[Triumph,Power,Naturally,Aromatic,Rare]

  Two more blonde suspects plus a two thousand and seven possibly unsolved murder, it was a productive visit to the library. I stopped at the town locksmith on the way back to the bookstore. After the keys were made I hurried home, the store would be closing soon, and I needed to have a quick chat with my intern. I loved the sound of that in my head.

  When I arrived Lucy was waiting on a pair of old ladies, quite old actually they had to be in their eighties. She was loading up a shopping bag with softcover mysteries. Then she asked if she could carry them out to their car for them. But the octogenarians refused any help, declaring that they’d be just fine, thank you very much. People who live in the Adirondacks are very much into self sufficiency, which is good, as a bad storm could keep people cut off for days, maybe a week in the remotest regions. It is the largest park in the lower forty eight states, three times bigger than Yellowstone and four times the size of the Everglades.

  But probably the best thing about the Adirondack Park is that it is a state park, not a national park. Which means that it can’t be exploited, by the president, not any president. Not as long as the New York constitution still stands. Even state lawmakers can’t mess with the forever wild designation of the park, not without changing the state's constitution, and that isn’t easy or timely.

  So while the National parks are exploited by oil, gas and ranchers. That can’t happen here without everyone in the state having a say, last time it happened was nineteen thirty eight when everyone agreed that a highway was needed to supply the people who live in the park and also allow greater access for all of the state residents. There is no entry fee, unlike national parks.

  But that is exactly why many of the residents move here. I wouldn’t call them misanthrope’s because when they do gather together in town they are genuinely friendly, if some perhaps a trifle shy. It’s just that they prefer their own company, rather than to a group. They will also go out of their way, to help a neighbor in need. A trait that is essential sometimes for survival here, especially in the winter.

  So Lucy helped the ladies to the door, and came back with a shining smile.

  “Eighteen mysteries, all in one go can you believe it? That’s my biggest sale ever. I’ll have to fill in inventory holes before I go home.”

  “Don’t worry about that right now, congratulations on the sale, that’s the biggest sale here at the bookstore in quite some time. So intern, do you think you are ready for more responsibility?”

  “Yes of course, why do you ask?”

  “Because I think you are as well, and because tomorrow is Monique’s arraignment, I won’t be here to open the store. So, I stopped at the locksmith and had him make you a set of keys. Well, it’s a set of one, because we only have one door and one key. You can leave it here or take it with you. The back door to the house is always open. So if you leave it here in a safe place, you can open and close, and never worry about forgetting or losing your keys.”

  “This isn’t about me worrying if I’m forgetting or losing my keys. This is about you worrying that I’ll forget or lose my keys, or leave them someplace. Isn’t it?”

  “Yes, when I was sixteen, even with an eidetic memory, I’d often misplace my keys. While I never actually lost them. So you can see why I might worry about it, and the key only works in the front door, so there really isn’t any need to carry it around as you can always get in the back. Then you can make a cuppa on your way in.”

  “What, about more responsibility?”

  “You do have more responsibility, you are in complete control of your very own genre here at the bookstore. How’s the poster coming, for Project Marginalia?”

  “You're deflecting, and the poster is done.”

  “Could I see it? Please.”

  She brought out a lovingly created poster, advertising Project Marginalia. Lot’s of bright colors made the poster pop. Borrow a book for free, Borrower agrees to return the book within thirty days. Payment for the loan is the borrower agrees to return the book with at least one new item of marginalia, but two or more marginalia entries show your support for the concept and the store. I mean what other stores let you borrow their stock for free. If you really want to show your support, the purchase of a book proves just how much you love the store. Marginalia books will never be sold, they are meant to foster community within our community, not generate profit. Please keep your comments to PG, as there are no age limits, on borrowing. So make a doodle, post a pithy comment, tell us just how bad a book this is. If you love the book and someone else hates it, don’t start a comment war, just tell the rest of us, why you loved it, hated it, meh it. Poetry is also great marginalia, especially if the borrowed book inspired the poem. Did this book remind you of another book, hey put a note in there telling us all about that connection.”

  “I love it, Lucy, and I trust you and I know that you are responsible, so take the keys or leave them here. It’s your decision, and I don’t even want to know what you decide.”

  “Thanks Laura, I know handing over those keys is like a new mother, leaving her newborn baby girl with someone else for the first time. So I’ll treat her well, I’ll burp her, feed her, and change her.”

  “Lucy you already have changed, her. Thanks to you we have fun store maps, and a new genre. So you’ve changed the store but you have very much kept to its core values that is something I can really appreciate.”

