Mary gasped and pointed at the monitor to an adorable image of a little girl with two long braids and ears sticking out from her head. She was standing in front of a tent, holding a dented metal bucket, and almost, but not quite, smiling. “That’s her,” Mary said excitedly. “Those ears? Has to be her. And that pail. I’d know that dent anywhere. It’s what my parents used for a Christmas tree stand for years.”

I wrote down the website’s URL and handed it to her. She clutched it to her chest as if she’d been drowning and I’d thrown her a rope. “Thank you, thank you, thank you. I never would have found this without you. I can’t wait to show my sister!”

Mary gave me a huge hug, and as I watched her hurry off, I thought about the benefits of persistence. Anyone could have helped her find that photo; I’d just happened to be the one who did.

At five o’clock, when the reference desk technically closed, I wandered back to my office, shut the door, and hunted for something I was sure I’d seen, once upon a time. And there, underneath files and catalogs and annual reports, it was.

“Hah!” I extracted the telephone book and started flipping pages. Sure, the publication was out of date, but my guess was that John Pinnock was a landline guy through and through, and sure enough, there he was, between Pinney, T, and Pintel, J.

Before I could think too much about it, I picked up my cell phone and dialed the number. Five rings in, Pinnock picked up. “Hello,” he said gruffly.

“Hi, Mr. Pinnock, this is Minnie Hamilton. My fiancé, Rafe Niswander, and I met you the other night when we were out on our bikes.”

Silence from the other end of the phone.

Okay, then.

“Anyway, I was wondering if you’d contacted the road commission again about that pothole. It is a nasty one.”

“Got that right,” Pinnock said. “Yeah, I called them again, for all the good it did.”

“So it hasn’t been fixed? I guess that’s what I was wondering”—not a complete lie—“so I’m going to give them a call, too. Maybe if more people complain they’ll actually do something about it.”

He snorted. “Good luck. Seems like you got to have political connections or money to get anything done in this county.”

If he was so sure his complaint calls wouldn’t improve anything, I wasn’t sure why he made the effort, but whatever. To keep him chatting, I said, “We met with Rafe’s dad, Rick, this morning. He remembered you from an easement issue a few years back.”