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By the time she finished cashing out, the truckers were gone. After fourteen hours, there was no one left to serve. The diner was in a rare mode of calm—that peaceful time between the breakfast and lunch crowds. She said good-bye to a couple of the other waitresses, none of whom were anything more than acquaintances. They were younger than Margot and all had the same thought running through their minds—that there was no way in hell they’d be working at this diner, or any other place like it, when they were in their fifties. Margot knew the twenty-something waitresses thought this because Margot had once been one of them. When she was twenty-five she had also been convinced that running tables at a diner was just a temporary gig. She had convinced herself that things would get better, that other opportunities would come along, and that when she was “older” things would be better. A decade later, when she was in her thirties, she told herself the same story. But her conviction in the story weakened, as too did her belief in it. By the time she reached her forties, that little voice in her head had grown faint and quiet. It still whispered every so often that there was more to life than swapping hours for dollars, that things could still change, and that at some point she’d start living life rather than surviving it. But she hadn’t heard that voice since she turned fifty. Mostly because she was as certain about the permanency of this life now that she was in her fifties as she had been about its temporary nature when she was in her twenties. But another reason was because it hurt too much to listen to it.
In the parking lot she climbed into her ancient Mazda, felt the pull of the hundred bucks of tip money in her pocket, and thought briefly about stopping at the liquor store and feeding the slot machine. She’d doubled her money doing that once, and the single victory helped her forget all the other times she’d worked ten straight hours only for the slots to steal everything in less time than it took truckers to drain a pot of coffee.
Resisting the urge, she decided she needed sleep more than anything else. She pulled into her mobile home complex, parked in front of her trailer, and headed inside. She grabbed a Coke from the fridge and pulled up her laptop—an aging Dell that miraculously booted up every time she opened it. She had no television, and couldn’t afford cable if she did. Her conduit to the world was the Internet, and if her antique laptop ever crapped out on her, she’d be disconnected from the world other than listening to CNN and FOX squawk from televisions in the corners of the diner.
Margot pulled up the YouTube app and clicked on the Unsolved channel—her favorite true crime fix featuring Ryder Hillier. Margot had been an Unsolved Junkie for as long as she could remember, and loved the way Ryder Hillier approached the stories she told on her podcast. The woman presented the facts of a crime, and then called on her audience to help solve the cold cases she covered. The reason her podcast was so popular was because Ryder’s process worked. Over the years, Margot had seen Ryder Hillier solve a number of cases that detectives had either given up on or had deemed too cold to crack. And she’d done it by enlisting the help of her audience. Strength in numbers Ryder always said.
Margot took a sip of Coke and clicked the play button to watch the latest Unsolved video. Ryder Hillier’s face filled the computer screen.
“Good evening Unsolved Junkies. This is Ryder Hillier coming to you from a hotel room in Raleigh, North Carolina, with breaking news and an urgent request for help.
“Today, I’ve got a story that all you Unsolved Junkies are going to go nuts for. I’m sure everyone at home is familiar with the case of the missing Margolis family from 1995.”
Margot curled down into her chair and pulled the laptop close to her. She was familiar with the case.
“I’ve covered the missing Margolis family on the podcast in the past,” Ryder continued, “and have done a number of follow-ups. However, to those unfamiliar with the story, I’ll offer a brief history.
“Preston and Annabelle Margolis, along with their two-month-old daughter—a beautiful infant the country knew as baby Charlotte—disappeared from Cedar Creek, Nevada, on July Fourth, 1995. Preston was the son of prominent attorney Reid Margolis, and an up-and-coming legal eagle at the Margolis law firm. The Margolis family is wealthy and established in Harrison County, where Cedar Creek is located. Despite a large-scale investigation and months of broad media coverage, there were never any suspects in the family’s disappearance, and the case has been cold for decades.
“But here’s the kicker, Unsolved Junkies. My sources tell me that baby Charlotte Margolis has just turned up nearly thirty years after she went missing. You heard me correctly, Junkies. Charlotte Margolis has been living as a woman named Sloan Hastings in Raleigh, North Carolina. According to my sources, baby Charlotte was adopted in November of 1995, a mere four months after she went missing. The adoptive parents—Todd and Dolly Hastings—named the baby Sloan, and she has lived a quiet life for nearly thirty years. There is no indication from my sources that Preston or Annabelle Margolis have surfaced, but certainly this is the biggest break anyone has seen for decades.
