“Something that would prove Ezra didn’t harm his partner?”
“Yep, that’s right. It was a terrible blot on the family name. I couldn’t stand the thought of it. But all my searching proved nothing. I’m afraid the evidence—if there is any—will be covered by the floodwaters when they come.”
“Now who’s the one giving up without a fight?”
Grandfather smiled down at Ronnie. “You’re right, boy. That wasn’t a Rorth talking then, but a discouraged, old man.”
Ronnie looked down into the valley. The thin mists that had settled in the lowlands during the night were dissipating now under the hot sun. “Gramps, do you think this man I saw is hunting for evidence too—the way you were?”
Grandfather thought over the question for a moment or two. “Nope, I don’t think so, Ronald. More’n likely—if he’s hunting for anything at all—he’s after the money and glassware that was stolen. There’ve been others before him.”
“Gramps?” Ronnie asked again. “What finally happened to Great-great-grandfather Ezra?”
“Well, when my father and mother returned after the epidemic was over, they found him in the office building. He was dead from the typhoid. But everyone said it was Jacob’s ghost that did it.”
The old man grasped the head of his cane with both hands and pulled himself to his feet. He stood for a minute with the hot breeze ruffling his snow-white beard and hair while he looked down into the valley. His sharp eyes darted from one building to another and finally rested upon the old, padlocked building.
“The answer’s in there somewhere,” Ronnie heard him say, although the wind tried to take his words away. “I hope the good Lord will let me live long enough to see it found.” He turned to face the boy. “Ronnie,” he said, “Ronnie, your father’s in town now, but when he comes back tonight, you tell him I said he’s to let you have the keys to the Rorth office building. You and this friend of yours take a good look around inside and maybe you can find what this man is doing in there. And maybe your keen, young eyes will find what I’ve failed to find all the times I looked.”