Free Horse Shy by Bonnie Bryant

First was), then they might not have to think so much about the death of Cobalt or how much they missed Carole at class.
    “Excuse me,” Lisa said politely to the woman at the information desk. “We want to do some research on history—”
    “Section nine hundred, the shelves to your left,” the woman said briskly.
    “Specifically, American—”
    “Section nine hundred seventy, the first eight shelves.” The librarian rattled off the information without looking up.
    “Well, really, Virginia—” Lisa continued.
    “Section nine hundred seventy-three, shelves five and six.”
    “Actually, Willow Creek, early this century.”
    “Section—Willow Creek?” For the first time, the librarian looked at Lisa and Stevie. “I don’t think anybody’s ever actually written a book about Willow Creek.”
    Suddenly, the woman was interested. She took Stevie and Lisa to the card file, but it was clear that there wasn’t a book.
    “How about old newspapers?” Lisa asked. Stevie was very glad she had Lisa the A-student on this trip.
    “Ah, yes!” the librarian exclaimed. “At the insistence of the editor of
The Willow Creek Gazette
, we have five complete sets of every newspaper ever issued in this town. Be my guest, but be careful. Some of this stuff is very old and the paper is delicate.”
    She led Stevie and Lisa into a small room off the main reading room. She turned on the light and showed them the big old books containing over a hundred years of news.
    “If you consider Mrs. Rappaport’s garden party news,” Stevie said a few minutes later, glancing through a musty old volume.
    Lisa took one of the volumes off the shelf. “The trouble is that not only do we not know what we’re looking for, we don’t even know
when
we’re looking for. I’ll start in 1920. You work through Mrs. Rappaport’s social season of 1905. It’s probably somewhere between the two. We’ll work toward each other.”
    Stevie nodded, pulling her notebook over to where she could reach it in case something interesting showed up. Two hours later, she knew an awful lot about the sewer system the town had installed and a great deal about the Rappaports’ guest lists, but she didn’t know anything at all about Maxmillian Regnery the First.
    “I keep seeing the same advertisement for riding lessons,” Lisa said. “The ad just refers to The Stable at Pine Hollow, but I guess that’s the same one. There’s no address and no name. The one thing I can say is that riding lessons were a lot cheaper then than they are now!”
    Stevie peered over her shoulder at the ad. It showed an old-fashioned picture of a lady—“Probably Mrs. Rappaport,” Stevie said—riding sidesaddle on a fine horse. It was fun to see, but it really didn’t help them at all.
    “There aren’t any stable ads in the 1905 papers. It took me a while to figure out that in 1905, almost everybody owned horses since that was the way most people got around. They had their own stables, same as we have our own garages. There are ads for blacksmiths, but that’s as close as we get here.”
    “I’m still sure this is the thing to do if we want to find out about Max,” Lisa said.
    “Oh, I agree,” Stevie told her. “But I don’t think we’ve hit it yet. And that’s all the musty old newspapers I want to read today.”
    “Me too,” Lisa said, slipping the big volume back onto the shelf. Together, they finished tidying up,turned out the light in the little room, and left the library, thanking the surprised librarian on their way out.
    “We’ll be back!” Lisa promised.
    “You’re welcome anytime!” the woman said cheerfully. Lisa had the distinct impression that the librarian would call the editor of the
Gazette
to tell him that somebody was actually reading the back issues. It would make his day. But so far, it hadn’t done anything for theirs.
    “You know, that’s not the only source we have,” Lisa said after a moment.
    “Sure, we can check with the