Edit to Death : Myrtle Clover #14

Chapter Eleven

Miles said in a hopeful voice, "You're dropping me off at home, right?"

"But I'm having such a good time driving! I feel like there's more work I can do on this case, too."

Miles said, "We've spoken to everyone, Myrtle. Everyone who's associated with the family has told us where they were, their relationship with Pearl, and who they think might have killed her. We've earned the opportunity to rest for a while."

Myrtle snapped her fingers. "I just thought of something. We should go to the newspaper office and read up on the old papers from when Tara Blanton disappeared. Maybe that will help jog my memory."

"Why can't we just go home and read up on it online?" asked Miles.

Myrtle said, "Do you really believe that Sloan Jones has scanned all of those old papers and made them available online? You wildly overestimate his work ethic. Speaking of, considering what I saw yesterday, I should make sure that he's working on tomorrow's edition."

Miles said, "You mean he hasn't had a student intern scan old papers? Or a part-time worker? All of that stuff should surely be online by now."

"Welcome to Bradley," said Myrtle with a sniff.

Myrtle drove the very short distance to the newspaper office and parked in front. When she and Miles walked in, Sloan was so deep in thought that he didn't even react.

"He's in a bad way," murmured Miles. "He wasn't even startled when you walked in. He always jumps when he sees you."

They walked over closer to Sloan, who was at the far end of the dimly lit newsroom.

Myrtle said crisply, "Are you all right? I feel the sudden need to follow up and make sure that the next edition of the newspaper is ready to go to press."

Sloan nodded. "It's ready. Don't worry—you made your point last time. And you're absolutely right that the readers should get their newspaper every day."

Myrtle said, "Well, that is a relief since I don't really have the energy right now to produce an entire newspaper with you at the end of the day today. But I do need something from you . . . some back issues of the paper."

Sloan nodded his head toward a mass of papers in a haphazard stack on a shelf. "Those are from the last two months."

"No, I mean real back issues, from when you were in high school and weren't working here. Where would those be?" asked Myrtle.

Sloan said, "Those will be on microfiche, Miss Myrtle. Sure you want to go back that far?" He sounded hopeful that she would give up and leave the newsroom altogether so that he could be alone with his melancholy again.

"Where is the microfiche reader?" asked Myrtle, narrowing her eyes as she surveyed the chaos of the newsroom.

Sloan sighed as if he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. He stood up and unerringly walked to a back corner of the newsroom. Somehow, although this space was always the picture of pandemonium, Sloan always seemed to know where everything was. You could ask him for a printed photo from ten years ago and he'd go right to a teetering stack and find it buried within.

Sloan proceeded to excavate a heap of old equipment—computer monitors from the eighties, desktops from the nineties—and pull out a contraption old enough to make the ancient computers look relevant. "Here you go." He carried it over to a table, shoved aside papers and a box containing pens, rubber bands, and paper clips and plugged in the machine.

"Remember how to work one of these beauties?" asked Sloan in the tone of someone who really didn't want to provide instruction.

"I can figure it out. I've used microfiche before," said Myrtle. Decades ago, but still.