“Authorities are looking into the method by which baby Charlotte was put up for adoption, and I’m told that the couple who adopted Charlotte Margolis are not, I repeat to all my Unsolved Junkies out there, are not suspected in baby Charlotte’s disappearance. Please respect the privacy of this adoptive couple, as I’m certain their lives have been turned upside down by the news.
“But, I do have an assignment for you. My sources tell me that the main focus of the FBI’s investigation is the woman who posed as baby Charlotte’s birth mother during the fraudulent adoption. A woman, I’ve learned, named Wendy Downing. She was aided by an attorney named Guy Menendez.
“This is where we shine! I’m paging all Unsolved Junkies! I need your help. I need you to flood my inbox with any and all information you find about these two people, Wendy Downing and Guy Menendez. This is a breaking story, and we need to move quickly, Junkies!
“I will be heading to Cedar Creek, Nevada, this week to find and interview Sloan Hastings, aka baby Charlotte Margolis. If Sloan is listening, or if any Unsolved Junkies know where I might find her, drop me a line. I hope to have more information for you soon.
“That’s all for now, but be sure to check back daily. I’ll be making updates on this story here, and I’ll be recording the first of a multipart podcast soon. Until next time . . . stay safe, Junkies.”
Ryder Hillier’s face faded, and the Unsolved logo came onto the screen. Margot slowly sat up and closed her laptop. She could hardly believe what she’d heard. Cedar Creek was just an hour or so from Reno. It took only a moment of contemplation before she pushed her chair over to the refrigerator and climbed up on it. In the cabinet above the fridge was her “someday” stash. Hidden in an old coffee container was fifteen hundred dollars that she’d managed to squirrel away over the years. Someday she’d use it to take a vacation. Someday she’d use it to buy a new computer. Someday she’d use it to put a down payment on a new car. There were so many things to do someday that Margot lost track of them all. But there had always been one thing she knew she would do someday, and that day had arrived.
She grabbed the roll of cash from the coffee pot and climbed off the chair. Over the last few years she had started to believe that fate was a fictional thing made up by people who had it good. Fate, Margot noticed, was never discussed by people with dead-end jobs and crappy lives. Fate only came into the picture when good things happened to lucky folks on the rise. Her life had never been touched by the mythical thing called fate. She’d been on a steady, downhill spiral since birth.
For her entire adult life Margot had bounced around the country chasing waitressing jobs and the fantasy of a better life. Somehow she ended up in Reno, serving truckers at a crummy diner. The last decade had provided little in the way of stability and had siphoned away any hope for a brighter future. But despite decades of proof that it did not exist, fate was the only way to explain why she was planning to drive to Cedar Creek with hopes of righting a wrong that had been a lifetime in the making.
CHAPTER 38
Cedar Creek, Nevada Thursday, August 1, 2024
WHEN SLOAN OPENED HER EYES THURSDAY MORNING, IT TOOK A moment to remember that she’d slept at Eric’s cabin. The scent of fresh-brewed coffee pulled her from bed. She walked down the stairs just as Eric was pouring a cup.
“Morning,” she said, running a hand self-consciously through her hair.
“Morning. Coffee?”
“Yes, please. Smells wonderful.”
They sat at the kitchen table. Sloan was never happier to have resisted temptation the night before. Had she given in to her urges, her and Eric’s relationship would be something different this morning. She would be distracted and confused. Instead, she was laser focused on the task at hand. She had a vivid dream about her birth mother during the night. Annabelle was snapping photos of her infant daughter and then moving to the darkroom to develop them. When Annabelle emerged from the darkroom, photo in hand, baby Charlotte was gone. In the fog of the dream, Annabelle looked at Sloan and asked where her daughter had gone. Sloan woke with a startle. When she finally fell back to sleep an hour later, she did so with a fierce determination to find answers when she woke.
“Sorry to keep you up so late last night,” Eric said.
“I just wish we’d have found something useful in the files. I feel like we’ve got more questions than answers at this point.”
“I’ve got a call in to one of my contacts at the Nevada State Police. I’m trying to track down one of the detectives who worked your case and see if he can give me any more details about the crime scene and the blood they found. What’s your plan for the rest of the week?”
“I’m meeting with Nora Margolis today to go through boxes of photos Annabelle took the summer she disappeared.”
