Page 89 of A Future To Remember

“First of all, the security cameras twenty-five years ago didn’t look like that modern black dome in there. They were boxy and looked like actual cameras.”

“How do you know that?”

I stared at him for a beat. How did I know that? “I…just do. But that’s only half of it. My other point is to ask why Red Shoemaker’s heirs—assuming he had any—would need to mount a security camera inside this abandoned building?”

Levi shrugged again. “Maybe Red left behind some valuable tools, and his heirs keep ’em stored here.”

I shone the light around the exterior of the building. Garbage, dead leaves, and overgrown weeds were sprouting up everywhere. Some graffiti tattooed the side of the building, and a broken window had been boarded up at some point.

I put my flashlight up to the dusty window again, cupping my hand around my eyes to better see inside. “If there’s a camera in there, and it’s working, then there’s electricity running to this place, and Wi-Fi, which is probably more expensive to run than renting some storage shed somewhere for any expensive tools or machinery, which would definitely be more secure than this dump.”

I glanced up at Levi, who’d cocked his head slightly. “That is weird.”

“There’s something in there, Levi. Something someone wants to protect. Something more than tools or machinery.”

“Like what, though?”

“Secrets,” I whispered. “Nobody goes to this level of expense for twenty-five years without the fear of exposure.”

“So, what do we do?” Levi glanced nervously around. There was no one anywhere nearby. It had gotten late and darkness had fallen, so I was fairly certain I could propose what I wanted to do next with relatively few witnesses—other than the most important witness, that is.

I moved over to a piece of the curb that had crumbled over time next to the building. Picking it up, I shuffled to the window and threw it against the glass with all my might.

The window shattered, and as the tinkling of glass petered out, I turned to Levi, who was standing stiffly and with huge, wide eyes, and said, “We break in.”

“Maddy, are you crazy?!”

I paused to consider that before reaching through the window to unlatch it so that we could get inside. With a shrug, I said, “Maybe? I had a pretty severe concussion, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility.”

“You can’t go in there!”

I reached carefully past the jagged pieces of glass that still clung to the window frame and unlatched the sash lock, then pulled back my hand and pushed up on the lower pane. It rose all the way up, which allowed me to hoist myself up onto the ledge and swivel inside.

Hopping down to the floor, I turned back to Levi, who continued to stare at me like I’d suddenly gone cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. “Apparently, I can, Levi. It’s fine if you don’t want to join me, but it’s necessary for the next part of the plan.”

I didn’t wait for him to make up his mind, I simply turned and followed the beam of my flashlight over to an object that I’d spotted across the garage. My intuition had lit up the second I spied it, and I knew it was the key to a twenty-five-year-old mystery.

Before I got there, I heard scuffling behind me, followed by hurried footsteps, then I felt Levi come up next to me. “We gotta get out of here, Maddy! This is breaking and entering!”

I glanced around at the empty garage. There were no tools. No machinery. Nothing of value anywhere. That’d all been taken out not long after Red Shoemaker’s death, I imagined.

What was even more apparent, however, were the big holes in the wall all over the interior. It was as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to it, trying to find a secret room or a stash of some kind.

And I had little doubt that’s exactly what the killer had done.

Red Shoemaker had been murdered for the same reason Doug Maydole had been murdered. He knew too much about yet another murder.

“Maddy, what’re we doing here?” Levi asked anxiously. I could hear the tremor in his voice. I knew I was putting him at risk, but I needed to tie him to this moment so that there’d be no question about who the reward money should go to.

“Just give me a sec, Levi,” I muttered as something caught my eye.

Nearly straight ahead, on the wall was a horseshoe, turned upside down to keep the luck in. It was somewhat corroded, which told me it’d been on that wall for a long time. And that’s when something somewhat extraordinary bubbled up to my conscious mind. I remembered being around four years old and standing in front of the TV as several adults in the room were yelling at the screen. Unfolding was a horse race where a beautiful red colt, ridden by a jockey in powder blue and pink silks, barreled down the track and crossed the finish line three lengths in front of any other horse. I remember being lifted high into the arms of a man whose face I couldn’t remember, and he danced with me around the room, overjoyed and calling me his lucky charm.

I couldn’t pull forward any other details, except that the man holding me aloft shouted, “Willie Shoemaker for the win! Shoemaker for the win!!!”

It dawned on me in that abandoned garage that Red’s last name was the same as the famous jockey, and I suddenly wondered if there was any relation. But, as I stared at the horseshoe, something else happened, and it’s hard to describe, but when I looked at that horseshoe, I felt like I wanted to pull on it. Which was somewhat ridiculous, but still, the urge was so strong that I couldn’t resist.

Walking to the horseshoe, I reached up, curling my fingertips around the top ends, and tugged.