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didn’t want to over-dress. After all, he was the head of an outdoor adventure company. I rather imagined that he would be wearing something casual, either khakis or jeans, but certainly not a suit. At least I hoped not, or I would be terribly underdressed. I had wavered between a skirt and silk blouse at one end of the spectrum and casual jeans and a t-shirt at the other but had ultimately decided on something in between.
    As I sat in the back seat of the taxi, which smelled vaguely of Lysol, sweat, and, unfortunately, puke, I frowned, not at all pleased with what little I did manage to learn about Blake Masters the day before. I spent the remainder of yesterday at the office trying to dig up information about him on the Internet, made several phone calls, all of which ended up nowhere, and bouncing ideas off Melanie.
    “How is it possible that there’s so little information about the murder?” I exclaimed in frustration after about an hour of searching.
    “He was a juvenile,” Melanie commented. “His records were probably sealed.”
    “I get that,” I said, pressing the heels of my hands into my eyes. “But I’m talking about the murder. The family was wealthy. You would think that there would be a lot more in the news about the entire incident, but there’s only a couple of brief write-ups.”
    “That’s just it,” Melanie said. “They were, and are, rich. They can pay off anybody, and back then nobody thought twice about it. It was the way things were done.”
    “At the turn of the millennium?” I said, shaking my head. “It’s not like DNA was in its infancy or anything, Melanie. I’m not finding any information regarding the particulars of the case; no forensics, no evidence, no motives…”
    “Keep digging,” Melanie encouraged. “If anybody can find information, it’s you.”
    I wasn’t so sure. “I’m not the first one to go digging into this case. And I’m sure I won’t be the last. I’ve tried public records and the Shawnee County Courthouse. I left a message with the County Sheriff’s office too, but doubt they’ll call me back.” I sighed and rubbed my temples. “I even left a message with the Topeka City Police.”
    I didn’t like to go into anything blind without at least some information. What little I’d managed to find out about Blake Masters was that his father, Jeremy Masters, had made his millions with something to do with the railroad. At the time he was murdered, he was in his early fifties. His wife, Eileen, had been somewhat of a social butterfly, apparently loved by all, or at least the social columns claimed. Blake’s grandfather, Ralph, had some questionable ties with Chicago. Not surprising, really, as he was born in the early 1920s, and Blake’s great-grandfather, Jack Masters, had been born and raised there. It was no secret that he was heavily involved in bootlegging.
    The only reason I’d been able to find out that much was through an ancestry search on one of the popular genealogical search sites. The information certainly wasn’t helpful in trying to figure out who Blake Masters was or what happened to him during his teenage years, or the year before or after his father’s murder. Nothing much for about eight years until he popped up in San Francisco.
    It wasn’t just the matter of the cold case. I was more than aware that if a case wasn’t solved within a relatively short period of time, it just got colder and colder. What did surprise me was the lack of newspaper articles at the time of the murder. Had it been hushed up? And if so, why? Despite their wealth, the Masters family, according to what few articles I was able to find, had not been movers and shakers in Topeka’s social circles or surrounding regions. They had owned a three-hundred-plus-acre estate out in the country and pretty much stayed to themselves.
    Despite myself, I became quite intrigued with the murder case and wished I’d been assigned to follow up on it instead of the man.