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.”
Mo’s fingers flew across the keyboard. He pulled up a story from the Savannah Morning News, datelined January 9, 2005.
BELOVED LOCAL TEACHER BELIEVED MISSING
“Here it is.” He read the first paragraph of the story aloud.
“‘Savannah police are searching for Lanier Pelham Ragan, a popular St. Mary’s Academy English teacher, 25, who disappeared the night of February sixth.’”
Cass sighed. “She was only twenty-five back then?”
Mo continued reading.
“‘Mrs. Ragan, a petite blonde and the mother of a young child, was last seen by her husband around midnight Sunday.
“‘Frank Ragan, the missing woman’s husband, said he and his wife attended a neighborhood Super Bowl party on Sunday night, and walked back to their home together at around 11:30 that night. Ragan, who is the head football coach at Cardinal Mooney Catholic prep, told authorities that after the couple’s babysitter drove away from their home, he went immediately to bed, but his wife stayed up to clean the kitchen and fold laundry.