I had my ghost-feelers out as I approached the front door of the library. Except for the guided tour Mrs. Berns was leading for her fellow old-homies, everything seemed in order for a Wednesday morning.

“And here is where I first heard about the murder,” Mrs. Berns creaked as she pointed at the spot on the sidewalk where our paths had crossed about this time yesterday.

“Are milk or rolls included in the cost of the tour, honey?” an old woman in the back of the group asked, her arm raised, revealing dangling, old-lady chicken wings waggling out of her short sleeve. She wore a pink paisley-print dress under a yellowed sweater, an apron, knee socks, and sparkling white tennis shoes.

Mrs. Berns adjusted her sun visor, causing the hand-lettered “Murder Guide” card to fall to the ground. I picked it up and handed it to her. “Good morning, Mrs. Berns.”

“When you gonna open the door?” she asked, eyeing the apron-wearer in the back.

“At opening time, Mrs. Berns,” I said, tapping my finger on the sign on the other side of the glass. “It shouldn’t be more than fifteen minutes.”

“Well, I’m going to need you to speed it up,” she said, fists on hips. Her liver spots brawled for sun space on the back of each hand.

Normally, I’m a stickler for rules that allow me freedom or control over others, but I was in no hurry to be alone in the library today. “OK, Mrs. Berns, you can all come in now, but you can’t check out books until I get the computers up and running, and don’t expect to get in early every day.”

Mrs. Berns snorted but didn’t want to risk losing her in by stating the obvious—crowds weren’t a real 911-type problem at the Battle Lake Public Library.

I inserted the key, rolled the lock back on the tumbler, shoved the door open, and paused a moment. I expected there to be a distinct odor fingering my nose, maybe a mausoleum tang, but between the pungent smell of cleaning supplies in front of me and the push of old folks behind me, there wasn’t much out of the ordinary I could sense.

I stepped back to let the crowd pass and flicked on the lights. I sucked a deep breath, turned on the computer and printers, and performed assorted library stuff, surprised to find the routine soothing.

Lartel, the head librarian, had hired and trained me in, being the only other employee of the library. He was a tall, thick man with eyes green and busy like bottle flies on the dark meat of his face. In his early forties, Lartel was bald except for one of those weird rings of hair bald men refuse to shave off. It started above one ear and wrapped around his head to directly above his other ear. It was like his head wore a mini mink stole to keep it warm. Despite his build and the constant white noise of his wind pants, he managed to fit into the library environment. He had a strong sense of order and talked only when necessary.

“Unlocked the door?” he asked me on my first day on the job.

“Yup.”

“Turned on the computer?”

“Yup.”

“Then walk the aisles.”

This was his term for “shelf reading”—going up and down the rows, book by book, and making sure no one had defiled the memory of Melvil Dewey by slipping out an H347.23 to glance at the cover and sliding it back into the H347.12 spot. I walked the aisles a lot under Lartel’s fleshy gaze, and sometimes, when he wasn’t looking, I marched down them like a soldier.

I stumbled through pretty well during my three weeks of training with him. It wasn’t that hard to be a librarian’s assistant, really. Type an author or title in the computer, and if it comes up, you got it; if it doesn’t, you don’t. If the book is available, you walk over to the appropriate aisle and hunt till you find it. I had always had a gift for finding things, probably because I was so good at hiding. My favorite part of the job was putting away the books. It had a sensory appeal, the smooth and colorful hardbacks sliding cleanly into place, a little bit of the world falling in order.

I tuned out the chicken chatter of Mrs. Berns’s tour as I gathered up the books from the overnight dropoff. The bin had been empty when I left the crime scene yesterday, but it was nearly full today. I suspected the unusual number of returned books was more a product of ambulance chasing than a sudden surge in civic duty. I must have been in a mini-trance, because Mrs. Berns and her group were at the front desk all of a sudden.

“Where’s the mess?” Mrs. Berns demanded.

I focused my eyes and grimaced. “It’s all cleaned up, Mrs. Berns.” Then I paused. “Right?”

“Riiiight,” Mrs. Berns said, wagging her head and drawing out the word. “It’s all cleaned up and we’ve wasted our time. I promised a tour, and everyone is terribly disappointed that there is no murder evidence here.”

I looked past her blue hair to the group of six waiting behind her. Actually, they all looked pretty pleased just to be in a new building. They also all were starting to look a little birdlike, and I wondered if I was going to have to start putting out old-people feeders to appease them like I was doing with the feathered population. I dismissed the idea as too expensive—bridge mix and date bars didn’t come in bulk like thistle seed. So I did the best I could given the circumstances.

