Stone Quarry

Chapter 9

Schoharie was a detour off the route between Bramanville and Cobleskill, but I thought it was a detour worth making. I'd dropped the Rugers with MacGregor, picked up my Colt, exchanged some small talk about civilians interfering in police work. I'd tried out the golden blond girl on him.

"Sounds like half the kids at Consolidated East. You got a picture?"

I shook my head. "She doesn't ring a bell, part of Jimmy Antonelli's crowd?"

"Not with me."

An idea came to me. "You think your girls might know her?"

"I doubt it. My girls go to school in Albany. Adirondack Prep."

"I didn't know that."

"Yeah." MacGregor sighed. "This is a dead-end place, Smith. Kids got no future here. The boys join the service and the girls get pregnant." He picked up a pencil, bounced it on the desk. "How long you been coming up here?"

"Eighteen years."

He nodded. "Those days, you could make a good living around here. Farming; or the young guys from town, they worked at the quarry. Now the quarry's down to one pit. And that one's almost played out now, did you know that?"

I hadn't. I shook my head.

"Yeah. Next year, maybe year after. Then that'll be gone, too. My father-in-law had a dairy farm. My brother-in-law, too. My father-in-law's place you could see from that window." He pointed across his office but he didn't look where he was pointing. "They're both working for other guys now. Broke their butts all their lives, what've they got? What've their kids got?" He looked up from the desk. "Where my girls go to school, all the kids go on to college. It's expected. My girls can speak French, play the piano, paint. Their friends are congressmen's daughters." Tilting his chair back, he stretched, smiled tiredly. "Aaah, what do you care? You got no kids. You don't have to worry about this crap. You're a lucky guy."

I didn't answer.

MacGregor raised his eyebrows. "What do you want this girl for, anyhow?"

Now was as good as any other time. "I'm working a case."

"Goddammit!" The front legs of his chair hit the floor and his smile collapsed like a house of cards. "Why the hell didn't you tell me that yesterday? What case?"

"Private problem for a private client."

"Who just happens to be looking for a friend of Jimmy Antonelli's when everyone else in the goddamn county is looking for Jimmy? What's the case, Smith?"

"I can't tell you. But it's not police business and it's not connected to Gould's death. And the girl might not be a friend of Jimmy's," I added. "I'm just guessing."

MacGregor sat motionless, looked at me. "God, I'm tempted."

I knew what he was tempted to do. "What for?"

He threw down his pencil, stood, yanked open the office door. "Being stupid and ugly in public. Raising the blood pressure of a Senior Investigator. Get the hell out. I'll be watching you."

That had been about it, there, so I'd started for the Greyhound depot in Cobleskill. The Appleseed plant was west of town; I could make my appearance at Sanderson's office after I got the silver squared away.

When I got on the highway, though, I had a better idea. I went east to 1A over the ridge, down into the softly quilted valley and through to Schoharie, same as yesterday. Main Street seemed exhausted under the leaden sky and leafless trees, as though it had stretched out for a rest and hadn't yet found the strength to get up and move on.

The smell of coffee and bacon grease inside the Park View was warm and familiar. The windows were still steamy, and the two old men in hunting jackets were at the same table in the front. Or maybe it was two other old men. I slid onto a stool and waited for Ellie to finish bringing them sandwiches.

Ellie came back to the counter, spotted me. Her faded brows knit together above her sharp nose; she squeezed my hand. "Hon," she said without preamble, "why didn't you tell me yesterday that what you were looking for Jimmy for had to do with a killing?"

I wasn't sure of the answer to that. "I didn't want to worry you, Ellie. How did you find out?"

"Sheriff Brinkman was here. He's going to call Chucky in North Carolina."

"I thought you said Chuck was at sea."

"Well, sure. And I suppose Sheriff Brinkman will find that out, sooner or later."

She grinned and I grinned back. "They have telephones on ships now, Ellie."

"Hon, I called him myself last week, for his birthday. You wouldn't believe the red tape before they let you call a ship at sea." She poured me a cup of coffee.

"Thanks." I tasted it. Not as good as Eve Colgate's, or mine; but still better than the 7-Eleven's. I was getting to be an expert. "Did Brinkman ask you anything about Alice, or the blond girl you told me about?"

"No. I don't think he knows about either of them. And Chucky won't tell him."

"I know he won't. Listen, Ellie, try this: Tony says Alice's last name is Brown, and that she bakes. It sounds to me as though she may do it for a living. If you were ordering desserts for the diner, where would you get them from?"

"What, this place? Ralph would kill you if he heard that." She pointed to a sign over the glass-shelved pie cabinet behind her: All Baking Done On Premises.

"Okay," I said. "But what if?"

She compressed her lips in thought. "I don't know. You want to talk to Ralph? He's here."

Ralph Helfgott owned and cooked at the Park View. He was a large soft man with the look of a hard man gone to seed. The blue tattoos on his forearms were blurred and his white hair was unkempt and wispy. He followed Ellie out from the kitchen, wiping his hands on the apron that surrounded him.

"How're you doing?" he asked, shaking my hand. "Haven't seen you around in a while."

"Haven't been up. Finally got so I couldn't stay away from Ellie another day, so I came back."

He put a thick arm around her. "That's my girl you're talking about."

She pulled away grinning, slapped his arm lightly. "Knock it off, Ralph. Bill wants to ask you something important."

Ralph leaned over the counter, spoke confidentially to me. "She don't know yet how crazy she is about me. But I got time, I can wait." He slipped his hand below the counter, pinched Ellie's rear. She let out a squeak, slapped him again. He straightened up and looked at me out of choir-boy eyes. "What can I do for you?"

I told him what I wanted to know, but not why. He massaged his chins. "Desserts? Baked goods, you mean?"

"Fancy ones, I hear. And good."

"Well, there's really no place around that's any good. There's Glauber's, and there's Hilltop, over in Cobleskill. But they're both pretty lousy. That's why I do my own. There's nothing worse than serving a customer a soggy pie, you know," he said earnestly. "Except wait a minute. There is a new place. I got a brochure or something. Wait, let me think." He rubbed the stubble on his chins again with a hand like a rubber bath toy. "Yeah. Some girl called me. About six, eight months ago, I don't know. A new bakery, commercial, but small. I told her no thanks, but she asked if she could send me a brochure anyway. Of course, I don't know if they're any good."

"Did she send the brochure?" I asked. "Do you have it?"

"Of course he does," Ellie said. "He has every piece of paper anybody ever gave him. Go find it, Ralph."

"You want it?" he asked me; I nodded.

He gave Ellie a friendly leer and went off down the counter to the back. Ellie patted my hand and, taking the pencil from behind her ear, went to see to a family with three kids who'd taken over one of the rear tables. I watch the oversized Slush Puppie cup slowly rotating on top of the milk shake machine.

Ralph came back first. "Got it," he said, spreading a flyer on the Formica in front of me. "This what you want?"

It was a price list, typeset on heavy stock. Cakes, pies, cookies, other sorts of pastry. At the top of the page was a line drawing of a cozy snowed-in house with smoke coming from the chimney, circled by the words Winterhill Kitchens.

"I hope so," I said.

"Well, you can have it. I still think I'm going to keep baking my own."

Ellie came back to the counter. "Find it?"

"Yeah. Kiss me?" Ralph closed his eyes and puckered his lips.

"Oh, in your dreams! Bill, hon, will this help?"

"I hope so," I said again. "Let me call and see."

I used the pay phone by the front door to call the number on the brochure.

The young woman's voice that answered the phone was fresh and direct, the kind of voice that goes with a clear complexion and great skill at outdoor sports. I asked for Alice Brown. The fresh voice said that Alice Brown was at the market, and that she'd be back at three-thirty. Would I like to leave a message? I would, and did, leaving my name, identifying myself as a friend of Jimmy Antonelli's, saying I'd call again. We thanked each other and hung up.

I went back to the counter, dropped some coins on it for the coffee. I squeezed Ellie's scrawny hand. "I think we found her. I'll see you later. If you think of anything, call me at Antonelli's."

"Found who?" Ralph asked. "What's going on?"

"None of your business, Ralphie," Ellie answered. "How's Tony?" she asked me. "Should I call him?"

I shrugged. "You know him. The more trouble he has, the less help he wants. He's got Jimmy convicted already."

Ellie shook her head. Ralph patted her shoulder, and she didn't pull away.

I walked back to my car, unlocked it, sat with the flyer spread on the steering wheel. The bakery had an address in Jefferson, in the south end of the county, far from here but not far from my place. I could be there in forty minutes if I stood up Mark Sanderson. I could camp out there, wait for Alice Brown to come back. And hope she knew where Jimmy was. And hope she'd tell me.

And hope Brinkman didn't get there first.

I fished a cigarette from my pocket, put a match to it, started the car. I pulled out onto the empty street and headed for the bus station in Cobleskill. I didn't know many of Jimmy Antonelli's friends, but even law- abiding citizens didn't have much use for Brinkman. He probably wasn't getting a lot of cooperation from people who'd be in a position to help him. And MacGregor hadn't asked me about Alice Brown when I was up there this morning, so he might not know about her either.

It seemed to me I might be a few hours ahead of the law on this. If that was true, I had the luxury of enough time to find out what was on Mark Sanderson's mind.

The bus station in Cobleskill was in what passed for downtown, a shabby area of two-story industrial buildings and three-story frame houses on both sides of the railroad tracks. There were no trains through here anymore, and most of the industrial buildings were only half used, as warehouses now. I parked in front of a peeling brown house with a gate hanging on one hinge and bedsheets for window curtains.

I looked around as I took the package from my trunk under the heavy sky. A car rolled down the cracked street, turned the corner. It hadn't been following me. I was making sure of that now, as routinely as I did in the city.

A kid on a thick-tired bike bounced along the opposite sidewalk, and a couple of college-age girls came out of the bus station, wearing backpacks. Otherwise the street was deserted. Whatever happened in Cobleskill these days didn't happen here. It happened in the office parks and Pizza Huts and Friendlys and multiplex cinemas that lined the state highway as it ran into and out of town.

I put my package on the next bus out to New York, a one o'clock local due at the Port Authority at eight forty- five. Very local. I didn't insure it. The fewer people who knew it was worth something, the more likely it was to get where it was going. Cobleskill had a Federal Express office and I'd considered that, but this was still faster, and Lydia wouldn't have to sit around waiting for delivery.

I called her again, got her machine again, sketched in what was going on. I left the time of the bus and the number of the receipt. I told her to messenger the package in the morning to Shelley at the lab, tell her it was for me, tell her to rush it. I started to tell Lydia something else, but I wasn't sure what it was, so I stopped and hung up.

