Page 25

Well, at least they’d made plans for dinner, and he had a task he needed to accomplish now, even though he doubted it would take him very long.

The bulletin board at the library was right inside the front door, so it was easy enough to tack up one of the flyers — this version featured the spotted owl — in a space where he guessed a poster advertising an event that had already passed must have hung.

Once he was done with that, however, an idea struck him.

He hadn’t been able to find a whole lot online about Silver Hollow, but maybe that was because the town hadn’t bothered to digitize its older records.

For all he knew, there could be all sorts of troves here that held information about the elusive silver horse…

or possibly some clues as to why a mysterious person or persons had felt compelled to scratch a bunch of Ogham letters into an oak tree.

A woman who looked a little older than he, maybe in her mid-thirties, was working at the front desk directly opposite the bulletin board. She was scanning in a group of books that had just been returned, but looked up from her work and smiled at him as he approached.

“Can I help you?”

“I hope so,” he said. “Do you have a collection of vintage Silver Hollow newspapers here? I didn’t find anything online, but….”

He let the words trail off, mostly because he wasn’t sure how to explain that he was looking for any evidence that something supernatural might have been occurring in the woods outside town.

At once, the clerk shook her head. She had light brown hair cut in a bob that brushed her collarbones, and tortoiseshell glasses warmed her soft brown eyes. If she was auditioning for a role as the librarian, Ben thought she was already off to a good start.

“No, all those materials are in the archives at City Hall,” she told him. “In the basement,” she added helpfully. “Someone at the front desk can show you.”

Maybe it was a little odd that those items weren’t stored at the library, but he wasn’t going to question the way the town conducted its business.

The important thing was that those records actually did exist, and since City Hall had been his next stop anyway, it seemed to be a sign that he was on the right track.

He thanked the clerk and then headed down the street to City Hall.

It hadn’t changed since the last time he’d been here and listened to Victor Maplehurst try to reassure the citizens of Silver Hollow that Northwest Pacific’s operations wouldn’t cause any harm to the forest, but the building looked somehow different in the uncertain sunlight, shadows dappling the warm stone of the structure and the birch trees that bordered the walk shivering in the breeze.

For some reason, a tremor of unease went through him, and he told himself that was ridiculous. If those records had been made available to the public, then he had every right to take a look at them, even if he wasn’t a resident.

First, though, was the bulletin board. Just like at the library, it hung right inside the front entrance.

However, whoever was in charge of it didn’t appear to be quite so meticulous about making sure only up-to-date items remained in place, since he had to find space between a notice about the St. Patrick’s Day parade and a list of locations where people could drop off their old Christmas trees.

But since those items of concern had come and gone, Ben didn’t feel too bad about partly covering them up as he hung a flyer, this one with a doe looking straight at the camera with large, liquid eyes.

He didn’t know how anyone could look at that photo without wanting to do everything possible to protect the beautiful creature, but people could get ticky when money was involved.

Afterward, he headed over to the front desk, where a clerk who looked as if he must have gotten the job right out of college was sitting.

“I need to go to the archives and look at some old newspapers,” Ben said, and the guy nodded.

“Downstairs and to the right,” he said. “The clerk working there can guide you to what you need.”

“Thanks.”

The stairs were only a few yards from where they stood, so Ben headed over there and went down to the basement. A sign directed him to the archives, although since it was the only room with the door standing open, it was pretty easy to find.

Once inside, he asked the older woman working there where he could find old copies of the Silver Hollow Herald — at least he already knew the name of the local paper — and she guided him to a section toward the back of the cramped space.

“They’re all here,” she told him. “You can see the years stamped on the spines, but sometimes one volume will contain more than one year’s worth of papers. Just let me know if you need anything else.”

“I will.”

She headed back to the desk where she’d been sitting, leaving him to go through the books on the shelves at his leisure.

Ben honestly didn’t know for sure where he should start. Somewhere way back in time? Last year?

