 
## News from Dead Mule Swamp

Joan H. Young

Published by Books Leaving Footprints at Smashwords

Copyright 2011 Joan H. Young

Discover other titles by Joan H. Young at Smashwords.com

and at Books Leaving Footprints

ISBN: 978-0-9765432-5-1

LCCN: 2011962390

# Smashwords Edition, License Notes:

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

# Reader Comments

"News From Dead Mule Swamp is a cozy mystery, perfect for curling up with on the couch for a lazy afternoon of entertaining reading."

~~Michelle Devon, Managing Editor, TTM, LLC

"News From Dead Mule Swamp is a small town mystery that drew me in from the very first line and kept me turning the pages."

~~ Jennifer Malone-Wright, author of The Birth of Jaiden

# To Ellen

who dragged me, kicking and screaming to the West Side Gang writers' group.

I wouldn't have done it without you.

# News from Dead Mule Swamp

Chapter 1

I bought the house at Dead Mule Swamp in the early spring. Here in the North that means April. The snow was still rotting on the sand road and a crust of dirty rime covered the swamp. Shelves of ice clung to the trunks of trees at the winter high-water mark, while six inches lower the surface of the slushy water hunkered down. Perhaps it was hiding from spring.

I was hiding from other things. My name is Anastasia Joy Raven. I'm forty-two, and experiencing new freedoms, if you look at it from one perspective. From my point of view, however, it's hard to see much beyond the facts. My husband of twenty-two years, Roger, has decided that he wants to trade me in for someone new. Someone named Brian. He and Brian got the house. I got my walking papers, and a rather large settlement, spread out in monthly payments. Fortunately, Roger (why did I ever marry someone whose name sounds like half of a pirate flag?) has a good upper-level management position with S-Mart. He thinks this gives him the right to make decisions for all those under him, including me. But he's going to be entertaining his new housemate with quite a bit less money. I'm buying a serious fixer-upper, but it won't talk back.

Dead Mule Swamp begins 2.3 miles down East South River Road, and it's another mile farther to my "new" house. It's a decrepit old farmstead, one of those with a two-story ell set at right angles to a one-story section, with a slab porch. It's going to be a great place for me to do my hiding, at the end of the road.

Despite being unlucky for some historical mule, the swamp isn't as ugly or dangerous as it sounds. In fact, for most of the year, it's a lovely backwater of the Petite Sauble River. From my bedroom window I can watch the herons catch fish in the shallows, and hear the kingfishers rattling cries as they swoop between the cedars. Some day I hope to add an upstairs porch to that side of the house. For now, I just hope to make the roof stop leaking.

East South River Road leads to Cherry Pit Junction; I kid you not. There's nothing at the Junction any more, but it's where the Indiana & Northern Railway once met the Chicago-Sault Line. Both are defunct, the tracks gone. If you are a careful observer, you can follow the old berms and will find odd conical mounds about a tenth of a mile south on the I&NR. Stick a shovel in one of those hills, and you'll find a core of cherry pits. The old canning factory processed tons of cherries in its heyday. It had to spit all those pits out somewhere, and the name stuck. Cherry Pit Junction is also in the dead center of Forest County.

I am kidding you about one little thing. My last name really isn't Raven. But I like how it sounds, and that way I can pretend to be anonymous. The truth is, if you drive into Cherry Hill one day, the town where West South River Road reaches US 10, and ask for Anastasia, anyone can tell you how to find me.

So, that's how I ended up standing on a ladder and wielding a crowbar on a surprisingly hot April day, ripping out old lath and plaster.

# Chapter 2

I should have been working on the roof, but I wasn't, and I'll tell you why. The old house actually has an indoor bathroom, upstairs, near the room I'm making into my bedroom, but the plumbing isn't exactly new either. When I figured out that the damp and flaking corner of the living room ceiling was directly beneath the toilet, I covered the floor and the furniture, and started pulling down the old plaster. I soon revealed an oozing soil pipe. After that, I just couldn't stop ripping.

The rubble was starting to pile up, and my nose was getting stuffy from the dust. I hauled a couple of wheelbarrow loads of the mess out to the driveway, figuring it would help to fill some ruts. I could burn the wood later. My destructive binge had nearly taken me to floor level on one side of the room. I pried loose a couple more pieces of lath board, and as I pulled them away from the wall a brown newspaper fell forward onto the heap of rotten plaster.

I can't resist anything with printed words, so a newspaper was an exceptionally fine reason to take a break. The banner read: Cherry Hill Herald. I glanced at the headlines above the fold: "London: Remarkable Photography of Human Bones by Professor Roentgen," "Local Business Team Develops Promising Product," "High School Thespians to perform Twelfth Night." The dust made me sneeze, and I realized how dry my mouth was, so I put the paper down and headed for the kitchen to get some iced tea to sip while I read. Before I had navigated half the distance, there was a knock on the screen door frame. The main door was open already, to let out the dust.

"Hey, Ms. Raven!"

"Oh, hi, Cliff. Come on in."

The man standing at the door was in his mid-thirties. He wore jeans and a large red plaid shirt that hung loosely from his wide shoulders. Cliff Sorenson was one of my neighbors, as country neighbors go. His house was about five miles away, on Grover, off Centerline, just south of Cherry Pit Junction. I'd talked with him briefly at the lumberyard one day when the truck driver commented that we both lived in the same direction for deliveries. We weren't yet well enough acquainted to be what I would consider friends. "Just call me Ana," I added. "It rhymes with on-a, like 'on a roll,' which I think I am. How do you like the wall?"

"You're sure taking things apart real good. Can you put 'em back together?"

"Oh, sure. I'm pretty handy, and I've got all summer. I just can't bust it up faster than the checks from Jolly Roger come in to pay for the damages. I was getting myself some iced tea. Would you like some?"

"That would be great."

"Uncover that couch, so we don't have to sit in the dust, and I'll be right back."

I headed for the kitchen, and Cliff started to peel back the sheets I had draped over the couch and the chair where the old newspaper lay.

In just a few minutes, I was back with two tall glasses of tea on a tray, and a couple of cookies. "Sorry, they're store-bought cookies. I've been a little busy."

Cliff folded himself into the chair. He was probably under six feet tall, but a life of hard work had made him thick and solid. As he took a cookie, I noticed that his hands were rough with calluses.

"Oh, no problem, Ms. R... uh... Ana. I like them just as much. Actually, I came over to see if there might be anything I could help you with. I mean, Sherri asked me to see if you had any odd jobs. I can't seem to get anything regular, and her job at the café don't bring in as many tips as it used to."

"How many children do you have, Cliff? I've met Sherri, of course, but I don't know your kids."

"There's three of 'em. Hunter is eight and he's doin' pretty good in the second grade. Amy's in kindergarten, and little Ruthie's still crawlin' around the floor. Sherri's glad I'm home to watch the baby while she's workin', but she'd like it a lot if I could bring in some dollars too. Her sister could watch Ruthie once in a while."

"Well, Cliff, I don't think I can afford much help right now. But when I get all this mess pulled down, I'll sure need some help getting the sheet rock up, especially on the ceiling. I'll keep you in mind." The truth was that I could have hired him to haul stuff right away, for a few hours a week, but I wanted to do as much of the rehabilitation on my house as I could. Alone. It was very therapeutic to smash holes in things with a large iron object. I didn't need to have Cliff observe my rage level.

"OK! I'd sure appreciate that. I'd better get back home before Sherri needs to head into town. Thanks for the tea."

I followed Cliff to the door and watched him start up his old Chevy truck. It misfired a couple of times before kicking in, but soon Cliff was backing the twenty-year-old heap out of my driveway and rattling his way toward home.

With the dishes back in the kitchen and the covers replaced on the furniture I was soon smashing more holes in Jolly Roger's head, um... the walls.

# Chapter 3

Twilight came, and since it was only April the air cooled quickly. I was definitely ready to rest after a day of smashing and hauling. I made a mental note to buy some pipe sealer at the hardware in Cherry Hill, stacked the tools in a corner and headed for a hot bathtub to soak. That's when I remembered the newspaper. It might be too brittle to read in the tub, but if I located it, then I could browse its pages over a mug of soup, after I was clean. Where the heck was it? It had been on the chair before Cliff peeled back the sheets, so it must have gotten tangled in the cloth. But it wasn't. It wasn't under the chair, or on the couch, or anywhere else that I could see.

This was curious. Would Cliff have taken an old newspaper? What on earth for? Oh, well, it was just an old local paper... I turned up the heat and headed for the bathroom. On the way, I grabbed a Crichton novel to read, instead of the news from some bygone decade. The last thought I gave to that paper for a while was that I didn't even know in which decade it belonged.

# Chapter 4

The school year was drawing to a close, but I didn't exactly care, having no ties to the local district. I do have one son, Chad, but he's a junior at Michigan Tech, studying Wildlife Ecology. His plans for the summer had been set for months—he was heading for Isle Royale to study the famous, most-studied moose in the world some more. I wasn't even going to see him till mid-August.

On a whim, I purchased a ticket to the Forest County Central high-school play. I'd been whacking and lugging old plaster for four weeks, followed by more lugging and nailing of new plasterboard. I figured I could use a break. The tickets were for sale pretty much everywhere in Cherry Hill, but I got mine at Volger's Grocery where I had been doing most of my shopping since moving here. Adele Volger checked me out, and she gave me the evil eye when I requested one ticket.

"One ticket, Ana?" she asked. "A nice young girl like you? You should not be buying only one ticket."

Actually, I was ready to agree with this sentiment. I'd been living in Forest County for over a month and the only people I really knew were the lumber yard employees and Adele, oh, and Cliff. I cocked my head in mock coyness and replied, "What are you doing Friday night?"

Adele tossed her graying curls and laughed uproariously. "Dearie, I'll be happy to go with you, but you know that's not what I meant."

Friday night came, and Adele and I occupied seats H23 and H24 in an aging school auditorium, while the local teenagers did their best to convince us of The Importance of Being Earnest. To be fair, I have to admit that the actors weren't too bad. It has just always seemed beyond odd to me to watch sixteen-year-old kids awkwardly pretend to be adults. Lady Bracknell was surprisingly agile with a high, reedy voice. But the lines were delivered with a decent sense of timing, and Adele and I laughed heartily in most of the right places. Yet, something bothersome was nagging at the back of my mind.

Cliff, Sherri, and their three kids were seated in row G, just ahead of us. That did bother me a bit. Of course, it was none of my business, but if they were so hard up for cash, what were they doing spending $20.00 on tickets to a play? Well, maybe only $18.00—the baby was probably free. The kinder side of my nature wrestled with my frugal sense. After all, everyone needs some entertainment, and this was pretty economical, as entertainment venues go. Maybe someone had given them the tickets. If they wanted to chuckle over the mixed identities of Jack, Algernon and Earnest, it was certainly more sophisticated fun than playing some mindless video game. And then it hit me... I knew what was bothering me.

# Chapter 5

After the play, Adele invited me over to her house for tea, and I readily accepted. She lives on N. Birch Street, in a solid, if uninspired, white house, built around 1900. It didn't have the grandeur of a Victorian home, but the front was hugged by an enclosed porch and bright floral curtains could be seen through the windows. Inside, I was pleased to note that the decor was feminine, but not fussy. If there was a color scheme it was green, with pink accents-very restful. I noted the shelf of plates sporting various breeds of dogs, art work presumably done by grandchildren, and a neat kitchen with aging, but decent, appliances.

No microwaved water for us! She put a teakettle on the stove and pulled out an actual stoneware teapot, crocheted tea cozy, and cups with saucers. Homemade cookies appeared from somewhere through the magic of her experienced hands. There was already a small basket full of flavored tea bags on the table. I chose lemon-ginger but Adele stuck with orange pekoe, plain.

There we were, two single women, no longer young, drinking tea and eating cookies. It was all too stereotypical.

Adele was a widow, I, divorced. We each had no handy male with whom to share our concerns, or with whom we had to share our time. Neither of us seemed to be needy for a permanent companion. And yet, I was eager to talk to someone, and Adele had certainly shown herself to be friendly.

"Now, what are you all excited about?" Adele queried, as she pulled out her chair and planted her sturdy frame across from me. "Don't try to deny it. I know that something started you into thinking, about the middle of Act III. Don't tell me you never saw that play before?"

I took a cookie, oatmeal-raisin with a hint of nutmeg, one of my favorites, and tried to decide how much to confide in Adele. Not that there was any big deal about it, but it's a small town. People talk. I took a deep breath. "Adele, I have a mystery, and I just remembered a piece of it, tonight."

"I knew it! Out with it, dearie."

I wrinkled my nose at the endearment, but maybe it would be all right to let one person talk to me that way. I began. "I am missing a newspaper."

"Is that all? Kids take 'em, God knows why. Poor old Eb sometimes misses the box and they blow away. That's no mystery"

"Adele! Not a new newspaper, an old one. Really old. I found it inside one of the walls I tore out, but then it disappeared, and I think Cliff Sorenson took it. I had only looked at the headlines, and when I went to really read it, it was gone."

"How does this tie in with tonight?"

"The play. The mixed-up identities. Jack and Algernon pretending to be Earnest..."

"Yes?"

"It reminded me of one of the headlines on that paper. There was an announcement of the high school production of Twelfth Night."

"Huh? You'll have to explain that one."

"It's another play about mistaken identities. In Twelfth Night, Viola pretends to be the boy, Cesario. When Viola's missing twin brother, Sebastian, shows up then he's mistaken for Cesario. Then Olivia falls in love with Cesario, but Cesario is really Viola, so that won't do..."

"OK, if you say so..."

"None of that matters, Adele. Don't you see? What's important is that now I can find a copy of that paper and figure out why Cliff stole it!"

"Bosh and nonsense! He probably thought it was trash and tossed it in your garbage pail. Just ask him."

"Not on your life! There's more happening in Dead Mule Swamp than the growth of polliwogs and anaerobic decomp. Hopefully the Herald will still have a complete archive."

# Chapter 6

The phone rang at 6:45 the next morning; I was still in bed. That's never a good time for a call. I managed to answer on the fourth ring. It was Adele. "Cliff's missing!" she blurted without even saying, "Good morning."

I was having trouble holding my brain cells together and barely managed an "uh...," but Adele rumbled on.

"Sherri called the police this morning at six. I know, because my neighbor, Kyle, is the deputy. It came over the scanner, and after Kyle left for work, Beth came over to talk about what all she heard. I guess Cliff went out late last night... told Sherri to go to bed; he just had to run over to Paulson Road to deliver some wood that he'd forgotten before the play. When she woke up this morning, the truck was still gone, and Cliff wasn't anywhere to be found."

I was beginning to wake up, and feeling thankful for a cordless phone. I had Adele on speaker and was setting up the coffee pot as she continued.

"I haven't heard anything more yet, but Beth said she'd come over as soon as the scanner squawked a syllable. Have you seen him?"

I nearly asked, "Seen who?" but caught myself in time. "No, not since the play last night. Where's Paulson Road?"

"Lordy, Lordy, it's clear over west of here, practically in the next county. I don't know who Cliff did business with over there, it's none of his regular customers. Anybody's going to know that."

The complexities of small-town life boggle my mind. It's hard to understand why everyone seems to have a mental Rolodex of not only their own business and social relationships, but of everyone else too. Clearly, I had been too busy renovating to even begin to live up to local expectations. I didn't know of a single business transaction made by Cliff, except for his request for some work at my place.

"OK, Adele, thanks for the update. Is someone with Sherri? Does she have someone to watch the kids? Maybe I should give her a call."

"Oh, you don't need to; her sister is already over at their place. She lives just down the block from me, and I saw her car race by here about fifteen minutes ago."

"Let me know if you hear anything;" I concluded with the obvious, and hung up the phone.

The coffee smelled wonderful, and I filled my largest mug, the big midnight blue one with cream and brown glaze drippings down the sides, and carried it up to the bedroom so that I could look out over the swamp. In the slanting morning light, patches of open water gleamed pink and gold. I thought about my hopes for an upstairs porch—it would have to be screened. I thought about Cliff—he didn't seem like the kind of man who would cheat on Sherri. I thought about Adele and appreciated her acceptance—but I wondered how many other people she had called this morning. I sipped the coffee and let its goodness seep into my nervous system.

As the minutes slipped by, the angle of the sun changed. A dazzling spot of light bored into my eyes, reflected from something down there among the trees. I couldn't imagine what it would be. I'd stood at this window many a morning and watched the light play across the swamp, and I'd never seen this before. Of course, the sun is always changing, but it seemed so out of place—something that shiny.

The binoculars were handy. I'd been rather unsuccessfully attempting to identify spring warblers, something I'd never had an opportunity to do in the suburbs. I changed locations just a bit to forestall the glare and aimed at the general area. As I see-sawed the rocker bar, suddenly a truck leapt into focus. Not just any truck, it was that blue and gray beater that belonged to Cliff.

Cursing the fact that I still hadn't made the decision to buy a cell phone... wondering if it would even work out here in the swamp, I called the police station. I would rather have checked out what I saw before bothering the police. But with no way to contact anyone from the truck I decided I had better call it in first. Tracy Jarvi, our young female Chief, answered the phone herself. This was no big surprise. The entire force consisted of Tracy and Kyle, plus one part-time office person.

"Cherry Hill Police." She sounded crisp but slightly distracted.

"This is Ana Raven, over on South River Road," I began.

"Oh yes, Ms. Raven. How can I help you?"

I was flummoxed. Was I supposed to know that Cliff was missing? How does one admit to being a party to gossip before eight in the morning? "Um, I'd like to report a truck."

"Your truck has been stolen?"

"No, I've found a truck. At least, I can see one where it's not supposed to be... in the swamp..." my voice trailed off. "It looks like Cliff's," I added lamely.

"Really, Ms. Raven? What makes you think that?"

"I know his truck. It's an old blue and gray Chevy. He's been by here several times this spring, and I heard that he didn't make it home last night." I waited for her reprimand, but none came.

"I'll be right out. Deputy Appledorn is out on the other side of the county, and it will take too long for him to get back here. I'll notify the Sheriff's Department as well; it's really their jurisdiction, but we work together on most cases."

"Thanks. I'm going to start walking down the road in the direction of the truck. It's south of my place, on the two-track. I'll watch for you."

"Be there in ten minutes."

I took the time to put on my mud boots and a jacket. Mornings were bright, but still cool. I guessed that the truck was about half a mile away from my house, but I wasn't sure how it could have gotten into the swamp. The county road ended at my driveway. South, beyond that, was a two-track that was drivable if one was careful, but it was not maintained by the county. Walking south down the lane, I wondered what on earth Cliff was doing out here. Perhaps, most alarming was the question of why he was still here, if he had left home last night.

A car was squishing through the soft dirt of the road behind me. I turned, and there was Tracy, in one of Cherry Hill's two police cars, a big white SUV with a gold star and a red cherry on the side. She slowed to a stop, rolling down the window.

"Hop in, Ms. Raven," she ordered.

"Call me Ana," I countered as I climbed in the passenger side. "I think we have to be close to the truck now, but I can't see it from here."

We continued down the road at a snail's pace, and suddenly Tracy pointed to her left. At first I didn't realize what she was seeing, but then I saw it too, the fresh tracks of tires snaking off the road into the woods on some long-forgotten grade that had once been used for vehicular purposes. Tracy carefully eased the SUV into the woods at the right edge of the road. "I think we'll walk in from here," she said. I liked that she said, "we."

I'd heard about our female Police Chief, but hadn't yet met her, so I was almost as interested in her as in our goal. Tracy Jarvi's name was telling, as she was clearly of Scandinavian descent. She was tall and large-boned with straight blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. Her athletic build fitted the blue uniform nicely. In spandex, I could picture her flying down a ski hill, and her inherent strength made me feel safe. I'm 5'5", and tip the scale at something between toothpick and pudgy, but Tracy was much more solid than I.

"Watch out where you put your feet," she added as we opened the doors. "Don't step in any of the tire treads."

No unusual sounds came from the swampy woods. A woodpecker hammered on a dead tree, and somewhere a white-throated sparrow cried "Oh, Sam Peabody, Peabody, Peabody." We began to follow the freshly-raw marks into the swamp, quickly rounding a bend and leaving the seasonal road behind. The recent burst of May growth had filled in the understory, making it difficult to see very far ahead. Tracy was scanning the ground continuously, occasionally pointing to fallen branches that the truck had clearly run over and broken, but we saw nothing out of the ordinary except those two tire tracks.

Despite the fact that I had walked up and down South River Road many times this spring, I'd never realized that there was a very old two-track that entered right into the swamp. Now we were following a bit of a raised berm; small puddles were visible below us on each side. Someone in the past had filled and built this narrow roadway. I was glad that the way back was going to be easy to follow, in case something happened that I would need to walk back home alone. After ten minutes of careful walking and observation we spotted the rear of Cliff's truck ahead.