Tomorrow I'd have to figure out how to get MacGregor to run the prints for me, if they found any. I had cop friends who would've run them in New York, but that wouldn't show up anything strictly local, as for instance if someone had been arrested by a county sheriff. Maybe MacGregor could be bent; maybe I could bribe him with a new pair of waders.

Appleseed Baby Foods was west of town, at the end of a three-mile spur off the highway built just for them. The white concrete-panel building spread in various directions from the center of a sprawling parking lot. A low office annex connected to the processing plant through a glass- enclosed entranceway.

I gave the guard at the desk my name, which he passed along over the phone to someone else. He listened, nodded, and hung up; then he told me to sign in, pointed at a pair of double glass doors, said "Upstairs."

I went up open-riser oak steps with an oak rail and a skylight at the top. Ferns hung in the light well in white plastic baskets. At the top was a hall lined with oak doors. The pair at the end were labeled President. I went through them into a large outer office with a beige carpet, and framed pictures of carrots, zucchini, and tomatoes on the walls.

A young woman with a heart-shaped face smiled behind a white desk in the middle of the room. Her glossy blond hair was an organized cap cut neatly at chin length. She wore a blue wool dress, and her nails were an understated length and an understated color.

"Did anyone ever tell you you have a beautiful voice?" I asked before she spoke.

She blushed but kept her composure. The effect was becoming. "Mr. Smith? Mr. Sanderson has been expecting you. Please have a seat; I'll just tell him you're here."

She picked up the phone on her desk, spoke into it, smiled at me again. Smiling was something she did well, probably from practice. I sat on a beige fabric-covered chair, the kind that puts you too low to the ground. I admired the vegetables. Five minutes; ten. For a man who'd been anxious to see me, in particular, Mark Sanderson didn't seem very excited now that I was here.

I took out a cigarette, rolled it around in my fingers a little, lit it. After the first drag the phone on the desk buzzed. The secretary answered it, hung up, smiled again. "Mr. Sanderson will see you now. Go right in." She nodded toward a door in the wall behind her.

Funny how often that cigarette thing worked.

Mark Sanderson's office was a corner office, as I'd imagined, with a view out over the plant, the parking lot, and the soft hills wrapping the valley. Sanderson's desk, though, was facing the door I came through. He'd have to turn his back on his work to get the benefit of that view.

"Smith." Sanderson rose, came out from behind the desk as I came in. He extended a well-kept hand in a solid handshake. A smile came and went on his round baby face, leaving no trace. His steel-colored eyes studied me. Then, with the casual tyranny of a man so used to being obeyed that he rarely gave orders, he said, "Sit down."

I sat.

Sanderson perched on the edge of the desk, one foot still on the floor, one hand folded over the other. I watched the action behind his hard eyes. "Look," he said, "I think we may have gotten off to a bad start earlier. If it was my fault, I apologize. I can be abrupt, I know." The smile blinked on and off again.

"I can be pretty rough myself," I said. "Let's forget it. What was it you wanted to see me about?"

"Frankly, I need your help." He walked back around the desk, sat in a leather swivel chair. I was left trying to read his face against the glare from the uncurtained windows. "I need to find a boy named Jimmy Antonelli. I've been told you can help me."

The cigarette I'd started in the outer office hadn't been much fun. I took out another, lit it, looked around for a place to throw the match. There was an ashtray on a credenza against the wall. Sanderson didn't move, so I got up, walked around him, picked it up. I repositioned my chair before I sat back down.

I pulled on the cigarette, breathed out some smoke. "Why do you want him?"

"It's a personal problem."

"Jimmy's got some of those, too. Why do you want him?"

"Well." He smiled again. This one was longer-lasting than the others, but it vanished as completely. "Well, I really don't want him. But my daughter seems to have run off with him."

"Alice?" I asked.

He looked at me blankly. "My daughter. Ginny. Who's Alice?"

"Never mind. What makes you think your daughter's with Jimmy?"

"They've been seeing each other. Two nights ago Ginny didn't come home. I haven't seen her since."

"Did you call the police?"

"Naturally." He frowned impatiently. "And they came to the same conclusion I had already come to."

"If you've talked to the police you know they're looking for Jimmy, too. So why call me?"

"You're a friend of his."

"That doesn't mean I can find him."

"Have you tried?"

"I’m not a cop."

"Doesn't that mean you're likely to do better than they have?"

I said, "Do you have a picture of your daughter, Mr. Sanderson?"

He started to say something, but stopped. He picked up a photograph from his desk, stood and handed it to me. It was a studio portrait, maybe a yearbook picture, of a small, beautiful girl with thick golden hair billowing around a delicately boned face. A hint of a smile, high red cheeks, and something in her deep blue eyes that sent a chill up my spine. Sanderson watched me. "She's fifteen," he said, unexpectedly softly.

I looked up quickly. His face had lost none of its arrogance and his mouth was still hard, but his eyes held a sudden tenderness, a familiar desperation that cut through me like a knife.

He stood abruptly, turned to the window, hands in his pockets. "I didn't want Ginny growing up around here, with the kind of punks that hang out in McDonald's and drag race down the highway. I sent her to boarding school. But like any kid, she probably thinks the grass is greener where she's not allowed to go, and she's naïve enough to fall for an SOB like Antonelli if he came on to her."

"Do you know Jimmy?"

He turned back to me. "By reputation."

"How did they meet, if she's in boarding school?"

He regarded me silently. I thought he wasn't going to answer; but he said, "She was sent home—suspended—a month ago."

"For what?"

"Her roommate, a first-year girl, was selling drugs. When they caught the little bitch, she claimed Ginny was involved, too.

"It wasn't true?"

"Of course it wasn't." There was ice in his words and his eyes. "Ginny didn't like that girl from the first day. She was loud and crude, Ginny said. I wish she'd told me that then. I'd have had that girl moved in two seconds flat."

I put my cigarette out. "So Ginny was home, with nothing to do, and she met Jimmy at the soda shop?"

His eyes hardened. "I don't have any idea how they met. And believe me, if I'd known they were seeing each other, I'd have forbidden it."

"How did you find out?"

"I was told yesterday morning, by a friend."

"Why didn't your friend tell you sooner?"

"How the hell do I know?" he burst out, then clamped his jaw shut immediately, the jutting tendons in his neck proof that he was working to contain anger he hadn't wanted to show.

I leaned forward, put the photograph back on his desk. "I don't know where she is, Mr. Sanderson."

"I know where she is." His voice was tight. "She's with Jimmy Antonelli. All I need is for you to tell me where he is."

I didn't say anything. His hard eyes looked me over. He said, shaping his mouth as though the words tasted bad, "Of course, I expect to pay for this information. Whatever a man like you would expect to be paid."

The sun broke suddenly through the dark clouds behind him, streaking the sky with slanted rays. "Mr. Sanderson," I said, "I don't know where Jimmy is. I don't know that your daughter's with him. I don't know that I could find him if I wanted to. But you're right about one thing: I'm a friend of his. I won't obstruct a police investigation, but that doesn't mean I have to be point man on this."

"Goddammit!" he exploded. "Goddammit, Smith, we're talking about my daughter!"

"I'm sorry," I said, toughening myself against the pain in his eyes.

For a moment he didn't speak. Then suddenly his eyes became hard again, and he smiled that firefly smile. "You have a cabin near North Blenheim, don't you? Off Thirty? I hear you come up here a lot. It's a long way from New York. You must like it here."

"Your friend tell you that, too?"

"Actually, I know a good deal about you. I like to know a lot about the people who work for me." He sat, leaned back in his chair, smiled a smile that lasted. It reminded me of his daughter's eyes. "Route Thirty." His manner was musing. "You know, we used to use that road a lot, to truck to our eastern markets, but it's winding and narrow. In my father's day it was fine, but competition's stiffer now. My father founded this company," he interrupted himself. "Did you know that?"

"No," I said.

"Fifty years ago. When I took over, I modernized a lot of things. I updated factory operations and office procedures. But transportation was the big problem. The demand was there, and we had the product, but we couldn't get to market fast enough. I almost moved the whole plant to Georgia. But you know what happened?"

"No."

"The county built me a new road. They were set to upgrade Thirty, until they saw that a new road on the other side of the valley made more sense. I helped them see that. And they got the state to put in a new highway spur for me, right out here. They want to keep me here, Smith."

I said nothing. He went on, "Now, that new road is good, but cuts too far east to do us any good if we want to get to Seventeen. Binghamton, Elmira, central Pennsylvania—those are big markets for us."

He looked out over the parking lot, where a truck painted with vegetables and smiling babies was pulling into a loading dock. "So I've been thinking about Thirty. You know, there's a place about two miles from North Blenheim where you could take Thirty, drop it down the valley, then pull it through around the other side of the mountain. Then you could widen it as it runs south. That would still leave a narrow stretch before North Blenheim, but it's pretty straight there, so that wouldn't be a problem." He turned back, steepled his hands over his chest. "That's a pretty good idea, don't you think?"

He didn't expect an answer and he didn't get one. "I think I'll suggest it to the County Economic Development people. I think I'll suggest that while they study the idea of improving Thirty like this, they start condemning the land they'd need to do it. That won't be costly, because none of that land is worth anything. Most of the people who live around there"—he paused, locked his hard eyes on mine—"most of them would be glad to take a few dollars from the state and clear out. Some won't like it, of course. But luckily, they won't have a choice." He spread his hands, palms up. "And if the state decides not to build the road, they can always sell the land again. That would be years from now, of course. These things always take a lot of time."

I watched him across the desk, the two of us sitting motionless in the carpeted room while on the other side of the window cars and trucks crawled around the parking lot and dark clouds scudded across the sky.

"You're blowing smoke," I finally said. "You can't do it."

"Oh, you're wrong." His voice was rueful, self-deprecating. "There are a lot of things I can't do. I can't play cards and I can't sing a note. And I can't seem to find Jimmy Antonelli. But get land condemned in this county? That I can do, Smith. That I can do."

He shuffled some papers on his desk. "Well, I imagine you're a busy man, so I won't keep you any longer. I'll expect to hear from you soon." He rose, stuck out his hand.

I stood. I looked at the outstretched hand, at the baby face, at the beautiful girl in the silver picture frame. I turned, walked to the door, left it open behind me, and went out.

The secretary with the beautiful voice began to smile as I came through the door, but the smile faltered and died when she saw my face.

Chapter 10

I pulled the car hard out of the Appleseed lot and onto the spur road. My jaw didn't start to unclench until I hit the state highway, which Sanderson didn't own.

I fished in my jacket pocket for a cigarette and found that was all I had: one. I shoved it in my mouth, crushed the pack, flung it against the passenger-side door. It bounced. I smoked the cigarette right down to the filter, ground it in the ashtray as I hit the turnoff that would take me to 10 and south through the county to Jefferson.

An Appleseed truck, painted with enormous peaches and cherries, rumbled past me going the other way.

