Daughters of the Lake(62)

Kate shook her head. “I have no business seeing another man,” she said. “I’m still married to Kevin.”

Simon set his fork down on the table. “Listen,” he said. “You’re not seeing him. You just had dinner. But Kate, this is me you’re talking to. We both know you’re not getting back together with Kevin. I saw it in your eyes the second you walked through the door.”

Kate had to admit it to herself—he was right. The thought of seeing Kevin again filled her with revulsion.

Kate’s phone ringing startled both of them. She looked at the number and whispered to Simon, “I think it’s the good detective.”

Simon took a sip of his coffee and leaned in.

“Hello?”

“Hi,” said Nick Stone.

“Hi,” Kate said, grinning.

“I know I said I was going to leave you alone until you got your life sorted out.”

“I never asked you to leave me alone.”

“Well, that’s good,” Nick chuckled, his deep voice sending a shiver through Kate. “Because I don’t intend to. But I’m calling today because I was thinking about your brick wall.”

“Were you now?”

“I was. And I think I have an idea for you.”

Kate smiled and took a sip of her coffee. “Are you going to tell me this idea?”

“I thought I might. Yes.”

“Today?”

He laughed. “Yes, today. Here it is. I was thinking about how you came up empty searching on the internet because you didn’t have the name of the person you’re looking for.”

“That’s right. And I’m not sure where to go from here.”

“What about to the library?”

Kate furrowed her brow. “I don’t follow you. What would I be looking for there?”

“Old newspapers,” he said. “I’m sure the library has the Wharton daily paper on microfilm, all the way back to 1905. Even earlier. You’d have to physically look through them, but you wouldn’t need a name. It’s the headline you’re after. If your lady and her husband were acquainted with your great-grandparents, and better yet, if they lived in Wharton, her murder would’ve been news.”

Kate closed her eyes. “Of course,” she said. “I’ve been so used to looking things up in an online database for so many years that I didn’t even think of archives at the library.”

“Forest for the trees,” he said. “Sometimes the closest person to a case can’t see the obvious. I’ll tell you, when I got this idea, I thought it might be a way to crack this case, and then . . .”

“It’s my case, not yours,” Kate said.

“That’s right. I can’t send someone from my team to do research on a dead woman from a hundred years ago.”

“So you called me,” she said.

“Exactly.”

Kate was silent for a moment, buzzing with excitement. Would this finally lead her to the truth?

“Thank you, Nick,” she said. “Thank you so much. I’ll head down to the library right after breakfast.”

“Let me know what you turn up.”

“I will,” Kate said, clicking her phone off.

After telling Simon all about it while they finished their meal, Kate gathered up her purse and jacket.

“I have a strong feeling that I’m going to find something,” she said to Simon. “I really do.”

“You know what? I do, too.” Simon smiled, squeezing her hand.

Simon walked her to the door and kissed her on the cheek. “Here’s to fruitful hunting.”



When she reached the library, Kate pushed open the big double doors carrying a purse heavy with quarters. She had stopped at the bank on her way down the hill and exchanged some bills for several rolls of coins, knowing that the temperamental microfiche machine at the library might require a good deal of coaxing before it agreed to print out any pages.

Even in this digital age, old copies of the town’s daily newspaper, the Wharton Tribune, were still stored on rolls of film that looked something like old-fashioned home movie reels. As a reporter, Kate was familiar with the medium and the machine needed to read it, a cumbersome cube with a screen about the size of a standard-size television and a hand crank that was used to advance the film. She had researched many stories in this way over the years, threading the film through the machine and using a handle to spin through the issues, which appeared on the large monitor, until she reached the one she needed. The film represented actual photographs of the newspaper that had been reduced—Kate was able to see an entire page of the paper, sometimes two, at once on the screen.

To Kate, reading old newspapers on microfiche was a bit like time travel. Issue after issue appeared on the screen and then vanished. Then another, then another. The faster she spun the handle, the faster time would go by.

“Where do you store old copies of the Trib?” Kate asked the librarian, a twenty-something man with messy brown hair pulled into a man bun on the top of his head.

“How old?” he asked her.

“I’d like to start with the year 1905 and go forward from there,” she said.

“Last couple of drawers on the right,” he said, pointing to a shelf in the back of the library.