Tracy pulled her sidearm, and I nearly jumped. I hadn't thought about any scenarios that might require gunplay. "Stay behind me, Ana. I don't expect any trouble, but you never know."

We approached cautiously and quietly, three steps, then four. "Shit!" she said.

Tracy relaxed visibly and holstered her weapon. I stepped up beside her. Curling from the tailpipe to the driver's side window was a section of dirty green garden hose.

# Chapter 7

The truck wasn't running. There was no way to tell how long ago it had run out of gas, and a person was slumped over the steering wheel. Tracy carefully approached the truck from the passenger side, searching the ground before she placed each of her feet. She opened the door and leaned across, lifting the head of the too-still man and feeling his neck for a pulse.

With her actions the face of the man was revealed, and sadly, it was Cliff, looking gray and pasty. Tracy backed out of the truck, reached in a pocket and snapped open a cell phone. Although it no longer seemed like a high priority, one of my questions was answered; cell phones do work in Dead Mule Swamp.

Someone apparently answered Tracy's call. "Tracy Jarvi here, Sheriff. We've got a body on East South River Road. It's Cliff Sorenson. It'll be a county case. We've been looking for him for a couple of hours, but he's outside the village limits. Looks like a suicide."

While Tracy continued the conversation, mostly with "Yeses," "Nos," and "Certainlys," I tried to come to terms with what I was seeing and what I knew. Cliff hadn't seemed like the kind of man who was desperate enough to kill himself. Yet, what did I understand of the trials of trying to earn enough money to feed five people? On the other hand, every time Cliff had talked to me about "little Ruthie," he had sounded like a father who was very much planning on being a part of that girl's life for a long time to come. I hadn't known Cliff well, but well enough that I felt physically ill at coming face-to-face with his death. He had been one of the first people to be nice to me in Cherry Hill. He and Sherri had brought me two jars of homemade jelly when I first moved into my house, and we had chatted a few times at the hardware store. My stomach was tight and my heart thumped and bumped out of time. Perhaps it was searching for the rhythm of Sherri's pulse, or little Ruthie's.

Tracy also called Kyle, told him to get a move on, go notify Sherri Sorenson, and not to use the radio.

"That's all we need," she added to me, "for Sherri to hear the news over the scanner."

My muscles were beginning to ache, whether from shock or from inactivity, I couldn't tell. I was still rooted to where I'd been told to stand, off to the left rear of the truck. "Can I move?" I asked.

"Let's come away from the truck," Tracy suggested. "The Sheriff is on his way with a photographer and the Medical Examiner. Nothing looks suspicious, but all unexpected deaths have to be investigated."

From the highway, about two miles away, across the river, I could hear the faint shrill of a siren. It rose in pitch and volume, and began to drown out the morning sounds of a sleepy swamp. I only hoped that Kyle had reached Sherri's house ahead of that piercing wail.

# Chapter 8

After the Medical Examiner arrived, the Sheriff's deputy peremptorily told me to go home. Tracy offered me a ride, but I said I would walk. I wanted to think about some things.

Cliff was dead. There was no arguing with that. But why? Even I could tell that there wasn't any obvious evidence for anything other than suicide.

Had something happened at or after the play that we didn't know about? I had spent a fair amount of time watching Cliff and his family during that event, and he hadn't seemed stressed. He had laughed in all the right places, juggled the kids in his lap, and whispered to Sherri. They had left together; I had seen them going out the door in a group, and sensed no undercurrent of tension. But something had sent him out, later, on his fateful errand.

How had the truck gotten past my house? I had been awake until almost 12:30, and I hadn't heard it go by. Would I have awakened if I'd been asleep? I thought so, but I had to admit that someone driving slowly with the lights off could easily have slipped past, unnoticed.

My thoughts turned once again to that old newspaper; I was more certain than ever that Cliff had stolen it, and it was somehow important. I had to track it down.

When I reached my house, I realized the whole day was still ahead of me. Despite the feeling that a week's worth of events had occurred, it was barely 9:30 in the morning. I decided to go into town to try to find a copy of that paper before Tracy and the Sheriff might claim it was all police business, and shut me out.

A quick shower made me feel better, and I slipped into a denim jumper over a green turtleneck. My almost-straight brown hair came just to my shoulders, and only needed combing. It would dry into a slight natural pageboy. With sandals instead of mud boots on my feet, I was ready to face the day. I hopped into my navy blue, secondhand Jeep Cherokee. It fits my new country image well, and starts without protest every time I turn the key. And, I bought it against Roger's wishes. Perfect!

Soon, I was standing at the front door of the Cherry Hill Herald office fuming over the fact that I had forgotten it was Saturday. The Herald is a weekly paper; it comes out on Wednesdays, and probably no one is in the office at all from Thursday till Monday. Calls are routed to an answering service. I had learned that earlier in the year when I called to place a classified—I had tried to sell an old manure spreader that was decorating my back yard, but it seems that Forest County residents have all the old manure spreaders they need.

"Are ya' lookin' for Jerry?"

I nearly jumped out of my jumper! A man wearing greasy coveralls was staring at me.

"He's generly workin' to home on Saturday," the man added—again, too loudly.

"Uh, hello. I'm Ana Raven and I don't know if I'm looking for Jerry. Who is he? Who are you?"

"Name's Tom Baker," the man bellowed. "I clean the presses every Saturday morning. Jerry's th'editor, Jerry Caulfield. Usually, by Saturday he's gotten two or three calls about somethin' that was printed in the last Herald, and he's workin' hard on his next editorial."

"Calls? How does he get calls? The phone number on the masthead just leads to an answering service."

Tom guffawed. "Ma'am, I can tell you don't know Cherry Hill any too well. Ain't you the lady that bought the place over in Dead Mule Swamp?" He went right on, not needing an answer from me. "You got to call Jerry at home. Everyone knows that."

"His number is in the book?" I was feeling a trifle annoyed— with Tom for finding me amusing, and with myself for still being so new in the ways of a small town.

"It is," Tom said, sounding oddly apologetic, as if it were a shame that anyone had to look the number up. But then he brightened, and pointed alongside the newspaper building to a house on the next street over. "See that picket fence?"

"I do."

"If you just walk over there and knock on the back door, Jerry's prob'ly got some coffee perking."

I smiled and Tom smiled back. He added, "I work at Teeter Farm Implements, out on Centerline. Place has been in the Teeter family for three generations. I s'pose you won't be needin' a tractor or corn picker, but we got hoes and rakes too, Ms. Raven. I'm there after lunch today and every week, Tuesdays through Fridays. Nice to meet you."

"It's nice to meet you too, Tom. I'm still trying to learn my way around here."

"Yes'm. But you'll do all right. Just go on over an' see Jerry. You can tell him I sent you."

# Chapter 9

As I approached the picket fence I could smell the coffee. The aroma was rich and strong, and I realized how badly I could use a cup. I lifted a hand to knock, but the door was suddenly opened by a tall man in his sixties, with wavy white hair combed back from his forehead. Half glasses were perched on his nose, and a crooked smile twisted his full lips. Momentarily, I felt quite awkward, standing there with my knuckles poised to rap on his chest, but he quickly put me at ease. "Come in, Ms. Raven. Our paths cross at last, thanks to Tom, I see!"

"Mr. Caulfield?" I inquired, feeling stupid.

"In person. Call me Jerry." He removed the glasses and slipped them in the pocket of his light blue shirt. I noticed how well the shirt set off the white hair and his blue eyes.

"Ana Raven," I replied. "It rhymes with Ghana."

"So I've heard. Come in."

He stepped back and beckoned for me to enter a neat kitchen done in natural wood and gray granite. The trim and hardware were black. Classy, but no-nonsense, a kitchen designed for a careful and precise person. Not an item was out of place. The delightful aroma emanated from a fancy black coffee maker on the center island. It was one of those that ground the beans, added water and made the coffee for you, all at a specified time. I noted that it held twelve cups. It was definitely top of the line, and I doubted it had been purchased in Cherry Hill.

Mr. Caulfield, Jerry, followed my gaze, and silently offered me a large black mug. I hoped I wasn't gaping, and mentally checked to see if my mouth was open. It wasn't, but I decided that I seriously needed to start acting less moronic, and soon.

"Thank you... Jerry," I began.

"Help yourself, Ana," he added. "Would you like a bagel?"

"I would," I admitted, suddenly hungry, "if it's not too much bother."

Jerry smiled quietly. "Cinnamon-raisin, or blueberry?"

"Cinnamon-raisin."

I filled my mug with coffee as Jerry pulled a stool out at the end of the island and indicated I should use it with a nod of his head. I sat.

He removed a bagel from a container in a deep drawer, expertly sliced it and laid the halves in a black and stainless toaster oven, then pushed buttons which beeped like an ATM. While the bread toasted, he opened the refrigerator, extracted and precisely set three containers in front of me. The choices were cream cheese, real butter, and a low-cholesterol butter substitute. I'll admit I was impressed. The man appeared to be single—despite the neatness, the kitchen was stark—lacking a woman's touch, and yet he was a prepared and excellent host. As I sipped the wonderful coffee, Jerry placed a small white china plate with a black border and silver edge in front of me. The black border wasn't plain, but was enhanced with a black-on-black intertwining of two Greek meanders. The butter knife he added was sterling silver, bearing the letter C. I was starting to feel inadequate again, just from the weight of the money in the room, but he grinned amiably and tossed a paper napkin on the plate.

"Don't let the family china frighten you. I don't need many things, so I kept the best, and it's really easy to set a lovely table that way. No choices."

The oven beeped again. Jerry brought me the perfectly toasted bagel, and I reached for the butter. Might as well go high-class when I can. My gracious host/editor refilled his own mug and perched on the stool opposite mine.

"Now, what brings you to my door on a Saturday morning? I assume it has something to do with the sad events unfolding in Dead Mule Swamp. Oh, don't look so surprised. As editor and chief reporter for the Herald I keep a sharp ear tuned to the police scanner."

Is there anyone in this town who doesn't? I wondered. Aloud, I simply said, "Yes, well. Maybe."

"Maybe? I doubt that. Would you have hurried in to find me if Cliff weren't headed for the morgue?"

"No. That's true enough." I hung my head. I had barged into this man's kitchen and now found that my thoughts were hardly collected. "Let me start at the beginning."

"Always a good idea."

I explained how Cliff had visited me more than a month ago, and about the old newspaper that was found and went missing all on the same day. I told him about the headline for the high school production of Twelfth Night, and how the plot was similar to that of The Importance of Being Earnest. It now seemed significant that Cliff had hauled his whole family to see that play when they could barely afford such luxuries.

Jerry nodded slowly as if digesting the information. I was still trying hard to remember what else was in those old headlines. I remembered something about science, but couldn't think what it was.

"Was Cliff interested in the paper?" Jerry asked.

"I don't know. I was in the kitchen when he must have looked at it, and taken it."

"How could he have hidden it?"

"He had on a loose shirt over a t-shirt, plaid wool, I think. I suppose he could have slipped it into the back of his belt behind the shirt."

"Makes sense. What else was in that edition of the paper?"

"That's just it. I can't remember. But I was thinking I could look through the archives. I could at least narrow it down by looking for the years when the banner looked the same. I have a pretty good mental image of that."

"I can probably be of some help to you there. Come into my office."

Jerry led the way into a spacious office/den combination room. In fact, it looked like it was supposed to be the living room of the house, but he had made it his own. Definitely a bachelor, I thought. All four walls were filled either with windows, or framed newspapers and pictures of all sizes. He pointed to one on the northwest corner of a blue-gray wall. It was a framed copy of the front page of the Cherry Hill Herald, dated July 1, 1876.

"This was our first edition, ever. The paper was established for the express purpose of celebrating the country's centennial." He ran his finger down the glass to rest on a masthead in the lower corner. "Charles M. Caulfield, publisher and editor-in-chief," was printed in difficult, uneven type. "This is my great-grandfather." He couldn't keep a slight lilt of pride from his voice. The next framed paper was dated September 8, 1881. "Forest Fire Kills 200, Devastates Local Logging Economy." The banner was essentially the same as the premier edition. I skipped over it, not because I didn't care about a great local tragedy, but it wasn't pertinent to my search.

"How about this one?" Jerry asked, sensing my focus of the moment. The next headline was "U.S. Declares War Against Germany," and was dated April 7, 1917. "We were a daily paper back then, but didn't get enough info for a significant news story until a day late. Probably took most of it from the Chicago paper." This banner was cleaner, with the paper's name in a less fancy font. I squinted at it, but it didn't seem quite right either.

Of course the next paper was dated December 7, 1941, with the screaming headline, "A Day That Will Live in Infamy—U.S. Declares War on Japan." This banner was definitely wrong. It was much too modern looking. Several other papers decorated the wall, but I didn't even look at them. "It's none of these," I declared. "It's most like the first two, but the one I found is obviously printed on newer equipment. I don't remember it being as fussy as that first one."

"That's good deduction, Ana. We can narrow our search to the years between 1881 and 1917. I should be able to look at our records and see when the entire banner design was overhauled during that time. I'm as interested in your mystery paper as you are."

"Great! Could I make an appointment to come look through the archives? This will definitely help me know where to start."

"I'm afraid not."

"Why?" My head jerked up and I stared at him. I had thought we were establishing a good rapport.

"Because the archives burned in 1954. We've got an eye out for old copies, but we've been able to replace very few papers from before that date."

# Chapter 10

Jerry and I chatted a few more minutes, but neither of us had much of a heart for continuing the conversation. My sense of frustration ran deep, and Jerry seemed to mentally move on to whatever he had in mind for the rest of his day. I swallowed the last cold mouthful of coffee, thanked him for his time and left.

I wondered what to do next. Part of me wanted to pursue this newspaper idea relentlessly, but the truth was that I was exhausted. It was not quite noon, and this early feeling did not bode well for the rest of the day. I felt like I needed a gallon of coffee, instead of having just finished an excellent cup of robust brew. I decided to see if Adele was in her store.

Since the Jeep was nicely parked in the shade, I walked the two blocks, up Mill Street to Main, then one block east, to Volger's store. A large maple tree shades the door and the inside is always cool. The screen door creaks and the dark wood floorboards have absorbed the odors of a century of groceries. It's a small wonder that the grocery manages to remain open, but Cherry Hill is far enough from any box stores that local folks need to buy some food between big shopping trips to fill their pantries.

Adele was sorting coupons and keeping an eye on the young man who was standing nervously at the cash register in the single checkout lane. He looked like a college kid, home for the summer, and just starting a new job. A young mother, with a baby perched in a full shopping cart, was approaching him while looking pleadingly at Adele. Adele shook her head and pointed at the young man, then motioned to me to come into the office.

"That's Justin Gorlowski," she whispered. "He started yesterday. I told him he's got to run the register alone today. He'll be fine as long as that baby doesn't start howling. That would make him as jumpy as a grasshopper in sneakers. What's on your mind? It doesn't look like groceries."

Was I that easy to read? I hoped not, or I'd make a pretty poor investigator, not that I was really investigating. I was only being curious. Seriously curious. "I just came from having coffee with Jerry Caulfield," I began.

"Do tell!" she responded with a raised eyebrow.

While Justin fumbled and hunted for bar codes on cans of corn and bundles of diapers, I told Adele about finding the body and my quest for the missing newspaper.

"Where did they take Cliff's body?" was her first question, skipping right over my obsession with the newspaper. I had to admit that I had no idea. "If they took him to the city, it means they requested an autopsy. And that would mean that they wanted to be sure it was a suicide."

"I think Tracy said it had to be looked into, just because it wasn't natural. How did you know it was probably a suicide?"

"Beth came over to tell me before I left home to come in and open the store. Cherry Hill folks like to know when someone stubs a toe. I keep a scanner here in the office, but I don't have one at the house. We haven't had a suicide since Kenny Schuster shot himself in 1998. The man just couldn't deal with his own inadequacies, but that one was obvious. This time... after all, Cliff could have hooked up that hose, or someone else could have done it.

"Adele, I just can't believe that Cliff wanted to die, but I was there. I didn't see any footprints or bloody bumps on his head."

"Hey, Mrs. Volger," called Justin. "How do I fix it when the price doesn't scan right?"

Adele rolled her eyes. "I need to help the poor boy," she explained.

"Wait, Adele, is there anyone who is really up on local history? Someone who might talk to me on the weekend?"

"Maybe Cora Baker, Tom's mother," Adele said in a bit of a huff that I credited to her hurry to reach Justin. "Do you know Tom?"

"I met him this morning. He seemed nice enough. Where does his mother live?"

Adele was tight-lipped now. "I have no idea. It's none of my business. Ask Tom." She rushed out to the register, and I was obviously dismissed.

This was definitely odd. In a town where tracking other people's lives was elevated to an art form, Adele either didn't know or wasn't telling anything about this Cora Baker. Before leaving the office I checked Adele's phone book, but Cora Baker was not listed. Neither was Tom. I tried to remember what Tom had told me earlier, and I was pretty sure he had said he would be at Teeter's Farm Implements that afternoon. I decided to treat myself to lunch and then go locate Tom.

The Pine Tree Diner was just a couple of doors down the street, and a neon sign in the window was flashing "OPE." I decided to follow the instruction, although I doubted that the owner meant to give poetic directions. The Pine Tree will never make five stars on anyone's list, but that wasn't because the food was below par. In fact, the food was excellent. However, the ambiance matched the rest of the town, old and worn. The vinyl booth pads were patched with duct tape and the laminated tabletops were chipped. Someone's choice of turquoise and brown for the color scheme wasn't inspiring, and there was never enough light. But, I'd eaten here a few times while I was getting settled in Cherry Hill, and I knew for a fact that the service was fast, the portions were ample, and the food was all prepared fresh.

I ordered a grilled cheese sandwich and a salad. They were served quickly, as I expected, and the food made me feel better. I considered where else I might look for old Cherry Hill newspapers. Surely some library would have an archive, but it seemed as if Jerry would have known if the small local library did. I thought that with his personal and professional interest in the paper he would have tracked down any existing archive. If he knew of one, I wondered why he hadn't told me. Were there multiple people trying to keep me away from old newspapers and old news? Maybe Adele's odd reaction wasn't about Cora, but was part of some bigger local secret that everyone was keeping from upstart newcomers.

Well, no one was going to keep me from tracking this down now. I wiped my mouth on the paper napkin, visited the ladies' room, and paid the tab. I had to rummage around in the canvas bag I was carrying to find my wallet. It was there, way down at the bottom, but I was annoyed at myself for choosing a big floppy tote bag for the day.

# Chapter 11

After retrieving my Jeep, I drove out to Teeter's. At least I didn't need to ask how to get there; it is one of the largest businesses in the whole region, not just Forest County. Farmers drop $30,000 or more on special pieces of equipment, and a dealer who can keep dozens of huge machines in stock on a lot is visible and known. The location on Centerline is perfect—near town, but far enough out that farmers don't have to be extra careful when bringing in big trailers to haul their new purchases home.

Teeter's sign was modern and in good condition. It towered above a landscaped knoll on which was perched an odd spidery, all-metal implement. The wagon-like thing had six wheels on the ground and a collection of wheels and gears rising up one side. A metal seat faced toward a tongue, and beside the seat were handles on bars that reached back to the gears. Beneath the machine's open framework were two staggered plow blades and several round discs set at odd angles. The whole thing was painted bright yellow, and displayed on white gravel set in a very green lawn. I wondered if it was the first machine Teeter's had sold.

I was a little surprised that the business was open on Saturday afternoon, but I supposed that lots of farmers also had to work another job to make ends meet, so farm needs had to be tended to on evenings and weekends.

There was a big glass-fronted showroom, just like an auto sales lot. Automatic doors opened almost silently, beckoning me into the large building. Several new trailers, wagons, and other shiny contraptions that meant nothing to me were displayed on the floor. One end of the showroom was partitioned off with a floor-to-ceiling iron railing. A gate in the bars led to another whole section which seemed to be filled with smaller tools and gardening needs. Tom was nowhere in sight, but a man was sorting papers at a desk behind more glass. He glanced up and motioned for me to come in. I judged him to be about my age, well built, but developing a bit of a paunch. He wore an expensive blue, pin-striped shirt, and navy twill pants, accented with a maroon tie. He rose and extended his right hand as I approached, while holding his tie from flapping with the other. "Kevin Teeter," he said as we shook hands. "My friends all call me Kevin. How may I help you? Not here to buy a cherry shaker, I would venture. Perhaps a utility trailer?"

Nice enough, but his voice was a little oily—the perfect salesman. Well, why not? He certainly would have to keep these expensive machines moving off the lot quite steadily to stay in business.

"No, not really." I smiled at him. "My farming equipment needs are pretty limited. But I must say this is all very impressive."