Cherries flowered early in the spring, up here; the three on my land, halfway up the slope between the cabin and 30, were always the first color on the hillside. For years I'd made it a point to be up here when they blossomed, if I could.

I checked to make sure I wasn't being followed. I checked to make sure I didn't have any more cigarettes. I checked to make sure I hadn't missed 10, because the way I felt, I could have zipped right by it and been halfway to Buffalo before I caught on.

In Jefferson I had to stop and ask directions. The ones I got, from a toothless guy in a John Deere cap, were complete to the point of idiocy. My fingers tightened slowly on the wheel as he leaned in my window and ticked off every curve and corner between the center of town, where we were blocking the intersection, and WinterhillRoad.

It turned out the drawing on the flyer wasn't half bad; I might have recognized the little house even without the wooden Winterhill Kitchen sign that stood on the lawn. The house was freshly painted, blue with a darker blue trim and deep red accents. There were carved bits of gingerbread at the eaves and lace curtains in the windows. The porch light was lit, a warm yellow glow in the chilly afternoon.

I parked in a gravel lot by the side of the house. There were three other cars there. None of them was Jimmy's Dodge Ram van and there was no blue truck.

A sign on the front door said Open—Come In in the same calligraphy as the logo on the flyer and the hanging sign. A bell tinkled as I opened the door and stepped inside. The air was scented with spices and the warm, sweet smells of vanilla, yeast, butter, chocolate.

To my right was a staircase, small but with an elegant curve to the bottom steps. Straight ahead was a closed door, and on the left a wall of French doors, which stood open. I went through into a lace-curtained room that held four tables, an antique garden bench, and a display case.

Inside the display case were latticework pies, deep purple filling showing through woven crust; a tall, darkly glossy chocolate cake, and a smaller white one with crushed pistachios sprinkled over it and one slice missing; a tray of cupcakes glazed in pastel colors; and a basket of star-shaped cookies with tiny gold and silver balls in their white frosting. Pots of coffee and hot water steamed on burners behind the counter, a cappuccino machine gleamed, and a rush basket held foil-wrapped envelopes of fancy teas.

It occurred to me that I was hungry.

A slight young woman with fawn-colored hair and round glasses came through a door behind the counter. I caught a glimpse of bright lights, white tiles, and pies cooling on tall racks. She wore jeans and a smudged white apron. She asked shyly, "May I help you?"

"I'm looking for Alice Brown," I told her, handed her my card.

She read it, nodded, disappeared through the door, and was back in moments to say, "Alice is on the phone, but she'll be right out when she's through. Would you like to sit down while you're waiting?"

I pointed to a plate of thick slices of cranberry bread. "What I'd like," I said, "is to have one of those and a cup of coffee while I'm sitting down."

Smiling, she poured coffee into a dark blue mug, slid the cranberry slice onto a blue china plate. I paid her, took a seat at a table by the window.

The shy young woman disappeared behind the door again.

The coffee was good: fresh and strong with a faint bitter taste of chicory. I put it somewhere up around Eve Colgate's. The bread was rich and crumbly, the cranberries moist, tart, and plentiful.

Outside, the view was over a treeless field curving gently up away from the house. The sky was silvery at the horizon, with heavy iron clouds above.

I'd finished the bread and was halfway through the coffee when the kitchen door opened again and a different young woman came through. She was in her early twenties, I judged, and heavy, as Ellie had said; but she moved with graceful ease, self-assured and quiet. Her white kitchen jacket contrasted with her rich, shoulder-length chestnut hair. Her eyes were large and dark, and there was a scattering of freckles on her high cheeks.

I stood. "Alice Brown?"

"Yes, I'm Alice Brown," she said, looking at me not with hostility but with a clear reserve. Maybe it was just her way; or maybe she had some idea why I was there.

"My name is Bill Smith," I said. "Please, sit down." I held the chair for her and she sat, her back straight, her shoulders relaxed. She folded her hands loosely on the table, gave me a direct gaze.

"I'm a friend of Jimmy Antonelli's," I said as I sat again. "It's important that I speak to him, and I think you know where he is."

"Jimmy," she said. She dropped her eyes to the tabletop. "No, I don't know where he is."

"I'm a friend of his," I repeated. "He's in trouble. Maybe he deserves it, maybe not. Either way, maybe I can help."

"I know who you are," she said evenly. "But I can't help you."

"Tony thought you might."

"Oh." She smiled a little. "I like Tony. I wish he and Jimmy had gotten along better." She stood abruptly, went behind the counter, made a business of making herself a cup of sweet-smelling herbal tea. "Do you want more coffee?" she asked.

"Please. It's terrific coffee."

She brought the pot over, poured, returned the pot to the heat, sat again. She sipped her tea. I waited to see what it was all about.

"Jimmy talked about you a lot," she said, cupping her tea in both hands. "He said you were the only other person who ever took him seriously. He said you didn't make him feel like a punk."

"What did he mean, the only other person?"

"Besides me. I was the other one."

I didn't say anything. She went on, "I suppose Tony told you Jimmy was living here with me for a while."

"This is your house?"

She nodded. "I grew up here. I live alone here now; my father died a year ago." Her face said she still wasn't used to it.

"I’m sorry."

She smiled softly. "Thank you."

I drank my coffee. "The bakery is yours, then?"

"Laura's and Joanie's and mine. That was Joanie you met when you came in."

"And Jimmy?"

She was quiet for a moment, looking out the window. Then she went on. "I got to know Jimmy in the fall. We needed a delivery van and none of us knows about cars. I take my Plymouth to the garage where Jimmy works. I could tell he knew what he was doing, so I asked him to help us find a used van and put it in shape. That's how we got to know each other, driving around looking at vans. At first he did his tough-guy act, but I wasn't interested. Finally we started to just talk. We talked a lot. He wasn't used to that, he said. He said nobody had ever cared what he had to say, except you."

"He never gave anybody much of a chance."

"That's what I told him."

Outside the window the wind ruffled the grasses. I said, "And he moved in with you?"

"Just before Christmas. I knew his reputation, but I didn't care. I knew Jimmy, I thought. And you know what?" "What?"

"I was right. It wasn't a mistake and I'm not sorry."

"But something must have gone wrong."

She nodded. "He wasn't ready. He just wasn't ready. He started seeing someone else. It didn't last long, a couple of weeks. It was over by the time I found out. He felt terrible about it, he said. It was just something that happened, it didn't mean anything. But I told him I didn't even want to start playing that game. I told him to leave."

"When was that?"

She swirled the floating leaves around in the bottom of her teacup, watched their patterns as they settled. "That he moved out? Maybe a week ago."

"Who was the someone else?"

She pushed her teacup away. "Maybe I'm talking too much."

"You haven't said anything that could hurt Jimmy," I said. She didn't answer. "Please," I said. "It's important."

"Her name is Ginny Sanderson."

"Mark Sanderson's daughter?"

"Do you know her?" she asked, eyebrows raised.

"No. But her father is looking for her. She hasn't been home for a couple of days."

Her answer surprised me: "Would you go home, if he were your father?"

I asked, "Do you think she's with Jimmy?" "No."

"Why not?"

"He . . ." she hesitated. "He said she'd dropped him for somebody else."

"Do you know who?"

She shook her head.

"And you don't think she and Jimmy could have gotten back together?"

"No," again.

"Alice," I said, "I've got to find him. I'm not the only person looking for him. A man's been killed. The police are calling it a homicide and they think Jimmy's involved."

"I know." Her fair, clear skin flushed a deep red. "I mean, I know about the killing, and I know it happened at Tony's bar. It was on the news. The man who was killed—Jimmy had talked about him. He talked about all those people. I told him he didn't have to explain things to me, but he said he wanted me to know." She looked at me seriously. "He said that was over. He said he wants something different now." She added quietly, "I hope he finds it."

She peered through the window to the pale horizon, but I didn't think she was watching the clouds. Her dark eyes turned back to me. "I don't think Jimmy killed that man."

"Why do you say that, if you haven't seen him?"

She didn't answer right away. Finally she said, "You don't think he did either." It wasn't a question.

I said, "I want to talk to him."

She gave a small shrug, spread her hands helplessly.

"If he does get in touch with you, will you tell him I'm here and I want to help?"

She nodded.

"My cell phone number is on the card. Or you can always reach me at Antonelli's. Jimmy knows that." I stood. She stood too, and hesitated; then she offered me her hand. We shook; her skin was soft and smooth. She smiled a quiet smile which didn't so much light up her face as allow it to glow softly, from within.

I went back down the porch steps and out to my car. The wind had come up and the clouds had thickened. I drove out of the lot and down the driveway, turning left onto Winterhill Road, the way I had come. The land up here on the ridge was gently rolling. I looked for a spot to pull off and I found a good one, behind a little slope about two hundred yards from the house. The road curved here; someone concentrating on driving, especially at dusk, might pass a parked car and never even notice.

I pushed the seat back, stretched my legs. I turned the CD player on, slipped in the disc of Uchida playing my Mozart Adagio. I could never hope to play with the control she had, the enormous technical mastery that made the piano respond to her precise intention every time, but I could learn from it. My fingers started to feel the music, to move the way your foot will move to where the brake pedal should be when someone else is driving the car. The Baldwin in the cabin, recently tuned, had sounded good these last two nights in the cedar-scented darkness. Now, in the still car, the tips of my fingers, looking for the smoothness and hard edges of ivory and ebony, found only denim and leather and the coldness of the air.

Color drained from the fields and the sky as the day grew old around me. I turned the car on twice, to get a little heat, trying to thaw that deep bone chill that can come from sitting in the cold, not moving. I kept reaching for a cigarette, remembering I had none, cursing first silently, then out loud.

Three cars passed me during the time I sat there, two from the east, one from the west. With each I turned off the tape, listened with the window open for the sound of brakes or slamming doors. In the wide, treeless emptiness the wind, blowing east, would have brought me those sounds, but there was nothing, so I stayed where I was and I waited.

It was longer than I thought, almost two hours, the day close to darkness, when the yellow Horizon I'd been waiting for whisked by. It had been the only Plymouth in the Winterhill lot. I started the car, pulled out without haste. I wanted plenty of room between us on roads as deserted as these.

She drove down into Jefferson and beyond it, picking up 2 heading east. There was a Stewart's a few miles along and she stopped there. I pulled into the lot, engine idling while I watched her shop under the harsh convenience- store light.

She was wearing a blue parka, her glossy chestnut hair half hidden under a blue knit hat. She filled a basket and it didn't take long. Cold cuts, milk, coffee, a six-pack of Bud. After a moment's hesitation, a second six-pack. Something from the sandwich counter in the back, microwaved before it was wrapped and handed to her. At the checkout she bought the Mountain Eagle and the Albany paper, and added a carton of Salems.

