“Ooooh-kay,” she said slowly, her voice wary. “Do I need to be freaked out?”

“I don’t know.” I hurried over to the printer and grabbed the image before it was done printing, so I played tug-of-war with the printer until it gave in. Then I sat back down and pointed again. “Look at that store window. What do you see?”

“Dirt. Well, mud, actually.”

“Like in a pattern? Like in a strange font or perhaps pictographs?”

“Not really. Just splotches of mud. It’s all pretty Rorschach-y. Why?” When I continued to study the picture without answering, she said, “Charley, what? What do you see?”

“That little boy standing there in vintage clothing? His hands are muddy, like he wrote on the plate glass window. It’s what’s on the window that caught my attention.”

“What’s on the store window?” Cookie said, growing more fascinated, and more wary, by the second.

“It’s angelic script.”

“Angelic script? Is he an angel? The boy?”

I almost laughed. “Not exactly. At least, I don’t think so.”

“Can you read the script?”

“Oh yeah,” I said, dread slithering up my spine like a snake made of ice.

“And?”

This was unreal. It didn’t make sense.

Cookie reached over and put her hand on mine to draw me back to her. “What does it say?”

“It’s a message, but how?”

“From who?”

“If I’m not mistaken, that little boy is Rocket.”

“Rocket? Our Rocket? From the asylum Rocket?”

“Yes.” I looked closer at the round face and the boyish features. He would have been a boy right about that age at the time.

“What does it say?” Cookie leaned closer, trying hard to see what I was seeing. “I don’t understand. How do you know it’s him?”

“First, it looks like him, only younger. And second, it says, ‘Miss Charlotte, what’s bigger than a bread box?’”

She looked up, still confused.

“He’s the only one who calls me Miss Charlotte. But I have no idea what he means and how on earth he got a message to me. He wouldn’t have died for another twenty years after this was taken. And I wouldn’t meet him for over fifty more.”

“The store is a bakery. It’s painted to look like a bread box.”

“Okay.” I’d have to take her word on that.

“My grandmother used to have one just like this. See, there’s the handle.”

It did begin to resemble a bread box with a handle across the top. And over that was a sign that read MISS MAE’S BREADS AND CONFECTIONS.

“So, then, what’s bigger than that building?” I asked. “I don’t get it.”

“Me neither. And how is that even possible?”

“Well, actually, there are a lot of things that could be bigger than that building.”

“No.”

“A bigger building, perhaps?”

“I didn’t mean—”

“A skyscraper?”

“Charley.” Cookie was trying just as hard to figure it out as I was. “This picture has to be from the forties or something.”

“It’s the thirties, to be exact.” I studied him harder and became more and more convinced that Rocket was sending me a message from the past. “I need you to find out everything you can about this picture.”

“You got it, boss. Boy, the creep-factor in this room just spiked tenfold.”

“That’s because your husband is about to walk in.”

She looked around and then back at me in awe. “You really are psychic.”

“Yeah.” I didn’t have the heart to tell her I’d seen a shadow pass, so I looked up to see his blurred image slide across the glass on the picture behind her desk. It would ruin the moment, though why anything about me would surprise her at this point, I had no clue.

I jumped up to grab my jacket. “First, find out all you can about our murder victim, Emery Adams.”

“Right.”

“And then figure out who my husband is paying child support to.”

“On it.”

“And then—”

“Go,” she said, still studying the photo. When the door opened, she looked up at my ramshackle of an uncle.

I dived in for the first hug, making him horridly uncomfortable. Which was exactly why I did it. He patted my back and then almost, almost hugged me back, his tall, only slightly overweight frame the epitome of male etiquette. Men didn’t hug. It was against their code of manly conduct unless they were in the throes of frat party. Or an even manlier event. Like touch football. Or backyard grilling. It was okay to hug in American guydom as long as one or both of the participants had grilling tongs in hand.