Chapter 15: The Newspaper Morgue

The Harlow Creek Gazette occupied the ground floor of a building on Mill Street that had been, in sequence, a feed store, a dentist's office, and briefly, according to Curtis, a location where illegal poker was played during Prohibition, a fact he delivered as they locked their bikes to the parking meter out front with the tone of a man who considers all history equally relevant until proven otherwise.

"My father advertises," Curtis said, which explained everything and nothing. He had a key. Not a copy — an actual key, on a ring with a rubber band around it, tagged with a strip of masking tape that read LAMB/CIVIC in his father's neat pharmacist's handwriting. Curtis had called ahead. The editor, a man named Garvey who was apparently in his father's Rotary chapter, had said the archival room was available until six and to please not disturb the typesetting equipment.

"Rotary," Petra said, reading the masking tape label.