Hope waited until the boys had left with their books before she approached the desk. She looked into the librarian’s enormous, slightly out-of-focus brown eyes and noticed Regina’s irises were huge and cloudy.
Hope figured the woman had to be legally blind, at the very least. “Hello,” she began. “I need some information, and I was hoping you could help me.”
“Depends. I can’t check out library materials to anyone who hasn’t resided in Pearl County for less than six months.”
Hope had been expecting that. “I don’t want to check out library materials. I’m interested in reading local news reports from five years ago.”
“What specifically are you interested in reading?”
Hope wasn’t certain how the town would react to an outsider poking into its business, so she took a deep breath and just jumped right in. “Anything associated with the late Sheriff Donnelly.”
Regina blinked, shoved her
glasses down her nose, then turned her head and looked at Hope out of the corner of her eye. “Are you the California woman living in Minnie’s old house?”
Such intense scrutiny was more than a little unnerving, and Hope had to force herself not to back away. “Minnie?”
“Minnie Donnelly. She was married to that no-good Hiram for twenty-five years before the good Lord called her home.”
“How did Mrs. Donnelly die?”
“The cancer. Uterine. Some say that’s what sent Hiram over the edge, but if you ask me, he was always a pervert. In the third grade he tried to touch my heinie.”
Hope guessed she no longer had to wonder if people would talk to her.
Regina pushed her glasses back up. “What do you want with the news reports?”
“I’m thinking of writing an article about the old sheriff.”
“Have you ever published anything?”
“Quite a few of my articles have appeared in magazines,” Hope answered, which was the truth, but it had been a long time since she’d had anything appear in more mainstream publications.
Regina smiled and her eyes got even bigger. “I’m a writer, too. Mostly poetry. Maybe you could look it over for me.”
Hope groaned inwardly. “I don’t know anything about poetry.”
“Oh, that’s okay. I also wrote a short story about my cat, Jinks. He can sing along with Tom Jones to ‘What’s New, Pussycat?’”
Hope’s silent groan turned into a throat cramp. “You don’t say.”
“It’s true, he really can.” Regina turned to a file cabinet behind her. She took a key from a rubber bungee cord around her wrist and, feeling for the lock, opened a file drawer. “Let’s see,” she said as she pushed her glasses to the top of her head. “That would have been August of ‘95.” She stuck her face into the drawer and studied several small white boxes at close range. Then she straightened and handed Hope two rolls of microfilm. “The projector is over there,” she said, pointing to a far wall. “Copies are ten cents apiece. Will you need help with the projector?”
Hope shook her head, then realized Regina probably couldn’t see her. “No, thank you. I’ve had lots of experience with these things.”
It took Hope a little under an hour to copy the newspaper articles. Because of the grainy projector screen, she didn’t take the time to read them. She skimmed mostly, and from what little she saw, it seemed the late sheriff had been involved in several fetish clubs he’d found via the Internet. Over the course of a few years, he’d embezzled seventy thousand dollars to meet with other members. He’d met with them in San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle, and toward the end, his taste in girls had gotten younger and more expensive. In the last year of his life, he’d become so careless he’d paid for a few of them to come to his house. What Hope found most surprising was that for all his recklessness, no one in town knew a thing until his death. Or did they?
One name that drew her attention to the fuzzy screen every time it appeared was Dylan’s. He was always quoted as saying, “The FBI is investigating the case. I have no information at this time.” Luckily for the reporters, the other deputies hadn’t been so tight-lipped.
When Hope finished, she gathered her Xerox copies and returned the microfilm. It was just after noon by the time she drove to Timberline Road, but she hadn’t been home two minutes when the doorbell rang. It was her neighbor, Shelly, and she had something on her mind.
“You know,” Shelly began, “I haven’t had a neighbor for a long time now, and I guess I was hoping that we could be friends.”
Hope looked at Shelly standing there on the porch, her head cocked to one side, a few stray sunbeams turning her hair copper. She had no idea why her neighbor was so upset. “We are,” she said, although she didn’t think one lunch automatically made people friends.
“Then why did Dylan have to tell me about what happened to you at the Buckhorn?”
“I haven’t had time to tell you,” Hope answered, even as she wondered if Shelly was really seeking friendship or just wanted information about what had taken place the night before. “When did you talk to Dylan?”