The Feed Store Floozy (The Penelope Pembroke Cozy Mystery Series) Read Free Page A

reasons.”
    “Rosabel came in yesterday. She says the house is coming along, but they’re still planning a Christmas wedding.”
    “The future mother-in-law is the last to know.”
    “Oh, come off it, Penelope.”
    “I’m joking. So how about it? Any books?”
    “Nope. And you’re the second person to ask me that today.”
    “Oh? Who was the first?”
    “A man named Brice Dolan. He’s the one who…”
    “Bought the feed store and discovered the second floor sin parlor,” Penelope finished.
    “I sent him to the archives in Little Rock.”
    “I didn’t find anything about it when I was digging into the town’s history.”
    “You weren’t looking for that sort of thing. Anyway, he was looking specifically for microfilmed newspapers. He said Hal Green at the Bugle told him the paper had been around almost as long as the town, and when he took over, he sent the bound volumes of back issues over to the historical commission. Brice says they probably microfilmed them to save storage space.”
    “Interesting.”
    “I had another thought after he left.”
    “What’s that?” Penelope settled herself in a chair behind the desk, knowing her visit would be a long one.
    “Old police records.”
    “I remember when Bradley was looking for something on Vincent Ives, he said all the old records were in cartons downstairs in the basement of the police department, probably moldering away.”
    “They’re so old they shouldn’t be confidential anymore. Maybe they need to be sent to Little Rock.”
    “They were never confidential, not really. That sort of thing is a matter of public record.”
    “Then…” Shana hesitated, leaving the unasked question hanging in the air.
    “Read my lips—I am not plowing through one more box of papers as long as I live.”
    Shana stuck out her bottom lip. “Be that way then. I’ll mention it to Rosabel.”
    “Who has other things on her mind besides digging up information on the local bawdy house.”
    “You never know.”
    “I know.  I’m going over to Mary Lynn’s now.”
    “She’s not home.”
    “How do you know?”
    “Because she’s in the back room looking at the inventory lists of those papers you got from the county clerk last spring. The ones Mrs. Taylor bribed you with.”
    “Don’t remind me. And it wasn’t a bribe—it was a threat. Get the boxes out of her way if we wanted any more information. So why is M ary Lynn going through them now for blessed Pete’s sake?”
    “She says her husband’s great-grandfather owned the building when it was new, and she thinks she can find some information in all those old Town Council minutes and deeds that never got recorded.”
    Penelope threw up her hands and started around the desk. “It’s days like this that make me wonder why I ever got out of bed.”
    “You had to feed the Gray Ghost.” Shana didn’t meet Penelope’s eyes.
    “How did—oh, never mind.” Penelope opened the door to the back room. “Mary Lynn, you’re insane if you think you’re going to find anything in those old papers.”
    Mary Lynn Hargrove looked up from where she sat sprawled in the floor with a folder of papers in her lap. “Hush up, Pen. I already found it. Harry’s mother’s grandfather put up that building. A saloon. The Main Street Saloon, proprietor one Malachi Sanborn.”
    “So what?”
    Mary Lynn tossed the folder back in the box beside her. “According to the Town Council minutes for September, 1883, Jeremiah Bowden raised Cain about a saloon in ‘his’ town.”
    “But the C ouncil allowed it anyway.”
    “They sure did.”
    “Don’t worry about it, Mary Lynn. Jeremiah Bowden’s busy haunting the basement at the old school, and Malachi Sanborn is six feet under in the city cemetery. They’re not going to be at each other’s throats again.”
    Mary Lynn unfolded herself and got to her feet. “Harry says the family story was that Malachi got himself shot in the saloon, and his widow closed it and sold the