  “Hey you two, what’s the good word?”

  “Hi Amy, you’re early.”

  “No you said eight and it’s eight, I was surprised the door was still open, Laura.”

  “Yeah, we were just talking about the store, I have to run up and get my coat. But you must be early, because Anais is never, never, late or early. I don't know how she does it.”

  “Unlike you hippie, I have a watch and a schedule that I adhere to, let me guess you’re not ready because you need your beloved twenty year old coat.”

  “I don’t know what the age of a treasured item has to do with anything, Lucy would you please lock up on your way out, and don’t forget you are opening by yourself.”

  “I know, good luck at the arraignment, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Lucy left and locked up and I went upstairs for my coat.

  “Amy, the girl shoplifted here less than two weeks ago, and now she has keys to the building.”

  “I know Anais, that’s what makes Laura special.”

  “Do you mean special, as in blithely clueless to how the world works? Or special in that she has a mental defect?”

  “I mean special in that’s how she makes you feel to be around her, Anais. Admit it you feel it to, or you wouldn’t be hanging around so much.”

  “I’m just trying to keep the hippie from getting killed.”

  “She’d rather die, than change her core principles.”

  “Amy, I know and that’s why I’m trying to make sure she doesn’t let the killer kill her. When she dies, so does this place. Does Placid really need another inn, restaurant, marina?"

  “Well Anais, you are the developer, couldn’t you get the historical society to make this an historical landmark.”

  “It wouldn’t help, Amy. Some rich guy would just buy it as a vacation home, that’s even worse than an inn. At least if a family saved up some cash they could afford to come for a long weekend, once the rich guy buys the property, security goes up, no one gets on the grounds or into the house except for said rich guy and his staff. Actually an inn is closer to what this place already is.”

  “Ok, I’m ready and I’ve got big news so let’s go get a drink.”

  On the way down to the pub, I told them about Monique’s graphic novel, the horrible murder she witnessed as a three year old. How that one night she went from a home with horrible, selfish drug addict parents, to a succession of group and foster homes. Both Amy and Anais vaguely remembered a killing in the woods almost twenty years ago, but neither of them knew if the killer had ever been caught. I told them that I had researched at the library and I think it is still unsolved. If it gets out that Monique was a witness her life might be in danger from the uncaught killer.

  Then I let them know that Tyson was not the killer, I had Claire look at the photo and she’d never seen him before. But I also found a clue at the library, not just information. Two blonde mothers were friendly with Lachlan, they attended storytime with their little kids and tomorrow at one, I would be at the library at one to hopefully talk to two potential suspects.

  “Well do you think it’s a jealous spouse or spurned lover or could it have something to do with the murder?”

  “I’d say it’s fifty fifty, Anais Covering up another crime is a strong motive, but it’s not like Lachlan was shouting the plot of his novel from the rooftops. His fellow writers had no idea. I understand why now. He claimed it was because he was afraid they’d steal his idea, when it really was to cover up that he’d stolen the idea from Monique. No, as far as I know, he talked about the plot here to Faith Sinclair and maybe he talked about it in the library. Unless he thought of another place to pick up women that I haven’t thought of yet.”

  “Well we should ask around in the bar, these guys probably know all the best places right.”

  “I’m not sure that would be a great idea, Amy. I mean, older ladies asking where the best places to pick up young women, that’d make us kinda creepy don’t you think? Oh, guess what else I came across today when I was searching the paper for information. Spring fest two thousand and seven spring concert.”

  “Our favorite jam band, moe.”

  “Yep, it’s the last concert I’ve been to, I’m glad my last concert was a great one.”

  Amy asked, “Anais, have you ever seen moe.?”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  “No, I’m not much of a jam band girl, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh, that’s too bad. They were so good and I think they must have played three or four hours.”

  “No, definitely not a jam band girl.”

  We got to the bar and I loaded up a drink card while Anais went to order some appetizers from Hazel. While Amy went and got quarters for the video games.

  “What kind of beer would you like Anais?”

  “IPA”

  “You don’t want a lemonade beer, I thought you liked that the last time you were here.”

  “I did but I woke up with a headache the next day, and I only drank two beers, I think it was all that extra sugar. So I’ll stick with the IPA tonight and see how I feel tomorrow morning.”

  “Sure, Amy, how about you?”

  “I’d like one of those Saturday Morning IPAs please. I just love that beer comes with marshmallows now.”

