The Colorado Kid… Massachusetts… Haven… 2 newspaper men – one 65, one 90 (with eastern accents – she says at 1st she doesn’t think that she can stay because she doesn’t understand them, one tells her to stick it out a little longer, and the next day, it’s like the cotton is gone from her ears, and she can understand them)… with an intern, a young woman who is finishing up her journalism… \\

And ‘school is in’… they are teaching her… we get two lessons, along with her… 1st lesson is short, the three of them are having lunch with another reporter from the ‘big city’, who is writing a series on mysteries… he leaves $100 to cover the lunch, and one of the old guys pockets it… as she tries to understand why, they give her clues, but rely on her to figure it out… the big city reporter left what the same meals would cost in his neck of the woods, but here where lobsters are caught, it’s a lot less, so they’ll pay the correct amount, and leave a 15% tip (because waitresses share the tips), but they know the waitress, and know she’s raising a son on her own, and her son broke his leg… so they’ll slip $40 into her pocket, for her and her only)…

And then, once back in the office, she asks them if in their half a decade of reporting, didn’t they have any unsolved mysteries… and here comes the next lesson… people fill in when there is a few unknowns… for instance, when they report that the minister was having an affair, and that the mistress (church secretary) serves a luncheon and 5 are poisoned, including the minister’s wife, the reader fills in the blanks… and we learn that a story has a beginning, a middle and an end… but not all of life fits in these neat packages…

And they tell her bit by bit of their investigation 40 years earlier… and though they take 3 hours to tell these facts… here they are…

A dead man is found by a couple (in their late teens), on the beach, sitting with his back against a trash can… his right hand is curled as if it had been holding something… he died because of a piece of meat caught in his throat, followed by a brain aneurism … he has no identification, and only $17 in the pocket with some coins, including one Russian coin, and a pack of cigarettes with one cigarette & one match from the matchbook missing… the cigarette package has a Colorado tax stamp on it… a year after he died, one of the newspaper men think about the tax stamp, and ask 87 newspapers in Colorado to print his picture… and his wife contacts them… they find out that he was a happily married man, with an advertising career he loved, and a new baby that he adored…

There is no reason for him to have left his family/job, and head to the east coast, and die 8 hours later…

No story – because there is no end… the 2 reporters seem to hope that she will try and follow up on it…

And she has plans to stay…