“Wash your hands before you open these,” she admonished three boys as she pushed her glasses back up her nose. “I don’t want any more black fingerprints on the pages.”

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?”

“This morning when he dropped Adam off. He has quite a shiner. Emmett Barnes is a scary guy and you could have been really hurt.”

“I know, but a man named Hayden Dean stepped in. If it weren’t for him, Emmett would have hit me.”

“Probably, but those Deans aren’t much better, believe me.”

“Really? I was going to try and find out where Hayden lives so I could see how he’s feeling today.”

Shelly shook her head. “Stay away from those people. I think Hayden is his own first cousin.” One red brow lifted. “If you know what I mean.”

Hope smiled, no longer caring if Shelly wanted friendship or information. It had been so long since she’d stood around gossiping with another woman, she’d forgotten how much she missed it. “Do you want to come in? I think I might have a diet Pepsi.”

“Diet? Do I look like I need a diet?” asked the neighbor who looked like she’d had to lie down to get her Wranglers zipped up. “I don’t diet.”

“I might have some tea.”

“No, thanks. Wally and Adam and I were just headed down to the lake for a late picnic. Why don’t you join us?”

Hope had a million and one things to do. Finish her alien story, take photographs of the area, have them developed at the one-hour photo place in town, scan them into her computer, then transpose some aliens into pictures. She had to read over the articles she’d xeroxed at the library, and she had to decide if there was a story in there somewhere. One that hadn’t been told before.

Her eyes felt scratchy, her brain mushy. A few hours lying on the beach, emptying her head, and chatting about anything but work sounded like heaven. “Okay,” she said. “Give me ten minutes.” As soon as Shelly left, Hope ran upstairs and peeled out of her clothes. She washed her face and shaved her legs. Her blue-and-green tie-dyed one-piece was cut high on her hips, and she liked it because it made her legs look long. She grabbed an old picnic basket she found in the pantry and checked for petrified rodents. It was clean and she tossed in a few diet Pepsis, grapes, crackers, bleu cheese, and her Minolta camera and case. With a beach towel over one shoulder, a pair of Japanese flip-flops on her feet, and her sunglasses covering her eyes, she headed to the lake.

Adam and Wally were already in the water, while Shelly relaxed beneath the shade of ponderosa pines. She sat on the beach in a chaise longue, drinking a Shasta Cola and chowing on barbecued potato chips. She wore a Hawaiian print halter with a matching swimming skirt.

“We brought extra sandwiches if you’re hungry,”

Shelly offered as Hope sat in the chaise next to her neighbor.

“What kind of sandwiches?”

“Peanut butter and jelly, or ham and cheese.”

“Ham and cheese sounds good.” Hope sat, straddling the lounge chair. The metal frame warmed the insides of her thighs as she placed her picnic basket between her knees. “I brought some fruit and some cheese and crackers,” she added as she opened the basket.

“Is it squirt cheese?”

“No, bleu.” Hope spread the cheese on a cracker, plopped a grape on top, then bit into it.

“Ahh…no, thanks.”

Hope glanced at Shelly, who was watching her as if she were eating entrails. “It’s really good,” she said and popped the last of the cracker into her mouth.

“I’ll just take your word for that.”

“No way. I ate your cooking, now you have to eat mine.” Hope fixed Shelly a cracker and handed it to her.

“This is your idea of cooking?” She looked doubtful, but she took it anyway.

“It is these days.”

Shelly bit into it, chewed carefully, then declared, “Hey, this is better than I thought.”

“Better than squirt cheese?”

“Yeah, except for bacon flavor.” Shelly motioned for Hope’s basket and they swapped.

“You can eat anything in there but the peanut butter and grape jelly,” Shelly told her as Hope pawed through the items. “It’s Adam’s and he’s real picky about his jelly. It has to be real smooth, no seeds or anything. Dylan has to make his sandwich special for him.”

Hope chose a ham and cheese made with the kind of soft white bread she hadn’t had since she was a kid, and greasy potato chips. “Where is Adam’s mother?” she asked as if she weren’t dying to know.

“Most of the time she lives in L.A.,” Shelly answered as she plopped a grape on top of a mound of bleu cheese. “But when she has a visitation with Adam, they stay somewhere in Montana.”

“That’s unusual.” Hope popped the top to a can of orange Shasta and raised it to her lips. “Usually it’s the father who has visitation.”