"If you want to visit the garden center, just go through that gate. But, now that you're here, you might as well introduce yourself."

"I'm sorry." I reddened at my bad manners even if the man seemed a little overbearing. "I'm Ana Raven. I live out on South River Road."

"Ah, Ms. Raven! May I call you Ana? I heard that the house out there had sold, but frankly, springtime is so busy for us that I haven't had a chance to keep up with the local news. What brings you here? Planning on doing some landscaping?"

"Not yet, Kevin, but I'll keep you in mind. Today, I'm actually just looking for one of your employees, Tom Baker. I met him this morning, and I'd like to ask him a couple of questions."

While we were having this brief conversation, Teeter's hands continued to adjust papers on his desk. The man seemed to be a compulsive pile straightener. I felt sorry for his wife. However, a quick glance at his left hand did not reveal a ring. Suddenly, I saw something else on his desk, and I hoped that my expression did not betray me. An edge of old yellowed newspaper was protruding from one of the stacks. I quickly raised my eyes to meet his, lest he take note of where I was looking. Had he been trying to move that paper out of sight with the pile-shuffling routine?

"Ah, yes, Tom is here. He's washing down some new corn pickers that were delivered yesterday. Have a seat and I'll get him for you."

Kevin put his hand under my elbow and escorted me to a row of seats upholstered in fake leather just outside the row of offices. I didn't really like being touched by the man, even in this polite, rather formal way, but I didn't see any way to get around it. I took a seat and crossed my legs at the ankles, attempting to look as if I was willing to stay parked indefinitely. "Be right back," he added and headed for a steel door that was labeled "Service Area."

As soon as I heard the door click, I jumped up and weaseled my way around the corner of the glass wall. It only took a second to carefully extract the brown paper from its location at the bottom of a pile. However, I was swiftly disappointed to find that it was only a wide torn edge from the top of a page. I could see that it contained a date, May something, and without wasting any more time, I slipped it into the tote bag and raced for my seat in the showroom. I made it just in time. The metal door clicked open and Kevin and Tom appeared.

"Hello, Ms. Raven," Tom bellowed. The man had one volume; I decided he must be partially deaf. "Mr. Teeter said I can take my break now, so I have a few minutes. What can I do for you?"

"Hi, Tom. Who knew that I'd see you so soon again?" I chuckled. "Why don't we go outside and talk." I headed for the big automatic doors and Tom followed along. I had already decided that I didn't want Kevin Teeter to hear anything at all about what I was really interested in.

When we reached my Jeep I turned to Tom and leaned against the hood. I began, "I hear your mother is interested in local history."

"Who told you that?" Tom shouted. I quickly realized that any efforts to keep this conversation quiet were probably futile.

"Adele Volger," I admitted. Given Adele's tone of voice, I didn't know if this would be a good or bad thing to confess to, but I really had no other options, since I didn't know enough people yet to make up a believable lie.

"That Volger woman!" Tom did lower his voice to something more like a normal conversational level. He probably thought he was whispering. "Ma and her have had a feud goin' for years. It's been hot fer so long I don't think either one of 'em knows how it began. But that don't make no never mind to you."

"No, it doesn't. Does your mother study local events? Maybe old news, years that things took place?"

"She does for a fact. Don't make no sense to me. She's got a house full of books, and ol' newspapers, and pictures and enough stuff t' start a museum. Maybe she will do jist that, someday."

"That's great, Tom. Sounds like just the person I'd like to talk to. Do you think she'd see me?"

"Hell, yes, ma'am... er heck, yes. Don't mean to show you no disrespect."

"That's OK. How can I reach her? She doesn't seem to be in the phone book."

"Oh, she's there, the listin's still in my step-daddy's name. She don't go by that no more, but never bothered to get the billing changed. I'll give you th' number, and I'll draw you a map. It's a hard place t' find, and she don't explain it any too well to strangers. Don't know's a stranger ever visited her!"

"That would be great." I started to dig around in the tote bag for a pen and paper, but of course, just because that's what I needed, there wasn't any. And, I had to be careful not to damage that fragile strip of newsprint. I sighed, "I don't seem to have anything to write with."

"Come intuh th' service center. I've got plenty of pens and paper." Not wanting to re-enter the building with my guilty booty, I opened the car door, tossed the tote bag on the floor, and then followed Tom back to the building.

Tom was right; the directions to Mrs. Baker's place, or whatever her name really was, were complicated. Getting there would involve a lot of back roads I hadn't heard of yet, let alone seen, and they weren't all laid out in nice squares like the ones downstate. Listening to Tom's tortured speech was difficult and the bursts at high volume were beginning to feel like a jackhammer against my brain. The service office wasn't anything like the front offices with shiny glass and faux leather. This space was dark, grimy and smelled of grease and sour grain. If Tom's voice wasn't giving me a headache, the odor certainly was.

When I finally had a map with many scribbled notes, and enough branched or crossing lines on it to entertain a cryptographer, I escaped to the Jeep, hopped in and headed for home. Now, I really was tired. This day had gone on long enough, but I had a good outlook for a visit with Mrs. Baker. Tom didn't want to call her just then. He said she'd be taking an afternoon nap. But he had promised to call her this evening, and suggested that I follow up with a call in the morning.

I was planning on a nice long overnight nap myself. I hoped Tom's mother wasn't deaf too.

The shadows were lengthening as I pulled into my driveway and turned off the key. I reached for the map and my tote bag, but the bag wasn't there.

# Chapter 12

The tote wasn't on the floor or under the seat. Just to be thorough, I looked in the back and under the seats again, knowing as I did so how silly that was, since I knew right where I had put it.

With a deep sigh, I headed for the house, fatigue settling heavy into my bones. The loss had to be reported; my wallet containing my driver's license and credit cards was in the bag. I tried to remember what else had been in there, other than junk, as I dialed the police station for the second time that day. Again, Tracy answered the phone, but she didn't sound as crisp as she had in the morning hours. The day had taken a toll on her as well.

"This is Ana Raven," I began.

"Ana, I've been thinking you might call, but I'm sorry to have to inform you that there's nothing I can tell you about the Sorenson case. It's a county case anyway, but the body has been sent to the city. We won't know much for a couple of days, even officially, and I can't discuss the case with you despite the facts of your involvement."

"Actually, I'm very interested in knowing more about Cliff's... um... demise. But I'm calling to report a stolen purse."

"Yours?"

"Yes, a canvas tote bag with blue stripes and hard plastic handles."

"How odd. You've had quite a day, Ana. Where were you when it was taken?"

"Teeter's Farm Implements. I foolishly left it in my car, and when I got home..."

Tracy cut me off. "You need to call the Sheriff's Department. Teeter's is outside of Cherry Hill village limits, and there's no possible link to allow me to handle this one. They'll do everything they can, and they have lots more deputies than we do."

"Oh, OK." I was disappointed, or tired. Or disappointed and tired. I had felt so connected with Tracy just a few hours ago, and now she seemed to be pushing me away.

"Let me know how it turns out. I have to go. Someone's just coming in the door."

"Sure, bye."

I had to look up the number for the Sheriff's Department, and I added it to my list beside the phone. I hadn't really understood that my ties to the village were not official when it came to needing police.

My call was shuttled to a Detective Paul Peters, and I struggled for the next few minutes to recall what was in the bag in addition to my wallet. None of the rest of it made a bit of difference, but the man wanted a complete list. My patience was thinning, but I remembered fighting with an old copy of Women's Day, a bottle of vitamins (surely outdated), a cheap manicure kit, a bottle of glue, and a mini tissue pack. My fingers had touched loose paper clips, some coins and rubber bands when I had tried to find my wallet at the diner. Who could make sense of that mess? Of course there was the newspaper strip. I didn't mention that, it would have been too difficult to explain, and I was already feeling foolish enough.

Frazzling my last nerve, Detective Peters closed with a lecture about leaving valuables in an unlocked vehicle, and an admonition to call the credit card companies immediately. As if I didn't know that.

Following that less-than-encouraging conversation, I realized it had gotten dark outside, and I was hungry again. The kitchen in this old farmhouse is nothing more than adequate. The house had been lived in up until the mid 90s, so the countertops are decent Formica, and the cabinets are modern, but no appliances were built in. I'd bought a basic white stove, refrigerator and microwave, but nothing expensive. I didn't plan on doing any entertaining for a long time, maybe never, and a fancy kitchen was lower on my list of priorities than a comfortable bedroom and living space.

I checked the fridge, and pulled out a beer and a tub of leftover spaghetti. The spaghetti was spinning in the microwave and I was on my second long pull of the beer when the phone rang. I reached for it with a sigh.

"Ana Raven here." There was a pause, then a long raspy breath. I snapped, "Who's there, please?" I thought I was simply annoyed, but I heard a ragged edge to my voice.

"Old news... should be left... in the swamp, or you may find yourself... in too deep;" the voice was a genderless, harsh whisper.

"Who is this? What old news? Do you have my newspaper?" I demanded. After two more slow raspy breaths the caller hung up quietly—the effect was more eerie than an angry click would have been.

The microwave dinged and I jerked so hard that beer slopped all down the front of my jumper. I checked the caller ID. There was the number, with the local exchange. How could anyone in this day and age think they could make an anonymous call? An involuntary shiver ran up my spine. Perhaps he or she thought it wouldn't matter if I could find out who they were later on. Was it someone on a cell phone, someone standing on my porch, or parked out on the road? I leapt to the light switch by the kitchen door and turned the overhead light off and the porch light on with almost one motion. Keeping to one side of the door I surveyed the porch and then looked out beyond my Jeep. I couldn't see anyone or anything unusual. With the cordless phone in hand, I sprinted up the stairs to get a better vantage point from the upper windows, and made my way around all sides of the house. I saw nothing.

Up until now I had only assumed the newspaper was important. Whoever had made this call actually confirmed my theory, but I still had no idea what was in that paper that was so alarming. Obviously, the caller thought I knew more than I did. Should I call the police back and report this phone call? Had it really been a threat on my life, or was the stress of the day making me over-react? I'd have to explain why I hadn't listed a scrap of browning newspaper on the list of stolen items, which would not give me more brownie points with the gruff detective. I hesitated a minute, then reluctantly scrolled down to the previous call to the Sheriff's Department and was about to push redial, when the phone rang—a vibrating jangle of noise in my hand.

I dropped the handset and squawked. It wasn't a scream. I don't scream, but my nerves were certainly stretched thin. The phone hit the rug with a muffled thump and rang again. I swallowed, scooped it up, and hissed, "Are you threatening me? Where's my newspaper?"

# Chapter 13

"What are you talking about, Ana? This is Tracy Jarvi. You sound totally stressed out. What's going on out there?"

"Tracy! I thought you were... uh... someone else. I just had the strangest call. I thought they were calling back."

"What kind of call? You said something about a threat."

"I wish I knew. He, if it was a man—I couldn't tell for sure—said I should leave old news in the swamp, or I might end up there too. I thought it might be someone watching me, so I turned out the lights and was checking around the house..."

"Not outside alone, I hope."

"No, no, just through the windows. I was rattled for a few minutes, but I'm OK now. Do you think I should take it seriously?"

"Yes, I do. What old news, Ana? Does this have something to do with your missing bag?"

"Well, maybe. I had a piece of an old newspaper in it that might be important, but I didn't have time to read it before the bag was taken. Why did you call me? Is something wrong?" I suddenly remembered that Tracy had initiated this call.

"Have you reported the theft to the Sheriff's Office yet?"

"I did. That's what you said I had to do."

"I know. But we now have the bag here. Someone turned it in about twenty minutes ago. It was found in a trash can on the corner of Main and Peach. Your wallet is in it, and some other things. You'll need to check the contents, but there's money in the wallet, so it looks like robbery was not the motive."

"That's unbelievable! Is there a piece of old newspaper?"

"I'm looking at the contents right now. I see a magazine, but no paper. Can you come in and verify the identification?"

"But I don't have my license."

"It's all right. You've reported it, so just explain that if you're stopped."

"OK, I'll be right there. This won't take long will it?"

"It shouldn't."

"Oh, wait. I just remembered I have the number of the heavy breather on caller ID. I'll bring it with me."

"Good, we can run that down. See you in a few minutes."

Instead of soaking in a warm tub, here I was headed out the door yet again on this long, long day, but the trip to town would be short. I jotted down the not-so-anonymous phone number, and sponged the beer off my dress. Then I drove cautiously, but quickly, to town and parked in the lot beside the old brick police station. The building was an ugly lump in the shadow of the Forest County Courthouse, a large gray stone building topped with a clock tower.

Cherry Hill didn't have many street lights, but the one at the corner cast eerie shadows on the dirty brick wall—organic shapes of bushes moving in the shifty breeze against the hard edges created by the light bar on the police car.

Soon Tracy and I were staring at the contents of my bag spread across her old and worn oak desk. I'd never been inside the station. It was dingy to say the least. If I hadn't already gotten the impression that Tracy was a sharp, efficient officer, I wouldn't have had much confidence in the local police based on this room. The paint was institutional green—the walls looked like they hadn't been painted since the 1930s—or washed since the 1950s. Both desks in the room were old and scarred. File cabinets were crammed into every open space between the wood sash windows, while loose files and papers spilled over all the surfaces, except for Tracy's desk, where we were examining the mostly worthless pile of things from my bag.

Nothing was missing except that browning scrap of newsprint, and I gave her the entire story.

"I think it's obvious that there's something important in that newspaper," I concluded.

"It would seem so," Tracy answered, "but there really isn't any particular reason to connect it with Cliff. You don't even know if it's the same paper you found in your house. Besides, technically, you stole the paper from Teeter's desk. Don't force me to pursue that line of thinking. And for all we know, that one strip of paper could have fallen out somewhere."

I sighed and pulled from my pocket the note with the phone number from my caller ID. I handed it to her. "Can we figure out who this is? They were pretty stupid to call from an unblocked number."

Tracy took one look at the paper, glanced at a card pinned to the wall beside her desk and looked up at me with a crooked grin. "It's the number of the pay phone on the corner of Main and Peach."

I sucked in a breath sharply through my teeth. "Who brought in the bag? Maybe that person was the caller."

"It was Bella Hanford. She's twelve. What do you think?"

"I guess not, then." My breath came back out in a sigh. "Whoever called was an adult for sure."

"I will ask Bella's mother if I can question her about anyone she saw around the pay phone, and what made her pick up the bag, but I don't think we're going to get much information out of this. We don't even know yet if Cliff's death was suspicious at all. I think you're trying to make connections that just don't exist. But I do want you to be careful. Whoever called you was unhappy about something, and it seems to be connected to that old newspaper, I'll give you that much."

Tracy's tone changed. "I like you, Ana. I think you fit in well, here in Cherry Hill, but you can't rock the boat. Small towns have long memories. Take care of yourself. I'll give the Sheriff a buzz to let him know your bag is located."

# Chapter 14

My bed had seldom felt so good. The phone call seemed much less frightening now, almost distant. The whisperer had the precious paper scrap again, and I didn't, so perhaps any danger was past. I tried to stay awake long enough to think about it all, to try to figure out what I might know that was so worrisome to someone, but I was asleep within five minutes. Truth be told, I probably could have slept soundly on a cement floor.

Sunday morning light streamed into my bedroom, and I lay there soaking in the promise of a calm day. A song sparrow insistently told the maid to put on the tea kettle-ettle-ettle from the tree outside my window; farther away, crows cawed and cardinals whistled. Dawn hours like these were part of the reason I found myself increasingly pleased with life in Dead Mule Swamp.

No jarring phone calls disturbed my morning routine. I showered, dressed in comfortable gray slacks and an Isle Royale t-shirt and poured fresh-brewed coffee into my blue mug. Once seated at the kitchen table with the coffee and some toast, however, I began to focus, and it was impossible to ignore the events of the day before.

I thought about how safe I had felt last night with the newspaper scrap out of my possession. But I now realized that was a false security. The person who took it certainly didn't know I hadn't read it. And who would have taken it? It had to be someone who knew I had it, and that had to be someone who was at Teeter's. One likely person was Kevin Teeter himself. The paper had come from his office, but there were other possibilities. There had been a clerk in the garden store section, and a few people out on the lot. I wasn't sure if all of them were employees, or if some were potential customers, but they could have seen me put the bag in my car and leave it. They certainly would have heard what Tom and I were talking about. Perhaps even Tom had been responsible. He didn't have time to take the bag while he was giving me directions to his mother's place, but he could easily have told someone else to grab it. There had been several interruptions during the time he had been telling me about his mother.

I refilled my mug and wondered what could have happened a hundred years ago, or maybe more, that was so important to keep hidden. It had to be something that would create a big change in someone's life today. A simple black sheep of an ancestor would probably only be a joke, perhaps even bestow a sort of local celebrity status. Maybe there was a birth or adoption record that someone wanted to keep hidden. This fit with the odd parallel of the plays featuring swapped identities. If it turned out that the bank president was really the great-grandson of a poor potato farmer it might be unwelcome news, but social structure is so fluid nowadays that this, too, seemed a silly reason to create such a stir. I couldn't think of a single valid scenario that was worth trying to keep an old newspaper from being read, much less connect it to a death that might not even be a murder.

Whether the paper was related to Cliff's death or not, I couldn't just forget about it. And the obvious thing to do next was to call Cora Baker Whoever and try to meet with her. I glanced at the clock and was amazed to discover that I'd been mulling over this problem for almost two hours. And, I was prepared to spend the rest of the day doing more of the same.

I located the map Tom had drawn for me, and found the phone number written in the margin, right beside a greasy fingerprint. Maybe there had been fingerprints on the flat plastic handles of my bag, or on the magazine. I hadn't thought to ask Tracy about that. I decided not to touch the bag or its contents again until I talked to her. But right now, I wanted to meet Cora Baker.

Expectantly, I dialed the phone, and almost immediately a woman with a high, but firm, voice answered, "Cora Baker speaking."

"Ms. Baker," I began. I wondered if I should have used "Mrs.," but I didn't sense any hostility, so I continued. "My name is Ana Raven, and I got your number from Tom. He says you are quite an expert on local history."

"I like to think that I am. What can I do for you?"

"There's an old newspaper I'm trying to track down, but I don't really know which one it is. I do think I know one of the headlines. I know that must sound all muddle-headed. I'm wondering if I could come see you."

"Of course! If Tom gave you my number he must think you are all right. You could come out for lunch if you don't mind eating with an old lady. Do you know how to get here?" She laughed.

"I'd love to spend some time with you. Tom drew me a map. I think I can follow it. It takes me down Schoolhouse Section Road to Butternut Valley, and then to Brown Trout Lane."

"That sounds right. Where do you have to come from, my dear?"

There was another of those unaccustomed fondnesses intruding into my preferred no-nonsense life. I absolutely didn't want to be anyone's dear. Jolly Roger had taught me what happened to people who got used to being cared for. But I shut my eyes and chose to ignore the affectionate words; the woman could probably be my grandmother. "I'm on South River Road, at the edge of Dead Mule Swamp."

"Oh! The old Mosher farm. How nice for you."

"Shall I bring something?" I couldn't believe I was offering. I had almost nothing in the house and I wasn't even sure the diner in town was open on Sunday morning.

"Oh, no. This time will be my treat. It used to take an hour for Jimmie Mosher to drive to my place in his old Studebaker. But I expect it won't take you nearly so long. You don't have an old Studebaker, do you?" She tittered a bit at her own joke.

I chuckled too, hoping the roads were better than her time estimate suggested. "I have a Jeep."

"You'll be fine, then," she pronounced. "I'll see you soon."

# Chapter 15

I slid the county map out of my desk, and compared it with Tom's drawing. It looked to me as if the drive didn't need to be quite as complicated as Tom had made it appear. He had mapped out a circuitous route that saved me perhaps three miles, but took a lot of dirt roads. I stacked the printed map with Tom's drawing, and stepped out the kitchen door. Since moving here, I had almost become comfortable with the idea of not locking my doors. Most of the folks in Cherry Hill don't bother. But the events of the weekend had taken a toll, and I turned the key in the lock.

School Section Road was way over in the southwest corner of the county, and Tom had suggested that to avoid going up toward the highway, I should go south on Alder from South River Road and jog around a bit to cross the Petite Sauble River where it curves back to the west, to get there. I decided to give Tom's route a try as an exercise in getting better acquainted with the county. The route was tortured, and the roads only slightly less so, but when I reached School Section Road it was straight and level, like a teacher's ruler. Once it dipped into Butternut Valley, however, things were altogether different. In the first place, there were no signs to tell a newcomer that this valley had a name. Then, the county map showed two roads extending south from School Section, but neither was labeled. In reality, there were three roads going left from the valley. They were all dirt roads, and none of them had road signs.

