010 Buried Secrets Read Online Free

continued.
    “Of course not,” Nancy said, trying to sound casual. “I’m a sucker for a challenge, you know that.”
    Brenda looked surprised. “You mean you’re accepting?”
    “Sure, why not?” Nancy sat on the edge of the desk and grinned. “What’s the matter, Brenda? Are you scared you’ll lose?”
    “Don’t be silly.” Brenda tossed her hair backand tried to smile. “After all, I already know ten times more about the story than you do.”
    “That won’t last long,” Nancy said. “Just give me a day to read the police files and the microfilms of the back issues of the newspapers, and we’ll be even.”
    “Microfilms of back issues? Gosh, Nancy, I don’t know about that,” Brenda said. “I mean, we’re not on the same team. Just because I work here doesn’t mean I should make it easy for you by letting you look at all those old newspaper films.”
    “Oh, yes, it does.” Nancy leaned closer to Brenda. “Because if you don’t, I’ll write a letter to the editor, and then I’ll go to the public library to read them.”
    Brenda knew she didn’t have any choice. “Well, all right.” She pouted. “I guess it doesn’t matter anyway. I’m already miles ahead of you.”
    “Good for you. But be careful not to stop and look over your shoulder,” Nancy warned her. “That’s how you lose races.”
    Without another word, Brenda grudgingly directed Nancy to the Times’s morgue, which was where all the microfilms of past issues were stored. With a little help, Nancy found all the films she needed and learned how to use the microfilm reader. She sat down at a long wooden table andstarted to read everything she could find about John Harrington.
    An hour later she had learned some very interesting things. Todd had been born four months after his father’s death; his mother had died giving birth to him. He’d been brought up by his paternal grandmother in another town. He’d lived in Harrington House for only his first month—the house had been closed up ever since then—but he’d inherited the house at the age of twenty-one.
    No wonder he doesn’t want all that stuff about his father dragged into the open again, Nancy thought. He will probably move back here someday, and he wouldn’t want a big deal made out of his father’s past.
    She also learned that Sam Abbott, now the mayor of River Heights, had been John Harrington’s personal secretary. He’d been with Harrington the night he was killed. But Abbott had never been suspected of anything, because the Harrington’s chauffeur, Charles Ogden, said he’d spoken to John Harrington after Abbott had left the mansion.
    Nancy made a note to speak to Mayor Abbott and to Charles Ogden, if he was still in River Heights. But the person she wanted to talk to most was Neil Gray, John Harrington’s opponentin the race for governor. Neil Gray had had an appointment with John Harrington the night Harrington died. He claimed he’d never seen Harrington—that when he got to the mansion, Sam Abbott had met him and told him the meeting was postponed.
    What made Nancy really want to talk to Neil Gray was something the newspaper said—that, according to Gray, the Harringtons had used every dirty trick in the book to ruin his name and campaign.
    “They said I dropped out of college,” he was quoted as saying. “But they didn’t bother to add that I dropped out because I needed money to finish. And I did finish, fourth in my class.
    “They said I was fired from the first law firm I worked for. What they didn’t say was that the firm was dissolved. Nobody was fired—there just wasn’t any firm to work for anymore.
    “They accused me of accepting campaign money from criminals. That’s true. One of the people who gave me money had two parking tickets.”
    Neil Gray had more stories to tell, and each one was worse than the last. He was an angry man, and if what he said was true, Nancy figured he had every right to be. But had he been angry enough