edge-of-your-seat content and would continue to solve unsolvable cases. She’d come a long way since writing puff pieces for the Indianapolis Star. But her success did not come without effort. She poured her heart and soul into her work, which was why she was sitting in an airport terminal on a Sunday, working on no sleep, and on her umpteenth Red Bull.
What made Unsolved so wildly popular, and a big part of its allure, was that Ryder enlisted the help of her listeners to solve the cold cases she featured on the podcast. She recruited her army of fans, termed Unsolved Junkies, to help her find answers to crimes that had long been written off by police and detectives. She relied on her audience of armchair detectives to provide tips about unsolved cases, and one hell of a tip had come in the previous afternoon. A woman named Zoë Simpson had slipped into her DMs to tell a fantastic story about the missing Margolis family from the ’90s. So fantastic, in fact, that Ryder hadn’t believed it. But thirty-six hours of fact-checking changed her mind.
Zoë Simpson did work for the FBI field office in Charlotte, North Carolina. And Special Agent John Michaels was, in fact, her boss. Ryder had confirmed these details, and more, about Zoë Simpson, and then closely read the FBI brief the girl had sent her. If it was true—and so far, despite Ryder’s best efforts to prove otherwise, it appeared to be—baby Charlotte Margolis, who up and vanished with her parents nearly thirty years ago and set off one of the biggest media storms in history, had resurfaced in Raleigh as a woman named Sloan Hastings.
Ryder received her contract, and the millions of dollars that came with it, because she promised to break huge stories like this one. But a story this big would not stay quiet for long, and Ryder was determined to be the journalist who broke it. She was headed to Raleigh to find Sloan Hastings, aka baby Charlotte, and convince her to appear on the podcast.
An airline employee’s voice came over the gate’s speakers. First-class passengers were invited to board. Ryder stood from her seat and walked toward the jetway, prepared to break the biggest story of her career.
CHAPTER 28
Cedar Creek, Nevada Sunday, July 28, 2024
ON SUNDAY MORNING SLOAN HEADED BACK TO NORA’S PHOTOGRAPHY studio. Despite the overwhelming reception she had received the day before, and the emotions it brought up, she had managed to refocus her energy once she arrived back to her rental house. Working from the list she and Eric had made, Sloan did an online search for Stella Connelly, Preston Margolis’s previous fiancée, and found on the woman’s law firm’s website a message to clients that Stella had recently taken a leave of absence. A list of other attorneys who were taking over her active cases was offered. Sloan had managed to find Stella Connelly’s cell phone number, but when she called it went straight to voicemail. The timing was strange and Sloan planned to speak with Eric about it next time they met.
She stopped at a coffeehouse in town and purchased two Americanos and a bag of bagels. As she approached Nora’s studio her mind flashed back to the previous afternoon when she’d opened the door to a chorus of cheers from the Margolis family. Sloan was relieved this morning to see the studio empty but for Nora leaning against the counter and scrolling through her phone.
“I grabbed coffee and bagels,” Sloan said when she walked in.