I tried to make sense of Tom's map. At the middle of the valley he had indicated one dirt road to the left with the name of Firebreak. One of the three roads was at what I decided was the "middle" of the valley, and another was at the bottom of the valley. The third choice was neither at the middle or the bottom, but it was clearly the best road of the three. None of them looked like a past or present firebreak.

I tried the best road. It twisted and curved for a half mile till I reached a gate with a sign: "No Trespassing—Private Property." There was no space to turn around, with thick scrub oaks encroaching on the road. It took longer than I expected to back up twenty-six hundred winding feet.

My next try was the road at the middle of the valley. I decided I should just consider Tom's map to be perfectly accurate. Since the valley was steeper on one slope than the other, the point halfway between the two hills was part way up the gentler slope. His map indicated that the next turn should be to the right in 1.2 miles. I drove slowly through loose sand, dipping through holes that probably became swimming pools when it rained. I passed several dirt roads leading either up or down hill, watching the odometer crawl upwards. This road was straight, as a firebreak would probably be, so I was hopeful. In exactly 1.2 miles there was, indeed, another road. Not a huge surprise, given that there had been one about every two-tenths of a mile. A signboard at the corner consisted of two uprights with slats across it on which people's names had been painted. I looked for one that might be Tom's mother, but realized I still didn't know her actual last name, so that was useless.

I nosed the Jeep downhill and thought it was probably a good omen when I slipped past Pike Pike and then Bluegill Circle. I was looking for another fishy road, after all, and just seeing names on the roads was encouraging. After Walleye Trail and Sunfish Bend, there it was: Brown Trout Lane. I turned right and then left along a broad curve of the Pottawatomi River, another waterway that meanders through the county. There was one house at the end of the lane, and as a small sigh escaped my lips I realized that I'd been quite tense ever since leaving School Section Road.

The brown board-and-batten building looked as if it has started out as a fishing cabin, but had been expanded several times. A large pole barn stood on higher ground slightly behind the house. There was a screened porch across the length of the house where it faced the river, and Brown Trout Lane ended at the side door. A small, thin woman wearing overalls and a blue-flowered shirt opened this door, waved and smiled at me. Her wispy hair was escaping from two thin braids. Although she was slight, she seemed to bristle with energy.

I stepped out of the Jeep, and she called, "I see you found me just fine. You must be Ana Raven." She even pronounced my name right.

"Yes," I answered. "There's quite a maze of roads back here. Like a small town of its own."

"Mostly summer cottages," she said. "But I stay year round. Tom brings in groceries on a sled with his snowmobile, and I don't need to go out very much. The Harpers, back on Bluegill, spend the winters, too. They plow the road that far, and I can call them if I need help. Come on in. Please call me Cora."

I followed her through the porch into a kitchen that was probably updated in the 1950s. A wooden table and chairs, painted white, occupied the center floor space. A one-piece cast iron, enameled sink and drainboard filled a corner, and flowered chintz hid the pipes and whatever was stored beneath. Open shelves were neatly lined with blue paper and stacked with dishes, pans, books and knick-knacks. A round-topped refrigerator hummed in the adjacent corner. The one anomaly was a brand-new stove with a glass cooktop. Cora had been following my eyes. "Had to do it," she said. "The old oven just up and died one day. It's a shame. The old appliances work much better, but it's easy to clean."

Every inch of the rest of the space in the room was filled with boxes. There were file cabinets, boxes of pictures, boxes of books, packing crates with faded fruit-farm labels, and boxes of what seemed to be unsorted junk. In fact, the rest of the house appeared to be stuffed with more of the same. Every item not in a box had a tag tied to it.

Cora's eyes were crinkling, and the left corner of her mouth twitched. "Historians know so much because we collect things," she said. "Some just collect knowledge, but I like to have substance to my facts. The pole barn's full too, but it's better organized. My little museum, I guess you could call it."

"Amazing," I said, shaking my head. "But if it's a museum, why not have it in town where people can visit?"

"Some day," she sighed. "Some day. Now, shall we have lunch and talk about your newspaper?"

# Chapter 16

Here was another mystery. Cora was not as old as I had imagined, probably only about twenty years my senior. And she was apparently well-educated, and spoke precisely, yet Tom's speech was sloppy and sounded more like that of a high-school dropout. If I had not been told, I never would have guessed that they were mother and son.

She put a kettle of water on the stove, and brought cups, spoons, teabags, sugar and milk to the table.

"I hope I'm not interfering with your afternoon nap," I said.

"Nap? I don't take naps."

I was surprised. "Oh, Tom implied you shouldn't be bothered in the early afternoon because you might be sleeping."

"That Tom! Honestly, I took a nap one day when I had a bad cold, and now he thinks I'm practically ready for assisted living. He's a great help to me, but sometimes he acts as if I've gone over the hill just because I don't like to drive."

"I suspect our children always think of us as much older than we are," I offered. "Even after they grow up. My son, Chad, is in college, and he thinks I'm a real old fogey." Most of the time, Chad and I got along just fine, but I was searching for ways to establish rapport.

"Maybe boys need to keep their mothers at a certain distance," Cora said. Abruptly, she changed the subject. "I have cream of chicken soup and some homemade brown bread. I hope those are acceptable for lunch. On the phone I forgot to ask you if you'd like them."

"That sounds great. How do you find time to bake?"

"I only have to feed myself, for the most part. When I do cook, I make a large batch of whatever it is. I give some to Tom and freeze the rest. I like to try old recipes that come across my desk. Some are very good, others... you have to wonder. The ethnic foods are very interesting. A lot of Finns and Swedes settled here, but also Poles and Czechs, as well as those from English-speaking nations."

I thought she sounded like a teacher, with carefully-selected words and phrases. As she talked, Cora began to heat the soup on her new stove, and then sliced thick slabs of soft brown bread that looked delicious.

"There are paper napkins on that shelf," she pointed to the right of the stove. "And you can see the bowls and plates."

I set the table without difficulty, and we settled into the comfortable pre-meal routine known to all women who inhabit kitchens.

Soon we sat down, and the food was as good as the aromas had promised. As we got acquainted, I was not surprised to learn that Tom was good at fixing machinery, but not too handy in the kitchen. She said she had married young and Tom was her only child. In return I told her I'd once taught literature at a community college. After eating, Cora refilled the tea kettle, and I began to tell her the story of my mysterious paper. It seemed to me to become more complicated every time I told it.

Cora, however, was definitely a no-nonsense kind of woman. I already liked her immensely. The kettle began to whistle, and as she hopped up to turn it off and fill our cups again she said, "It's really quite simple. There's something so juicy in that paper that someone is willing to go to a great deal of effort to keep it hidden. Cliff must have realized that, but his death may or may not be related. Believe me, old forgotten facts can affect the present quite seriously. The important thing is to find a copy of the paper."

"I agree," I said. "But Jerry Caulfield told me that no one has copies of those old editions any more. We narrowed it down to some time between 1881 and 1917. Both of those page designs are wrong, but he thinks the banner was changed once more, and he said he'd look up that date.

Cora's eyes were not twinkling now. "Humph. That Mr. Gerald Caulfield ought to know more about his own paper without looking it up. The man's a disgrace to the county."

This hardly fit with my image of the person I'd spent a pleasant morning with, just the previous day, so I held my tongue.

"All-new printing equipment was purchased in 1894. Surely he knows that date. It was the year his great-great-grandmother died. She left a fortune to her son, Charles, and he spent a pile of it on new presses. Enraged his wife, but it boosted Cherry Hill into prominence in the county. There had been three papers before then, but the new presses were faster and cleaner, and the Herald could get the news onto paper in record time."

What she said made sense, and I nodded. Before I could say anything, Cora continued. "Bought a Balzer automobile, too. I'll bet you never heard of that! It looked like two bicycles fastened together, with a gasoline engine under a buckboard seat. He had it custom built with a cargo box on the back, and shipped it in by rail from New York. It couldn't handle the back roads, but Charles moved papers around the main routes in the county so fast that he had news on the streets from Cherry Hill to Jalmari to Thorpe faster than the other companies could even print their papers. Gerald knows all this."

"If he does, then why wouldn't he tell me?" I asked. "He seemed really interested in helping me."

"He's a sneak, a snake in the grass, with his fine china and smooth talk. He's got some hidden reason, you mark my words."

I tried to move the conversation back to my topic of interest, since I just couldn't relate to this view of Jerry Caulfield. "So, you think the paper had to be printed in 1894 or later?"

"No doubt about it. Let's see if we can narrow it down even more. You said the school play was Twelfth Night?"

"Yes."

Cora pushed herself away from the table and walked to one of the large file cabinets. As she rummaged in a drawer she muttered, "T. Theatre. Local plays... Shakespeare... Aha!"

She pulled a brown folder from the cabinet and laid it on the table. "There have been fifty-two Shakespeare productions in the county since 1867 that I've been able to verify. The most often staged has been Hamlet. How's that for an ominous past? Tragedies are so much more popular than comedies."

I took a breath, planning to say something snide about modern tragedies like House of Sand and Fog, but Cora continued on in her eagerness to share of her amassed knowledge.

"Coriolanus played here only once—a traveling company from Chicago. However, Twelfth Night has been relatively well represented with four productions. In 1977, Cherry Hill High School attempted to produce a modernized version. That was an error of judgment." Cora peered at me over her reading glasses. "I was there."

A tingling of anticipation prickled my skin, and I tried to urge her on with an intense look.

"A 1952 production was staged, also by the high school. The original version. The director was Samuel Lutz, who was still directing plays when I graduated.

"The State University Thespians brought a Shakespeare festival to town for a week in the summer of 1928. A stage was erected in the park and they presented on successive evenings, King Lear, Twelfth Night, and Hamlet."

"There's one more," I said. "Is it the one we want?"

She read from a yellowed card,

"'Cherry Hill High School presents a Shakespeare Comedy in Five Acts. Twelfth Night or What You Will celebrates the opening of the new school auditorium. Viola to be played by the lovely Miss Edna Heikkinen, and Sebastian by young Master Charles Caulfield, Jr.'" Cora looked at me again, and harrumphed once more. "Here we are. 'May 7-9, 1896. Tickets $.25. All proceeds will go toward retiring the auditorium construction debt.'"

My thoughts were racing. That was the same month as I had seen on the scrap of newspaper that had been in my bag. "Now we know when the play was given, but how can we find a newspaper?"

"Let's go to the barn," Cora said.

# 

# Chapter 17

The pole barn was everything the house was not: organized, modern, and also chilly. Cora switched on bank after bank of fluorescent lights which buzzed and flickered as they struggled to come on in the cold building. Fortunately, she also turned on a gas-fired space heater which began throwing out warmth immediately.

I could hardly believe what I was seeing. The inside did not look anything like a barn at all, except for Styrofoam insulating material filling the spaces between the posts. In the first place, the barn had two floors. A wide staircase leading upwards was against the wall to my right, but it led to a closed door. Directly to my left, a corner room had been partitioned off and made into an office with half walls. A computer with a twenty-three-inch, flat-screen monitor occupied the desk; there was an oversized flat-bed scanner, a color laser printer and a couple of work tables.

The remainder of what I could see on the first floor was filled with display cases or roped-off "rooms."

"Cora! This is wonderful. This is already a museum. Why isn't this in town where people can see it?"

"Some folks have no sense," was Cora's cryptic answer, and she seemed to put a heavy period on the sentence, and the topic.

I changed my tack. "You have very nice computer equipment here. My son would be impressed. He's a junior at Tech."

"I may like history, but historic filing systems are inadequate. I'm working hard to transfer all the paper files to digital ones. It took me a while to learn how to set up a database, but I usually manage to accomplish things I set my mind to. I thought I'd really miss my old card system, but I can't say that I do. I've kept it, of course; it's upstairs. But I can look up everything much faster this way. The biggest problem is it takes so long to do the data entry. I have thousands of items here, and more in the house that aren't listed yet."

"I noticed."

"A lot of it I've kept catalogued in my head, but that isn't going to help anyone else, and I won't be able to keep this up forever. I'd love to see a foundation established, a real historical society that would preserve the local past. There could be programs for school children. There are duplicates of so many items the students could even learn to use some of the less-valuable ones—sort of a living history class every so often."

"What a wonderful idea. May I look around?"

"Of course."

I began just beyond the office room. The first case was an old one with quarter-sawn oak edges, and a rounded glass front. It contained fossils and arrowheads, stone hatchets and wicked-looking stone knives. Some were grouped, and every group was labeled with a typed card. The card beside one batch of small arrow points read, "Clarence B. Morrow farm, found by William Morrow, aged 7, 1934."

"How do you know all this?" I asked.

"People generally want to tell me all they know about things when they bring them in, and I make them stay until I get it all written down. I mostly display the items that have more provenance, and keep the less-well documented things upstairs."

I moved on to the next case. This one was newer and seemed to have come from a department store, perhaps it had been a jewelry case. The angled shelves were perfect for displaying a mixture of old photographs and some personal items. There was also a Bible, a lace handkerchief, a shawl, some buttons and other oddments. In contrast with the soft fabrics, the bottom shelf contained a rough and broken whiffletree from a wagon. The cards came to my rescue again. "Possessions of Thaddeus T. and Alma Jorgensen, first settlers of Forest County. Whiffletree believed to be from the wagon in which they traveled here, from Pennsylvania, 1847."

I skipped over several cases. "I'd love to look at everything in detail, but I guess I'll just look at a few things today," I apologized.

"I understand," Cora said.

In the far corner was a bedroom set, arranged so as to create the room, even though there were no walls. It was roped off with green velvet strung through brass posts, reminiscent of an old movie theater. The rope had a tag attached. "Starlight Movie Theater, 1916-1955;" I had been right about its source. The antique bed had tall head and foot boards. A matching washstand and bureau were placed against opposite "walls." Men's clothing had been laid over a valet chair, and a silver-topped, dark walking stick leaned against it. Books filled a case near the bureau. Facing me, just inside the velvet rope was a placard on a stand bearing the picture of a man with sideburns and a full beard.

The Honorable Judge Reuben Pierce Oldfield. This is his own bed, in which he was shot to death by Zeke Bradley, November 23, 1924. Judge Oldfield had recently sentenced Zeke's wife, Nora, to the state penitentiary for repeated thefts from Volger's General Store. Zeke's rationale was that no gentleman could send a lady to prison. He seemed to believe that if he were also sent to prison he would be allowed to stay with his wife. It was a sad week for Forest County.

I looked at Cora, and she was definitely beaming. I suspected that not many people got to see the results of all her careful efforts.

"Well! You want to find that paper, not gawk at all my silly labels. I know it doesn't mean much to you, but local folks remember those events. Most residents here are related to the people in more than one of these displays."

Looking at all of this local history made me realize again how much of an outsider I was, but even so, I was sure that Volger's General Store had been owned by an ancestor of Adele, and I already felt a connection because of my friendship with her.

# Chapter 18

Cora had been following me around—enjoying my pleasure in her hard work. But now she headed for some shelves ranged along the other long wall. The cases appeared to be custom built, and they were filled with thin, tan boxes with metal-reinforced corners. Each was obviously the size of a flat newspaper. Although there were a lot of them, it didn't look possible that they could hold copies of every Cherry Hill paper printed since 1876. Not surprisingly, each exposed end had a label affixed. It looked as if some had layers of labels.

"I don't have complete archives," Cora explained. I've just been collecting issues whenever I can get my hands on them. The recent ones are no problem. I'm only missing a couple of papers since 1954. That was the year of the fire, you know."

I nodded.

"That year, I was shocked into making sure I had a complete set. They have all of these at the library, and the paper office, too. But the fire reminded me how easily one whole collection can disappear. It's also because of the fire that the Herald became a weekly."

"1954! How old were you then?"

"Oh, I was ten. My collection of old 'stuff' was already fairly extensive, but I hadn't figured out a very good way to keep track of it. My mother was surprisingly supportive of my compulsive behavior. She bought me a set of drawers to hold four-by-six inch cards for my next birthday, several packets of cards, small numbered stickers, and a set of colored pens. I became obsessed with filling one whole drawer before I turned twelve, and I succeeded. You can see where that led."

I smiled at Cora's admission.

"Many of those early acquisitions weren't very valuable, but I was learning to identify odd gadgets and to date things with some degree of accuracy."

"You must have been a whiz at school."

"Hmmm. Not really. I didn't care much about anything except my collections. My education expanded like ripples around the epicenter of my interests. I learned math so I could keep a ledger of my expenses. History was a no-brainer, except for events that had no relation to local happenings. For example, I was very interested in the World Wars because we had local men and women who were involved, but Ancient Rome is still pretty hazy in my mind."

She chuckled, so I did too.

"English was important because I wanted to write letters to curators of real museums, and to read books by local authors."

"Amazing." I couldn't think of much else to say.

"Anyway, back to the papers. My collection, pre-1954, is spotty. I've found stacks of old papers at estate sales, and an odd copy here and there. That's why some of the labels have to be changed from time to time. These archival boxes are fairly expensive, and I only buy new ones as I need them. I just hope I have the paper you are looking for. Some of the issues aren't complete. Some just have a front page, or maybe a clipping that I can date.

"I wish I had all of this cataloged in the computer. That would make it easy to look up. But documenting the papers is an incredible amount of work. Not only does each paper have to be entered, but every local story needs to be read and noted too. That way the database can cross-reference the names of the people mentioned with other items in my collection. It's very interesting, but I'm afraid I'll never finish in my lifetime. It wasn't even remotely possible before I started building the database."

"You need someone to help you, Cora. How on earth do you pay for all this?"

"I've sold some nice items to big museums over the years, and I don't have many other interests. It's mainly financed by the settlement from John's accident."

"John?" I asked.

"Tom's father. There was an explosion at the canning factory. It was the end of an era for Cherry Hill. Seven people were killed, and the company was found negligent. The insurance paid some hefty amounts to the families of the victims, but the factory never recovered from the equipment losses and was forced to close."

"I'm so sorry," I began.

"Oh, don't be." Cora's voice was slightly defiant. "It was a long time ago now, and John and I were never a good match. I didn't hate him, but honestly, the nicest thing he ever did for me was to get blown up. I made some good investments, and my life's work is secure." She swept out an arm. "My biggest problem now is mice, even in a metal building. I had to have special flashing installed, but despite that added protection, I have to be vigilant. They are very persistent little creatures." Her lips were thin and tight.

With each revelation I understood more about how important this all was to her. As Cora had been explaining about the mice, her index finger had ranged along the ends of the boxes, tracing from label to label. She pulled the next to the last box from the shelf, and carried it to a clear table in the middle of the room. My pulse quickened.

"Let's look in here," she said, lifting the large cover from the base of the box.

"That's the banner! That's the way the paper looked." I could hardly keep from jumping up and down like a little girl.

Cora pulled a pair of white gloves from a plastic box under the table, slipped them on, and carefully lifted the corners of the papers on the side where the fold was. She checked dates as she dug deeper and deeper. Soon she reached the bottom of the box.

"Darn it!" she said.

"What?"

"It's not here. Wait... don't look so crestfallen. We have one more chance. See this note?" She pulled a piece of notebook paper from beneath the newsprint. "It says there is a whole box of uncatalogued 1896 papers upstairs."

"Wow, ok... let's go up."

"There's one small problem."

"What's that?"

"I don't have the key."

"What do you mean? How can you store things up there with no key?"

"Oh, Ana, I own a key, but I lost the spare. So, I asked Tom to take it to town and make a copy. I didn't know we were going to need it this weekend."

"Let's call him. I'll drive anywhere you like to pick it up."

"It's no good. He's gone to the big mushroom festival. It's a three-hour drive, and you'd never find him anyway. He won't be home till after midnight, tomorrow. We'll just have to wait till Tuesday."

# Chapter 19

I helped Cora put the box of papers back and glanced at a few more items in cases, but I was too disappointed to really have much interest. Cora seemed to understand, and she patted me on the arm.

"Let me offer you one more cup of tea before you go."

"Maybe another time, Cora. I want to go home and think about things for a while."

"All right. Maybe you'd be willing to go by Teeter's Tuesday morning and pick up the key to the upstairs from Tom. I'll call him and leave a message, so he'll be sure to have it with him."

"I'd be happy to do that. I'll get that spare made for you, too."

"They can do that right at Teeter's, in the garden store, if Tom hasn't already made it."

"Good enough. See you Tuesday morning. Shall I call first?"

"Just come on out. I'll be here, either in the house or the barn." Cora smiled at me, and I knew I'd made another good friend, even if we hadn't found the paper I wanted so badly.

I drove home slowly, noticing the colors of the trees, their spring leaves almost unfurled. Before living in the country, I'd never realized how many different shades of green there could be. Some trees appeared almost white. The red maples were pink; that one I knew from a distance. Other fuzzed-out branches were yellow-green, and even the green ones weren't all the same. The oaks didn't have leaves at all, yet. Like shades of people, I thought.

