Lena immediately stopped him from touching it.
Grant photographed the area.
Then he put on gloves and cleared dirt from around the ring.
Attached beneath it was a narrow metal tube sealed with a threaded cap.
Grandma whispered, "He really did it."
Grant removed the tube and placed it on a clean evidence cloth.
Lena looked at Grandma.
"Would you like us to open it here?"
"Yes."
The cap resisted at first.
Then it turned.
Inside was a plastic sleeve.
Inside the sleeve was a small cassette tape.
And a handwritten label.
T. WALSH - 11:48 P.M.
Grandma sat down on the curb.
I crouched beside her.
"You okay?"
She nodded.
But her eyes never left the tape.
Michael looked at Lena.
"Can we play it?"
"Not on a random device."
"How soon?"
"Tonight if the field office has the equipment."
Grandma stood again.
"Then let's go."
Lena raised a hand.
"Before we leave, there is something else."
She pointed at the tube.
A second item remained inside.
A folded strip of paper.
Grant removed it carefully.
The paper contained a name and a phone number.
WALTER HAINES.
Below it, Grandpa had written:
IF THEY SAY I WALKED AWAY, ASK HIM WHY HE WAS AT THE HANGAR.
Michael stared at the name.
"Robert's father."
Grandma's expression hardened.
"The man who sat in my living room and suggested Thomas had left me."
Lena took out her phone.
"Walter Haines passed away six years ago."
"And Robert?" I asked.
"Still practicing law."
Michael's phone vibrated.
He looked at the screen.
His expression changed.
"What?" Grandma asked.
He turned the phone toward us.
A text message from an unknown number filled the screen.
STOP DIGGING INTO YOUR FATHER'S MISTAKES.
Below it was a photograph.
A photograph taken less than five minutes earlier.
It showed all of us standing beside the old concrete step.
As Grant photographed the metal tube, Grandma walked to the edge of the old lot and looked up.
A passenger jet crossed the sky in the distance.
The sound reached us a few seconds later.
She smiled faintly.
"That used to shake every dish in our kitchen."
I stood beside her.
"You miss that?"
"I miss who I was then."
"Who were you?"
"Poor. Tired. Completely certain everything would work out."
I laughed softly.
"That sounds nice."
"It was exhausting."
Then her expression changed.
"Thomas would have hidden the cassette here before he disappeared."
"Probably."
"Which means he came back to this house that night."
I looked at the old concrete slab.
"Maybe."
"No."
She shook her head.
"He would never have told Patrick about this place."
Michael overheard.
"Why not?"
"Because this was ours."
She pointed to the tube.
"If that was hidden here, Thomas himself put it here."
Lena looked up from the evidence bag.
"That narrows the timeline."
Grandma nodded.
"And it means he was free long enough to think ahead."
That mattered to her.
I could see it.
Every new detail was replacing the image she had carried for decades of Grandpa simply vanishing into nothing.
Now there were movements.
Choices.
Plans.
A trail.
For the first time, he felt less gone.
Chapter 10 - THE PERSON WATCHING US
Lena reacted instantly.
She looked across the street, then toward the storage yard, then up at the nearby buildings.
Grant was already moving.
"Everyone back in the vehicles."
Grandma did not move.
"Someone is watching us?"
"Possibly."
"That picture was just taken."
"Yes."
"Then not possibly."
Lena looked at her.
"Fair point."
We got into the car.
Grant walked the block while Lena called local authorities.
Michael kept staring at the message.
"Only a handful of people knew where we were going."
I looked at him.
"Who?"
"Us."
"The bank manager."
"The investigators."
"And whoever accessed the safe-deposit box."
Grandma spoke from the back seat.
"Robert Haines."
Michael turned.
"We don't know that."
"No."
Her voice stayed calm.
"But I'm tired of giving Haines men the benefit of the doubt."
Lena returned ten minutes later.
"No obvious photographer."
"Could have been taken from a car."
Michael showed her the number.
"Can you trace it?"
"We'll try."
She looked at Grandma.
"I want you somewhere secure while we process the cassette."
Grandma nodded.
For once, she did not argue.
At the field office, the cassette went to an audio specialist.
We waited in a plain conference room under bright fluorescent lights.
Coffee appeared.
Nobody drank much of it.
Michael finally asked Grandma the question I had been wondering about all day.
"Why did you decide to fly now?"
Grandma looked at him.
"Daniel bought the ticket."
"I know."
"But why did you suddenly remember 34A?"
Grandma looked down at the wings.
"I never forgot."
"Then why wait nearly thirty years?"
Her eyes moved toward me.
"Because Thomas told me to sit there if I ever flew west again."
"And you never flew west."
"Not once."
I frowned.
"You avoided flying because of that?"
Grandma considered the question.
"Partly."
"Why?"