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walked by.
    “Cam, good to see you again!” Sam Ellison, the reference librarian said as I entered her area. “Researching a new book?”
    “Sort of, Sam. I’m looking for some information on the Ashton family.”
    “Good grief, why? That family has been gone from here for over sixty years.”
    “But the Ashtons were one of the founding families, right?”
    “Yes, they were.”
    “So you should have files on them, right?”
    “Of course we do,” Sam replied. “But if you want to write about the founding fathers, surely you could find someone more interesting than the Ashtons?”
    “ I’m starting with the A’s and working my way down the list.”
    Sam got up, walked around the desk and over to a row of gray filing cabinets. “Everything we have would be in here,” she said, opening the top drawer of the first cabinet. “Is there a particular Ashton you are focusing on?”
    “Stanley III,” I said.
    “Oh, him ,” she said, the tone of distain loud and clear in her voice.
    “What do you mean by that?”
    Sam pulled out three thick files, carried them over to a table and put them down. “He was a real piece of work,” she said, going back to the cabinet and grabbing three more files. “From what I’ve been told, no one was sorry to hear that he killed himself. A lot of people went to the funeral just to make sure he was dead.”
    “I take it your grandmother was one of them.”
    “Yes, she was,” she said, putting the other three files on the table. “Stanley Jr. spent years trying to take my family’s land from them. He wanted the land to add horse stables and tennis courts to his private house. He wasn’t able to take it away from us, but Stanley III picked up right where his father left off. It took him a couple of years, but he managed to do it.”
    “Because of the D epression.”
    She nodded. “They just couldn’t make the house payments or pay the property taxes. It was the same for a lot of families back then. Unfortunately, Stanley III died before he could go through with the expansion plans.”
    “But your family never got the land back.”
    “No, they didn’t. I believe they tried to talk to Amelia about it, but she wouldn’t listen to them. A month or so after that, she took the kids and left town.”
    “I’m sure that your family wasn’t the only ones that Stanley III hurt.”
    Sam snorted. “You want a list? Go visit the nursing home. I can guarantee that almost everyone there had some type of business dealings with the Ashtons.”
    “I’ll have to ask him about that,” I mumbled.
    “Ask who?”
    “No one. It was one of those random thoughts that popped into my head. Just reminded me I need to ask someone a question.”
    “Why exactly are you asking about the Ashtons?”
    “I’m thinking about doing a book on the people who first lived here.”
    “Then you should write about the Underwoods. They were wonderful people.”
    “That’s Amelia’s family, right?”
    Sam nodded. “They were very generous, giving money to build a lot of the historic buildings.” She got up and went to a different cabinet. “People wondered why Amelia married into the Ashton family,” she said, pulling more files out and carrying them to the table. “There was speculation that the Ashtons agreed to the marriage to get access to the Underwood money.”
    “But weren’t the Ashtons rich?”
    “Yes, they were, but with Underwood money, it would make Stanley III more powerful than his father. There were rumors that he wanted to run for governor.”
    “So what happened?”
    “Amelia’s father made sure that her husband couldn’t get his hands on the Underwood fortune. He established a trust fund for her when she was born, and when she started dating Stanley III, he reworked the terms of the trust so that the money could only be used for her and any children that she had.”
    I thought about it for a minute. “So when she decided to leave town, she had access to