It was hard to focus on anything for the rest of the afternoon. I sorted a pile of mail and wrote a couple of checks for bills that were due.

My renovations had been coming along nicely before the weekend. I'd gotten all the downstairs drywall up, and had paid Gorlowski Construction (which turned out to be owned by Robert Gorlowski, the uncle of Justin from the grocery store) to come do the ceilings and all the taping. A pang of guilt hit me; Cliff had asked for a job to help with this, but I'd chosen to hire a professional. I couldn't regret my decision—the walls never look right if the seams show, but if I'd spent more time with Cliff he might have told me why he cared about that old paper so much.

I shuffled through a handful of paint sample cards, but the colors refused to mentally move to the walls. I thought about the roof. I'd never gotten back to it after I started ripping out walls. The shingles were curled and shredding. So far, there was only one small leak, and I had it under control with a bucket in the attic, but I knew I couldn't afford to ignore the roof much longer. I should call the lumber yard and price shingles. Maybe I should consider a metal roof. But, it was Sunday. The lumber company was closed, so I couldn't do that anyway. If I was going to add an upstairs porch, shouldn't I do that before the roof? I tried to concentrate on the house, but roof and rooms and projects kept skittering off into the corners of my mind, and an image of a newspaper kept appearing.

Seeing the correct banner at Cora's had jogged my memory a bit. I could see the headline about the school play spread across the width of the paper just below "Cherry Hill Herald." The headline on the right, below that, was in bolder, but smaller, type. Suddenly it came to me. It was about Roentgen discovering the X-ray. What could that have to do with local events? Anything? Had an X-ray of someone or something revealed a hidden secret: some sort of abuse shown in an image of previously broken bones, or a treasure box inside a wall that everyone had forgotten but was never retrieved? Those ideas seemed rather unrealistic uses for early X-ray machines.

Why was it so difficult to track down this paper? Everyone seemed to be putting me off, keeping me from finding it. I had finally found the right track and then Cora couldn't, or wouldn't, produce the key to where the paper might be located. Was she trying to protect Tom from something? He was still on my suspect list for taking my bag. When I went to get the key from Tom, would it have mysteriously moved somewhere else?

I knew this line of reasoning was silly. The paper was over a hundred years old and I'd only been looking for a copy for two days. In truth, I'd done very well to come so close, so soon. But I still felt as if I were getting nowhere. I tried to focus on what else had been on the front page of that paper, but the harder I concentrated, the less I could recall.

I went to bed early. Thoughts of Roger tried to intrude, as they always did when I wasn't doing something distracting or physical. I really didn't want to think about him any more, but supposed that I probably still needed to. For the seventy-hundredth time I wondered how I could have been so dense that I missed the import of all the times I got his voicemail at work, when I knew he should have been at his desk. All the self-recrimination for not checking with Sheila, his secretary, about the too-often, out-of-town weekends flooded in again. Images of him and Brian using our bedroom were too painful to bear. I forced my mind to turn elsewhere.

I focused instead on the relationships between the people I had recently gotten to know. Clearly, Adele did not like Cora very much. Adele was not one to mince words, or keep anyone's secrets private. I didn't know how Cora felt about Adele, but she had absolutely no use for Jerry Caulfield, who had seemed like a very nice man to me. However, it was definitely odd that he hadn't mentioned Cora's stash of papers to me as a way to continue my search. The way that his own great-great-grandmother's death was linked to the purchase of new presses made it unlikely that he didn't know that date. So, was he also trying to keep me from reading that paper? Was the issue I was looking for locally notorious in such a way that everyone knew exactly what was in it, and they didn't want an outsider to find out? But an item of common knowledge wouldn't have resulted in Cliff's death. Ridiculous! I scolded myself and looked for another line of reasoning.

But nothing else came to mind. I tossed and turned and finally drifted off to sleep with alternating visions of my upstairs porch, cups of warm tea or coffee served by new friends, and Cliff's pale dead face flickering in my brain.

# Chapter 20

Monday morning, I slept a little later than usual, and awoke to a gray and drizzly sky leaking rivulets down the window panes. I quickly climbed the steep, narrow stairs to the attic to make sure the pail was situated directly under the drip, and to ascertain if I needed more buckets. For now, things seemed to be holding steady at one leak.

Over a cup of coffee and some cereal, I thought about what I could do today to find out more about my mystery, instead of anxiously fretting over a key I couldn't get for another twenty-three hours. I remembered the tote bag, and decided to see if Tracy would dust the handles for fingerprints. Perhaps she had questioned that little girl who had brought it in. I could pick up some groceries, too.

As it so often turns out, errands seemed to chew up a great deal of time. I stopped at a farmhouse on the way to town and bought some rhubarb from their roadside stand, chatting a few minutes with the farm wife, who introduced herself as Myrna Bidwell. I filled the Jeep with gas at Aho's Service Station, bought an extra quart of oil, and checked the air in my tires. At the Post Office I bought a book of stamps and mailed the checks I'd written the day before. It was already 11:00 when I pulled into the parking lot beside the police station. The rain had stopped and there was a hint of sun and warmth in the damp air.

For once, I seemed to be having some luck. Tracy was at her desk, and she greeted me with a smile. The part-time office boy was tapping busily at a computer keyboard. He was probably about 25, but he looked like a boy to me.

Chief Jarvi looked up. "Ana, what brings you in today?"

"Hi, Tracy. How are you?"

"I keep busy enough, that's for sure, even in this small town." She replaced some papers in a file folder. "Shoplifters today, nothing as serious as another death, fortunately."

"I've been thinking about my tote bag, the one that was taken on Saturday."

"Yes?"

"Is there any chance there might be some fingerprints on the plastic handles? I put it in a shopping bag as soon as I thought of it, and I have the tote here." I laid the package on her desk.

"It seems like there would be a lot of prints on there by now. Yours, mine, Bella Hanford's..."

"Yes, that's the girl's name. You said we might be able to talk with her. Do you think we really could?"

Tracy glanced at the clock, and I wondered if she was secretly trying to think of a way to get rid of me. I had to stop imagining this small-town conspiracy scenario.

"It's just about lunch time at the middle school. Let me call the gas company and we'll see if she can come in."

"What?"

"Her mother's a secretary at the gas company. If she agrees, maybe she can pick Bella up and they can come here right away."

I still found it incredulous that everyone in Cherry Hill seemed to know where everyone else was all the time, but I was grateful for the current plan. Tracy made the call and Jennifer Hanford agreed to take an early lunch herself, and come by with Bella. In the meantime, Tracy carefully slid the tote out of the plastic bag, with gloved hands, and laid it on a counter. She opened a jar of fine black powder and using a wide brush applied it to the plastic strip, just as I'd seen it done on TV.

"We can't test the fabric here," she told me as she worked. "If you really think it's important, we can send it off to the county lab, but you'll have to pay for the test. Since you have the bag back, with nothing missing, really, there's no real crime involved and the taxpayers won't fund curiosity."

"OK. How much would that cost? I don't know if it's worth it or not. I mean, I was definitely threatened, but no one has called or bothered me since Saturday night."

"I'll have to contact the lab about the pricing. There are a couple of prints here. Mostly smudges, though. I need to take yours, to eliminate them."

"Right."

Tracy took my hands, rolled the fingers across an ink pad and made a ten card. When she printed my name across the top with a black pen I felt more like a felon than a victim. She squinted at the card and then at the prints she had lifted from the bag.

"I'm not a certified fingerprint expert, but neither of these prints is yours, Ana. One has a tented arch, rather rare, and none of your fingers have that. The other is quite small. It's probably Bella's. We can put this print in the system and see if we get a match in AFIS. I can do that much for you."

"That would be nice. What's AFIS?"

She handed me the card. "You keep this. It's proof I'm not putting your prints in the database. AFIS is the Automated Fingerprint Identification System. Computers have made it possible for even small towns like Cherry Hill to check prints across the country with ease."

While Tracy was instructing Bob, the assistant, to scan the print and begin a run with a low-priority status, a woman in her mid-thirties and a young girl came through the door. The girl looked small for a twelve-year-old, and she seemed a little frightened. She was wearing a pink skirt with ruffled layers and a Hello Kitty top, and pink striped tights. The outfit seemed immature for an almost-teenager, and I wondered if she was a bit slow or if perhaps small-town children didn't develop attitudes as early as their counterparts in the suburbs.

# Chapter 21

"Hello, Jennifer, Bella." Tracy said. "Thanks so much for coming in." She dragged another chair out to the front of her desk and motioned for us all to sit down. "Bella, there's nothing to be worried about. You were very thoughtful to bring in Ms. Raven's bag the other night, and we just want to ask you a couple of questions about how you found it."

Bella looked at her mother, so we all did. Jennifer looked tired. She was slightly overweight, but not yet fat. She wore clean blue jeans and a cheap pastel green sweater with sparkly beads sewn around the neck. Her nails were brightly painted, but not overdone. She nodded at Bella and said, "It's OK, Bella. You did everything right, they just want to know if you saw anyone hanging around."

Bella's dark eyes softened a bit and she visibly relaxed. "OK," she said.

Tracy began. "Bella, why were you at that corner on Saturday night?"

"I was walking home from Emily's house. She lives over the drugstore. It's only two blocks from our place and I called Mom before I left, and she said she'd watch for me, but not to fool around."

"But, then, what made you stop at the trash can?"

She looked again at her mother, and the fearful look returned. She hung her head. I couldn't imagine what was frightening the girl. Tracy looked quite official in her uniform, but her eyes were kind and she had let down her long blond hair from the twist that could hold it under her uniform cap. She did not appear intimidating at all, to me.

"Bella?" said Jennifer.

Bella squirmed. "Well, I was chewing gum and I wanted to get rid of it. I'm not supposed to because of the braces." She grimaced and showed off a mouthful of wires.

Jennifer rolled her eyes. "Let's not worry about that right now, honey. The bag is more important."

"OK, Mom." The girl stopped speaking.

"And..."

"The bag was pretty. I could see it under the streetlight. I didn't think that something so pretty should be thrown away. I wondered if it had a big hole or something. But when I lifted it out, it was too heavy to be empty, so I looked inside."

"Did you take the things out?"

Bella squirmed again. "Just to see what was there. I didn't take anything, honest!" She glanced fretfully from Chief Jarvi to me, and finally settled on her mother as her best ally.

"We know you didn't take anything, Bella," said Tracy. Everything was there except a piece of old newspaper.

"I didn't do it!" wailed Bella. "It must have been that man."

"What man?" we all demanded at once. This frightened Bella even more, and Tracy pushed her chair back from the desk.

"Let's have some lunch and relax, all right? Are tuna melts all right for you ladies?" We all nodded. "Bob, will you run over to the Pine Tree and get some sandwiches? Tell them to put it on my tab." Bob nodded and left immediately. Maybe he was glad to be delivered from this uncomfortable interview.

"Bella," said Tracy, "I have three specific questions for you. But I want you to believe us that you are not in trouble. We are just very interested in this bag, OK?"

"OK," said Bella, still looking wary.

"When you first looked in the bag, was there a piece of a newspaper in it?"

"I didn't see one. I pulled things out on the sidewalk until I saw the wallet. It was in the very bottom. Then I knew I had to turn the bag in. There was a magazine, and some small junk. I put it all back in and went home. Then Mom walked me down here. I gave it to you."

"Yes, you did, Bella. That was very good."

"Was there any money missing?" Jennifer asked.

"No, Mrs. Hanford," I assured her again, "There's nothing wrong with what Bella did, at all. We are just hoping that she may know something that can help me find someone."

Tracy continued, "Did you see anyone using the pay phone on the corner that night?"

"No. Unless that's where the man had been."

"All right, now, here's the last question, maybe the most important question. Do you know who the man is that you saw?" We all stared at the child intently.

Bella stared back, suddenly sure of herself. "Sure. It was Mr. Baker."

"Tom Baker?" I couldn't help but raise my voice.

Bella cringed again. "I don't know his first name. He's always dirty. He works at the paper on Saturdays. I see him every week."

Jennifer chimed in. "She does mean Tom. He lives just over on Taylor Avenue, and walks past our house to go home. That's why she knows him. But he doesn't usually go out in the evening."

Just then, our lunches arrived. Bob set four cans of soda pop on Tracy's desk and handed each of us a paper bag. The delicious aroma of hot tuna and cheese focused our attention on the food for a few minutes. Tracy didn't interrupt our eating, and Bella hungrily tore large bites from her hot sandwich. The braces didn't seem to hinder her efforts.

"This is lots better than a school lunch." She finally said, licking her fingers and following up with a swig of 7-Up, the flavor she had chosen.

"What do you say, Bella?" Jennifer was using a parental tone.

"Oh. Thank you very much, Chief Jarvi."

"You are very welcome," Tracy answered. "Will you and your mom come talk to me again if you remember anything else about Saturday night?"

"I will, but I don't know what else I would say. That's all I saw."

"You didn't see anyone put the bag in the trash?"

"No."

"Did you see a person put anything in the trash?"

"No."

"Did you pass anyone else on your way home?"

Bella shook her head.

"Do you know what time you found the bag?"

Jennifer spoke up again. "She came right home, and got to our house at 9:45. She couldn't have wasted very much time because she called at 9:33 from Emily's house. I know, because she was supposed to call at 9:30, and I was watching the clock. Cherry Hill is pretty safe, but I don't like her out alone after dark. This two-block walk was a test to see how prompt she would be, and look where we ended up. At the police station." She sounded a tiny bit petulant. We all stood up.

A thought came to me. "Did Mr. Baker frighten you, Bella?"

Bella was apparently feeling more confident now, and she almost stamped her foot. "No. He's not scary, he just smells bad after work. He didn't even talk to me on Saturday."

We began to crumble up the sandwich wrappings, all of us sensing that we had probably exhausted this topic. Tracy thanked Jennifer and Bella again, and said she hoped it hadn't been an inconvenience. Jennifer glanced at her watch, but assured the police chief that it was fine. I wondered how long of a lunch break she was usually allowed. Just before Bella went out the door, she turned and gave me a little smile and a wave. I waved back, surprised that she seemed to want to be friendly. But maybe getting out of an hour of school was enough to prompt cheer from a child.

After they left, Tracy asked Bob if the AFIS search had turned up any results.

"No matches in the state, Chief. I've expanded it to the national database. Those results sometimes take a couple of hours."

Tracy turned to me. "All this only tells us someone other than yourself touched your bag recently, and that person doesn't have a criminal record. That's certainly not going to help very much. I can't ask for Tom's prints unless we can accuse him of a crime, and walking down the street in the evening is still legal in Cherry Hill." She grinned. "I think this is a dead end, Ana, unless you want to talk to Tom."

I thought I might just do that, tomorrow morning, and I knew where I could find one of Tom's fingerprints—on the map he had drawn.

# Chapter 22

I really needed to get some groceries, but I wasn't sure I was up to chatting with Adele. She would want to know everything I had learned about the missing newspaper, but there was so little to tell, of any consequence, that I just didn't want to face her. I considered driving to the larger store in the county to the east, but I didn't feel like doing that either. After moving my car to the grocery parking lot, I sat there for a few minutes, building up my reserves of energy. The familiarity of a small town could be a sheltering wing, but I was beginning to feel pressured by it, too. What did these people expect me to be? Once they had each labeled me in their own ways would I still be free to act with the independence I was beginning to cherish?

I sighed. I really needed some provisions. I'd think about this topic another day. As it turned out, Adele was out of the store for the afternoon, sparing me from a conversation. Justin had improved his efficiency since Saturday, and he told me that because Monday was a slow day at the small store, Adele had left him alone for a couple of hours.

My cart was soon piled high with boxes and cans of staples, a pound of ground Angus beef, and a bag of salad. An end display of cheap tabletop grills and charcoal was more temptation than I could resist. The end of May was approaching, the evenings were warming, and I wanted to relax and enjoy my home in Dead Mule Swamp. Almost as an afterthought I added a bottle of mosquito repellant to my cart. I hadn't spent a summer here yet, but the word "swamp" probably carried some meaning.

By late afternoon I was sitting on my porch watching the shadows move across the water. The leaves were filling in, and I realized once summer came I'd barely be able to see the open water to the south, especially from this lower level. Most of the swamp wasn't a pond, but was just damp, wooded ground. I decided the upstairs porch was going to be a priority, even if I had to borrow a little money to go ahead with it. There was a good chance I'd solve my newspaper mystery soon; it was probably unrelated to Cliff's problems or his death. After all, I was the one who was making such a big deal about the whole thing. Except for that phone call, I remembered.

Tonight, I was not going to be intimidated by anyone. My existing porch was an open slab facing south and west. I could enjoy twilight over the swamp, and also see up South River Road. I'd know quite early if anyone was coming to see me. I gave Saturday's caller's threat enough credence to position my chair so I could easily glance toward town without moving very much, but that was all I was going to give.

The charcoal was beginning to turn white and hot. The beef was already formed into patties, and I'd stewed up the rhubarb, and added sugar. It was cooling on the card table I'd set up on the porch, which would have to do until I bought a picnic table. The salad and some Green Goddess dressing were keeping cool in the fridge, and a cold beer was mellowing my mood.

It was moments like this that clarified for me the essential right-ness of my decision to leave the city and move to Cherry Hill. I couldn't believe how long it stayed light here in the evenings, and the wildlife was moving about at the edges of the trees. A flicker came into the meager grass of my supposed lawn and stabbed its beak between the blades, looking for insects. A rabbit appeared calmly at the edge of the trees. It was so sure of its security that it didn't even hop, it walked. Sparrows twittered and a few robins sang their "cheer-i-up, cheer-i-o."

No one came to carry out any threats. No one drove down the road at all. I cooked the burgers and ate one, along with some salad and rhubarb. The rest of the burgers went into the refrigerator for other days, and I carried another beer back to the porch. I sat and stared into the shadowy swamp as the evening cooled, and tried to think of nothing at all. For the most part, I succeeded. Yes, I was now "alone" in the world, but I had a pretty good idea that I was going to like it. A lot.

When it began to cool off I retrieved a sweatshirt from the house and took a stroll down the footpath that led from my yard into the swamp. It might have been an old tractor lane, or just a cow path, but now it was grown in so much it was barely four feet wide. I'd been walking the meandering trail most evenings, as far as a large tree that had fallen across it. The tree had large branches protruding in all directions, and I'd need to ask someone with a chain saw to come clear it out if I wanted to follow the path any farther. When I reached the tree and turned around I could no longer see my house. I enjoyed the solitude and peace of twilight, and I felt very safe in my new world. The frogs were waking up and singing. It was pleasant music to accompany me on the return walk.

I made a cup of tea and returned to the porch. Gold and orange washed over the budding trees as the sunset light flowed in from the west. I sat and watched the play of colors until full dark came. I had been doing nothing for hours, which was not my usual goal-oriented habit. Even so, I felt a certain reluctance as I folded the card table, collected the beer cans, and finally let the screen door bang shut behind me. When I flipped the switch, the naked incandescent light of the partially renovated living room broke the magic of a May evening on the edge of Dead Mule Swamp.

# Chapter 23

Tuesday morning dawned clear and golden, and I woke early, energized and ready to explore Cora's box of 1896 papers. It was actually too early to leave; Teeter's wouldn't open until 8:30. After breakfast, I puttered around, but couldn't make myself wait past 7:45. Even though it would only take about fifteen minutes for me to drive to the equipment dealer, I hoped that Tom might come in early.

I pulled into Teeter's entrance at 8:00, and there were no other cars in the parking lot. Not wanting to sit and fidget, I decided to go look at that strange, spidery implement that was displayed so prominently on the knoll in front of the business.

It was obviously very old. There was a tongue that extended from the front, its end now resting on the white gravel. There wasn't any motor, but there was a seat. I figured out that this design indicated it was meant to be pulled by horses with the driver holding reins from the seat. Long levers extended from various gears to handles which the driver could also reach. Apparently it would plow and disc a field all in one operation. I wondered how well that would have worked. I didn't have much farming knowledge.

Although the machine had been cleaned and heavily covered with yellow paint, I could see a metal plate riveted on one of the bars. The words stamped on the plate were pretty much filled by the paint, but I could still read the first one; it was "Teeter." So a relative of Mr. Kevin Teeter might have invented this monstrosity, I thought. Following "Teeter" was an ampersand, and another name followed that, but I couldn't make it out. I was brushing my fingers over it to remove any superficial dirt when a hand was placed on my back. I nearly jumped a foot, and indeed, I barked a shin on one of the metal bars. Involuntarily I leaned over and grabbed my leg, making me feel vulnerable to whoever was behind me.

"Good Morning, Ana. Are you fascinated by our historic machine?" The voice was Kevin Teeter's; the tone was edgy.

