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bigger than they’d been when he was a boy, but even then the maples on the front lawn had been fairly mature, spreading their limbs wide, providing plenty of shade for the Story Lady, who had read to the children of the town every Thursday afternoon of the summer months. Now, forty years later, there was still a Story Lady, and she stillentranced the children of Blackstone on warm summer Thursdays. Oliver suspected there would always be a Story Lady. Anyway, he hoped so.
    Today, though, there was no storyteller or cluster of children in evidence as Oliver mounted the steep flight of concrete steps, deeply worn by generations of feet moving up and down, and pushed through the outer set of double doors that provided a buffer between the chill of the December day outside and the comforting heat from the old-fashioned radiators whose occasional clanging was the loudest sound ever heard within the walls of the building. The radiators provided too much heat, really, but nobody objected because Germaine Wagner, who had been the head librarian for nearly twenty years now, always insisted, “A warm room leads to the appreciation of good books.” Oliver had never been able to figure out what the connection between temperature and literature might be, but Germaine was willing to work for a salary that was no more modern than the building itself; if she wanted the heat turned up, so be it.
    Now, as Oliver pushed through the second set of doors, Germaine looked up from the stack of books she was checking back into the library—still with old-fashioned cards bearing the due date and the signatures of the people who had borrowed them tucked into envelopes glued to the inside covers. Peering at Oliver over the tops of her half-glasses, Germaine stuck her pencil into the thick bun of hair that was neatly pinned to the top of her head and beckoned him over to the desk.
    “I’m hearing rumors that there might be a problem with Blackstone Center,” she said in the professional whisper with which she could silence rowdy high school students from seventy feet away.
    Oliver’s mind went over the possibilities. He supposed that Germaine had seen him go into the bank with Bill McGuire and immediately assumed the worst. The assumptionwould have been typical of her. Or someone else had seen them and told Germaine.
    More likely, Germaine was on a fishing expedition, looking for a juicy tidbit to take home to her mother. Old Clara Wagner, wheelchair bound, hadn’t been out of the house in at least a decade, but she loved a good piece of gossip even more than Germaine.
    To say nothing at all to Germaine was tantamount to guaranteeing that whatever rumor she passed on would henceforth have his name attached to it (“I asked Oliver Metcalf point-blank, and he did
not
deny it!”), so he decided the best thing to do would be to send her off in the wrong direction. “Well, I know Bill’s been pretty busy with some other projects,” Oliver said. “I suspect that once he gets them wound up, he’ll be pitching into the Asylum full-tilt.”
    Germaine pursed her lips suspiciously. “It seems to me that leaving equipment idle up there is something Bill McGuire wouldn’t do,” she replied, her sharp eyes boring into him. “He’s never been one to waste a dime, Oliver.”
    “Well, I’m sure he knows what he’s doing,” Oliver said. Then, before the librarian’s cross-examination could continue, he rushed on. “Actually, the Center project is the reason I came by. I’m thinking of running a series on the history of the building.”
    The librarian fixed on him darkly. “I would have thought you’d have all the material you need right in your own house,” she observed, “given who your father was.”
    Suddenly, Oliver felt like a little boy who’d come to school without his homework. “I’m afraid my father didn’t keep much in the way of memorabilia,” he said.
    The librarian’s eyes narrowed slightly, and her already narrow