The Unkindness of Ravens M. Hilliard (popular novels txt) 📖

name wasn’t familiar so who knew if he was still around, but it shouldn’t be hard to find out. “Alb Cty Deeds.” A reference to property records. Most could be searched online through the County Clerk’s website, but I wasn’t sure how far back the digitized records went. Only to the eighties, was my guess, and everything before was still paper. Again, not hard to find out but I wasn’t sure where she was going with it. I’d check. Real estate records told quite a story if you did enough digging.

I couldn’t make sense of the next item. “Reno—lock—gaslighting?” The words were surrounded by squiggles, as though she’d been doodling as she thought. I couldn’t relate them to anything. I’d have to leave them for now.

The next few notes were the ones that had been buzzing in my brain. Cryptic sets of letters and numbers. Code? Probably not. Some of the letter sequences seemed familiar. Acronyms? Abbreviations? I looked at the various strings of numbers. Some could be dates but others clearly weren’t. If they were dates, only half would coincide with the drowning. Another would be from about ten years ago, and the rest seemed unrelated. I tried writing out each line, grouping the letters and numbers differently each time willing them to make sense. I was sure some were abbreviations and dates, others looked like Roman numerals.

Roman numerals.

A visual of the local paper flashed into my mind.

I launched myself off the couch, crossed the room in a single bound, and dove into the recycling bin by the door. I found a rumpled copy of the latest issue of “Helderberg Highlights” and studied the masthead. There it was—volume, issue, date.

Score!

I did my fist-pump-one-skate victory dance and went back to my laptop. At the state library website, I went to the New York State Newspapers and scrolled the list of titles for Albany County. I matched most of Joanna’s abbreviations to newspapers, most small, local, and out of print. The numbers were either dates or volumes and issues. The Times Union was still around, as was the New Holland Republic, but the rest had either consolidated or simply folded. Thanks to grant money and a zeal for preservation, many were now on microfilm. But which, if any, were online?

I could search the Albany Times Union back to the mid-eighties, beyond that I’d need to go to microfilm. The dates I needed from the smaller papers weren’t digitized, so that meant microfilm as well, and microfilm meant a trip downtown. I’d made an appointment at Albany All News for the next morning, ostensibly to gather information for Joanna’s memorial. I couldn’t miss it, and didn’t know how long I’d be there. If I hit pay dirt with some of my questions, it could be a while. Either way, I doubted I’d have time to get to the state library and do the necessary research and still make it back for my afternoon reference shift. The state library closed at five, so unless I could finagle some time off on Tuesday I was out of luck. I did know someone in reference there, though. She’d be able to find what I was after, and if she wasn’t too busy she might turn it around quickly. I organized my list of newspapers and dates and e-mailed it to her, saying I was helping a friend with some research. I asked her to respond to my personal e-mail and let me know when she thought she could get to it. I made a separate list of the dates Joanna had noted for the village paper. Those would be in the archives, and I could check there as soon as I could get in without Millicent around. That was as much as I could do for now.

I stretched my cramped hands and checked the time. It was later than I thought—much later. Normally Henri would be home by now, or I would have heard from him. I checked my phone. No texts, no messages. Very unlike Henri. I sent him a message asking for his ETA.

I waited a few minutes and tried again. He said he’d gotten some odd looks when he asked questions. Could he have asked the wrong thing of the wrong person? We didn’t know what we were dealing with, or who.

I stared at my phone, willing a message to pop up. Maybe he’d gotten home and I hadn’t noticed, and he was waiting for me to bring Pierre downstairs. I called the dog and leashed him up—it was time for his last outing anyway.

There was no sign of Henri. Pierre sniffed around the front garden for a few minutes, did his business, and headed for the door to Henri’s apartment, where he sat and whined.

I was trying the door handle when my phone beeped. Henri. He apologized, dinner involved much wine, would I like to keep Pierre for the night?

I agreed, and carried the little dog upstairs, where he promptly went to sleep. I was too wound up. Ignoring the fact that my octogenarian landlord had a more active social life than I did, I tucked in with Hercule Poirot. Maybe my own “little gray cells” would be inspired by his company.

Chapter Thirteen

I was at Albany All News by nine the next morning. The PR manager met me in the lobby. She looked harassed but was pleasant enough. Handing me Joanna’s official work biography, she said she had a few fires to put out and left me in the charge of an intern. Fine with me. While gathering information for Joanna’s memorial page was the official reason for my visit, I wanted to see what else I could unearth. Workplace gossip might yield some new angles, and Joanna’s co-workers were more likely to open up if there were no management types around.

I explained the memorial plans to the small group that had agreed to help me. Most had worked with Joanna for many years and seemed genuinely fond of her