Rubbing my shin, I contemplated that tone. I turned, stood up and forced myself to be cheerful. "Mr. Teeter, Kevin, how are you?"

"Fine, just fine," he said. If there had been any sharpness, it was gone now, and the salesman was back.

"Yes, I need to see Tom, but I got here early, so I came over to look at this strange... thing. What is it?" I thought I sensed Kevin relax, but maybe I was imagining threats everywhere since Saturday night's phone call.

"It's a plow-disc combination. My great-grandfather invented it. Any other place in the world, it would have been a flop. Usually soil is too heavy to do both operations at once, and it would have taken too much power to pull. But greatness often dances with luck, don't you think?"

"Certainly."

"Here, the soil is sandy and well-drained. A team of horses could pull this implement and prepare a field for planting with half the work. Old Albert Teeter, my great-grandfather, adapted various factory-made components and assembled over fifty of these machines in his blacksmith shop. He patented the design and sold them all over this part of the state."

"That was quite an undertaking, on his own."

"It financed what became everything you see here."

"There's another name on the plaque; I can't quite make it out." I countered.

"Oh, I don't think so. It just said 'Teeter Equipment' or 'Blacksmithing,' or something like that."

I knew Kevin was lying; the ampersand was clearly visible. But, why? He had taken my arm, and was leading me back toward the building. "I see Tom's here now," he said. "I hope you won't take too much of his time. He does work for me, you know."

"I won't," I promised, and I meant it. I couldn't get away from here fast enough. For some reason being touched by Kevin gave me the creeps, and both times I'd been here he had found some way to do it. I'd ask Tom all the questions I had for him another time.

Tom saw us coming and walked out to meet me. "My mother said you'd be here t' pick up the key to her upstairs. C'mon inside and I'll make that copy for you real quick," he bellowed.

I gladly transferred my attention to Tom and he motioned me to follow him inside. We walked through the showroom, and I could feel Kevin behind us. The garden center, beyond the iron grillwork, was filled with bedding plants, bags of fertilizer, pots, shovels, hoes, saws, vicious-looking loppers, picks, axes, and other sharp items. Tom seemed oblivious to the power of Kevin's eyes, which I could feel boring into the back of my head. We turned out of the path of that gaze and walked to the back of the store where the key-grinding machine was mounted on a workbench.

Tom pulled a single brass key from his pocket, studied it and then spun a small kiosk filled with key blanks. He selected the correct one and fitted both pieces of metal into the grinder, tightening the thumb screws. The noise of the cutting deterred us from any conversation for the next few minutes. I was glad enough of that. I only hoped Tom would keep quiet about the key's purpose. For some reason, I didn't want Kevin to know anything about what it might reveal.

"Here ya go, Ana. Say hello to Ma for me. I gotta get busy." And without any further words Tom handed me the keys, gave a two-finger salute, and exited through a rear door. I hadn't even had a chance to be polite and ask him what one did at a mushroom festival. Tom had seemed to be uncomfortable and was looking past my shoulder.

I glanced back, but saw nothing. Rubbing the two pieces of metal against each other and wondering if they were the keys to this whole puzzle, I walked slowly back toward the garden center entrance. Standing in the one opening in the tall black bars was the garden center clerk, a large man, wearing a green company vest and holding a pair of heavy-duty clippers. Instantly, I felt trapped. The bars, installed for security, now seemed like a prison. I couldn't take my eyes off those heavy blades, curved like the beak of some evil bird.

But the clerk smiled, and rotating his body, swept his arm back in a gesture indicating that I should pass by. "Have a good day." He said. "I was just returning these to the display rack."

Had I only imagined the menace in his demeanor?

# Chapter 24

As quickly as I could, but hopefully not appearing too anxious to leave, I heel-and-toed my way to the car. Now that I had the key, nothing was going to slow me down. Well, almost nothing. I decided that I should provide lunch for Cora and myself today, so I stopped at Volger's. Going through town wasn't exactly on the way to Cora's, but it was only a few extra miles, and I was pretty sure it would be worth far more than that in good will.

Adele was in the store this morning. She nodded to me from the checkout lane as I came through the doors. I waved and pointed toward the refrigerated cases.

"Be right back, I said." Volger's is a good store for a small town, but Adele can't afford to stock and staff a true deli case. However, there are tubs of fresh salads available, and some sliced fresh meats, pre-packaged. I had never thought to ask her if the salads are homemade, or if she gets them from a supplier. Today, it didn't matter, I was just glad to find some ready-to-eat items. I chose a pint of potato salad and some ham. I figured I couldn't go wrong with those. I knew Cora had that luscious brown bread, so we could make sandwiches. I added Muenster cheese to the pile, which I was now juggling in my hands, having neglected to pick up a cart. Adele appeared at my shoulder with a rectangular plastic basket in hand. She chuckled as she eased the items into it.

"Are you going on a picnic, Ana? With someone?" There was no way to keep ones activities from Adele. But it didn't matter—I was happy to let her know what I'd discovered.

"You were right to send me to Cora," I began. "She certainly has quite a museum in her pole barn. We couldn't find my mystery paper yesterday, but today we're going to search the upstairs."

"I wondered what you had found. I thought you might call me last night." Adele sounded a little hurt, and I recalled she had seemed rather chilly when we were discussing Cora on Saturday. I wondered if she was jealous.

"I'm sorry. I guess I could have, but we didn't really find anything yet, oh, except that the year of the paper is 1896. May, 1896, actually." I paused, and Adele did not break the silence. "When I got home last night, I just needed some space. I didn't talk to anyone."

"I know just how you feel!" Just for a moment I wondered if she realized that the townspeople, herself included, were not very good at giving people any social elbow room.

"Anyway, Cora knows there's a box of papers from the right year stored upstairs, and we are hoping to find the one we are particularly interested in today."

"Take one of these pies, then, for luck. Cora loves rhubarb pie. Janice Preston makes them for me every morning. I sell two or three a day at this time of year."

"Thanks for the tip!" I lifted a pie and we walked toward the checkout lane.

"I don't really dislike Cora," Adele suddenly offered. "I just find her attitude toward Jerry Caulfield insufferable."

"I noticed she was pretty icy when his name came up."

"Old wounds fester deep," Adele said, but she did not offer any more information. I paid for the food, and headed for my Jeep.

I realized that I could have brought Tom's map, with his fingerprint on it, in to the police station. However, I'd forgotten, and left it on my kitchen counter. I'd have to do that another time.

Cherry Hill is so small that within a minute I was beyond the village limits and on the way out to Brown Trout Lane once again. Now that I knew how to get there, it was easy to find, and it did not require driving a lot of back roads except at the very end. I even felt that the potholes in the road were becoming familiar.

Cora met me at her door. She had pinned her braids around her head in a very old-fashioned, but no-nonsense style. She wore the same overalls, but had switched to a yellow checked blouse, and she looked ready for work. She certainly didn't seem like an "old lady" to me. We carried the food inside, safekeeping it to the refrigerator for later. She smiled and raised an eyebrow when she saw the rhubarb pie. When my hands were free, I produced the keys from the pocket of my jeans and waved them triumphantly. "Got 'em!" I said.

"Let's see what we can find, then." Cora answered. "I already turned on the heater in the barn, to take off the chill. I'm glad you wore jeans today. It's much more dusty upstairs than down. The barn's not that old, but the things I bring home seem to carry their own layers of grime."

We headed for the barn, and I wondered if Cora knew how excited I was. I was surprised, myself, at how absorbed I'd become in this little puzzle. I still thought it was tied in with Cliff's death, but even if it turned out not to be so, I was glad that something besides anger and frenzied remodeling could hold my attention.

Cora entered the barn and made a detour into the office space, carefully slipping one key on a ring and placing it in the desk drawer. She climbed the stairs opposite the door, and fitted the remaining key to the lock, which opened easily. Since there was no landing at the top, I had remained on the lower level.

"Come on up," Cora said, as she put the key in her pocket. She took a step out of my sight and in another second I could see the upstairs flood with light. With no windows, it would have been pitch black without lights, even in the daytime. I heard Cora cough.

When I reached the second floor myself, I realized why. The huge open room was stuffed with piles of dirty, stained boxes, furniture with frayed upholstery leaking stuffing, and hand-held farm equipment like hay rakes and scythes. Newly disturbed dust hung in the air. I saw a spinning wheel, a rack of clothing covered with clear plastic sheeting, and a dozen things I couldn't identify. There was a pile of heavy, rectangular metal frames stacked against the wall in front of me. I almost tripped on them.

"Cattle stanchions," Cora said. "See the name on the top bar? Not just any stanchions; these were manufactured in Thorpe. It was their one industry."

Sure enough, I could read "Thorpe Metalworks" on the frame. I wondered if the plow-disc might have read "Teeter & Thorpe," but the length of the word didn't seem right for the available space on the plaque.

"This is going to take a while," Cora said. I looked around the room and I had to agree.

# Chapter 25

Our search focused on the boxes, naturally. That decision was easy. Cora carried a stepladder over and set it beside a pile.

"I wish I could remember when I acquired the box we are looking for," she said. "I've worried the question since you left. It might have been at the Kepler's estate sale about four years ago, but I'm not sure. Sometimes I'm very careful about making notes, but sometimes so many things come in that the best I can do is to slip a label into the box and hope to sort it out later. Frankly, papers that old seemed a low priority. I'm sorry."

"We'll find it," I assured her, although I didn't feel too confident myself, looking at the stuffed expanse of floor space. "There's no way you could have known that someone would want to look at one of the issues before you got it sorted out. I don't know how you've made as much progress as you obviously have."

Cora seemed pleased to hear me say that. I climbed the ladder and opened a box. The main problem facing us was the number of boxes there were. Most of them were not labeled. I discovered fairly soon that even if they were labeled it might not be helpful, even if it was correct. A box labeled "Granny Tess" contained a beautiful tortoiseshell toilet set. I did notice that inside the box was a piece of notebook paper with details handwritten in a cramped script. "Property of Theresa Gandolfi. Donated by Edward Gandolfi, 1976. Believed to have come from Italy. Set complete and used by TG for 68 years. Brush, 2 combs, 2 decorative combs with applied silver design, mirror, 2 button hooks, a soap box, toothbrush and toothbrush holder, 2 trinket boxes." I touched one of the smooth caramel-swirled pieces gently, just because it was so appealing, and then handed the box down to Cora. We needed to focus.

The next carton had "1932—Summer Storage" written on the side in grease pencil. Inside that one was a woven shawl wrapped in tissue and smelling strongly of mothballs. I didn't take time to read the inserted notebook paper. I knew Cora had meticulously inventoried every box, but putting those lists inside would not help us very much, today. Cora took that box too, and moved it to an empty space on the floor.

After we had about ten boxes removed from the top layers, we realized there was going to be a problem. Lighter boxes had been stacked on top of heavy ones. That made perfect sense for storage, but there wasn't enough room to lay the light ones all out and still have room to move and search the heavy ones. A box of newspapers would certainly be near the bottom of a stack.

"How about if we take some of these boxes downstairs?" Cora suggested. I'll be ready to do some more cataloguing soon, and I might as well start with these.

"Sounds good," I said. "Why don't you bring up paper and markers? We can make some labels for the cartons while we're sorting." I had already settled in for the long haul, and I liked Cora enough to want to help her with her unbelievable life project.

By the time she reappeared with the requested items and tape, I had figured out how to make this sorting project work. With some boxes taken downstairs, there was room to spread the top two-thirds of any stack on the floor. Then we would be down to the boxes that were packed solid with things like books, and presumably, old papers. These could be used to start a new stack, with enough space to maneuver between the pile we were searching and the new pile. I would do the hauling, and Cora could do the labeling. She liked the plan when I suggested it, and sat right down on the floor to work. She seemed exceptionally spry and almost childlike in her delight at opening each box.

At first, Cora was having trouble keeping up with me. She lingered over boxes, trying to decide how to tag them. "It's hard to do this quickly," she admitted. "I'm afraid I'm thinking too hard about what to write. I'm not used to having someone else who is waiting for me to finish something."

"That's OK," I said. "But, maybe you can just take a peek and write what you see, instead of reading every inventory list."

"Yes, I'll try. You are very patient to humor me and do this project slowly."

"We might as well do it carefully. Whatever the 1896 paper has in it isn't going to change in a couple of hours." I hoped that events weren't already set in motion that would make me regret my forced calm, but in truth, I had no idea if there was a genuinely pressing reason to find my newspaper or not.

We worked steadily for nearly an hour. Cora managed to examine and tag boxes with more speed, and I unstacked and restacked and dusted. When Cora began to slip behind again she suggested I get the vacuum cleaner from the closet off the kitchen in the house, and maybe some water to drink. We'd both been sneezing in the enclosed space.

It took me two trips, but I collected cold drinks and the vacuum, and we resumed our work with no conversation. It would have been impossible above the whine of the vacuum cleaner, anyway.

By the time our stomachs were growling we had examined and moved and labeled eighty-six boxes. It took longer to check out the cartons on the lower levels because they were often mixed books, magazines, newspaper, files and pamphlets. These boxes had to be emptied, so that we were sure the 1896 papers weren't among the treasures. Then, of course, they had to be re-packed. So far, the oldest newspaper we had found was from 1931. All the local papers we uncovered one of us immediately carried downstairs. "You've gotten me interested in these again," Cora said. "My focus lately has been buttons, but I think it's time for a change."

She stood up and looked at the tall piles of newly-labeled boxes. "Ana! This is such a help, you can't imagine! I should have been taking the time to do this all along. Of course the complete information is most important, but this will allow me to locate specific things much more easily."

I thought that some of her labels were cryptic, such as "2009, NEC 341" or "Jalmari Garden Club" on a box I recalled as being full of books, but "Theresa Gandolfi Tortoiseshell" seemed obvious enough for even a future helper to understand the general idea of what the box contained.

We made our way to the house, complaining light-heartedly about stiff arms and backs. The salad and ham sandwiches hit the spot, and Cora mixed up some lemonade that really helped to cut the dusty coating in our mouths. We spoke very little, but commented occasionally about an item we'd seen in our search to this point. "Let's save the pie for later," Cora finally suggested. "I'm full."

"Me, too."

"Back to work?"

"Absolutely! I feel good about this afternoon." It couldn't hurt to sound optimistic. The number of boxes yet to open was daunting, but that also meant there were still plenty of chances to find the papers we wanted.

We climbed the stairs in the barn again, but neither of us felt as energetic as we had a few hours earlier. During the morning hours we had chatted a bit, joking about spiders—which didn't bother either of us at all, and the sisters neither of us had had. But now we seemed more focused on a mission, rather than just having a puzzle to solve. Any conversation we made consisted of short fragments related to the task.

"Here?"

"No, I'm not done with this one."

Or, "That's the next stack. I'm starting number fifteen now."

"Seems impossible."

Cora resumed her position on the floor, but added a cushion from one of the couches to sit on. I continued climbing the ladder, grabbing a box, descending, and placing it near Cora. Then I would take any she had labeled, carry them to the other side of the room and pile them up again, paying attention to long-term stability. If the boxes had really mixed contents, I helped with the sorting.

At the very bottom of stack seventeen, I uncovered the heaviest box yet. I could barely slide it across the floor. It was a perfect foundation block for the piles of history. The lid was depressed downward a bit, but it was solidly filled with something. I pulled open the flaps, and not surprisingly, it was newspapers. It was hard to get excited immediately; it was the third box of papers I'd seen that day. However, when I flipped over the topmost, yellowed edition, I knew we had found the right box. The banner matched the other 1896 ones I'd seen downstairs.

"We've found the box." I said with suppressed excitement.

Cora scrambled up from her cushion.

# Chapter 26

Because the light was better, and the dust less stirred up, we each took half the newspapers from the box and went downstairs. We lifted them carefully because the paper was brittle. The long work table near the archival boxes was perfect for our task. Cora said, "Wait a minute, please." Once again, she produced lightweight cotton gloves. "Put these on so the oil in your hands won't damage the paper any further."

My heart was beating fast, but I put on a pair of gloves, and so did Cora. "May I?" I asked.

"Of course, dear. Just be careful. Papers this old tend to break easily. I suppose that's obvious."

I began to sort the papers by date. There appeared to be only about 100 in the stack, so I knew it was possible the one I wanted wasn't there, but somehow I couldn't let myself consider that. I was working on the ones I had carried, and Cora started sorting hers. Although I was reading the dates, I knew I'd recognize the issue I was looking for instantly, if it was there. My unsorted stack was getting smaller and smaller, and I hadn't seen any May dates yet.

Suddenly Cora gasped. "Here it is!" She spread the newspaper on the table.

I sidled over beside her and saw the now-familiar banner, with the main headline, "High School Thespians to perform Twelfth Night." The date was May 1, 1896, which would have been the week before the play was to be presented. In bold, beneath that on the right, was the story, "London: Remarkable Photography of Human Bones by Professor Roentgen, First X-Ray Machine Brought to Colorado in February, Remarkable Outcome of Prof. Roentgens's Discovery in Medicine and Metallurgy." I followed the words with my finger as I read it silently.

"I don't think that one has much local influence. Where's the story about the play?" I asked.

"Down here, under the x-ray article," Cora said. She turned around and leaned against the edge of the table, lifted the paper closer to her eyes, and began to read.

Under the careful direction of Mr. Thompson Graves and the expert stagecraft of Mrs. Norine Aarnen, the high school Thespian Guild has been practicing the Bard of Avon's comedy in five acts, Twelfth Night or As You Will. It can be noted with pride that the new auditorium is about to be put to its first public use, and all who have eagerly awaited the opening should be sure to purchase tickets for premiere night, which will be Thursday, May 7, at eight o'clock in the evening.

"Is that building still in use?" I asked

"Yes, the old high school is now the middle school. Rather dismal, I suppose, at this point, but the community was certainly proud back then."

"It must have been quite something for a small town. Read on."

For the benefit of anyone in Cherry Hill who has not already heard it from the proud parents, Charles Caulfield, Jr. has been cast as Sebastian, and Edna Heikkinen is to portray Viola. The son of our very own publisher is not unknown to theater-goers. Last year he carried the title role in Uncle Tom's Cabin with a most convincing performance.

Cora sniffed. "I would hardly expect the paper to say anything less about the scion. However, I didn't know about Uncle Tom's Cabin being produced locally, so that's good for my theater files."

"Yes," I said, "but is there anything in there that seems pertinent today? Is Jerry Caulfield worried about his grandfather's acting talents? That doesn't seem like it would have anything to do with Cliff, unless Cliff saw the name and wanted to take the paper to Jerry. But, he could have just asked me for the paper in that case—no big secrets to hide in that."

"We are getting a bit far down the page. From how you described the day the paper was taken, Cliff didn't have time to read anything extensive. Let's see what else is here. Your turn."

Cora graciously handed me the paper. I really appreciated the gesture. With her accompanying smile of understanding, I knew that Cora realized how much this search meant to me. I scanned the rest of the front page. There was only one other major article above the fold. It was on the left, with a smaller, less-bold typeface. I read out loud, "'Local Business Team Develops Promising Product.' I remember that headline now!"

I began reading the article.

Two local entrepreneurs have officially joined forces this week to patent and market an exciting new product. Some may have already experienced the satisfaction of using this piece of agricultural equipment in its prototype stage, which was built here in Cherry Hill, at the blacksmith shop. We refer, of course, to the Teeter & Sorenson Plow-Disc Combination. Arne Sorenson has applied his engineering expertise to the problems of these combination machines, which have been so poignantly demonstrated to be failures in such states as North Dakota.

Sorenson, in an exclusive interview with the Herald, stated, 'A successful design is all in the angle of entrance as the blade hits the soil. The front bevel and side rake angle are critical. If these are too steep, the tool will bury itself to the brackets, and no team of horses can pull it free in a forward direction. Conversely, if they are too relaxed, the tool will not cut deeply enough.'

"Wow," I said. "There's not much about the Teeter half of this partnership yet. This article is all about that machine that Kevin Teeter has on display."

"It certainly seems so," Cora replied.

I read on.

Mr. Sorenson plans to travel this week by train to Washington, D.C., where a patent application will be filed. Meanwhile, the responsibilities of the partnership will be carried out by Albert Teeter, also of Cherry Hill.

Mr. Teeter is well-known in town, as he has been the owner of the smithery since the passing of his uncle, Edward Teeter. Albert has assisted his father's brother in the shop since youth, and was eager to take the reins, upon the passing of his relative. Mr. Edward Teeter died from consumption in November 1890.

"Let me interrupt you," Cora said.

"Sure."

"Why don't we take this paper to the house, and some of the subsequent ones? We can celebrate with a piece of pie, read the rest of that article, and see if there was any follow-up in later issues."

"I like that idea," I said.

