“So you do know all the gossip.”

He starts walking again but gestures at me to follow.

“Where are we going?” I jog to catch up.

“We’re here,” he says, coming to a stop in front of a perfectly pedestrian two-story building with blue-gray siding, rows of shuttered windows, and Colonial-style columns abutting an arched doorway. Sea glass museum, hotel, or a bar, my mind goes, until my eyes land on the sign: CITY HALL.

Inside, I discover it is a museum, at least in part. SEAVIEW TOWN ARCHIVE reads a plaque affixed to a room to our immediate left. But Gabriel bypasses it, trudging up the stairs to a receiving room with a desk, behind which is Diana Martinez from WestonCon.

“Gabriel, hi! What are you doing here?” And then she lays eyes on me. “With Cecelia Ellis.”

“Cecelia is researching town history,” he says. Diana’s eyes light up, and she only just stops herself from clapping with delight. The way to an archivist’s heart, apparently, is through pointed questions about eras in local history.

“Which period are you interested in?” she asks.

Gabriel hangs back, signaling that I have the floor.

“The Caroline Quinn murder?”

Diana’s face darkens. “So you’re one of those.” Her shoulders slump. “Follow me.”

The mayor’s closed office door pulls at me like a magnet. What might I find inside? But Diana has rounded her desk and bustled past me, beckoning me down the stairs. Destination: town archive.

Well, maybe I can take advantage of my tour guide. Her name was on Natalie’s blackmail list, after all. I can’t help but wonder why.

The town archive starts to the left of the entrance and circles around the main floor like a horseshoe, Diana explains. Part walk-through museum, part reference library.

“We offer an audio tour, and you can even explore the full newspaper archive, thanks to Gabriel’s mom. It’s all in the resource library in the back.” Diana’s heels clomp over polished hardwood, a stark contrast to the worn speckled-beige carpets upstairs. The archive has seen recent renovation, and there it is—a plaque in the corner bearing my grandmother’s name. At least it’s not named after her, like the annex at school.

“The first room is early Seaview history, including its founding as a lumber town and its incorporation in 1892, but what you really want is over here….” We follow Diana through several similar dimly lit rooms, made mazelike by cluttered glass display cases with framed old-timey photographs crowding the walls. Soon, we reach the resource library in the middle.

“That’s the microfiche,” Diana throws over her shoulder. “And you can circle back here to browse.” Our destination—the modern era of Seaview—is on the other side.