Permanent Record

After twenty-six years of marriage, Marnie Kowalczyk has $11.42 in checking and a label maker. Her husband kept the house, both cars and the good knives. Now a real estate agent with a laugh like a car alarm has listed that house, and Marnie has eleven days to pack up nineteen years of her life before the open house.

Then her mother-in-law, Dodie, drives her Corolla into her own mailbox and needs a ride. The Pruett Falls High Class of ’76 is opening its Bicentennial time capsule, and Dodie typed the inventory herself. Ninety-eight letters went in. Fifty years later, ninety-nine come out.

The extra one is addressed to “Mrs. K.” Inside is a brass key that vanished from Dodie’s desk in 1976, along with $2,300, and a note: It’s still in the house. I’m sorry.

An innocent boy took the blame for that theft. Now somebody wants the key back badly enough to go through Dodie’s purse at bingo.

Marnie has never solved anything. But after twenty-six years of finding everybody’s lost things, she’s starting to think she knows exactly where people hide them.