Free Murder at the Falls by Stefanie Matteson

introducing herself. “Tom wants to do an article on him. Randy told us a little about himself the other evening, but we wondered if you could fill us in.”
    “Would you like to sit outside?” asked Diana. She gestured at the table and chairs on the flagstone patio just beyond the open doors. “Go ahead,” she directed them. “I’ll just get us something to drink.”
    Stepping outside, they took seats at the table, which was shaded by a huge old sycamore. The cool rush of the waterfall was delightful on this hot afternoon. The setting reminded Charlotte of one of her favorite places: the vest-pocket park, with its refreshing waterfall, on New York City’s West Forty-fifth street.
    “What was this building used for?” Charlotte asked Tom, her authority on the history and lore of Paterson.
    “It housed the wheelhouse for the Ivanhoe Papermill Complex. The wheel was there,” he said, pointing to the taller section of the building, “and the egress for the water was down there.” He pointed to an archway at water level.
    Leaning back, Charlotte studied the elegant brickwork of the wall looming over them. It was studded with wildflowers that had found niches in the moist nooks and crannies between the old bricks.
    Diana reappeared momentarily with a tray on which sat three glasses, a bottle of Pernod, and a small bowl of green olives.
    Not only did Charlotte not feel as if she was in the heart of a deteriorating American industrial city, she didn’t feel as if she was in an American city at all. With the Pernod and olives, she could have been sitting at an outdoor café in Cannes or Nice.
    “How’s business?” asked Tom after Diana had poured the yellow, anise-flavored aperitif and handed the glasses around.
    “In a word, it stinks. Do you see any customers?” she asked, waving an arm at her surroundings. “It’s bad. So bad, in fact, that I may not be in business much longer. At this point, it’s only my income as a curator that’s keeping the wolf from the door. I had big hopes when I came here. I thought I would be the Paula Cooper of the Great Falls Historic District.”
    “Who’s Paula Cooper?” asked Tom, popping on olive in his mouth.
    “She was the first art dealer to open a gallery in Soho, in 1967. Now there are a hundred and forty of them. She followed the artists, who were lured there by the cheap rents. Back in the seventies, I thought the same thing was going to happen here. There was nowhere to go but up, or so we thought. Paterson had been rated the most depressed city in America. For a while, it looked good: the historic district and all that. There was a lot of energy, a lot of enthusiasm. They were calling Paterson ‘the Venice of America,’ because of the raceways. What a joke.” She laughed bitterly. “Then it all just fizzled out. The odds were too overwhelming. Not only did the new people not come, the pioneers started leaving. Once they started having children, they moved to the suburbs, where there are safe streets, good schools. I don’t blame them.”
    “People talk as if there’s a thriving community here,” said Charlotte.
    “We talk a good game. Or maybe it should be called wishful thinking. The much-vaunted renaissance of the historic district is a fraud. I’ve got a crack den across the street.” She pointed to a picturesque little brick building that was perched on the bank of the raceway behind the Gryphon Mill. “I’ve got winos sleeping in my doorway. It seems like another mill goes up in smoke every few weeks.”
    “The owners are torching them?”
    “They deny it. They say it’s squatters setting fires to keep warm. But most of the fires have been in the summer. Who needs to keep warm in summer? You tell me. The developers bought these mills during the good years, with high hopes of restoring them, and then the economy soured. A lot of them didn’t realize how expensive it is to restore these buildings. There are all sorts of restrictions that go