Nothing like a ghost to bring you back to earth.
The hum of clicking keys and flipping pages filled the library. The old building had been refurbished with institutional blue-gray carpeting the color of Witt’s eyes on a bad day and rows of tables equipped with a reading light in the center. None of the lamps had bulbs. Perhaps the city had run out of money. The floor-to-ceiling book stacks, their metal as yet unscratched by careless hands, provided a sound barrier from the clicking computer keys and the soft voices of the three librarians as they answered questions.
Max waited her turn. The library provided no card files, having replaced them with computers and lookup tables. She, therefore, had no idea where the dead newspaper files would be. She’d decided to begin the search with the date of Cameron’s yearbook and move forward. His sister had obviously been alive and well at the time her picture was taken.
“May I help you?”
Startled—she’d been in the midst of an almost palpable memory of Witt between her legs, one which had her panties turning embarrassingly damp—Max lurched forward when the gray-haired lady beckoned her a second time.
“What can I do for you?” Cat’s-eye glasses with sparkles in the rims swung on a beaded chain around the woman’s neck. Her hair, the color of steel wool and appearing equally as coarse, lay in a cap of tight curls on her head. Over her breast, attached to her green dress, perched a name badge. Evelyn. An old-fashioned name. Anywhere between seventy and eighty, her face was a blanket of lines filled in with a layer of makeup. She had a tiny nose, a snub thing she pointed in Max’s direction, this time clearing her throat.
“Uh,” Max managed, “I’m looking for old newspapers.” She gave the woman the year, watched amazed as the lined features tensed and the gaze behind the cat’s eyes turned inward.
“What a year,” she murmured.
In that moment, a spark of familiarity struck Max. Could it be? Could she be ... ? But no, that would be too coincidental, and there really wasn’t a trace of Cameron in that countenance. Especially with that nose.
Max shook off the feeling. “Where can I find the old stuff?”
The woman also seemed to do a mental shrug, focusing once again on Max, her face softening. “We’re having everything scanned so we can load it all on the server, but I’m afraid the daunting task hasn’t been completed yet. What you’re looking for is still on microfiche.” She bent her head and looked at Max over the tops of her bifocals. “If you want the Lines Gazette, that is.” As if Max might dare to ask for something else, like the Chicago Tribune or the New York Times.
“Yes, I definitely meant the Lines Gazette.” Max’s heart beat faster. “And you do have it?” She realized now she hadn’t believed they would, not that far back.
The woman beamed behind the lenses, her snub nose lifting. “Certainly. Lines has everything, things a big library would never think to carry. Let me show you.”
Moving at the speed of light, she dashed around the end of the counter. Max, despite her longer legs, had a time keeping up. The woman led her to the far end of the library, past Witt at his computer station, past the tables and the stacks, the children’s reading room on one side, the soft-spoken readers’ groups on the other, the periodicals, and finally back to three work stations, each equipped with old-fashioned fiche viewers.
Wooden card files of old created sound-dampening walls around the stations. Max’s escort dropped her voice as she opened a neat drawer packed to capacity with envelopes of microfiche.
“They’re filed by year and day within year, my dear.” The woman lowered her chin once more and looked at Max over the rims of her glasses. “Please don’t get them out of order.”
“I won’t, I promise.”
“It’s five cents a copy if you do a print screen. You can pay up front.” Then her guide scurried back to the help desk, leaving Max amid filing cabinets fragrant with lemon polish.
The task was indeed daunting. She had over twenty-five years to go through.
“Why obituaries?” she asked, her voice a murmur in the quiet library. “Why not marriages and births?”
Being suspiciously quiet today, Cameron didn’t answer.
Then she thought of the three days she had to accomplish the chore and was damn glad Cameron only asked for the obituaries.