G Is for Gumshoe

Grey. Suppose she used that as a cover name… a kind of code…"
    "To what end?" he asked.
    "I don't know," I said. "I think she wanted to tell the truth. I think she wanted someone to know, but she couldn't bring herself to say it. She was terrified about coming up to Santa Teresa, I do know that. At the tune, I figured she was nervous about the trip-unhappy about the nursing home. I just assumed her anxiety was related to the present, but maybe not. She might have lived here once upon a time. I gather she and Emily were sisters and there was a third one named Lottie. She might have known some critical feet about the way Emily died…"
    "But now what? At this point, we don't even know what her real name was."
    I held a finger up. "But we do know about the earthquake."
    "Kinsey, in California, you're talking eight or ten a year."
    "I know, but most of those are minor. This one was big enough that someone died."
    "So?"
    "So let's go to the public library and look up the Santa Teresa earthquakes and see if we can find out who she was."
    "You're going to research every local earthquake with fatalities," he said, his voice flat with disbelief.
    "Not quite. I'm going to start with January six or seven, nineteen forty… the day before that box was packed."
    Dietz laughed. "I love it."

23
    The periodicals room at the Santa Teresa Public Library is down a flight of stairs, a spacious expanse of burnt-orange carpeting and royal blue upholstered chairs, with slanted shelves holding row after row of magazines and newspapers. A border of windows admits ample sunshine and recessed lighting heightens the overall illumination. We traversed the length of the room, approaching an L-shaped desk on the left.
    The librarian was a man in his fifties in a dress shirt and tie, no coat. His gray hair was curly and he wore glasses with tortoiseshell frames, a little half-moon of bifocal in the lower portion of each tens. "May I help you?"
    "We're trying to track down the identity of a woman who might have died in one of the Santa Teresa earthquakes. Do you have any suggestions about where we might start to look?"
    "Just a moment," he said. He consulted with another of the staff, an older woman, and then crossed to his desk and sorted through a pile of pamphlets, selecting one. When he returned he had a local publication called A Field Guide to the Earthquake History of Santa Teresa. "Let's see. I can give you the dates for earthquakes that occurred in nineteen sixty-eight, nineteen fifty-two, nineteen forty-one-"
    "That's a possibility," I said to Dietz.
    He shook his head. "Too late. It would have been before nineteen forty if that newspaper has any bearing. What other dates do you show?"
    The librarian flipped the booklet open to a chart that listed the important quakes offshore in the Santa Teresa channel. "November four, nineteen twenty-seven, there was a seven point five quake, but that was west of Point Arguello and the damage here was slight."
    "No casualties?" Dietz asked.
    "Evidently not. There was an earthquake in eighteen twelve that destroyed the mission at La Purisima. Several more from July to December nineteen oh-two…"
    "I think we want something after that," I said.
    "Well then, your best bet would probably be to start with the big quake in nineteen twenty-five."
    "All right. Let's try that."
    The man nodded and moved to a row of wide gray file cabinets, returning moments later with a box of microfilm. "This is April first through June thirtieth. The quake actually occurred on the twenty-ninth of June, but I don't believe you'll find a newspaper reference until the day after." He pointed to the left. "The machines are over there. Use the schematic diagram to thread the film."
    "If I find something I need, can I get a copy?"
    "Certainly. Simply position that portion of the page between the two red dots on the screen and press the white button in the front."
    We sat down at one of four machines, placing the spool on the spindle to the left, slipping the film across the viewer and attaching it so that it would wind onto the spool on the right side of the machine. I turned the automatic-forward knob from off to me slow speed position. The first page of the paper came into view against a background of black. The edges of the pages were ragged in places, but for the most part the picture was clear. Dietz stood behind me, looking over my shoulder as I turned the knob to fast forward.
    Days whipped across the screen in a blur,