It only took a few minutes to finish our sorting of the browned papers. We collected all the ones we could find for the rest of the month of May, and carried them back to Cora's kitchen.

# Chapter 27

We stacked the papers on the table and peeled off the white gloves. Cora put a kettle of water on the stove and pulled out some plates and forks, while I organized the papers on the kitchen table, and scanned the headlines.

As I worked, I thought out loud. "Kevin Teeter is very proud of that machine. He's got one all painted up and displayed by his sign. I was looking at it just this morning. Yet he didn't seem very happy to find me doing so."

"What makes you think that?"

"He escorted me right away from it. Have you seen it?"

"Not yet, but Tom told me about it. He thought there was something odd, because Kevin painted it himself. He usually gives jobs like that to the employees. Kevin Teeter would much rather stay clean."

"I know why he didn't delegate the work."

"Oh?"

"He painted it himself because there is still a nameplate on the top bar that says 'Teeter & Sorenson.' At least it used to. The 'Sorenson' is scraped nearly down to flat metal. I couldn't read it this morning, but that must be what it says. I'm thinking that's not the result of normal wear and tear."

"I'm sure your observation is correct," Cora noted primly.

"So all the money that built Teeter implements came as the result of a partnership? I assume... what was his name?" I glanced back at the May 1 paper, "Arne Sorenson, was Cliff's grandfather."

"Great-grandfather, I'm pretty sure."

"Why is... was Cliff so poor, then?"

"I think that's the reason for his interest in your newspaper. He was probably wondering the same thing himself."

"He took it so he could find out the answer to that exact question. Maybe he even confronted Kevin Teeter."

"That wouldn't have been very wise." Cora said.

Now it was my turn to say, "Oh?"

"Well, I hate to speak unkindly, but Kevin has always been known as something of a bully. He does a lot for the local economy, and is generous enough, but only when there is some reciprocal benefit for himself."

The kettle whistled, and Cora's phone rang, simultaneously. While she answered the phone, I made tea and placed the cups and generous slices of pie on the table. By the tone of Cora's voice, I gathered she was not really happy to hear from the caller. She turned to me and announced, "It's for you."

I pointed to my chest and opened my eyes wide. "Me?"

"Yes, you. It's Adele Volger." Cora sounded huffy.

I had to walk across the kitchen to reach the corded wall phone. "Adele?" I said, taking the receiver.

"Ana, are you there? I'm so glad you told me where you were going to be today," Adele began.

I was a little bit annoyed. Of course I was here. It was bad enough that Adele seemed to delight in tracking everyone in the county like a human GPS system, but being called at someone else's home seemed too pushy. "What can I do for you?" I asked.

"I'm so sorry to bother you at Cora's house."

I felt confused. Adele was saying all the correct, polite words, but she didn't sound very sorry at all. She seemed almost triumphant.

Adele continued. "It just came over the scanner. The results are back from the lab on Cliff's death. You won't believe it!"

"Try me," I said.

"It was about 2:15, Justin had just come back from his break and taken over the register from me. I went into my office and turned up the scanner. I don't have one at my house, you know, but it seems necessary to run a business safely—to know where the police are, since we only have two officers. I always turn it down when I'm not in the room."

"Adele, come to the point, please."

"Well, all right. There wasn't very much information. It just said that Cliff Sorenson had died from carbon monoxide poisoning, but he had been unconscious when he died."

"Isn't everyone, who breathes carbon monoxide that long?"

"What? Oh, I see what you mean. No, he was unconscious before that."

"How on earth do you know?"

"I called Bob, at the station."

"I see. And he told you more? Should he have done that?"

"Probably not, but who cares? It will all be in the paper tomorrow. Do you want to know this or not?"

I sighed. Of course I wanted to know. I glanced at Cora. She was toying with a bite of pie, trying, unsuccessfully, to look uninterested.

"OK, tell me the whole thing," I said into the phone.

"Bob explained that Cliff's system was full of some drug. I can't pronounce what it's called. It doesn't matter. The drug breaks down at a rate they can measure, and the carbon monoxide builds up until it's lethal. Anyway, they can tell that Cliff had to have been unconscious long before he began to breathe the gas from the exhaust."

"Are you telling me Cliff didn't drive to the swamp?" My ear was glued to the phone, but I was watching Cora, and trying to let her know what was going on as much as I could without interrupting Adele.

"Right. Somebody drove there and hooked up that hose, then pulled Cliff into the driver's seat and left him. Who would do that?"

"Somebody must have thought Cliff was a threat," I said, trying not to commit myself to a particular suggestion. Cora's eyes were bright and she was shaking her head vigorously from side to side. I got the hint, but it felt like I had to choose between trusting Adele or Cora. However, I knew Adele had no ability to keep a secret, so for now I sided with Cora.

"Exactly!" Adele barked. "What are you and Cora doing?"

"We're still sorting old newspapers," I said. It was almost the truth.

"Let me know if you find something interesting."

"I will." That was the truth too, as long as there was no time restriction placed on the promise.

"Your tea is getting cold," Cora called, loudly enough that Adele surely heard it.

"I should go, Adele. But thanks for the information. I'll call you later."

Adele tried to keep me on the line, fishing for more information, but finally I was able to return to the tea, pie, Cora, and the newspapers.

# Chapter 28

"So Cliff's death was definitely a murder?" Cora asked, with a wicked grin. Historians also love gossip; they usually just prefer it to be old gossip.

I explained to her everything Adele had just told me, while we forked up mouthfuls of the rhubarb pie. It was so good that we had seconds, and more tea to wash it down. As we ate, we reasoned out what must have happened to Cliff.

"Cliff must have confronted Kevin with the paper, and asked him why he wasn't getting any of the proceeds of the business." I said.

"He probably threatened to take Kevin to court. If Kevin had been forced to pay for three generations of lost profits, it might have bankrupted him."

"That could be a very powerful motive."

"Money and love are the big two, they say."

"But what happened that the Sorensons got shut out? Maybe they sold their half, and they aren't entitled to anything now."

Cora pointed at the papers strewn across the other side of the table. "Let's keep reading. I'll bet history will reveal at least part of the answer. It often does."

We washed and put the gloves back on. I read the rest of the original article, but we'd already learned the important parts of the story. Very quickly we decided that it might be difficult to glean enough information just from the papers. We looked at the front pages through May 10, and learned that Twelfth Night had been a great success, and coupled with donations, a total of $132.45 had been paid to the bank for the retirement of the auditorium debt. We read about Torvald Nurmi's cows getting out, and plans for a new hotel to be built in town, but there was nothing more on the front pages that seemed to connect to this case.

Cora took a deep breath. "We'll have to look all the way through every edition," she said.

"I agree. I hope we'll recognize something important if we see it."

The afternoon wore on as we turned page after yellow page. Each edition wasn't very thick, but the typeface was small and fussy, and the dimensions of the sheets were larger than modern newspapers. The small print and darkening paper seemed to become harder and harder to read. There were a couple of missing editions, too. There was no way to know if there was something important in them. My eyes were itchy and burning.

When I got to page six of May 14th, I saw part of our answer. "Listen to this," I said.

Obituary. Arne Sorenson, 1842-1896. Arrangements being made by Thompson Funeral Parlor. Arne Karl Fredrik Sorenson, aged 54, tragically met his death last week in a train wreck while returning from Washington, D.C. He is survived by his wife, Astrid, and two children, Eugene and Marguerite. Services will be held at three o'clock in the afternoon, Friday, at the Swedish Baptist Church. Interment at Cherry Hill Cemetery to follow.

"Oh my!" was Cora's response. Then she jumped up from her chair and said, "I have to go back to the barn. One of the archived papers told about that train wreck. I just didn't know it was connected to this story. I'll be right back."

She bustled out the door, and I stood up to stretch my legs. It was already very late in the afternoon. I washed up the plates from our dessert and before I was finished, Cora returned.

"See. It's right here on the front page." She showed me the huge headline, "Prominent Citizen Dies in Ohio Train Wreck."

"The name of the victim isn't given until the second paragraph, so when I thumbed through the archive the other day I didn't realize it had anything to do with the Sorenson-Teeter saga."

She read the whole story out loud; it covered most of the front page, with a huge picture of mangled train cars on their sides, and men in stiff suits posing around it. The details of the wreck had been wired from Columbus, but some local writer had done a good job of telling more about Arne Sorenson. We learned that he had come to the United States from Sweden as a young man, and had met his wife, Astrid, in New York City, while he was attending Maritime Engineering College in Throggs Neck, New York. They had moved to the upper Midwest soon after Arne's graduation.

"I'll bet this is important," Cora said. "It says Astrid didn't speak any English."

"Not at all?" I asked, surprised.

"It wasn't that unusual, back then," Cora explained. "She and Arne probably spoke Swedish at home, and if they had hired help, and most everyone of any prominence did, those people could have done the shopping. Even the church services would have been in Swedish. Maybe she didn't understand what Arne's trip to Washington might mean for their future. Maybe she just wasn't up to the difficulty of following through on the business transaction by means of a translator."

"I wonder what happened to her. She couldn't have gone very far away, since Cliff still lived here."

"I can probably track down some of that when I have time, maybe tomorrow," Cora offered.

"But the crash was definitely while he was on the way home, right? This had to be the Washington trip mentioned in the first article, which means he had already been to the patent office and registered both of their names."

"As far as I can tell. It says the train was westbound from Akron."

We sat back down at the table and continued to scan the rest of the papers we had brought to the house, but we didn't find anything else that seemed to involve the Sorensons or the Teeters. There were more papers from the month still in the barn, but we were both tired with cramped muscles and aching eyes.

"Let's have another sandwich and think about what we should do next," Cora said.

# Chapter 29

By seven o'clock we had decided that we needed to let law enforcement know what we had learned. That way we couldn't be accused of withholding anything. But, we didn't want to contact someone we didn't know at the Sheriff's Department. We decided to fax all the information to Chief Jarvi, and let her pass it along to the proper authorities when she came into work the next day. We both trusted Tracy.

It took a long time to accomplish this goal. Cora had a scanner and fax capabilities in the barn, connected to her computer, but the contrast on the old papers was terrible. After we scanned the articles, I sat at the desk and worked on each one in Cora's graphics program until it was more readable. Then we had to print the articles out in sections, so they could be run through the fax machine. We thought fax was better than e-mail, because it would go right to the police station. If Tracy didn't come in first thing in the morning, Bob would find the documents.

We were not too interested in telling anyone else yet that same night, which was another reason we chose the fax. We didn't want someone to notify the paper and then discover the story all over the county as an extra sheet in the weekly Herald the next day. Cora was sure that Jerry Caulfield would stay up all night, if necessary, to put something so juicy in the current issue, if he got his hands on it.

After a bit more than an hour we had a stack of pages with everything we had learned about this case: the patent and partnership, the train wreck, and the obituary, all printed out with the correct dates on each page.

We wrote a cover document explaining how we had found it all, verifying that Cora had the newspapers, and that she had locked them in the Cary safe, along with a set of our copies, to be extra sure nothing would happen to them.

"I've never put anything really important in here," Cora said. "It's just been on display."

The cabinet safe was lettered in fancy, gold cursive script: State Bank and below that, Uniform Strength Without.

Cora continued, "I've had this since the 90s. It came to me as a donation when the bank was remodeled. It had been in continuous use for one-hundred-three years, and of course, they still had the combination, which they also gave to me. The Cary company custom lettered cabinet safes for their customers. But by 1996, the safe was just too small and old for the bank's modern needs and new look."

I hoped it was as secure as it had historically been. Obviously, Kevin had taken the newspaper that came from inside my wall away from Cliff, and had probably destroyed it. We really wanted to keep these papers safe, since they were the best evidence we had. There couldn't be very many copies of these editions left anywhere. Of course, if the patent had been granted, or even legally applied for, it should still be on file with the national Patent Office.

That one strip of newspaper I'd found on Kevin's desk might have torn off without him even realizing it. But that didn't explain how he would have known I had it in my bag. I couldn't figure that one out.

Finally, Cora and I looked at each other. "Ready?" she asked.

"Let's send it," I said with a nod.

Cora loaded the stack of prepared pages into the fax tray, and punched in the fax number of Tracy's office, which she found on a dog-eared business card in her desk. We listened to all the beeps and squeals as the machine dialed in, and then watched the pages feed through, one by one.

When the machine had sent them all, we looked at the pages again. "What shall we do with these?" Cora asked. "Do you want to take them with you?"

"No, I sure don't. Let's put them in the safe too."

It was a good test of the ancient lock mechanism. Cora slowly spun the dial, right, left, and then right again. It was a bit sticky, but we heard the tumblers click, and the door swung open easily when Cora turned the handle. Now that we had begun to think of what we had found as evidence, it was all too easy to become slightly paranoid.

"I feel as if we need to hide all this, in case Kevin is watching us somehow," I admitted.

"I do too," Cora said as she closed the heavy door on our stash again. "But, aren't we being silly? There's no way he could know what we found, yet."

"Uh, oh. Did Tom know why it was so important to get the key made? Maybe he would have said something to Kevin." I shivered.

"No, I never tell Tom details like that. If he should happen to repeat something, then everyone knows about it. He's hearing impaired, you know, so he always talks too loudly."

"I wondered about that! But, if Kevin knows about your museum maybe he even figured out what we were looking for without Tom saying anything."

"It's possible, but he wouldn't want to signal his involvement if he weren't sure we had anything incriminating, would he."

"Probably not," I said. "What about the copies on the computer?"

"He'd need my password to log on, unless he's a good hacker. I'll be sure to sign out when we're done, so no one will have easy access. What did you do with the pages that didn't print right?"

"Good thought. I'll get them. We can burn them in the sink."

"I think we should," Cora agreed. "But I'm sure we are worrying unnecessarily."

Nevertheless, when we finished in the office, turned off the lights and opened the outer door, each of us involuntarily looked left and right through the dusk beneath the trees.

# Chapter 30

We burned the extra printouts, had some more lemonade and finished off the pie. It's amazing how hungry we had become, solving puzzles. But the aroma of charred paper did not improve the ambiance. We should have done those activities in the other order.

"It's time for me to go home," I said. "We've done everything we can until tomorrow." I didn't tell Cora I had one more item on my agenda for the day.

"All right, Ana. Be careful. I can't believe there would be any more danger than there was a few hours ago, but I feel different."

"I do too."

We said goodbye, even shared a little hug, co-conspirators on a mission. As I pulled out of Cora's yard into Brown Trout Lane I realized I hadn't driven these back roads in the dark before. Because of that, I did drive extra carefully, but I wanted to take my time anyway, to be sure it was completely dark before I made my next stop.

When I reached School Section Road, which was straight, and demanded less of my attention, I reached over and checked to make sure my tiny flashlight was in the glove compartment. It was. I patted my pocket to reassure myself the other items I needed were still there, too. I didn't waste any more time, but drove straight east and then north on Centerline. It was full dark by this time.

About a half-mile from Teeter's I turned off my headlights, just before I drove over a slight rise. I didn't have much experience driving at night with no lights. Actually, I had none. It was a lot harder than it looked on TV. I drove a few feet, and my tires slipped off onto the shoulder and crunched on gravel. I pulled the wheels back onto the pavement and slowed down even more. Gradually, I sensed that my eyes were adjusting to the dark, as I could now see at least the edge of the road, and shapes of trees. Ahead of me was the implement company, but I couldn't tell exactly where it was yet because the big lighted sign was turned off for the night, part of the county's pledge to conserve energy. I hoped that same lack of light would also conserve the secrecy of what I wanted to do.

I slowly rolled onto the shoulder a few yards before reaching Teeter's driveway, came to a stop and turned off the engine. There were no lights on in the building, but there were some security lights mounted on the corners of the roof. I didn't want any of that light bouncing off the shiny metal of my car, so I chose to park out here on the road. For about five minutes I sat quietly in the car. I pushed the manual switch on the overhead light so it wouldn't come on automatically when I opened a door (thinking that I'd never anticipated needing to know how to do that, but glad I'd read the manual), pulled out the key to forestall the annoying beeper, and opened the Jeep door so I could listen as well as look. Everything seemed perfectly normal. The evening was cool and overcast, a perfect night for stealthy activities. I had on a navy blue jacket and jeans which would prevent me from being too visible. My sneakers were white, but I couldn't think of anything to do about them, at this point. I wouldn't be out in the open very long anyway, according to my plan. I put the small flashlight in my jacket pocket, but hoped I wouldn't have to use it.

Slipping out of the car was easy; closing the door noiselessly was not. I managed to get the latch to click even though the door was not shut tight. It would have to do; I didn't want to slam it shut. I waited another minute, a full minute, counting silently to sixty-Mississippi. As far as I could tell, I was all alone except for some chirping frogs, spring peepers. They were singing from a small wetland just beyond the ditch, and I was glad the racket they made would cover at least small sounds.

The ditch extended along the front of Teeter's property, and that was to be my route. I took a deep breath—if I was really going to do this, now was the time—and in a slight crouch began walking toward the mound where I knew the plow-disc machine sat. In fact, crouched down, it was dimly silhouetted against the diffuse glow from the security lights. Since it was spring the ditch was not clogged with tall weeds, and I managed to keep my feet out of the water at the very bottom. It took less than a minute to reach the edge of the mound, and now I would have to take a bigger risk. After I climbed that hill, I too would be in silhouette. But there was no other way; I had to look at that machine again, and I wasn't about to do it in daylight when Kevin was sure to see me.

Another deep breath for courage, and I crawled up the hill. The grass was cold and damp, but I ignored everything except my goal. Even when I reached the plow, I didn't stand up straight. This might keep me from being noticed by someone driving by. So far, I didn't need the flashlight, and I was glad of that. My eyes had adjusted well to the dark. I pulled the crayon and thin paper out of my pocket. I had found the tissue paper in one of the boxes I'd unpacked in the morning, and the red crayon stub had been in the desk of the museum office. I was hoping the second name would be revealed by making a rubbing of the metal plate.

I looked around, and saw nothing out of the ordinary. The frogs were not as deafening here, but I could still hear them peeping, off in the woods to the south. I turned to my task, and for a few minutes, concentrated on pressing the paper smoothly over the metal plate, and holding it steady with my left hand while rubbing the side of the crayon evenly over the paper. I wouldn't be able to tell if I'd successfully replicated the second name until I could examine the paper under a strong light. Since I'd managed without the flashlight so far, I didn't want to risk flicking it on.

I finished the rubbing, and slipped the paper and crayon in my pocket. Crawling down the hill would be very awkward; I had to risk standing up. I straightened, and turned to go back to my car.

Kevin was standing there, pointing a gun at me. "Hello, Ana," he said.

# Chapter 31

I'm not a person who pales in fear and passes out, but I will confess to suddenly having rubber legs. I'd never faced the barrel of a gun before. It was a very small pistol, dwarfed even by Kevin's average-sized hand. It was probably only a .22, but I knew just enough about guns to know that even a small bullet hole, in the right place, was not going to be good for my health.

"You seemed very interested in my plow-disc," Kevin continued. "I thought you might come back again for another look, and I doubted you'd be foolish enough to do so in the light. I've been waiting for you, almost an hour. What took you so long?"

"I've been busy," I said, trying to keep the quaking in my legs from transferring to my voice.

"Did you find what you were looking for?"

"I don't know what I'm looking for." I willed my voice to be even, to try to make Kevin think I did not yet know he was really a killer.

"I don't believe you," he said flatly.

"As you like," I answered with a toss of my head. I found it hard to accept the fact that I was in deadly danger, and his attitude made a flush of anger rise up in me. This made my legs more steady, which turned out to be a good thing.

"Let's go to your car. I believe it's over there." Kevin pointed right at the Jeep. That's how effective my attempt to be stealthy had been. I couldn't think of anything else to do. Running away from a gun, in the open, seemed useless, so I started toward the vehicle. "Give me your keys first," Kevin added.

I didn't like the sound of that. Was this how Cliff's last evening on earth had begun? However, I couldn't see that Kevin had a length of hose hidden anywhere on his person. I thought its shape would have been visible even if it were under his suit coat. The man was dressed for business, even after hours. I handed over the keys. He didn't ask for the rubbing. I wondered if he had not been able to see enough of what I was doing to know that I had it. He poked me in the ribs with the gun. It was not a pleasant sensation.

"Walk," he commanded.

At the car, he pointed to the passenger seat and kept the gun pointed on me as I opened the door and climbed in. Still keeping the gun aimed, he walked around the front of the Jeep and got in the driver's seat. I did not fasten my seat belt.

"Buckle up, Ana. We wouldn't want you to fall out," he said. I was sure he wasn't concerned about my safety. I'd never ridden in the passenger seat before, and when I clipped the belt, I learned that the clip was defective, or maybe just very tight. The tab fit in the slot, but unless you gave it an extra-hard push, it stayed in place but wasn't latched. This was the best automotive problem I'd ever not fixed. I left it in this un-locked condition. Safety didn't seem to correctly correlate to being restrained, at the moment.