Maybe she'd pick me up a pack of Kents, if I asked.

She loaded the paper bag into her trunk, rolled out of the parking lot. She turned north on 30 as far as Middleburgh, then suddenly left it and started threading her way over back roads. I kept my distance. She wasn't acting as though it had occurred to her she might be tailed; she hadn't even scanned the Stewart's lot. But she wasn't stupid and I didn't want to scare her off.

She knew the roads well, choosing the better-paved shortcuts, working her way north. I kept her in sight close enough so I wouldn't lose her when she made a turn, but no closer. A couple of times I killed my lights, not for long, just long enough so that she'd think the headlights in her mirror belonged to three or four different cars, if she thought about it at all.

About half an hour after we'd left 30, twisting and turning along dark roads where the trees crowded close, she turned onto a well-kept county road and I suddenly caught on. She drove west about two hundred yards.

I didn't follow her, just watched as she turned left into a space in the trees that was a road only if you thought it was. I didn't need to follow her now; I knew where she was going.

After the Plymouth's tail lights disappeared I parked on the shoulder across from the mouth of the hardscrabble road she'd turned up. I locked up the car, started to pick my way. I had the flashlight from the car and I needed it. The sky was a thick steel gray, no moon, no stars. Branches pressed against its underside. The darkness around me started at the edge of the flashlight beam and was complete.

There were no night sounds, no birds; just my footsteps scraping softy, as softly as I could manage, up the stony road.

The road wasn't long; I knew it wasn't. I switched off the flashlight as I came near the top. The path leveled out and the trees stopped abruptly, staying behind. In the darkness there were darker shadows, but mostly there was a sudden feeling of openness, an empty plain where, if I stood long enough, I would begin to be able to see what I knew was there.

Close in, there would be piles of boulders and slag standing on the dead earth; farther off, a pit, an enormous hole maybe five hundred yards across and half that deep, sudden and sharp-sided and filled with inky water. Beyond the pit, a wall of rock, thin trees scratching for a living. On top of the wall was a road that ran straight along the top of the mountain. The only way to get here from that road was to scramble down the rocks.

About a third of the way around the pit there was a

bigger road than the one I'd come up, and there were three other pits like this one, vast canyons separated from each other by ridges which in places narrowed to ten feet. When this pit was active the gravel trucks had used that other road, kicking up dust, rumbling through the daytime hours with loads of stone crushed and ground to order in a towering collection of connected timber structures that clung to the side of the hill. Fist size, egg size, pea size, dust: there was nowhere in this part of the state that gravel from this quarry hadn't been used to build roads, line drainage ditches, mix into concrete.

This pit was abandoned now, and so were two of the others, but the fourth—the one MacGregor had said was close to played-out, too—was for now still working, lower down on the hill. Each of the exhausted pits was as huge and desolate as this one, and each, as it was abandoned and the dewatering pumps removed, filled with water from the interrupted springs that bled down the face of the rock. The local kids used these pits to swim in in the summer, diving from the rocks into the cold, bottomless pools. It had been one of those kids who, early last August, on the last warm night of the year, had discovered something strange here: a late-model Nissan Sentra come to rest on a ledge a few feet below the surface.

To my right two cars were parked: the yellow Plymouth, and a familiar Dodge Ram van. The van's rear windows were hung with Mylar shades from which a stag on a huge boulder stared, impassive, over a winter scene as desolate as this.

Just beyond the cars a dilapidated shack with a tin roof leaned into the night. Light shone through its grimy windows, reflecting weakly off the cars' chrome trim.

My footsteps were silent walking up to the shack. It seemed likely that Jimmy was armed, and though he wouldn't shoot me if he knew it was me, he was liable to be jumpy as hell.

I stopped about ten feet from the door, stood facing it. Anyone looking out through the glass could have seen me clearly then, a tall, solid shape on the barren plain. Inside my gloves, my palms were sweating.

"Jimmy!" My voice echoed off the rock wall, repeating, fading, dying. The light in the shack went out; nothing else happened. "Jimmy!" I called again. "It's Bill Smith. I'm alone. Let me in."

Nothing, again.

Then Jimmy's voice, loud, tough, and blustery. "Mr. S.! Talk to me! You alone?"

"I said I was. Let me in."

I waited. The door creaked open; the doorway gaped emptily. I walked forward, stepped through into the darkness. The door slammed shut and the blinding beam of a powerful flashlight hit me full in the face.

I jerked, raised my hand to block the glare. The beam switched off and the small flame of a match lit a kerosene lamp. Wavering shadows were thrown against the bare walls, shadows of two figures standing, some distance apart, before me.

"Jesus," I said, trying to clear my eyes.

"Had to make sure." Jimmy's voice, nonchalant.

"You know a lot of guys my size that sound like me?"

"You never know."

We faced each other across the small, dusty room. In the flickering light Jimmy looked drawn and tired, his stubble-covered face smudged with dirt; but the grin, the cocky set of his shoulders under the plaid-lined parka were the same as always, the same as they'd been on the kid I'd taught to hit a baseball and to drive a nail straight and to split a log without chopping his own foot off.

And to shoot. I'd taught him that, too.

Loosely by his side Jimmy held an old Winchester. 30- 30, maybe the one Tony had given him when he was twelve. The shack smelled of stale beer, kerosene, and disuse. Shadows danced on the walls, moved over our faces. It struck me then how much Jimmy looked like Tony: the same short, powerful build, the same square jaw and dark, unyielding eyes. But where Tony looked as if he'd been put together by a rockslide, Jimmy had been carved more carefully. His nose was straighter than Tony's, his eyes set less deep; but the take-it-or-leave-it in them was Tony's, too.

To Jimmy's right, next to the wall, Alice Brown stood with her arms wrapped around her. She had taken off her hat, but not her parka; the potbellied woodstove in the corner wasn't giving off enough heat for that. She was watching me with guarded eyes.

"I'm sorry," I said to her. "I didn't believe you."

"You had no reason to," she answered calmly.

"I wanted to. But I couldn't afford it."

"I had to make sure Jimmy wanted to see you," she said.

I turned back to Jimmy. "Did you?"

"Hell, yes!" Jimmy leaned the rifle against the wall, reached into the Stewart's bag on a rickety table by the stove. He pulled out a six-pack, freed a can from its plastic collar, tossed it to me. He held out another, said "Allie?" in an unsure voice. Alice shook her head.

I dropped onto an upended wooden box, popped the top of the beer. Jimmy leaned against the table. There was one spindly chair in the room and he gestured Alice to it with his beer and a tentative smile.

"No," she said, with no smile at all.

So the chair stayed empty as I sat and Jimmy leaned and Alice stood. On the table next to the Stewart's bag was a half-eaten meatball hero, melted cheese and tomato sauce congealing on aluminum foil. "You mind if I finish this?" Jimmy asked me. "I'm starving."

"Go ahead," I said. He scooped up the sandwich, bit into it. Tomato sauce dripped on the floor, kicked up tiny craters in the dust. I asked, "When was the last time you ate?"

"Yesterday," he said, his mouth full of bread and meatballs. "Lunch."

I put my beer can on the floor, went to the table, took the carton of Salems from the bag. I shook out a pack, found a book of matches in the bottom of the bag. I lit a Salem as I sat down again.

Jimmy watched me. "You hate those," he said.

"Damn right," I answered.

I smoked and Jimmy ate. I asked, "Where were you yesterday?"

"Here," he said, wiped his mouth on a wadded-up paper napkin. "Been here for a few days."

"How many?"

He looked uncomfortable. "About a week," he answered. "Since Allie threw me out."

Over by the wall, Alice dropped her arms, turned around to stare out the window at the impenetrable darkness.

"Allie—" Jimmy said.

She shook her head, didn't turn around.

Jimmy looked at me, helplessly. "I come up here sometimes. To think. You know. Nobody comes here, except in summer. When Allie . .." His eyes shifted to her; she didn't move. "Where was I gonna go? I didn't want to crash with nobody. No way I was going back to Tony's. So I came here. I mean, just for a while. Just, you know, to get it together."

I said nothing, tasted the cool taste of menthol, wished for a Kent. Jimmy went on, "I was on my way to work yesterday, in the van. Had the police scanner on just to listen to the cop talk. Heard about Wally. Heard Brinkman was looking for me. Well, no shit, Sherlock!" He grinned, but the grin seemed strained.

"What did you do?"

"Turned the hell around and came back here. What'd you think?"

"Did you talk to anybody?"

"What do you mean, talk?"

"You have a CB in the van, don't you?"

"Oh, yeah, and I said, 'Breaker, breaker, this is Jimmy Antonelli, tell Brinkman I'm up at the quarry.' What're you, fucking nuts?"

"How did Alice know you were here?"

"He called me," Alice said, without turning around. Her voice was strong, but waiting to crack, like spring ice. "In the middle of the night, from someplace closed. He asked me to come after dark, and bring him some things."

I looked around the shack, at the leaning walls, at the cardboard jammed over the missing windowpane, at the sleeping bag spread on the floor, at the dirt and the darkness in the corners.

"How long you figure to be here?" I asked. "A couple of months? A few years, maybe, until everyone forgets?"

"Years? What the hell are you talking about?" Above the grin Jimmy's eyes were confused. "A few days, that's all. Just till the heat lets up a little."

"Then what?"

"Then I'll take off. Time I left this dead-end place anyhow." He crumpled his empty beer can one-handed, flipped it into the Stewart's bag, popped the top on another.

"And go where?"

"What's the difference?" He slurped beer off the top of the can. "New York, Chicago. Hell, L.A.! I hear it's nice out there. You been there?" I didn't answer. "Anywhere. I got a million choices, man. I'm gonna disappear. Change my name. You know." He laughed. "I'm gonna grow a big fuckin' mustache, be a real dago wop, like my grandaddy! Hey, whadda-you a-think?" He looked from Alice's back, which didn't move, to me. His grin was desperate for company.

I dropped my cigarette butt in my empty beer can, listened to the hiss it made. "All right," I said, looking up at Jimmy. "Now listen to me, and hear every goddamn

word." The grin wavered a little. "You don't know shit about life on the run. You'll never get out of the county. If you do you won't last six months. You'll be spotted in Asshole, Texas, by some pork-faced sheriff who sits around reading wanted posters because he's got nothing else to do. And you're a cowboy, aren't you, Jimmy? You'll pull out that Winchester when they come for you in the hole you're hiding in, which'll be just like this one except instead of cold and filthy it'll be hot and filthy and the water'll taste bad. And they'll blow your head off. And that'll be it, Jimmy. That'll be all of it."

He stared at me for a long moment; then he pushed sharply away from the table. He turned away, ran a hand over his hair, turned back. He stood looking at me, his empty hands opening and closing.