  I said hello to Hazel, and asked her to send any of Lachlan’s conquests our way, then I returned to our table with our beers. I passed out the beers, then I pulled out my phone and passed it to Amy.

  “Wow, did you find that when you were looking for the murder?”

  “Yeah, Amy, it was the first thing I found when I scrolled through the microfiche of the newspaper for the whole year. I was hoping Harry would be here tonight, so I could show it to him. I wonder why he ever cut his hair. With that blow to my head I don’t know if I ever knew he was such a good snowshoer, I mean three time champion of the Eastern region is pretty great. Was he in any sports in high school?”

  “No, I don’t think so, Anais do you remember if Harry played on any of the teams.”

  “No, I’m sure that he didn't. He was too busy selling pot to the freshmen.”

  “Well, our school didn’t have a snowshoe team as far as I know, you know it’s really weird not being able to trust my own brain. It was the one thing about me that I could trust. Now I wonder if I’m remembering correctly. Do you two trust your own memories?”

  “Yes, absolutely, I think false memories are extremely rare and only brought on by being guided by someone. I had a case in Boston, a woman went to a fortune teller, who told her she was a duchess in a former life and sent her to a past life regressor.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a scam artist, powered by hypnosis. The hypnotist puts you into a trance then plants a lot of nonsense about people that she was in a former life. Then keeps her coming back week after week, to relive those lives. At a few hundred dollars a session it’s quite lucrative.”

  “If you believe in reincarnation, I understand the fascination. But why keep going back?”

  “Because of the families that they claim she left behind when she died. She was convinced she had all these relatives all over the world. So when she was a ‘duchess’ she had five children. She hired a private investigator in London and thankfully he was honest, he could have bilked her too if he had any inclination to do so. So she gave him the names of her ‘five children’. None of them ever existed. Surprise, Surprise. But those were planted memories, so I think, Laura, you can trust your brain, it’s just like Amy’s and mine now. You form a memory, and if you don’t revisit that memory for some time, it gets overwritten, or it’s just no longer indexed, when you do go searching for it.”

  “You make it sound like a hard drive, Anais.”

  “I think it probably is very similar. Except it has a huge capacity and is quite wet. Maybe the closest thing to a false memory is when you misremember something which is just two similar events that happened to you in the past and the memories somehow merge so that it seems like one event, or the details of two events get partially swapped. But something that happened two decades ago isn’t really critical to your continued existence two decades later. Like you and Amy probably remember different things about that moe concert you went to. A few weeks ago you might have remembered the set list perfectly, but you still remember the important part, going to the concert with your friend. If the set list matters to you just go to the search for the moe concerts and be willing to bet you might not just find the set list I’ll bet you could download the audio of the concert itself.”

  “Ouuu, Ouuu, Anais, you right, look Laura here’s the whole concert moe. Live at Herb Brooks Arena on 2007-03-24. This site is so cool. How come I never heard of it before?”

  “Its .org address it’s completely supported by donations, no ads, they aren’t trying to make a profit off of you or your data. So you only hear about them if you visit the site, or sometimes they make the news. But they host the wayback machine too and it was in the news recently, they have archived a trillion webpages. So if you want to see what the web was like in the past, before social media. Where people put up sites about the things they loved, they weren’t looking for ad money, or any money. They did it because they loved it. It looked garish at times and it was slow, but people were passionate about it. It’s only when web two point o made everything into a cash grab, that it got crappy.”

  “Alright, hippy, not another rant.”

  “No but those early days the computer geeks who built this really were like the last of the hippies. They just wanted to connect ideas, people they thought they could help fix the world. Those guys live on in the dot orgs, open source software.”

  “Speaking of computers and software, who wants to play some games, I’ve got lots of quarters.”

  So we went into the video game room and started playing all of the old classic games. Donkey Kong, Space Invaders, Robotron, Defender, Pac Man, and my favorite Centipede, with the track ball, like Missile Command, but they didn’t have that one here at the pub. We played for about an hour before I started to get bored or just sick of losing to Amy, she was incredibly good at all the games. So I let Anais, who was stupidly stubborn and wouldn’t quit until she won at least one game against Amy, just keep playing. While I looked at the photos they had on the wall of the videogame tournaments that were held here at the pub.

  The last wall had a big sign, the Wall of Champions. It was composed of the individual game champions for the past ten years. I noticed Harry had his picture up multiple times, always for the same game, Defender. A game I was particularly bad at. I kept looking, I wanted to see if he had maintained his edge over the much younger players or if age had finally caught up to him. Arcade games are very much a test of dexterity, trigger reflex, could his greater experience and knowledge of the make make up for slower reaction times.