“He wasn’t shot in the library, Mrs. Berns, so there wasn’t really any blood here. But the police did find a bunch of pencils on him, and we’re giving them away as souvenirs to our first visitors of the day.” I reached below the counter and pulled out the box of omnipresent library mini-pencils. I had always wondered why libraries didn’t just buy regular-length pencils that would last longer, but now that I worked at a library, I knew there were some things you didn’t question. That’s just how it was.

Mrs. Berns eyed the box suspiciously but didn’t have any options left if she wanted to keep the crowd happy. She grabbed the container out of my hand, passed it around, and dumped what was left into her purse. “Come on!” she said and marched toward the door.

They were almost all out when a thought occurred to me. “Wait!” I yelled.

The Apron Lady in the back stopped and turned to me, smiling kindly. “Yes, dear, you don’t have to yell.”

“Sorry,” I said, walking over to her. “Do you know Curtis Poling?”

She blushed and looked down at her pristine tennies. “Yes, but you should ask Mrs. Berns about him. They’re an item, you know.”

Super, I thought. Even the octogenarians were getting some around here. “I don’t need to know anything personal,” I said. “I just wonder if you think he would be around about eleven o’clock today. I wanted to ask him some questions about the town’s history. For an article I’m writing.”

Apron Lady smiled. “Curtis is always around,” she said. “Around lunchtime, he’ll be out fishing.”

“Thank you,” I said. She opened the door and twirled out. I hoped I could still twirl when I was her age. I turned my attention back to the library and realized that I should go check out the place where I had found Jeff’s body. I wasn’t going to have anything sneak up on me. I strode purposefully toward the aisle and turned to look down it. Nothing but fresh, clean, tight-weave Berber.

Out of curiosity, I went back to the reference section. All the encyclopedias were accounted for and in order, even the L. Around the encyclopedias were two unusual displays Lartel had told me were from his own personal collection: on the top shelf, his stuffed fish collection, and on the bottom, his array of Battle Lake High yearbooks, starting in 1953 and going right up to last year. On a hunch, I kneeled down and traced my fingers across the annuals’ green faux-leather spines and slipped out the book for 1982, the text of the invitation I had found by Jeff’s body imprinted in my mind.

The yearbook’s front cover had a red-faced Indian in a headdress, a fighting “whoop” coming out of his mouth. Underneath were etched the words “Battle Lake Battlers Class of 1982.” This yearbook was from the self-involved eighties, before racism and violence were recognized as contagious. In recent years, the high school had changed its mascot to the bulldog. It was still mean, but no dogs were going to picket the choice.

I made my way to the seniors’ section and marveled at the shiny, feather-haired class of ’82. Class song: “Thriller,” by Michael Jackson. Class movie: Zapped!, Porky’s, Gandhi (three-way tie). Class TV show: The A-Team. Sad world deaths: John Belushi, Princess Grace of Monaco, Barney Clark. Class colors: green and silver. Class motto: “Love Lift Us Up Where We Belong.”

I flipped past these specs as well as the Best Smile, Best Attitude, Most Likely to Marry a Lawyer, Most Likely to Go to Jail, et cetera, results and went straight to the W section, which didn’t take long given the meager number of graduates in this small town. Sure enough, Jeff Wilson’s picture stared back at me, his hair shaggier and his eyes tighter but his smile still wide and generous. I felt a lurch on my heart and had to sit on my heels. He had been really cute.

I ran my eyes over the picture to Jeff’s immediate right and was satisfied to find a replica of Chief Wohnt, then listed as Gary Wohnt, his hair greased back with some sort of shiny, dirt-attracting substance, his acne fierce, and his neck muscles intimidating even in the head shot. I wondered what having a name that is a negative sentence does to a person. Turns one into a cop, apparently.

Kennie Jensen, now Kennie Rogers, was on the preceding page, actually looking beautiful in an early eighties sort of way. She could really pull off that drugstore doll appearance back then, her hair tight and curled, skin firm, blue eyes bright. I could see why Jeff had fallen for her. I glanced at the rest of the senior class, but no one else stuck out.

I closed the book with a muted thump and slid it back in its home, then went out to my car to get the invitation. It must at least be related to Jeff’s arrival, if not his death. It was too much of a coincidence that he graduated in the class of 1982 and there was an invitation to a class of ’82 party by his dead body. I suppose “class of ’82” didn’t have to refer to Battle Lake’s graduating class of 1982, but there really is a pattern and order to the universe if you look for it. Besides, the invitation was in the class colors, green writing on a silver background.

I traced my fingers over the date: Friday, 15 May. The military format of the date struck me, as did the lack of a year. Of course, since there was a day, it had to be either the day after tomorrow or a Friday, May 15, six years in the past or six years in the future.

