He felt sure the key to Margie’s disappearance was in there somewhere. He put aside the magazines and boxes of mail order merchandise, and decided to concentrate only on looking in envelopes that Margie had already opened. He put on some latex gloves, took a long sip of hot coffee, and began. At 3:30 in the morning, a third of the way through his examination of Margie Estep’s stash of stolen mail, Scott found what would have been a very powerful motive for blackmail and murder. They were the kind of photos that would send a person to jail for a very long time; the same kind of photos Margie had used to ruin Willy Neff’s life a few years previously. The envelope they were in was newer and plain, with no writing or postmark of any kind on the outside. Scott wondered if the original envelope, with the original recipient’s name and address, had been used to threaten the perpetrator, with the photos kept in reserve as a kind of insurance.
