Anna shifted uncomfortably in her chair. Bib’s speech reminded her of one she’d heard many years ago, when she was in Junior high, and Wally Inglass had plopped his pudgy little hody next to hers in open study hall in the auditorium, and proceeded to give her a sotto voce explanation of why she wouldn’t be appearing in the school play—a piffling little murder mystery called Somebody Screamed!—despite her glowing audition:
“Lots of people in this town still remember what your great-grandfather did. The publicity for this town was pretty bad, and at least one manufacturer who was thinking of locating in the old lumberyard pulled out when the news went statewide. And that happened during the Depression, when this town needed all the help it could get. And a good many people had parents or gr
