I spent the rest of the evening going over Flick’s file. Again. I’d been through it ten times already over the past month, but now I attacked it with renewed purpose. I needed to find evidence that Flick’s and Granddad’s deaths were connected in order to persuade Lindsey to deal with Tackett. I knew in my gut that the two crimes were related—possibly even committed by the same person—I just had to find a way to prove it.
The problem was that Flick had told me very little about what he was working on. It was his way of keeping a promise he’d made to Albert to “keep me safe.” I still didn’t know if Granddad had asked Flick to do that as a general measure, or if he said it because he was worried about a particular threat to my safety. Either way, Flick’s interpretation of keeping me safe had led us down a rocky path. Right after Granddad’s death was ruled a suicide, I’d begged Flick to help me investigate it, to help me prove it had been a crime, but he refused to even talk to me about it. He shut me down and shut me out completely. At the time, I assumed it was because he was selfish or lazy or a coward. I had no idea he was just trying to keep the last promise he’d made to his best friend. And until very recently, I’d had no idea that Flick shared my suspicions about how Granddad died.
I started, as I often did when I was feeling stuck, by making a list. I carefully selected a brand-new journal from my growing collection (and possible indication of hoarding tendencies). This one was gray, eight and a half by eleven, leather-bound, and had my initials stamped into the bottom right corner. It had been a birthday present from Flick. I opened it to the first page and wrote the words WHAT I KNOW across the top.
1. Flick went to Chincoteague Island to follow a lead about Granddad’s murder.
Just days before he was killed, Flick told me he was going to Chincoteague to look into something. I didn’t even know he’d left the island until I received the phone call from Kay saying his car had been found on Highway 58. That was more than 200 miles from Chincoteague. Among the many things I needed to figure out were: What exactly was Flick doing on the island? Why did he leave? And where was he going when he was run off the road?
2. Shannon Miller / plane crash.
The last conversation I had with Flick was on the day before he died. I remembered the call so clearly. I could still hear his gruff voice across the line, the cutouts from bad reception, the background noise that made it sound like he was in a war zone, rather than a vacation destination off the coast of Virginia. I’d asked him to tell me what he’d found out, what lead he was chasing. He was characteristically vague and said only that he was following up on something Albert had been working on right before he was murdered.
“…an entire family was tragically killed in a plane crash outside their home state of—” the line cut out and I didn’t hear that part. “The youngest daughter was only four years old at the time. Her name was Shannon Miller…I came over here to Chincoteague because this is where their plane went down—”
When I told Flick that I was worried about him and maybe he should just come back, he’d laughed and said, “Don’t worry about me, kid. I’ve confronted worse than a pack of professional liars…I’ll call you back later tonight, okay?”
But he didn’t call me back. Instead, he’d left the island and had driven west. I would never hear his voice again. A wave of sadness swept through me thinking about that night. If only he would have told me what he was working on, whom he was meeting, where he was going. I don’t know that I could have saved his life, but it sure would have made it easier for me to find who killed him and hold them responsible.
Other than Granddad’s missing book research, this was the biggest clue I had to work from. And it wasn’t much. I had the name of Shannon Miller, a four-year-old who died along with her entire family in a plane crash off the coast of Chincoteague Island in 1959. I’d been able to find a couple of old newspaper articles online about the crash that had been digitized by the Chincoteague Historical Society. The reports said that the pilot, a man by the name of Daniel Miller, was flying his family to Wilmington Beach, North Carolina, when the plane crashed. All five family members were killed. Investigators were not sure of the exact cause of the crash, but the theory was that Daniel lost consciousness while flying the single-engine Piper PA-32, and the plane dove into the Atlantic Ocean. Listed among the dead were Daniel Miller, thirty-eight, his wife, Robin Miller, thirty-six, and their three children, Eric Miller, ten, Joseph Miller, eight, and Shannon Miller, four.
While it was certainly a tragic story, I didn’t know what this plane crash from sixty-plus years ago had to do with my grandfather. Why would Granddad have been looking into an aviation accident that happened when he was just a teenager? My only thought was that perhaps Granddad had been planning to include this family in his Lonely Dead book. But that didn’t seem to fit either. How could five people die and have no one to bury them? Also, why did Flick specifically tell me to remember the name Shannon Miller? I needed to find more information on this family and its connection, if any, to my grandfather.
3. Doodle
I’d found a piece of yellow legal pad paper in the file upon which there was a hand-drawn doodle of two hands cupped together. It looked familiar to me—almost like the logo for that insurance company, but the hands were wider, the fingers spread farther apart, almost as if they were reaching out to grasp something. Flick had circled the drawing and taken the time to put it in the file, so even though I had no idea what possible significance this might have, I put it on the list anyway.
Close to midnight, I set my notebook aside, no more enlightened than I’d been when I’d sat down. I’d asked a few questions but uncovered no answers. And even worse, I had no ideas about how to get any answers. Had Flick and Granddad started out with these same questions? Was that the reason they were both dead? Was I now heading down the same path that had led two of the most important men in my life to their deaths? If I was being honest, I knew that I probably was. Surprisingly, while there was definitely a part of me that was scared, most of me just felt angry. I would not—could not—allow whoever committed these crimes to get away with it. They’d taken too much from me. So, as scared and lonely and overwhelmed as I felt, I knew I had to keep chasing the answers to my questions. No matter where that chase might lead.