Free Home for the Holidays by Steven R. Schirripa Page B

Clarence said.
    Inside, the library was deserted. The stacks of books stood tall and silent. Nicky stepped up to the reference desk, where a young woman with a tall hairdo was reading a thick, heavy-looking book.
    “Excuse me,” Nicky said. “I need to look something up in a newspaper.”
    “Guide to periodic literature,” the woman said.
    “Uh, okay,” Nicky answered. “What does that mean?”
    The woman said, “Follow me.”
    Nicky and Tommy sat at a long library table. In front of them was a big red book called the
Reader's Guide to Periodic Literature
—a bound directory of magazine and newspaper stories from the past.
    “We'll never find him in all this!” Tommy whispered.
    He started reading under the listings for P. Then he went back and started looking under the listings for A. Five minutes in, he suddenly said, “Here he is! Patrick Arlen.”
    The listing said, “Arlen, Patrick. ‘Local Developer Missing.’
Ridgeway Register.
Nov. 13, 1982.”
    “What's that mean?” Tommy said.
    “Beats me,” Nicky answered. “We'd better ask.”
    The librarian directed the two boys to a computer terminal and sat them down. Then she returned with a CD-ROM and inserted it.
    “This holds all the
Ridgeway Register
stories from 1975 to the present,” she said. “Use the Search command to find the stories you need. Do you know how to do that?”
    “Yes, ma'am,” Nicky said.
    He did as he was told. The disk booted up. Nicky performed a search on “Patrick Arlen.” A dozen stories popped up. Nicky read the most recent one first.
    The headline was LOCAL DEVELOPER MISSING. The story said, “Ridgeway real estate developer Patrick Arlen is missing and presumed dead, Comstock County Police Officer David Huckney said, after a weekend blaze that left Arlen's home in cinders. Huckney said an investigation into the cause of the blaze is underway. Fire officials, meanwhile, said that …”
    “Wow,” Tommy said. “Van Allen torched the guy's place and burned him to death.”
    “Murder!” Nicky said. “But who was Arlen?”
    “Beats me,” Tommy said. “Where's Ridgeway?”
    “Down the shore,” Nicky said. “About half as far as Newton.”
    “Read the next story,” Tommy said.
    The rest of the stories went back in time, all of them written by a reporter named Sean O'Farrell. One was about the fire. The one before that was about Arlen and his realty company declaring bankruptcy. The one before that was about Arlen being investigated for tax evasion, fraud and malfeasance.
    “What's malfeasance?” Tommy said.
    “I don't know,” Nicky answered. “But it sounds bad.”
    The story before that was a big one about Arlen's real estate business and his alleged connection to organized crime.
    “Check it out!” Tommy said. “He was a gangster!”
    There was a picture, grainy and small. “He looks like a creep,” Nicky said.
    “He looks like a wiseguy,” Tommy said. “Wait a minute! Is he one of the guys we saw at the amusement park? He looks familiar.”
    Nicky stared at the grainy picture. “He does, a little. But he's dead, remember?”
    “Good riddance,” Tommy said. “The guy was a crook.”
    Clarence was waiting for the boys outside when they left the library. He said, “Did you find what you were looking for?”
    “Oh, yeah,” Tommy said.
    “So where are your books?”
    “It was a reference book,” Nicky said. “I just needed to take some notes.”
    Clarence dropped the boys in the driveway. Inside, the house smelled like heaven. Grandma Tutti had outdone herself. Even though Nicky's mother had hired a catering company to prepare food for the evening, Grandma Tutti had made a rack of meatballs, two huge lasagnas, several ricotta cheesecakes and another batch of
sfogliatella.
Now she was rolling out little rounds of dough for baby pizzas.
    “Nicky, at last,” she said. “I need someone to test the meatballs. I think they're too dry.”
    Nicky and Tommy flew to her side and found she was