What am I doing? I’ve got something so much better than the internet. Something that should be able to tell me everything I want to know, and he’s right here in Kingsbrook.

*

“Mr. Price!” Mr. Howard waves cheerily from the porch of the Kingsbrook Historical Society as I walk up the path.

“Thank you for seeing me on such short notice,” I reply, shaking his hand.

“My pleasure.” He leans in. “Honestly, I can’t remember the last time I got a phone call, asking me if I was open this late. It sounded urgent.”

“It is. I need your help.”

“Of course. What can I do for you?”

“I need to know everything you can tell me about the Nightingale House.”

*

He leads me through the first floor, past the display cases, to what was once the kitchen, but has started morphing into an office/storage room. Boxes rest on the counters, while papers and binders sit by the sink.

“Please, have a seat,” he says, motioning to the small table by the window, overlooking the perfectly manicured backyard. “Would you care for some coffee?”

“Thank you. That’d be great.”

He opens a cabinet and takes out two coffee cups.

“So, what is it you’d like to know?” he asks, taking a pot from a coffee machine that’s so old, it looks like it would be perfectly at home with the displays out front and pours two cups.

“I’m trying to find out everything I can about the Carrington family. Specifically, about the disappearance of their daughter, Katherine.”

His face lights up as he sets a cup in front of me and has a seat at the table. “Quite possibly Kingsbrook’s darkest hour.”

“Yeah. I’m surprised you didn’t mention it when we were here that day.”

He looks offended. “I wasn’t sure you knew, and you were here with your daughter. I didn’t want to upset her. Besides, why would I bring it up?”

I can respect that. “Okay, but I really need to know, now.”

“Fascinating stuff, isn’t it?” He’s about to take a sip but stops. “Are you writing a book about it?”

I could tell him “no” and that my reason for asking is that last night, I saw a girl who has probably been dead for over a hundred years in my basement.

“Yep. Writing a book.”

It’s so much easier to lie when the person you’re lying to offers the perfect cover.

His smile lets me know that I’ve come to the right place.

“Now, there’s not a whole lot out there,” I say. “I’ve found some newspaper articles online but they don’t offer much beyond the fact that she disappeared from the train platform, no one found her, and then Thomas Carrington died of some sudden illness in the Nightingale House shortly after.”