"What the fuck you want me to do, man?" For the first time the fear stood out in his eyes. "Brinkman's after my ass, you know he is. He's gonna hang this on me if he can. What am I supposed to do, just let him?"

Alice turned from the window then. Her lip trembled as she looked from him to me and back again.

"Did you kill Wally Gould?" I asked him.

Color drained from his face. He sank down slowly onto the chair.

"You think so, Mr. S.?" he asked quietly. "That what you think?"

I lit two cigarettes, passed one to him. He took it, hunching forward in the chair. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands.

"Listen," I said, in a voice gentler than the one I'd been using. "Listen, Jimmy. That's not my only question. I've got a lot of questions, and you're going to have to answer them all. Jimmy?" I waited; he looked up at me. "You'll have all of me, either way. Either way, Jimmy. But I want to hear it from you."

He took in smoke, exhaled. He stood, walked around aimlessly, sat down again.

"Wally. That stupid little fuck," he said in a half-whisper. "He was real into making trouble for me. With Frank, with Brinkman, with anyone he could think of. And now check it out: he's fucking wasted and he can't stop!" He laughed shortly, looked up at the ceiling, back at me. "Ain't that a kick in the ass?" He did what I'd done, pushed his cigarette into his beer can, watched it disappear.

He lifted his eyes to mine. "I didn't kill him, Mr. S."

By the window, Alice's hand moved slowly to her mouth, and she started to cry.

Jimmy jumped from the chair, moved to Alice's side. He folded an arm around her shoulders, spoke her name softly, but she pulled away. She wiped her eyes, leaving her face streaked with grime.

"I want to go home," she said, voice quavering. She pulled together her mittens, hat, car keys. "You don't need me now. I can go."

"Baby—" Jimmy reached out a hand; she shrugged it off.

"Alice, wait," I said.

"Why?" she asked unhappily. "Jimmy has you now. You'll know what to do. I just want to go home."

"It's not him I'm thinking about. It's you."

She pulled on her mittens, stood thin-lipped, waiting.

"Remember I said I wasn't the only person looking for Jimmy? One of the other people is Frank Grice. He offered me a thousand dollars."

Jimmy's eyebrows shot up. "What the hell for?"

"You."

They were both silent, digesting that.

I went on, "If I found you, Alice, Grice can too. He's not a nice man."

She threw Jimmy a confused look, then back to me. "I don't understand. What do you want me to do?"

"I don't want you out there in that house by yourself. Is there someone you can stay with?"

"That's ridiculous!" she snapped. "It's my home. I've always lived there. I'm not afraid of those people."

"That's a mistake," I said. "I am."

That stopped her. "Well . . ." She frowned. "Laura and her husband live in Schoharie."

"Good," I said. "Go there tonight. And I don't want you alone during the day. You know Grice by sight?"

She nodded.

"You even think you see his shadow, call the state troopers." I described Arnold to her, and Otis and Ted. "And if anyone does ask you anything, do you think you can lie better than you did to me?"

She flushed crimson, and for the first time she smiled. "I think so."

"Good," I said again. "You haven't seen Jimmy since he started cheating on you and you threw him out." Jimmy started to protest; I ignored him. "You don't know where he is, and you hope he rots in hell. Right? Tell them to go ask his new girlfriend. And tell them if they find him not to bother to tell you about it because you really couldn't care. Can you do that?"

"Yes." Her voice was clear again.

We looked at each other, the three of us, in the cold, dingy room. The kerosene lamp sputtered.

"If you need me," I said, "you have the number; or try Antonelli's."

Alice opened the door, shut it silently, and was gone.

Jimmy watched at the window as the yellow Plymouth backed into position, headed down the stony road.

He sat down, nodded toward the door, gave me a shamefaced smile. "I messed that up, huh?"

"Big time," I said. "Was it worth it?"

He shook his head.

I lit another Salem, tried to taste the tobacco through the mouth-numbing menthol. "Okay," I said. "Let's get to work."

He grinned his old grin. "You're the boss. What do we do now?"

"I ask, you answer. Who killed Wally Gould?"

"Oh, man, I told you, I wasn't there!"

"No, you didn't. You only said you didn't kill him."

"Well, I wasn't. Happier?"

"Lose the attitude, Jimmy. This isn't a game."

His grin spread, and he reached for a cigarette. "Sure it is, Mr. S. It's a big fucking game, and you're my ace in the hole. You're gonna pull it out for me, just like before."

I pushed to my feet so fast the box I'd been sitting on fell over, clattered on the floor. I took two steps across the room, grabbed Jimmy's parka, slammed him up against the wall. His cigarette dropped and his fists clenched but all he did was stare at me through eyes suddenly grown huge.

"What the flick—!"

"Shut up, you stupid bastard!" I felt the blood rush hot to my face. "Now listen to me! There's no game. A man's dead: the game's over. I don't know if I can pull it out for you, but I know this: there's only one way now. My way! You got that, Jimmy?"

He didn't answer, didn't move.

Our eyes locked in silence. In his eyes I saw the kid who, years ago, had skated out onto a frozen pond on a dare, triumphantly clowning at first, then hearing the ice crack.

I didn't know what he saw in mine.

I spoke slowly, controlling my voice. "You're going to give me everything you know."

I released him urgently, took a step back, drew in a long breath. My Salem had scorched the table where I'd left it. I set the box on end again, sat down.

Jimmy still hadn't moved.

"You never knocked me around before," he said, angry and accusing but with a note of wonder. "My dad did, and Tony, but you never did."

"Maybe I never thought it would do any good before."

He pushed off from the wall, yanked his parka back on straight. He turned the chair around, straddled the seat, arms crossed along the back. I took another drag of the Salem, dropped it and crushed it.

"My way?" I asked.

Jimmy nodded.

I began: "Who killed Wally Gould?"

"I don't know. I wasn't there."

"You don't have any ideas?"

He shrugged.

"Why was he killed at the bar?"

"I don't know, unless to make me look bad."

"Who'd want to do that?"

He smiled a little. "Mostly, Wally."

"All right, try this. Frank Grice tried to soften Tony up the other night. Why?"

Surprise stiffened his body. "Frank? Tony? What happened? Is Tony okay?"

I told him about the fight, Gould, and the gun. "Grice told Tony he had something on you, and it would cost him to keep it quiet. What does he have?"

"Oh, shit, Mr. S.! What the hell could he have? I've been clean, man, months now. You know, working. Allie could tell you . . ." He gestured toward the door, left his sentence unfinished.

"She did tell me." I opened another beer; my mouth was as dry as the rock dust that coated everything in the shack. "She also told me that a couple of weeks ago you started fooling around with Ginny Sanderson."

"Yeah" was all he gave me, and that reluctantly.

"Where'd you meet her?"

"At the Creekside."

"Grice's place?"

"Uh-huh."

"I thought you told Alice you were through with those people."

"I just stopped by for a beer, man. Just a beer, with the guys. They were all starting to say stuff. You know, about how I wasn't hanging out no more . . ."

"Yeah, Jimmy. Okay. Where's Ginny now?"

"Where's Ginny? How the hell do I know? Who cares?"

"She dropped you for another guy. Who?"

He pulled out a cigarette, tapped it on the pack. "I don't know."

"She didn't tell you who it was?"

"Uh-uh. She only said he was tougher than me. That's what she likes, tough. She thinks she's tough, too." He lit the cigarette, licked his thumb and forefinger, squeezed out the match. It made a sizzling sound. A smudge of smoke rose, broke up, and vanished. "She told me to get lost. She said . . ." He trailed off.

"What?"

He glared, but he answered. "She said she was tired of little boys."

"Jimmy," I said, "she hasn't been home for two days. Her father's worried."

He laughed. "Worried? That jerk? He's lucky she didn't split a long time ago."

"Why should she have?"

"He's on her case all the time. Won't leave her alone. He's the king of don't, like she was a kid or something.

Don't do that, don't go there, don't hang out, don't be late. He's a tightass with money, too. She hates him."

"She told you that?"

"Uh-huh."

A gust of wind shook the window in its frame. A storm was coming up. There were scratching sounds as pebbly dust was flung against the shack.

"You know Eve Colgate, Jimmy?" I asked. "She lives along Ten outside of Central Bridge."

"Sure. Tony used to work for her, long time ago. Sometimes he took me over there with him. She used to give me, like, cookies and stuff. I mean, I was a kid." He flushed self-consciously.

"Last Friday she was robbed," I said. "She lost some pretty valuable stuff, but it's not stuff just anybody could unload. I want to know who did that job, Jimmy. Was it you?

His face was the face of a kid who'd been smacked even though, for the first time in his life, he'd been nowhere near the cookie jar.

"Oh, man!" he said. "No, it fucking wasn't! What do I got to do for you, man, draw you a picture? I'm clean! Ask Allie. Ask Tony. Ask fucking Frank!"

"Okay, Jimmy," I said, "Okay. It wasn't you. Who was it? Frank?"

"No way. Even if it was his idea, it wouldn't've been him. He keeps his hands clean. Only he'll find where to fence your shit for you later, for the right price. What the hell's the difference, anyway? I got a murder rap hanging over my ass and you're asking about a robbery I never even heard of! What do you want from me?" He stood abruptly. "You keep asking me all this shit I can't answer. What do you want?"

"I'm trying," I said evenly, "to dig your ass out of a hole so deep it hasn't got a bottom. Your keys to the bar were found next to Gould's body."

His face went white, stranding his eyes, big and dark and frightened. "What?" he almost whispered.

"Your keys to the bar, on a ring with some other keys. Door keys, car keys. Where's your truck?"

"My what?" He looked blank; then the color rose in his face again.

"Oh, come on, Jimmy. Ellie Warren says you bought a four-by-four. It's not up here. Where is it?"

"I don't know," he said.

"You don't know? What the hell does that mean, you don't know?"

"I don't fucking know! One of the guys must have borrowed it. They do sometimes, you know, like when I'm working and shit."

"How long is it that you don't know?"

He paced the small room. "Couple of days, maybe. How the hell'd my keys get in the bar?"

"You tell me."

"Oh, man! I wasn't there. I wasn't! I didn't know nothing about it, until I heard it over the goddamn scanner." He stopped pacing, turned to me hopefully. "They were left there on purpose. Like Wally was killed there: to make me look bad."

"Planted? Maybe. Who had the truck?"

"Oh, shit, Mr. S.! I don't know! One of the guys took it, Andy or Rich, somebody. I leave the keys in it sometimes when I'm at work. Bad habit, huh?" He tried to grin.

"Same keys? The ones on the silver ring?"

"Yeah. I guess so."

I pushed to my feet, stood facing him. "This is a load of crap. You don't just lose track of a new four-by-four. I don't know how that truck figures into Gould's murder, but your keys say it does. I want to know who had it. Was it Frank?"

