by BMB Johnson
After speaking to the person in charge of the microfiche, Melody found her mother who was at the moment returning from her queue at the reference desk.
“She said we need a specific date,” Melody told her. “And that she couldn’t just simply give us all of it.”
“Rules, eh?” Lonnie attempted a laugh, but seemed lost in thought.
“What is it, Mom?” Melody looked at her mother with some concern.
“Todd, the guy behind the counter, said that there was just a man here looking up info at that same address. He also suggested that we’d have more luck conducting our research over at the Historical Society. Which is what I thought in the first place, so score one for mom, and you stopped listening to me a while ago, didn’t you?”
Melody’s eyes were huge with excitement. “Here we go,” she said. “This is just starting to get good. Did Todd say how long ago, or what the man looked like?”
“About ten minutes ago, I guess. And no, I didn’t think to ask. Also, that’s a little creepy, don’t you think?” She had blinked and in that briefest of moments her daughter seemed to disappear off the face of the Earth. “Melody??” She turned to find her daughter rushing to the reference desk. Lonnie raced after her, but Melody was already making her inquiries.
“Thanks, Todd,” she told the slightly balding, middle-aged man behind the reference desk.
“There you are, girly,” Lonnie said, perhaps a little too loudly and chuckling as she approached. She looked up to Todd, who adjusted his glasses but not his indifferent expression. “This is my daughter, Mel,” she stammered. “She’s just overly curious. When I told her about the predicament she just had to know if this was someone we knew.”
“Oh,” Todd said. “That’s fine. I get questions all day.” He smiled suddenly, and the act of it made his eyes nearly disappear into his forehead.
“Well,” Melody said, attempting to move the conversation to its conclusion. “Thanks again.”
“Actually,” Lonnie continued, sounding almost frantic. “We’re on a highly competitive scavenger hunt. Mel, here, shouldn’t even be asking such pointed questions.”
Todd simply looked at her, his smile now gone, his eyes returned.
“Okay, we’re going now. Thanks for your help.” Melody dragged her mother away from the desk and into the open flow of the main hall.
“We’re not stalkers or anything,” Lonnie yelled to Todd over her shoulder.
“First of all,” Melody began slowly. “Mel?”
“I was trying to preserve your anonymity,” Lonnie said.
“Then you should have called me Barbara, or something. Second of all, and this is more of a note to myself, next time you want to embarrass me I’m going to just let you call them the research squad and be done with it, because that would have been less horrible overall.”
Melody turned around, and saw that Todd was still staring at them with one eyebrow raised. When she waved at him, he turned away and began to instead stare at his computer screen.
“Anyway,” Melody said. “Here’s the skinny: About six feet, Caucasian, very hairy, glasses, blue shirt,” Melody said, pulling on her mother’s arm to bring her ear closer to her mouth. “Is that someone you recognize?”
“Yeah,” Lonnie said. “Just about everywhere.”