Kevin transferred the gun to his left hand, but aimed it across his body at me as he started the ignition and put the Jeep in gear. When we were rolling down the road, he put the gun back in his right hand and laid his arm along the back of the seat. The gun nuzzled my neck, and he used his left hand to steer. I wished I knew one of the martial arts, so that I might have disarmed him during the switch. But I didn't.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

"I think I'll take you home. Any decent date would do that at the end of a lovely evening together."

"If you consider this a lovely evening, you've had a limited social life," I said. I could hardly believe what came out of my mouth. Why was I being sarcastic with a man who was holding a gun two inches from my brain?

Kevin laughed. It was not a nice laugh. "I like a girl with some spunk," he said. "Perhaps not quite so much as you have, though."

"How did you know I had that scrap of newspaper from your desk?" I asked.

"You'd be amazed at the things people want to find out when I leave them alone near my office. It's very simple. I have a small mini cam hooked up that sends its view to my computer. I learn a lot about prospective buyers that way; I just call up the cam feed on my smart phone as soon as I leave the showroom. However, I didn't realize a strip of that newspaper was still on my desk. You surprised me there."

"Very clever of you. So, that means you are also my mystery caller."

"Of course. But, I didn't succeed in making you stop your prying into other people's business."

"It seems to me that 'other people's business' is just what you've been doing for about three generations now." The cat was out of the bag. So much for not letting him know how much I knew. We turned the corner from Centerline onto South River Road. He had to drive more slowly on the dirt, but not slow enough for me to risk jumping out.

"I suppose Cliff showed you the paper and expected you to make good on half of the patent rights."

"Cliff Sorenson was a fool. No one should be that naïve about business. But he threatened to sue me and that would have been a real drain on finances. I simply played along and offered him a cup of coffee while we talked it over. Good thing he liked it with plenty of sugar to mask the taste of a couple of sleeping pills. The rest was easy."

"Easy for someone who's completely heartless. Is that what you call good business?"

"You need to shut up." His lip curled in a nasty sneer. "I got rid of that newspaper for good, and by tomorrow the nameplate will be gone from the plow-disc. You're my only loose end." I wasn't sure if I should continue to let him think that, or if it was better strategy to tell him it was already too late—many people knew, or would soon know, about his cheating the Sorenson family. Fortunately, he apparently read no particular meaning into my silence.

We turned into the driveway of my house, and approached the entrance to the small trail into the swamp I'd been walking since the water level had gone down a bit. I knew this was my best chance, to jump out and run for the trail when it would be behind Kevin. He'd have to turn in the seat to aim at me. And time was running out. I had no idea what he had planned, but I was sure he wasn't just going to drop me off and then leave.

The Jeep slowed. I pulled the door latch, the unfastened seatbelt snapped away, and I rolled out on the ground without even thinking about it.

# Chapter 32

It hurt. A lot. But it was the best way. I had been right; it took Kevin a couple of seconds to react, and he had to put the Jeep in park unless he wanted to also jump out of a moving vehicle. By the time I heard footfalls behind me, I was down the trail and around a curve, with trees and darkness between us. I heard a pop, and a tearing of leaves to my right. Then another pop, and more ripping leaves to my left. I thought that .22 revolvers had six bullets but I wasn't positive. I was, however, counting. Another pop and something smacked into a tree, a tree that was way too close to me for my taste. But, that was three bullets out of the gun, and not into my body. I hoped he didn't have more shells in his pocket. Apparently he did have a flashlight, because a bright beam of light stabbed through the trees. It looked blue, as if it came from one of those small laser lights.

I knew this trail better than Kevin did, and I was wearing sneakers. He had on dress shoes and was slightly paunchy. Would those advantages be enough for me to outrun him? The light definitely gave him an advantage, but the beam seemed narrow, and would have to be pointed in the exact right direction to catch me. And where did this trail ultimately lead? I'd never followed it all the way to the end, had only gone as far as the large tree that was down across the path. I was trying to recall any sense of how far into the woods that tree was when I ran right into its dark trunk. A gasp of air escaped my lungs, and I fell flat on my back. I knew the noise I had made was loud enough to be heard. How close behind me was Kevin? The trunk of the fallen tree was hung up on some other branches, bent beneath it when it came down, enough to hold it up off the ground. I rolled under the huge log just as two more bullets thwacked into its solid body. I heard bark splinter and the wood fibers rip. The tree was caught in the beam of light, but the large trunk shielded me from light as well as bullets.

I crawled a few more feet to be free of the tree's branches and struggled to my feet. The trail was now unfamiliar, and all I could see was a slightly lighter opening between the trees to guide me. The surface beneath my feet was a complete mystery, but I had to keep running. I forced myself into a jog. I hadn't known I could run this far, but I'd never been quite so motivated. Behind me, I heard a grunt and a thump. So, Kevin had found the tree, too. He apparently hadn't been using the light to find his way, only to search for me. Somehow his discomfort didn't worry me very much.

Without warning, my left foot encountered a soft, angled surface, and then my right foot disappeared into cold water. I pitched forward and felt both my feet being pulled into soft, oozing mud. Unavoidably, I thrashed my arms to try to regain my balance, and the resulting splashing sounds were loud in the night air. I twisted to look back at the trail, but this pushed me even deeper into the muddy water.

The flashlight beam caught me full in the face and blinded me. I couldn't see Kevin, but I heard him panting. It was one thing to read old newspapers and track down a killer in theory. It was another thing altogether to be face to face with one in the dark of a swamp.

"Perfect," he said, heaving with the effort of speaking. "No one will find you here for months."

I heard the gun click, but there was no pop, no ripping of leaves, no tearing of flesh and bone, or burst of pain.

"Shit," he said. I thought of the last time I'd heard someone say that word in Dead Mule Swamp. That had been because of this same man's success at taking away a life. This time, it was because he couldn't take mine.

He moved the light slightly so it was out of my eyes. I could see him looking at the tiny gun cradled in his hand. He raised his eyes to mine, and his face wore a crafty look. There was bark and a dead leaf stuck to his forehead with what might have been blood. He must have scraped his face on one of the big tree's branches. It might have been comical if my situation weren't so critical. I had now sunk up to my rib cage in the muck. It was hard to decide which frightened me more—the man or the mud. As I floundered, he spoke again, "No, this is even more perfect. No bullet hole is better. Everyone will just think you wandered into the swamp at night. Which you did. Good riddance. Forest County will be better off without a nosy newcomer."

"Don't just leave me here," I protested. I probably was whining, but I didn't care. I could definitely accept being touched by Kevin right now. There was nothing solid under my feet and the soft mud was sucking me downward.

"Your newspaper's gone, and soon you'll be gone too. 'Newcomer Abandons Cherry Hill when Renovations become Overwhelming.' How would you like that headline? The swamp doesn't dry out in this part. You'll never be found."

I was afraid he was right. My only consolation was that other people would be alive to confront him. The alternate headline would sell even more papers, "Teeter Farm Implements Owner Indicted for Fraud and Murder."

He gave that nasty laugh again, turned on his heel and walked back the way we had come. A few seconds later he swore and I could hear breaking branches. I was glad the tree had gotten a second chance to inflict some damage.

# Chapter 33

One threat was apparently gone, but I couldn't deny that I was in real trouble. I seriously wished I had trusted Cora enough to tell her what I had planned to do, but I knew she would never have agreed that it was a good idea. A layer of haze was settling down over the swamp, but the moon had apparently risen, because there was now a soft light reflecting off the open water. It wasn't much, but it did allow me to see a little better. What I saw wasn't good.

My floundering had taken me farther away from the path. Not very far, but my feet still hadn't encountered anything solid, so I certainly couldn't walk away from this problem. I was in mud almost up to my armpits, and I was finding it difficult to fight down the panic. I tried to recall anything I might have learned about quicksand. The scene from Princess Bride in the Fire Swamp didn't seem a useful resource, and there was no handsome Westley here to dive in to save me. In Lawrence of Arabia, the Arab boy had disappeared below the surface in a few seconds; at least I was still floating.

Then I remembered. Floating was the key. If you stopped struggling, and just treated it like thick water, you could stay on top. The problem was that the whole idea was repugnant, counter-intuitive. To float, I would have to put the rest of my body, the only parts that weren't being sucked down by the soft mud, into the black ooze. I thought about that for a few seconds, but realized I didn't have much time for contemplation.

Denying the desire to struggle which the panic clamored for, I lay back, splayed my arms as wide as I could and spread my fingers against the dark water, palms down. Mud sloshed into my ears, and a leaf drifted against my face. I wanted to brush it away, but didn't dare move my arm that much. I could feel my hips rising, almost imperceptibly, but they were definitely being forced upward by the tension of my back, flat against the surface. My feet still dangled downward, caught in the slime. The grip of the mud was so strong it felt as if my sneakers might be pulled off my feet.

I waited until it seemed as if my legs were no longer moving, and tried something akin to swimming. I didn't dare do anything as bold as a backstroke, not wanting to raise an arm from the surface and reduce my floating power. Instead, I sort of fluttered my hands, scooping watery mud with each motion. At the same time, I risked a slight kick with my feet. I could hardly move them. It seemed exactly like the proverbial expression: "to swim through molasses." However, as I moved a few inches backward, my feet came a few inches upward as well. The higher I could get, the better, because the surface area was much more liquid than the depths. It seemed at first as if my left shoe might remain in the swamp—the lace must have been loose, but I curled my toes and managed to keep it on my foot.

The plan was working. I was moving very slowly, but my feet were rising, and I was staying on top of the ooze. The next problem was that I was moving in the wrong direction, away from the path, and presumably into deeper water. Well, maybe the open water would be more clear, and I could turn over and actually swim.

After a few minutes of flap-paddling, I bumped into a clump of bushes. They were growing right out of the water. I rolled on my left side and grabbed a handful of the branches. Now that I wasn't fighting to stay afloat, I could see I wasn't really very far from the path. It had made a jog, but I had run straight ahead into the water. These bushes were screening me from it. Although the path was not far, the branches were too thick to push my way through, especially since I couldn't get any purchase with my feet, but the line of bushes did lead right back to where the trail had turned. The way was longer, maybe fifty feet, but I could get there, if I were strong enough.

First, though, I had to turn around. This meant leaving the security of tightly gripping a bush, and then turning in a half circle. The shrubbery pulled at my hair like rough fingers as I rotated past, but I was beyond caring. Finally, I was facing the bushes again, with my left hip out of the water, and now my head was pointed toward solid ground.

I reached above my head, grabbed some branches and pulled them toward me. They bent, but did not break, and slowly, my body slid in their direction until my stomach was even with the stems I had grasped. It was a good thing I had taken up renovating my house. Hauling rubbish and hefting sheets of drywall had made me strong, stronger than I had realized. I did the maneuver again. Assuming my arms were about three feet long, I calculated that I'd just moved about six feet. Only forty-two feet to go, fourteen more strokes. I did two more. This was really hard work, but I felt secure, and the panic was gone. And there was no time pressure; I had all night if I needed it. At least I hoped I did. I prayed that Kevin would not come back, bringing fresh ammunition for the gun.

I rested for a while and then pulled myself along the edge of the shrubs for three more strokes. And then three more. What was it Adele had called this stuff? Oh yes, buttonbush. It grew right through the open water. Two more strokes. Well, I'd just button myself right to it. Another rest, and then two more strokes. The moon was visibly higher now, glowing weakly through the haze. I tried to twist my head around to see how close I was to dry land, but I couldn't tell without turning my whole body, and I didn't want to waste the energy. My arms were tired and shaking; I was getting cold. But I thought it couldn't be more than a few more strokes until I'd be out of danger. This danger, at least.

I reached back once again and was pulling more branches toward me when my right hip grazed across something hard. I ventured to put some weight on it, and realized it was a log, and it was angling toward the surface. I reached down and grabbed its sides. Now I could turn and face the shore, for that's where I was, and I dragged myself from the water.

I don't know how long I sat there. At first I was just trying to catch my breath, and then I seemed to fall into a sort of trance. I only know that because when I began to shake it felt as if I were waking up. The mud was drying on my skin and was starting to itch. There was no Kevin to hurt me, there was no handsome Westley to save me, there was no Roger to either hold me or push me away. There was only me, sitting in a swamp in the watery moonlight, shivering. I could live without Roger. I could live without a Westley. I could live.

# Chapter 34

I wasn't sure whether I would be safer here, or if I walked out to the road. A decision was forced by the fact that I was cold; walking made as much sense as anything, and eventually I'd have to go. It might as well be under cover of night. I didn't know where the trail led if I went forward. Perhaps it really did dead end at a wide expanse of water. However, I didn't like the idea of going back the way I had come, just in case Kevin was still hanging around. I tried the flashlight, which was still in my jacket pocket, but it was wet and wouldn't turn on. It was just as well. I could see quite a bit by the diffused moonlight, and the flashlight beam would have only made me a visible target. I decided to go forward.

Now that I wasn't running, the path wasn't treacherous at all. There were a few more fallen trees, but none as big as the monster that I had crashed into before, and I easily stepped over them. I only had a vague sense of the direction of the trail, but it seemed to be angling away from the rising moon, to the right, so that meant I had to be turning south. That was good news, because it meant this pathway should eventually come to the seasonal extension of South River Road. I had been walking for maybe twenty minutes when I rounded a bend and could see a lighter patch ahead, and the surface of a dirt two-track road. Reaching it, I turned to the right. Now, I could walk faster, which helped me warm up. I thought I knew where I was, but I couldn't be positive. If I were right, I'd walked that old road many times for exercise, but never in the middle of the night.

In the distance I heard a siren begin to wail, and I wondered who was in trouble now. The last time I'd heard a siren from this road was also the day that Cliff had died. I shivered again, but not from the cold. I heard more sirens, and then they all cut off abruptly. It sounded as if they were out on the highway. Maybe an accident.

Headlights shone around a bend in the road ahead of me, and I quickly shrank into the trees beside the road, just as a car came around the curve. Had I been seen? It was moving very slowly, as if the driver was looking for someone, and then I recognized it as a Cherry Hill police car. I stepped into the road and raised my arms.

The car came to an abrupt stop and Tracy jumped out and ran toward me. She led me back to the car where I saw Tom Baker in the passenger seat.

Within minutes, I was in the back seat, bundled in an army blanket, which itched even more than the mud, but I didn't care. Tom poured me a cup of hot coffee from a thermos bottle he held between his knees, as we sped back along South River Road. Tracy swerved around as many potholes as she could, but it was a good thing the coffee was in a travel mug with a lid. At Centerline we turned north and then east on the highway, which seemed strange because it took us away from town.

They were asking me questions almost faster than I could muster up answers. I pulled the soggy rubbing from my jeans and handed it to Tom. "This might not be any good now, but we should be able to get another. You can probably take the actual name plate to a forensic lab."

Tom took the softened paper and studied it.

"How are you going to find Kevin?" I asked.

My question was answered when we reached an enclave of State Police cars, and Cherry Hill's other cruiser. Deputy Kyle Appledorn was leading a handcuffed Kevin Teeter toward one of the state cars. On Kevin's other side was a State Trooper, firmly gripping his other arm.

Tracy turned her head to look at me. "I happened to stop in the office this evening, to pick up some files," she said. "I got the fax you and Cora sent."

"But what made you come looking for me in the swamp?"

"Tom got worried. He called his mother and she seemed nervous. He finally got her to tell him what you two had found out, and she urged him not to go into work tomorrow."

Tom chimed in, loudly of course, "I got ta thinkin' about how Kevin acted all day. He was short-tempered and mean. More'n usual. I saw him take that little gun out of the safe. It's like somethin' a lady would carry, only five bullets, and I asked him what he was goin' ta do."

"'Just some target practice,' he said, and told me to mind my own business. But that ain't no target shootin' gun."

Tracy continued, as much to save our ears as anything, "After Tom talked to Cora they decided you might not be safe. I called the State Police and sent Kyle out to meet them along the highway. They planned to begin looking for Kevin at his business. Then, I picked Tom up. I sometimes deputize him when we are short on officers."

"But how did you find me?"

"We were just going to check your house. But, while we were driving out there, it came over the radio that the State Police had picked up a man walking along the highway with a bad cut on his head, and a lot of mud on his pants and shoes. Turned out it was Kevin Teeter, trying to walk home. That seemed out of character, and when he became belligerent about what he was doing, the officers searched his pockets. That's when they found the gun, and he didn't have a permit."

"He told you where I was?" That seemed incredulous.

"Not at first, but the more they questioned him, the less sense his answers made. He was talking about that old machine he has on display and how Cliff couldn't have any of something, but we couldn't understand what Cliff couldn't have."

"Half of Teeter's Implements," I said.

"Really? No wonder Kevin was desperate. Eventually he just began to brag about himself. He bragged about his business, and his accomplishments, including getting rid of Cliff, and finally that he had left you in the swamp."

"Kyle kept the radio open, so we heard it all," Tom added.

"These new broadband communications are great for us, because we don't have to keep someone on a central dispatch board any more. The last millage increase passed and this is what we bought." Tracy was doing a little bragging of her own, but it was fine by me.

# Chapter 35

A week later, Adele and I were getting ready to leave the friendship hall at the former Swedish Baptist Church, now named Crossroads Fellowship. Cliff's funeral had been somber, but the luncheon afterwards had worked its small-town magic. Everyone was reminding themselves of how much they had to be thankful for. Even Sherri Sorenson was trying to smile, and the kids were tearing around outside with their friends, as if nothing had happened—for the moment anyway. Praising Janice Preston for her pies, and chuckling about the pedestrian pickle-bologna sandwiches were parts of what helped each person to know his or her role in a county with fewer than fifteen thousand inhabitants. There would be plenty of moments of pain yet, but the residents of Forest County were ready to help everyone move ahead with life.

People were beginning to get up from the tables and move around the room, chatting with people they might have seen yesterday, or not for weeks. Almost everyone took the time to pass by Sherri's table and put a hand on her shoulder, or at least say something to her. A large blond man seated by her side had been one of the pallbearers, and had been introduced as Cliff's brother, Karl, who had driven up from Minneapolis.

I had sat with Cora and Tom for the service. Tom was clean and neat in a plain brown suit and cream-colored shirt with a bolo tie. He looked odd, but not uncomfortable in the dressy clothes. His fingernails probably never came clean, but he had clearly tried to scrub off the grease. Cora wore a maroon knitted suit that I guessed might have come off her rack of vintage clothing, but she looked very stylish.

They had excused themselves after just one plateful of sandwiches, Jell-o salad, and dessert. Cora explained that she could only tolerate large groups for just so long. Over the past week, she had uncovered the information that Cliff and his brother Karl were the only living direct descendants of Arne Sorenson, and that Kevin only had a cousin, Priscilla, who was somewhere in the far west. She was expected to want to sell her share of the Teeter business. "That means that Karl and Sherri will have full ownership of Teeter's. Although, I expect they'll change the name." Cora's eyes twinkled. "I'll just pay my respects to Sherri, and head home. Are you ready, Tom?"

They rose and headed toward Sherri. That allowed me to spend the rest of the event with Adele. She and Cora would not willingly share a space, but I liked them both. Adele delighted in telling me the details of Kevin's incarceration to date, as she had heard them, and included some cutting quotes made by his ex-wife.

"I know you might not believe that anyone would ever marry him," she said, "but he was considered quite a catch when he graduated from high school."

"People change," I agreed. "Sometimes you wonder if you really know a person at all."

"It's so true." Adele said.

"Say, I keep meaning to ask you something."

"What's that, dear?"

"I never have heard what Cora's correct last name is."

Adele smiled, a supercilious smile. "Caulfield," she said. "She's the ex Mrs. Jerry Caulfield."

# About the Author

Joan Young has enjoyed the out-of-doors her entire life. Highlights of her outdoor adventures include Girl Scouting, which provided yearly training in camp skills, the opportunity to engage in a ten-day canoe trip, and numerous short backpacking excursions. She was selected to attend the 1965 Senior Scout Roundup in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, an international event to which 10,000 girls were invited. She has ridden a bicycle from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean in 1986, and on August 3, 2010 became the first woman to complete the North Country National Scenic Trail on foot. Her mileage totaled 4395 miles. She often writes about her outdoor experiences.

Recently, she has begun writing more fiction, with several award-winning short stories awaiting publication at Twin Trinity Media. News from Dead Mule Swamp is her debut mystery novel.

Other titles on Smashwords by Joan H. Young:

Get Off the Couch with Joan

Devotions for Hikers

Connect with me online:

My Author Blog: Shark Bytes and Tales

My Personal Blog: My Quality Day

Facebook: jhyshark