"Frank? I wouldn't lend Frank a nickel, forget about my truck!"

"But you did lend it to someone. Andy and Rich didn't just come and take it, did they?"

"No, man, I told you."

"You told me bullshit."

"Hey! Hey, you don't like it, go to hell!" he exploded. "No one asked you to come up here, man! You don't owe me nothing. I don't need you. I was doing great before you came!

"Were you?" I asked quietly.

He turned away with a curse, pounded a fist on the wall. Wood groaned, glass shivered. He stared out the window at the bleak plain. The shaky flame of the kerosene lamp was mirrored in the glass.

I put a hand on his shoulder. He didn't turn around but he didn't shrug me off, either.

"Okay," I said. "I'm leaving. I'll do what I can. I'll be back when I can. Jimmy?" I waited for an answer. I got a grunt. It was enough. "If they find you, give up. Let them take you. Don't shoot it out, Jimmy. You'll lose. I don't want that."

He didn't answer again. I zipped my jacket, stepped out the door into the moonless, starless night.

Chapter 11

There were more cars than usual in the lot at Antonelli's. I parked up by the road, watched the tin sign swing in the wind, blowing stronger now, out of the north. As I left the car two guys I'd seen around over the years came out the bar's front door, talking, smoking. One poked the other's ribs, said something low as I passed. I felt their eyes on me as I crossed the gravel, pulled the door open.

Inside was crowded, for Antonelli's, for a Wednesday in late winter. There were new faces and faces only half familiar. The winter regulars were sitting at tables along the walls as if they'd been stranded there by a flood.

Marie passed, looking harried, carrying plates of burgers and a bowl of chili. I winked at her and she smiled ruefully.

There was an empty stool at the end of the bar and I put myself on it. Tony spotted me, nodded. I waited for him to finish mixing two 7&7s that Marie came back and snatched up off the bar. She called, "Scotch rocks, two Buds, and a Fog Cutter."

Tony stared. "An' a what?"

Marie lifted her shoulders helplessly.

Tony looked at me. "Grenadine, mixed fruit juice, one- fifty-one rum," I said.

"Figures you'd know." Tony reached the Buds up onto the bar. "Can I charge 'em five bucks for it?"

"Charge them whatever you want. Most people you'd have to pay to drink it. What's going on here?"

"Vultures," he shrugged. "Same as yesterday." He dropped ice into a glass, poured Jim Beam over it. The ice cracked under the bourbon.

"You got the ice machine fixed," I said as he handed the glass to me.

"Did it myself."

I drank. "I need to talk to you."

He started to answer, then looked at me. After a moment he turned, pushed open the door to the kitchen. "Ray!" he called to the short-order cook. "Take over here a minute."

He swung the gate up, stepped out to the customers' side of the bar. I took another swig of bourbon, left it sitting on its cardboard coaster, waiting for me. Tony and I walked out together into the parking lot.

We stopped at the same time, as if we'd reached some prearranged place, and turned to face each other. Tony hooked his thumbs into his belt and stood waiting.

"I've seen Jimmy," I said. "I just left him."

Tony spat in the dirt. "Where is he?"

"He says he didn't kill anyone."

"Where the hell is he?"

"He's up at the quarry."

"Alone?"

"Yes. He's scared and he's armed."

"But he didn't do it, huh?"

"He says not."

"An' you believe him."

We looked at each other in the red neon glow. "Yes."

Tony shook his head. "He say who did?"

"He says he doesn't know."

"An' you believe that, too?"

"I'm not sure."

"He's so goddamn innocent, why's he hidin' out?"

"Come on, Tony. Last time he was in jail Brinkman beat the shit out of him. And guys have gone to prison before this on less than Brinkman and MacGregor have on Jimmy right now."

A car swept down 30, the beams from its headlights brushing the trees, illuminating nothing.

"Shit," Tony said. He kicked at a patch of gravel. "You gonna tell that trooper buddy of yours?"

"No."

He rubbed at the back of his neck. "What do I do?" he asked, but I didn't think he was really asking me.

"Maybe nothing, for now," I said. "I wanted you to know he was all right. But maybe you don't do anything."

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, maybe." He spun around, stalked back into the bar.

I watched him go, gave him a minute. Then I went too, back inside, picked up my drink from the bar, carried it to the phone in the back.

A pretty young girl with a lot of blue eyeshadow was on the phone, talking animatedly with the receiver pressed to one ear and her index finger in the other. I waited, drinking bourbon.

Finally she was through. She hung up and sashayed across the room to a table where a skinny boy with a skinny mustache was waiting. I picked up the receiver, to which the scent of her perfume still clung. It was nice perfume. I fed the phone, dialed Eve Colgate. When she answered there was Schubert in the background again.

"I just wanted to make sure you were home," I told her. "There's something I want to talk to you about. Can I come over?"

"Yes. When?"

"Soon. After I get something to eat."

"Where are you?"

"At Tony's, but I'm not staying. Too many people here for me."

I could hear the small smile in her voice. "I know how that feels." A hesitant pause; then, "Why don't you come here?"

As she spoke the jukebox started up, filling the room with Charlie Daniels. "Sorry?" I said.

"For dinner. Come here. I have beef stew. There's plenty."

"Well, I—" I stopped myself. "Thanks. I'd like that."

When I left, the bar's door swung closed behind me, as though, if allowed to drift out, the light and the music, the talk, the taste of bourbon and gin would dissipate like woodsmoke in the vast darkness, and Antonelli's would be as empty and desolate as the night.

I crunched up through the gravel of Tony's lot toward the road, hearing nothing but my own footsteps and the hissing of the wind, seeing nothing but the shadowy forms of trees moving restlessly. In those trees, patient and alert, owls waited.

My car, up by the road, was a mound of flat, featureless black in the surrounding murk. No moon or stars threw careless light to be reflected off it; no cars rushed past it to emphasize by their motion its own stillness. Dark, and still, and silent, full of things I could only sense, not see: the night up here was always like that, and in that sense, comforting.

But here, now, in this night, something moved. Beyond my car, a red glow, the tip of a cigarette drifting lazily through the air.

Such a small thing, an everyday thing.

My skin sizzled. All my senses were instantly alert and bare. I reached, but there was nothing else, no sound, scent, nothing more I could see from that place.

But the night had changed completely.

I eased the zipper of my jacket down, slid my .38 out as the red glow vanished. If this was someone just finishing off a last smoke out in the night before driving home, he'd get in his car now and pull out. It didn't happen. Or if he'd just wanted a few moments of peace before heading down to Antonelli's, his footsteps would start soon, and he'd pass me, nodding a greeting, going on.

That didn't happen either. The smoker, quiet as the night, didn't move. Up by my car, he waited for me.

I didn't slow my steps. I could be walking into a setup, but it wasn't likely. If he'd wanted me dead without fuss he could have picked me off as I stood framed in Tony's doorway. This was someone who wanted to talk, just us two.

Still, I slipped the safety off the gun as I covered the last few yards.

He was on the far side of my car, a dark form between it and another I could now see parked beyond it. On this side of my car, nothing, no one else visible. A few more steps. Then I swung the gun up sharply, the car still between us, and snapped, "All right, don't move!"

The stillness changed; I could feel the smoker's body go stiff, maybe with surprise, maybe obedience. But not that, because although there was no movement, a girl's soft voice breathed, "Wow! Are you going to shoot me?"

I was at my car now, facing her across it. At this distance we could see each other, though shadowed and indistinct. She was small, her face pale, her clothes dark; I was large, and I was armed. For a moment nothing moved. The entire night was waiting for us. Then slowly she lifted her hands. She wore gloves without fingertips, the gloves you need if you're hammering nails or selling apples by the side of the road; and I could just make out her mocking smile as she wiggled her fingers like a child saying bye-bye, showing me they were empty.

I held the gun steady. She hesitated, then shrugged. Reaching up, she pulled her knit cap off, shook out her thick, golden hair.

"Fuck this hat. I fucking hate hats." The words were spoken with a careful casualness, the way you'd try out a phrase when you found yourself among native speakers of a language you'd been studying. "But it worked." Her voice held a self-satisfied tone. "You didn't see me until you got close."

A dark turtleneck sweater, much too big for her, engulfed her tiny frame in soft folds. Her tight jeans were tucked into high leather boots; even with the heel on the boot, she was barely five feet tall. Without looking, she tossed the unwanted cap onto the hood of her car.

"The cigarette was a big mistake," I told her.

"Well, shit, I've been freezing my ass off out here for a fucking hour! Guys keep coming in and out of that stupid bar. How was I supposed to know this time it was you?"

"Doesn't matter. If you don't keep your focus, you lose."

"Oh, is that detective stuff?" she asked archly. "Well, if you have to stand around in the cold all the time waiting for some asshole you don't even know to show up, it's a pretty shitty job." She started to move around the car toward me.

"Stay where you are."

"Oh, give me a fucking break," she snapped, but she stopped.

Gun still on her, I walked around, peered into the car that wasn't mine. It was as empty as the night around us.

"You're afraid I brought somebody?" Close enough now to read each other's faces, I could see amused contempt in her smile. "Is that what real detectives do?"

"It sometimes helps." I holstered the gun; I felt stupid, alone out there in the huge night, holding a gun on a tiny fifteen-year-old girl. "Did you know I was looking for you? Is that why you're here?"

She frowned up at me. Although there were no stars, no moon, the gold of her hair seemed to shine. "Looking for me? How do you know who I am?"

"Detective stuff," I told her. "You're Ginny Sanderson, and your father's worried about you."

"Oh, him." Impatience and disappointment equally filled her words. "You work for him?" The idea didn't seem at all to surprise her. She slouched against my car and scowled.

"He wanted me to," I said, "but I don't."

She glanced up at that, and I saw her eyes glow, like the sparkling of the stars and the snow and the air itself on the coldest of winter nights.

"You crossed my dad? You won't last long up here. What did he want you to do?"

"Find you. Where's Jimmy Antonelli's truck?"

With a laugh she pushed herself up to sit on the hood of my car. As she moved she brushed close to me, and I caught the scent of her perfume, a heady, complicated fragrance, rich and old-fashioned, not what I might have expected of such a young girl.

"I get it," she said, swinging her legs against the wheel well. "That's a dumb detective trick, right? You say something out of nowhere to confuse me?"

"Do you have it?"

She pointed to the Trans-Am parked between my car and the road. "That's my car. I'm not supposed to drive at night until I'm sixteen, but it's mine."

"That's not an answer."

"Sure it is. Besides, you should like that car. My dad gave it to me. But he won't give you one. He's not that nice to his employees."

"I told you I don't work for him."

"Maybe you think you don't. Everyone around here does, whether they know it or not."

