Charlie's Column

The large house now occupied by the Historical Society had small panes of stained glass in the second floor windows. After dark, the flashing lights of the railroad barrier across the street made the stained glass twinkle like a kaleidoscope whose barrel was being turned by a hyperactive child.

Charlie could see the reflection of the colors on the computer monitor as he scrolled through the database. Laurie, the director of the Society (though she had questionable credentials) had developed a database that was supposed to be a geneological reference for the town's citizens. Having sent three or four smoke rings into the air, Charlie put his cigar on the edge of the table and tugged at the cuffs of his white starched jacket.

He had set up yet another column on the database for a family characteristic that hadn't occured to Laurie, but to Charlie, this particular characteristic was of intense, professional interest. To convince Laurie of its inclusion, he had rationalized the additional of the column as important in identifying people in the old family photographs that had been donated to the Society. It apparently hadn't occurred to Laurie (or she chose not to pursue the issue further), so she didn't ask how knowing the dominant hair color of the family would be relevant in identifying their ancestors in what were black and white pictures.

Her lack of interest was fortunate for Charley who had his own agenda for knowing the dominant hair color of the citizen's families. With only a small fraction of the families included in his own column, he already had noticed a pattern that might be of interest to Gil, the mayor. Or not. In either case, working on the database made him privy to the argument that took place on this particular evening. That argument would be of extreme interest to the mayor.