I didn’t know whether this invitation to a masquerade had fallen out of Jeff’s clothes or been intentionally left by his killer, but there was a really good way to narrow the possibilities. I added mask shopping to my notebook list of lunchtime activities.

I returned to the front desk to check my e-mail. The only thing in my inbox was a forwarded e-mail from Gina. Apparently, she had entered her e-mail address when she created my online dating ad, and the cute Moorhead State professor had written to say he enjoyed my ad and would like to meet for coffee, considering he was only a hop, skip, and jump—eighty miles—from Battle Lake. I considered replying to her and telling her to knock it off. Then I considered replying to him and telling him it was a mistake and I wasn’t looking to date. In the end, I just deleted it. I had too much on my plate right now.

I spent the next chunk of the morning searching the Internet for “Minnesota Indian carvings.” There were 1,470 hits, but through a combination of luck and doggedness I came across one with pictures that matched what I had seen: the Jeffers Petroglyphs. The page was a link off of the Minnesota Historical Society site and informed me that the Jeffers Petroglyphs were over five thousand years old and found among the prairie grasses of southern Minnesota. According to the site, the carvings illustrated holy ceremonies and hunting rituals. The picture on the web page, like the carvings I had seen, was breathtaking in its simplicity and importance. And certainly petroglyphs in west-central Minnesota, hundreds of miles from the Jeffers Petroglyphs, would be something to write about.

It would also be something to immediately call your supervisor about if you were a surveyor for a company interested in building. Jeff had told me that Trillings wouldn’t build over Indian artifacts. When he found the petroglyphs, he must have called the company and told them that this spot was a no-go. But then why had Karl told me a rep had called him and said they wanted the land? I wondered how much Jeff really knew about the company he worked for. Apparently they had no compunctions about building on sacred ground or lying to their employees. Maybe they didn’t mind murder, either.

I picked up the phone book and dialed First National. “Hello, this is Mira James. Is Karl available?”

“I’ll check,” came the reply. I waited and was patched through.

“Karl here.”

“Karl!” I said, my voice excited at the thought of potentially solving Jeff’s murder. I caught myself before I showed my whole hand. “What happens if the Jorgensen land isn’t saleable?”

“Why wouldn’t it be saleable?” he asked in his typical banker manner.

“I don’t know. Say it had historical value and just couldn’t be sold.”

I could hear him trying to hold back one of his chuckles on the other end. “Mira, all land has historical value, if you look closely enough. You can sell any land you hold the deed to. It’s just that whoever buys it may be restricted on what they can do there.”

I didn’t really feel like being laughed at. I was onto something. “Well, let’s say the Jorgensen property doesn’t sell for some reason. What happens to it then?”

“First of all, I think it will sell. Like I said, Trillings called the other day and said they want to go ahead with the deal. Second, all land sells, eventually. Since there is no one alive with a claim to it, it’s not particularly pressing. However, the bank would like to get the mortgage paid, and soon.”

I sighed. “Karl, if there were special Indian things on the land, could Trillings still buy it?”

“Well,” he said, and I could hear a squeak as he wheeled his way over to his filing cabinet and a zoom as he opened one of his immaculate drawers and pulled out one of his perpetual files, “. . . yes. But what they could do with it would depend on what those ‘things’ were. According to . . .” I heard paper flish on the other end. “. . . Minnesota Statute 307.08, if there are human burials, the land can be built on, but the burials cannot be disturbed. Anything short of a burial grounds isn’t protected by law and can be treated as the owner or buyer wishes.”

The other side of the phone was quiet for a moment. When he spoke, his voice was soft. “What did you find, Mira?”

“I’ll tell you when it all makes sense to me, Karl.” I still wasn’t ready to give up the details. “Just tell, please, if you think Trillings would still buy the land if there was a sacred Indian site on it.”

The moment of silence told me he was respectfully considering my question, probably while lining up all his desktop space fillers in perfect soldier rows like he always did when he was thinking hard. “If they’re like most big businesses, they’d be delighted to buy it. Wouldn’t that be a perfect addition to their Indian theme park? Built on genuine, sacred Indian land.”

“I suppose you’re right.” I was disappointed that I was probably correct about Jeff working for an unethical company, but that didn’t mean I was wrong about Jeff being principled. Maybe when he contacted Trillings about the petroglyphs and told them they couldn’t build on them, they decided to take him out of the picture. People did crazier things for money, and Jeff had said the Jorgenson land was ideal for what Trillings was after.

I started to put the phone down but pulled it back to my ear quickly. “What was the name of the person you talked to at Trillings?” I asked. “Was it a woman?” If the caller was female, she might be the one Jeff met at the Jorgenson land Saturday night.

“Nope, not a woman. A Tim something or the other. Anything else I can do for you?”

“Just keep being my friend, Karl.”

“That I can do.”