I pulled a cigarette out of my jacket. She held out her hand automatically, unthinkingly. I gave her that one, took out another for myself. She waited for a light; I did that, too.

The match was a brief flare in the darkness, reflected in her hair, her eyes. I shook it out, threw it away. "A man was killed Monday night by someone with the keys to that truck."

"Yeah. Wally." She pulled deeply on the cigarette. "Dumb little shit."

"You knew him?"

"Oh, sure. I know all those guys." She tossed her head, elaborately uninterested. "What kind of stupid cigarettes are these?" She looked at the Kent I'd given her, threw it away. She reached under the baggy sweater, brought out a filterless Camel, waited without speaking for another light.

The still-burning cigarette she'd abandoned lay among gravel and dry leaves. I crushed it with the toe of my boot, then lit for her the one she was holding.

"Shit!" she snapped, brushing ash from my own cigarette off her sweater, where it had fallen. "Watch it! This is my mom's."

"Your mom's?" I said, then stopped myself. Her family's troubles weren't my business.

"Yeah, you know all about it, right?" she said scornfully. "Everybody around here knows all about it. So she walked out on my dad, so what? Who wouldn't? Fucking jerk-off. Anyway, when she comes back, she's gonna want her stuff." She hugged the soft black sweater around her, looked away as she smoked.

I watched her in the empty night. She brushed again at the spot where ash had fallen. I said, "I'm sorry."

"Oh, don't be an asshole!" she hissed. She might have been about to say something else, but the bar's door opened, spilling light, music, and four laughing people out into the night. They stood briefly in the lot, ending the evening together, the men's voices loud, the women's harder to hear. Car doors opened and closed, engines growled, and two sets of headlights swept past us onto 30.

Ginny Sanderson jumped lightly off my car, moved beyond it to where the headlights didn't reach. "Nobody better see me here," she said.

"Why not?"

She looked at me with a nasty smile. "Because if my dad knows you found me and didn't bring me home you'll be in really deep shit. He'll probably fuck you up anyway if you don't find me, but this would really piss him off. He said that, right? That he'd fuck you up?"

I didn't answer, but whatever she saw in my face made her nod. "That's him," she said. "He never just asks you to do something. Like it never occurs to him you might want to anyway, or you don't but if he paid you or something you would. He always has to tell you how bad he's going to fuck you up. That's why my mom ran away. You know," she said, fast, as though to prevent me from speaking, "you're some dumb detective. You never even asked me what I'm doing here."

"You want something," I said.

"Well, duh! If you're so smart, what do I want?"

"I don't know. But I want something too: I want Jimmy's truck, and I want the things that were stolen from Eve Colgate's storeroom."

Her eyes widened quickly; then she laughed. "You used that one already, saying something to confuse me. Are you supposed to be a good detective?"

"Probably not. But I get the feeling you're not such a good kid, either."

She snorted. "Different meanings of 'good,' Mr. Bigshot. Don't do that shit with me. I'm in Honors English."

"Not anymore this semester, from what I hear."

"That was bullshit!" She glanced at me sharply.

"That's what your father told me, too. Not his innocent little princess."

"He's an asshole," she couldn't help saying. "But anyway, now I can go somewhere else next year. Maybe Europe or something. I hated that dump anyway."

"If I tell Sheriff Brinkman you've been fencing stolen property, you might not be going anywhere."

"Who, Robocop?" She was scornful, unimpressed with my threat. "You think my dad would let him anywhere near me? Besides"—she leaned back against my car, blew a stream of smoke into the sky—"I don't know what the fuck you're talking about."

"I don't believe you."

She eyed me thoughtfully. With a well-bred, ladylike smile, she inquired, "Who fucking cares? Anyway, forget that crazy lady and her shit. I thought you wanted to know who killed Wally."

I dropped my cigarette to the ground, crushed it. "Do you know?"

She shrugged. "Everyone says it was Jimmy."

"Was it?"

"How the hell am I supposed to know? But Jimmy's in deep shit, huh? Do you know where he is?"

"That's what you were looking for me for? You want to know where Jimmy is?"

"Hey, you figured it out! You are a great detective!"

"Why do you want him?"

Her voice became coy. "I can help him." She waved her cigarette casually in the darkness. "You're not the only one who knows smart lawyers and shit like that. I can help Jimmy more than you can. Only I bet you don't even know where he is."

"Why would you want to help him? You walked out on him."

"He told you that?" she asked slyly.

"Everyone knows," I countered.

She shrugged again, temporarily out of dumb detective tricks. "So what? I can still want to help him."

"Then tell me who has the truck."

"Okay," she said teasingly, "if you tell me where he is."

"Did you use the truck when you robbed Eve Colgate?"

As I spoke, a car cut around the curve of 30, swept us with headlights as it pulled into the lot. Ginny Sanderson stepped into the shadows again. When Antonelli's door had shut behind the driver and the night was ours again, she threw her cigarette away, still burning, like the one before it. "Oh, fuck this shit," she said. "I'm getting the fuck out of here. This is a drag."

She brushed past me to her car, pulled open the door, slid behind the wheel. As the engine roared to life and the loud bass thump of the stereo began to pound, she lowered the black-glass window.

"If you want to know where the fucking truck is, just tell anyone at the Creekside you want to see me."

She reversed hard, close to me, then tore onto the road. Her red tail lights whipped around the curve much too fast, and were gone.

The drive to Eve Colgate's wasn't long. The bare branches of the trees were being tossed violently now, and dead leaves scraped across the road in front of me. I drove carefully, my mind on other things.

Leo came charging to the doorbell, barking loudly. I heard Eve reassuring him as she shot the bolt and drew the door open.

She smiled, stood aside to let me pass. I walked through out of the cold wind into the warm, neat room, where the odor of damp earth was replaced by a rich confusion of herbs, garlic, tomatoes, meat. Steam fogged the windows. The table was set with woven mats, wineglasses, white china. There was music, not Schubert anymore, but Chopin, a nocturne I used to play. Hearing it now, I couldn't remember why I'd stopped.

Leo followed me, wagging, looking up; I reached down to pet him and he sniffed my hand expectantly. "Oh," I said. "Sorry, old buddy. Nothing for you."

"It's just as well," Eve said. "You were spoiling him." She took my jacket, hung it in the vestibule next to the yellow slicker. I shrugged off my shoulder holster, slipped it over another hook.

Her eyebrows raised slightly. "You don't have to," she said.

"It makes you uncomfortable."

She moved around me into the kitchen. "I just wonder how it must feel to live with what it means."

"You get used to what protects you."

"Yes," she said. "Yes, I suppose that's true."

She lifted the cover from an enameled steel pot on the stove. A cloud of steam rolled up as she added wine from an open bottle.

"Sit down," she said. "It'll be another few minutes."

I stood on the polished floor by the ivory wool couch like a tractor at Tiffany's. "Let me clean up first."

"There's a bathroom under the stairs."

I went and used it, scrubbing rock dust from my hands, my arms, my face. I examined the face critically in the mirror as I dried off on a thick, soft towel. Dark eyes, too deep and too tired; the etched lines that smokers get, on the forehead, around the eyes and mouth; crooked nose and a lumpy jaw. Dark hair, rapidly graying. And the new addition, a collection of scratches and bruises in the ugly colors of healing on the left cheek. Clean, the face was better, but it would never be good.

Back in the living room, I chose the chair, whose dark upholstery gave it a fighting chance to handle the dirt I hadn't been able to brush from my clothes.

"Do you want wine?" Eve asked. "I haven't got anything else except brandy. But this is good."

She brought over the glasses from the table, handed me one, poured a garnet-colored wine into it and into the other. I tasted it. It was liquid silk and it had no argument with Tony's bourbon.

Eve settled on the end of the couch nearest the chair. Her clear eyes swept over me, face, hands, dirt, everything. She said, "Shall we talk business before dinner?"

I put my wineglass down. "The blond girl," I said. "When I called you before, it was because I thought I knew who she was. Now I'm sure, I've seen her. It could be a problem for you."

She said nothing, watched my face.

"Her name is Ginny Sanderson. She's Mark Sanderson's daughter."

"He's a powerful man," she said after a moment. "Is that what you mean?"

"Only part of it. I also think she's mixed up in this murder, the guy in Tony's basement. If she is, your robbery may be, too."

She sipped her wine while Chopin's ambiguous tones flowed around us.

"Why do you think that?" she asked quietly.

I told her about Ginny, and about Wally Gould and Frank Grice and who Frank Grice was. I told her about the blue truck waiting outside the antique shop for Ginny

Sanderson, and about the keys that I'd found on the concrete floor by Wally Gould's body.

"The keys were to that same truck? How do you know that?"

"I don't, not for sure. But Jimmy Antonelli owns a blue four-by-four. It's been missing for a couple of days. The keys I found were his."

"Oh," she said softly. "Poor Tony. Does he know that?"

"That the keys are Jimmy's? Yes. But I haven't told him about Ginny Sanderson and the truck."

Eve's lined face seemed paler than before. Leo nuzzled her hand and she scratched him absently, sipping wine, thinking her own thoughts. She said, "You say you spoke to her . . . ?"

I nodded. "She claims she doesn't know anything about your robbery. I'm pretty sure she's lying, though I guess it's possible she's just fencing things and doesn't know where they came from. But, Eve, if she's got the truck, it could connect her to both crimes. If that's true I don't know how long I can keep your robbery a private problem."

She searched my face. "There's something you're not telling me."

I thought about Jimmy, alone up at the quarry, and nodded again. "But it wouldn't help."

She surveyed her own living room minutely, intensely. It was something she must have done a million times.

"Is there something you want me to do?" she asked me finally.

"No. Give me more time. I'll try, Eve. I know how important it is; that's why I didn't push Ginny when I saw her tonight. I wanted to talk to you first. If there's any way I can keep it from coming out, I will. But I wanted you to know."

Eve was silent. Dragged by the wind, branches scraped across her roof. The approaching storm weighed on the air.

"All right," she said, standing. "If things have to change, will you tell me first?"

"I promise."

She looked at me for a few moments. Then she walked back around the couch, over to the stove. Leo jumped to his feet, followed her. I stood, too.

"Trouble or not," she said, "there's still beef stew. Why don't you pour more wine?" She put the enameled pot on the table. "And you can change the music, or turn it off, if you want. I should have said that before."

The nocturnes had given way to Chopin mazurkas. "No," I said. "It's fine. I haven't heard these pieces in a long time."

"You know this music?"

"Yes."

She smiled. "I'm intrigued. I suppose I always thought of the detective business as rather sordid."

"It is. But I'm not sure it's any dirtier than cows and chickens."

She brought a round, crusty loaf out of the oven, set it on the table next to a dish of butter flecked with herbs. "Cows are much more decent than people," she said.

