He narrowed his gaze. “Oh, I’m researching. I’m researching so hard.”
I put my coffee cup in the dishwasher. “Then I guess I better find you a super-fuckable muse.”
His phone buzzed on the counter and he gave it a quick glance. “Get your coat, Palmer. I’ve got our next lead.”
Chapter Ten
Isaac
The Christmas Notch Public Library was a snug building made from gray stone and humped with improbable amounts of snow. Sunny and I bolted from the truck to the front doors with the distressed speed of Southern Californians in New England, and then spent a minute or two inside stamping our feet and unwinding scarves and missing summer with a speechless, soul-deep intensity.
“Okay, so why are we here again?” Sunny asked in what she thought was a whisper, but definitely wasn’t. “Isn’t this all on the internet anyway?”
I decided to tell Sunny a version of the truth that didn’t involve Judy, Betty, and Dee suggesting this field trip, because I wasn’t ready to admit that I’d drafted three mostly strangers into helping me negotiate an armistice with her cat. “Do you remember my mom’s miniseries about the hot serial killer with a beard? Her character had to go through the town’s microfiche records to solve the B plot mystery, and I think that might be anidea we can work with. In a town this small, I bet the Christmas blizzard would have made the papers.”
“Microfiche,” Sunny repeated, like I’d said something in Martian.
“Well, I guess it might be microfilm. I don’t actually know the difference,” I confessed. The Cat Advisory Text Thread had erupted into an internecine debate about whether I should start with the historical society or the library, with Judy pointing out that Burlington or Montpelier was a lot more likely to have what I needed and with Betty looking up local weather conditions to see if I could drive there safely. The texts had been coming in so fast that I hadn’t caught up before we got here, and so I wasn’t entirely sure what looking at newspaper records would entail. “I think we need to find a librarian.”
We stepped deeper into the book-lined hush and swiveled our heads to look for help. Despite serving a too-far-from-the-interstate town, the library had some gestures at grandiosity: a vaulted ceiling, a cramped balcony around the edges of the main room, and windows comprising secular stained glass. I didn’t see a desk, but there were nooks upon nooks upon nooks, and I assumed the desk was probably tucked away in one of those, along with a shriveled librarian who would give us frail but meddlesome assistance.
“Can we help you?” came a voice from beside us. A tall, fair, and befreckled redhead was standing in the aisle just beside us with a wooden cart of books next to her narrow hip. She looked to be in her late twenties and also like she’d just slunk her way off the page of a vintage pin-up calendar—copper hair in effortless victory rolls, her slender curves showcased in a blouse and pencil skirt, half-frame glasses showing off bright blue eyes and long lashes.
Very muchnota shriveled librarian.
“Yes, you can,” Sunny purred, flirty interest all over her face as she turned to the librarian. But just as she spoke, another librarian appeared behind the first, about the same age but shorter and with riotous curves spilling out of a sweater and skirt situation that could be prescribed for low blood pressure. She had warm sienna skin, hair in an updo and cinched with a thin silk scarf, and cat-eye glasses. Her lips were painted in a deep, matte red.
Sunny was practically bouncing next to me.
“We were hoping to look at the local newspaper issues from December of 1944,” I said before Sunny could start drooling. “Maybe on micro... fiche?”
“Microfilm,” the redheaded librarian corrected me. “But I don’t think everything from thePiney Notch Gazetteis on microfilm—some of it might be in the bound copies.”
“You’ll need to watch out for silverfish,” added the librarian with the scarf.
“I’m sorry, what’s thePiney Notch Gazette?” I asked.
“The local paper,” the scarf-librarian said, and then said, “Oh! Sometimes out-of-towners don’t know. Christmas Notch used to be called Piney Notch back in the day. They changed it after World War Two.”
Sunny mumbled something likeyou can change ME after World War Two, but the librarians didn’t hear us, because they were already abandoning their cart and leading us to the back of the stacks, where a stairwell sank down to a dim and probably haunted basement. A microfilmmachine hulked dustily in a corner, while rows and rows of metal shelves held hand-labeled microfilm boxes, bound newspapers, and also what appeared to be every yearbook from every Christmas Notch school since the beginning of time.
The redheaded librarian kicked on the ancient machine while the scarf-librarian pulled down boxes of film and somebound copies of the newspaper for good measure. Soon we had everything we needed—which was almost unfortunate, because then it was time for the librarians to go back upstairs.
“I’m Opal,” the redhead said, “and this is Fabienne. Come get us if you need any help. It’s always slow on weekdays, so we’re free.” She hesitated, and then added, “Also, are you really...?” She gestured to me a little shyly, and I realized that she was asking if I was truly Isaac Kelly or just a lookalike.
“Yeah,” I said with a smile. “It’s me.”
Opal and Fabienne exchanged awe’re going to dissect this immediatelyglance and then disappeared in a flash of lipstick and glasses.
Sunny finally let out the squeak she’d clearly been suppressing for the last ten minutes.
“Hot librarians,” she said in a voice of dire agitation. “Hot librarians, Isaac! I must be dreaming. Pinch me! Actually, wait—do you thinktheywould pinch me?”
The librarians were hot. Like very incredibly hot. But even hotter than the librarians was watching Sunny right now, seeing the glitter in her dark eyes and the flush on her cheeks, and I wondered if I could still cash in some of my muse-vacation time. The table now stacked with microfilm and old newspapers would be the perfect height for laying her down and peeling off her jeans and pushing her thighs all the way open. I could pull up a chair and kiss her pussy until we scared off all the library basement ghosts with her screams.
But my fantasy was quashed when Sunny held up a finger. “No. Uh-uh. Don’t even think about it, mister.”
“What?” I asked, trying to sound innocent. I failed. My voice was already rough and low from the wet and pink images flitting through my mind. “I didn’t think anything.”