Some impulse made him reach for 2010. According to Sidney, that was when her father had taken off.

Possibly that event wouldn’t have been recorded in the local paper — after all, it was a family tragedy, not an actual crime like a bank robbery or arson or something — but small towns could sometimes be quirky about what they recorded in their local papers.

If nothing else, it might give him an idea of what else had been going on in Silver Hollow during that fateful year.

He pulled down the volume in question from its shelf. A little study carrel had been placed off to one side, so he took the book over there and sat down.

At first, he didn’t find anything too interesting. Coverage of various parades — the town seemed to love those, whether they were celebrating St. Patrick’s Day or Easter or even May Day — but one entry caught his eye.

An article about a man named Finn Lowell getting arrested for being drunk and disorderly.

Sidney’s father?

Most likely. After all, Ben had met the guy while he was bending an elbow at the hotel bar, drinking the straight stuff rather than the more manageable Scotch and soda he had been nursing. Maybe the man had never kicked the habit, even after all these years.

By itself, a drunk and disorderly charge wasn’t the sort of thing to raise too many eyebrows, although Ben guessed such disturbances weren’t very common in a quiet place like Silver Hollow.

What was unusual, though, was the guy telling the cops that he’d seen things in the woods outside town. Everyone appeared to dismiss those claims, figuring it was the alcohol talking and nothing else, but Ben wasn’t so sure.

Had Finn Lowell left because he couldn’t handle having to keep those kinds of secrets any longer?

On the surface, that sure looked like what must have happened. Obviously, there were a thousand and one reasons why a marriage might fall apart, and yet Ben couldn’t help thinking the strain of having to keep his mouth shut about such unusual occurrences might have been the final deciding factor.

He’d brought his laptop along with him, so he pulled it out of his satchel and took a few quick notes, writing down the date of the newspaper article and the names of the people involved.

It had been long enough ago that it was possible the arresting officer was no longer with the sheriff’s department, but it couldn’t hurt to check, just in case.

Or maybe he should just leave it alone. Even after all this time, Ben could tell that her father’s abrupt departure continued to wound Sidney, although she did her best to sound indifferent. How would she react if she learned he was rooting around in her past?

Well, he could wrestle with that moral conundrum later. For now, it seemed better to focus on digging up any other relevant data about the woods that surrounded the town. He could deal with the personal drama aspect of the situation later.

As it turned out, there did seem to be plenty of weirdness.

Northwest Pacific had been operating here off and on for quite a while, although they’d been gone for a couple of decades by now.

During their earlier forays into logging in the area, they’d had equipment malfunctions and people walking off the job, claiming the forest was haunted and trying to get them.

Overactive imaginations?

Ben somehow doubted it. Although he hadn’t met too many people in the logging industry, not when he’d grown up in Southern California and had spent most of his professional life in the Southwest, he had to believe that loggers as a rule must be pretty hard-headed, practical people.

It probably wasn’t a very good idea to be indulging in flights of fancy when cutting down hundred-foot trees that could kill you without batting an eye.

Put together, all those stories made it sound as if there definitely were strange energies in the forest. What they meant, he wasn’t sure.

The only thing he was sure about was that coming here hadn’t been a waste of time.

No, it could never be that, not when this trip to Silver Hollow had resulted in him meeting Sidney Lowell.

As he drove over to her house — their deluxe meat-eaters pizza riding shotgun on the passenger seat — Ben wrestled with how much he should say to Sidney about what he’d learned…if anything at all. Somehow, he didn’t think she’d be overly thrilled to learn he’d been snooping into her family history.

Then again, it was that very history which had sent him here in the first place.

Maybe it was time to come clean about his motivations.

He’d never been a fan of hiding things from people, and even though he knew there wasn’t much chance of a future with Sidney, not when they were so geographically unsuited to each other, he also didn’t want to continue on false pretenses if there was even the slightest chance of them getting together.