"Well, maybe. But not chickens. My grandmother kept chickens in our backyard in Louisville. I know all their secrets."

"Is that where you grew up? Louisville?"

"We left there when I was nine, but yes, until then."

"Where did you go then?"

"Thailand," I said. "South Korea, West Germany, the Philippines, Holland. My father was an army quarter master. We lived in a lot of exotic places; when I was fifteen we moved to Brooklyn."

She nodded. "Exotic."

The last thing she did before sitting was to feed two more logs into the iron stove on the hearth.

"Well, it's not fancy," she said. "But you won't be hungry."

It wasn't fancy, but it was great. The stew was thick with beef, and the beef was tender. Chunks of carrots, potatoes, onions, and stewed tomatoes glistened in a garlicky broth. The bread was dense and slightly sour, the butter sweet.

Eve Colgate and I drank more wine, and we talked, and in the silences we listened to Chopin and to the wind.

I admired her house, the spare completeness of it.

"I've been here thirty years. Things get completed, over time."

"Not always."

She poured wine for me, some for herself. "Where do you live, when you're in the city?"

"Downtown. Laight Street."

"What's it like?"

"The neighborhood? Changing."

"Your place, I meant."

"A friend of mine owns the building, and the bar downstairs. Years ago I helped him fix up the bar and the two upstairs floors. He has storerooms and an office on the second floor and I live on the third."

"You have no neighbors?"

"It's better that way."

"Why do you come here?" she asked me.

I sipped my wine. "Even fewer neighbors."

That was true, and in some ways the real reason; and in some ways, about as evasive an answer as I'd ever given to any question. Eve looked at me. She smiled, and in her smile it seemed to me she understood both the truth and the evasion.

I buttered a last piece of bread. "Why did you choose this place, Eve? When you left New York, why come here?"

She didn't answer right away. "Henri and I had come here for three summers, renting a cabin, the way you did Tony's father's. I suppose I wanted to be where I'd been happy. With him."

She rose, went to the kitchen, put water on for coffee. I started to clear the dishes. "I'll wash," I said.

"No," she said. "There's almost nothing. I'll do it later."

"It's my only domestic talent. Let me exercise it."

"I doubt that that's true. I think you're capable of being quite domestic, in your way."

"In my way," I agreed. I did the dishes.

We drank coffee, ate pears and some Gorgonzola cheese that looked older than I was. We talked some more. Then the Chopin was over, and the coffee was gone, and I had work to do.

I called Lydia before I left. It must have been both my night and not my night: she answered the phone herself.

"Where's your mom?" I asked her.

"Playing mah-jongg at Mrs. Lee's. Don't try to make up by being solicitous about my mother."

"Still mad?"

"Why wouldn't I be? Has something changed? Are you about to tell me what's going on?"

I looked over at Eve putting dishes in cabinets. "Not here," I said. "Not now."

"Uh-huh. Well, good-bye. I have to go to the Port Authority to collect your package. I assume I still work for you?

"God," I said. "Yeah, uh-huh, sure. And there's something else I want you to do."

"You're lucky I don't have another case right now But I'm raising my rates."

"I'll pay anything." I had a feeling that was truer than I knew. "You know Appleseed Baby Foods?"

"Baby food's not exactly my specialty. Is that the one with the babies and fruits all over the label?"

"Yes. It's owned by a guy named Mark Sanderson. He lives up here; I'm not sure where. The Appleseed plant is up here, too," I added, realizing she probably didn't know that. "I want dirt. Get a skip tracer, someone with a computer who can chase paper for us." "Us?"

I let that one drop. "Get Velez, he's good."

"Are we looking for anything specific?" she asked.

"No, and there may not be anything at all. It's just a hunch. But whatever there is, I want it. Tell Velez sooner is better than later. You have anything new on the other thing?"

"The paintings? I would have told you if I had," she said. "You're sure they were stolen? You're sure they exist?"

The woodstove clanged as Eve opened it, fed another log into the fire. "Yes," I told Lydia.

"Well, I'll keep looking. But if they do, I think they're on ice."

"I think you're right. I'll call you in the morning."

"Lucky me."

We both hung up. Eve brought my jacket and shoulder rig in from the hook where I'd left them. "What are you going to do now?" she asked.

"I'm going to talk to Ginny Sanderson again."

"At her father's?"

"No, she's not there. He told me this afternoon she hadn't been home for a few days. But Grice lives in Cobleskill. I'm going there."

She caught my eyes with hers. "If these people are what you say, if they're involved in murder ... Be careful, Bill. My paintings aren't that important."

"To you they are."

"Not that important."

We walked together across the porch, down the steps. "Thanks for dinner," I said.

She smiled. "I don't have guests very often. I'm glad you came."

Leo bounded down the steps and sniffed circles in the driveway. The cold wind tossed the tops of the trees around as yellow light spilled from the windows of the house. I took her hand, squeezed it lightly; then, feeling suddenly unsure, I let it go. I turned up my collar against the wind, walked down the driveway toward my car.

Chapter 12

I headed along 10 in the direction of Cobleskill, but I didn't get that far.

After the driveway there was a wide curve around the wooded slope where Eve's land came up to meet the road. The other side of the road was flat farmland, and my eyes traveled restlessly over the fields and down the slope, for no reason I could name. In the deep emptiness of the wind-swept night there was nothing to see.

But there was: off to my right, way down the slope, lights. Headlights, double, one set white, one piercing yellow, spaced widely, the way they would be on a truck. And near them, a paler glow, light through a window.

I stopped the car. This was Eve's land. Her studio stood at the end of a road, a road from the valley. I wasn't sure that clearing was what I was looking at now, but as I watched the headlights swing around and start to move off, it suddenly seemed like something I wanted to know more about.

I didn't know where the road came out down in the valley and it would have taken me twenty minutes to get there anyway. The truck would have to do without me. But the paler light still shone, and there might be something in that. I pulled off, parked, started down the slope on foot.

The darkness and winter brush made it slow going. Wind swept through the trees, swirled leaves, shook branches. It carried on it the scent of rain. There was no moon to help me; my footing was uncertain. I could have used the flashlight, but there might be someone still down there, and getting myself noticed wasn't the point.

From the bottom of the slope across thirty feet of clearing I saw my hunch was right: the building with the lit windows was Eve's studio. The glow was gentle and even, the light diffused through the frosted glass. The door was open a few inches, throwing a rod of light across the clearing toward where I'd stopped at the edge of the woods.

I began to inch around the clearing, keeping behind the trees, to where I could approach the building from the rear. There was only the one door, but I could work my way back to it against the wall of the building, which seemed a better idea than strolling across thirty feet of empty space.

It might have been, too; or it might have worked out the same in either case. I never had time to think about that. The only thought I had, as a shadowed figure rose suddenly at the edge of my vision, pain exploded in the back of my head, and the world turned red for an instant and then softly black, was that my woodsmanship wasn't what it ought to be.

I was dreaming of a dark beach, late night, winter. Billowing sheets of rain, gray-green water folded into sludgy, pounding waves. I shivered on the wet sand; icy spray broke over me.

In the shelter of a dune was a house with golden windows. Music came softly from it. Schubert, I thought, but I wasn't sure. It would be warm inside; someone kind would be there. I tried to head toward it, but my feet wouldn't move.

I turned my back on the house, walked slowly down the beach into the cold, thick water, looking for something I knew I wouldn't find.

There was water everywhere, cold water, rushing past me, sweeping over me. I opened my eyes, saw nothing. I was lying face down in water, tasting it in the mud in my open mouth. But this wasn't the ocean, and the dream was over.

I tried to look around. A pounding in my head made it harder. There was darkness, there were trees. There was rain, lashing through the trees and darkness, racing over the ground where I was.

I was soaked through. The skin on my thighs was numb where I lay in the cold water. My scalp was tight with the cold and I felt my back trying to pull away from the heavy weight of my sodden jacket. I started to shiver.

I pushed my shoulders off the ground, to get up, but hot nausea rose in me and I collapsed back onto the leaves and twigs and icy water. I lay there, listening to my breath rasping in and out, as the dizzying pain in the back of my head faded.

I tried, very slowly, to get up again. I became aware of noise: wind shrieking through the trees, branches creaking and cracking against each other, the percussion of rain pounding the ground around me. The duller, desolate sound of the drops as they hit my jacket. My own voice, wordless and hoarse.

I made myself stand.

Water ran down my neck, oozed inside my sleeves. I shook uncontrollably. My body tried to fold in on itself, to escape the icy, burning bitterness. The wind changed directions, blasted me from the front; my eyes began to tear, but they hadn't been clear anyway.

I didn't know where I was. I didn't know where to go. I didn't know anything at all, except the agony of the cold and the dazedness I couldn't clear. Finally I took a clumsy step, then another, because movement was better than standing still and anywhere was better than here.

After a time that was not long, or maybe a thousand years, I had to rest. I leaned against a tree, tried to catch my breath. All the world was in motion. The wind screamed and the rain drummed and I was shaking and unsure. I looked up, around.

Above me, up a slope through the trees: light. Yellow light. I blinked, passed a hand over my eyes. The light was still there. Lights, maybe; or maybe that was me. But something was there and I headed for it, crashing through what I could, going around what I had to, always my eyes fixed on the light.

It was uphill and I climbed. I pushed my feet into the mud, strained against tree roots and branches. My legs were sluggish, slow to respond, as though they were only half listening.

There was a searing flash and a bone-splitting thunder crack. Negative became positive and then black again and what I'd reached for wasn't there. I slipped and fell. The pain in my head wouldn't quit, and needles of rain swept across my face as I lay listening to rushing water and the pounding of my heart.

I wanted to stop trying then, to stay where I was, to wait for the cold and the pain and the noise to end.

But there was light; I could see it. Where the light was maybe it was warm and maybe it was quiet.

Better than quiet: maybe there was music.

With a groan I rolled to my feet. Slowly, as though with glue in my veins, some steps forward; then some more.

The trees ended.

I held onto the last one, looking. The space before me was dark and full of rain, but nothing else. Nothing to hold onto; but nothing, anymore, between me and the light.

It was harder, without the trees and brush. Each step had to be sure. The ground still sloped uphill and the wind was hard. But the light was closer now, I could tell that. It was golden and square and must come from windows, from someplace warm, a house, someone's home. It had to.

And then it was gone. I blinked, stared, tried to bore through the darkness with my eyes. Maybe I was wrong about the trees. Maybe something was standing between me and the light, something I could go around.

I took some more steps; my knees became rubbery. There were no trees. There was nothing there, nothing hiding the light. It was gone.

Like a puppet whose string had been cut, I sank slowly to the ground. The water rushed past me, splattered over me, pushed by a screaming wind. As I was swallowed by darkness and cold, I was sorry that I hadn't reached the glowing house, because I'd wanted to hear the music.