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Page 226
"Certainly, dear. She considered California the land of opportunity. That was why our ancestor Arlen came here, according to the journals."
Abby leaned forward, but Mike motioned to her to wait.
"Where did Myra put papers that showed how important her home in California was?" Mike's face remained impassive, but his body tensed as he waited for an answer.
"In the box under her bed, of course," Jess replied.
"I didn't find boxes or anything else in her room," Abby told him in a low voice.
He nodded, then continued, "You don't suppose she put the journals in a safe-deposit box, do you?"
Jess waved her small, wizened hand in a gesture indicating Mike's foolishness. "Heavens, no. Oh, she kept some old jewelry at the bank, since our lawyer Mr. Peebles insisted, but we looked in that box after . . . when she left us. There wasn't anything but the jewelry. Remember?"
Mike nodded. "Did she have more than one box?"
"Of course not."
The discussion continued, and Abby was caught up in it despite her unfulfilled wish to focus on the journals. According to Jess, Mike had been quite a rapscallion while here, frequently getting into scrapes from which his great-aunts took enormous pleasure from extracting him. "Why, there was that time when you had promised two young ladies a night on the townthe

 
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