She looked up with a quick smile. “May I help you?”

“I’m hoping you have copies of the Haines and Poke Directories going back thirty years. I’m researching someone who lived here in the late fifties, early sixties.”

“We have directories starting in 1910. Genealogy?”

“Not quite. Something similar.”

“Telephone books should help,” she said. “We have newspapers on microfiche, and you might take a look at voter registration records, which are available at city hall.”

“Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind. This is my first run at the project, so we’ll see what kind of luck I have.”

She showed me to the reference section, where an entire wall of shelves was devoted to city directories, old phone books, and historical accounts of the settling of the area. “Let me know if I can be of any further assistance,” she said, and left me to my work.

I found both the Haines and the Polk from the years that interested me—1959, 1960, and 1961—along with the telephone books for those same years. I also picked up the current year’s editions of the Haines and Polk so that I could trace information forward. I was hoping to find someone who’d been acquainted with Ned and Lenore during the period before her death. For sleuthing purposes, gossip is like freshly minted coin. If I could find someone at a given address who’d been in residence in 1961, I might strike it rich.

I sat down at an empty table and spread my books across the surface. I started with the 1961 Haines and worked my way through the alphabetical street listings until I reached Glenrock Road. Then I followed the house numbers from 101 as far as the 400s. The occupants at 461 were Elmer and Clara Doyle. Elmer owned a carpet-cleaning business. Clara was a homemaker. I flipped over to the 1961 Polk Directory and found the Doyles listed by last name, with the same address and a telephone number, which I made note of. I turned back to the Haines and jotted down the names of the neighbors on either side of the Doyles, Troy and Ruth Salem at 459 and John and Tivoli Lafayette at 465. I tried those same names in the current telephone book and found Clara Doyle, a widow, listed, still at 461. There was no sign of the Salems or the Lafayettes.

Out of curiosity, I returned to the shelves and pulled the Haines and the Polk for 1952, the year Lenore Redfern was “confirmed to Christ.” There were four Redfern families. The listing that sparked my interest was for Lew and Marcella at 475 Glenrock, a few doors away from the Doyles.

I had no idea how or why the Doyles, husband or wife, had sent the mailing pouch to Father Xavier, but I was hoping Clara could enlighten me. In the 1961 Polk, under the last name Lowe, I found Ned and Lenore Lowe at 1507 Third Street. From April’s wedding announcement, I knew that Ned and his current wife, Celeste, lived in Cottonwood, six miles to the south of Santa Teresa. The 1961 Haines confirmed Ned Lowe’s name and indicated he worked in sales and his wife, Lenore, was a homemaker. I wrote down the names of nearby neighbors: the Wilsons, the Chandlers, and the Schultzes. Taryn Sizemore had told me Ned attended Burning Oaks High School, which might be another source of information.