"What you're really asking is, Was Orton corrupt when he dealt with wealth and power?, and the answer is, Absolutely." She smoothed her sweater. "No apologies. Carson and Butch ran that town. If you wanted to survive, you played along. When Butch died, Scott took over his half. It wasn't even a town. It was a joint fiefdom with the rest of us serfs balancing on a wire between them. Orton was caught right in the middle. By the late seventies, we decided we were getting the heck out, one way or the other. Orton had qualified for Social Security and mine was about to kick in, plus I'd inherited a small annuity from an aunt. All we wanted was to sell the printing equipment and get something for ownership of the paper. Orton approached Scott first, because he thought Scott would be easier to deal with, but Scott wouldn't even listen."

Beating her chest, she put on a gorilla face. " 'Me farmer, me do nothing else.' Straight ahead and pigheaded, just like his father. So Orton went to Carson, and to his surprise, Carson said he'd consider it."

"Surprise because Carson was uncreative?"

"And because everyone knew Carson wanted to get out of Treadway himself. Each year there'd be talk of some new real estate deal."

"How long had that been going on?"

"Years. The main problem was Scott wouldn't hear of it, and half the land wasn't very attractive to the developers. The approach Orton used with Carson was to suggest the paper might be a good activity for Sybil, to keep her out of trouble." She snapped her ringers. "That did the trick."

Now I understood the Intelligencer's sudden editorial shift toward Crimmins.

"What other kind of trouble was Sybil getting into?" I said.

She smiled archly. "What do you think?"

"I saw a picture of her and Scott at a dance."

The smile faltered, then changed course, growing wider, fuller, ripe with glee.

"Oh, that picture," she sang. "We might as well have published them naked. Orton wasn't going to print it, a gentleman to the last. But that night, he was sloshed to the gills, so I put the paper to bed."

Breathing in deeply, she savored the exhalation.

I said, "What was the fallout?"

"Nothing public. I suppose there was tension among those directly concerned. Terri Ardullo always impressed me as tightly wound, but she didn't run around after Sybil with a hatchet. The Ardullos were never the type to air their laundry in public. Same for Carson."

"What did the serfs have to say about it?"

"Nothing that I heard. Doesn't pay to antagonize the nobility if you want to eat. And it wasn't as if everyone didn't already know about Scott and Sybil."

"The affair was public knowledge?" I said.