  Experience lost to reaction time this year, just a few weeks ago Harry had lost to… Lachlan. But Harry had told me he’d never meet Lachlan, he couldn’t have forgotten the man who’d beaten him at his favorite videogame, just a week or so ago.

  “Damn it, that’s it Amy, I quit. How the hell are you so good at these video games?”

  “Well, Laura was pretty much my only friend at school. She’d get a new fantasy series and I wouldn’t see her for a week as she read book after book until the series was read. So, I’d fill in the time with video games. I’d go over to the collective while Laura read I played her Atari. The games for that system were terribly difficult. Sometimes when the writers were taking a break from writing they’d play too. So I got used to a wide variety of styles of play. The writers were always changing, but the games stayed the same. Atari games were almost all twitch games, you needed fast reaction times, but lots of the games ran on patterns, once you learned the pattern, you could make some impressive runs. Remember your Atari, Laura? Do you still have it?”

  “Maybe, it might be up in the attic. You can have it Am, if you’d like it.” I said absently.

  “It’d be fun just to hook it up and see if it still works. I have such fond memories of that time of my life, coming to your house after school, even if you were ignoring me, to read a book. I still loved being in your house, with so many people something was always going on. Well I have an early shift tomorrow and you have the arraignment early tomorrow, you girls ready to go?”

  The alarm went off too early the next day, but I wanted to eat breakfast with the writers to see if any were coming to the arraignment with me and before that I needed to call the Adirondack Daily Gazette.

  “Hi, I’m looking for Nate Kelly. I read a story of his from two thousand and seven and I have some questions.”

  “Well you certainly waited long enough to call, but I’m sorry to say that he retired about three years ago. What was the story about?”

  “It was about a murder that happened at a campsite in Tupper Lake. I kept looking through the rest of the microfiche for that year and the only other mention was an autopsy about a week later. I wanted to know if they ever caught the killer?”

  “Why are you doing a podcast?”

  “No, I’d just read the story and it sparked my interest.” I didn’t want to tell this woman that I thought it might be tied into Monique’s case. If the killer was still out there, I didn’t want them to know that the witness who’d gotten away. Still remembered the case. “I live in the writer’s collective in Lake Placid, I thought it might make an interesting book.”

  “Ah, I see, I don’t think anyone was ever caught. I can’t be one hundred percent sure, but I’m pretty sure. Did the article mention what agency would be handling the case?”

  “Yes, the troopers in Willimington.”

  “That’s who you’ll need to call, I’m afraid. I just did a database search and I can only find those two articles you mentioned. Oh course if the killer had been caught we would have had followup articles for sure, many probably if the case went to trial. I’m sorry I couldn’t help.”

  “No, you did thank you very much.”

  Amelie, Anna, Bianca, Clara, Em, Ezra and Magdalena all squeezed into my old beater and drove for an hour over the hilly and twisty route seventy three to Elizabethtown and the county court where Monique was to be arraigned.

  We found front row seats right behind Monique’s side of the courtroom. I sat on the aisle, because if there was time I wanted to apprise Aiden, what I’d learned. Detective Jones walked in and sat right behind the district attorney’s table. He glared at me, I glared right back. That man is infuriating. But Aiden came in next, he signaled to me and I followed him out into the hall.

  “Aiden the graphic novel murder is real and I think it is unsolved. I called the newspaper this morning and they told me to call the troopers. But as far as they know it’s unsolved. But I didn’t want to call the troopers, without speaking to you, first. Oh and here is a copy of the two articles.”

  “Okay, go downstairs and ask the court clerk at the window to speak to Raja. She’s a friend of mine. Tell her I really really need two copies of your paperwork. Then get back up here as soon as you possibly can, alright.”

  I went down and waited in a slow line and when the clerk got to me I asked for Raja. Raja seemed only too happy to make copies for Aiden. I wonder if she might have a little crush on the kind public defender.

  Then I hurried back to the courtroom. The assistant District Attorney was speaking, but it seemed Aiden was waiting for me to arrive. As he motioned for me to take a seat, between himself and Monique. The ADA droned on for a little while then it seemed to be Aiden’s turn.

  “Your Honor, I have a motion to dismiss. A grave miscarriage of justice has been inflicted on my client. Who is herself a victim. I was also just handed information that I would like to include with my motion. I think when the ADA has a minute to digest this information, they may join in my motion to dismiss.”

  Jones looked like he crapped himself.