The Best American Mystery Stories 2000

Bentley Dadmun Annie’s Dream

From Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine

The Farm is seven miles of bad roads from anywhere and has occupied sixty-three acres of scrub pine and rock-laden pasture since Teddy Roosevelt was thrashing around the White House. Now, at the other end of the century, it is home to eighty or ninety senior citizens, several aging cows, a few semiferal chickens, and a handicapped cat.

The majority of the senior citizens ended up at The Farm because they were living their lives on the two-hundred-year plan and handled their money accordingly. The animals, like most domesticated critters, had little choice in the matter.

The animals make do with a large shed, and the barn houses most of the humans. Those who don’t live in the barn reside in a motley collection of trailers and RVs that squat like disgruntled sows in the pastures surrounding the barn.

Except for me and the cat. We live in a thirty-six foot mahogany sloop cradled in the middle of a windblown grove of hardwoods in the north pasture.

Annie Kokar, closet misanthrope, Renaissance woman, and retired veterinarian, is the owner of The Farm and keeper of the purse. It is by her efforts that The Farm stays solvent and the residents warm, fed, and relatively free of despair and errant behavior.

I am very attached to the boat. We suit each other, for we are both old drifters, sharing a propensity for solitary wanderings and a desire to keep our distance from others and walk our own path.

Several weeks ago I walked a path.

A path that put Duncan, Annie’s son, in prison for more years than he is probably capable of enduring and plunged Annie into a quagmire of despair and anger.

I was told to leave The Farm.

The number of dollars I presently control do not allow for more than a corner room in Teller’s Hotel, a dim, crowded slum catering to nearly destitute seniors. Two ancient suitcases and a bulging duffel rested quietly beside several stacks of books, waiting.

I sighed, pulled the last of the Lancers out of the refrigerator, filled a yellow plastic mug, and slumped in the settee.

Cat, always astute, was aware that something profound was happening and, having the feline distaste for disruption and change, was coping by spending most of her time in the cavelike berth under the cockpit. Hearing me fill the mug, she decided to join me, limped out of her nest, and pulled on the cuff of my pants with her good paw. I picked her up, set her on the table, and between sips massaged the scarred tissues of her small, frail body.

I upended the bottle and watched the last drops of wine splash into the mug. I wondered if it would be worth the effort to hike to the barn and snag a bottle from one of the old refrigerators lining the wall in the makeshift kitchen. Thunderstorms were imminent, and Cat, who insists on accompanying me on every journey, does not tolerate thunderstorms well. She clamps herself to my chest, pants like an exhausted puppy, and drools profusely.

I peered out the window to check the weather.

And probably performed a classic double take.

Dressed in bright yellow rain gear a Gloucester lobsterman would envy, gripping a long walking staff, and clutching a plastic bag to her chest, Annie marched across the clearing to the boat. I listened to her climb the stairs, drop into the cockpit, and hammer on the hatch with the staff.

She was undoubtedly here to deliver an ultimatum. I had told her I would be gone by the end of April, and that bitter day was fast approaching. I struggled to my feet and pushed open the hatch.

She lowered an arm, and I grabbed it and helped her down the four steps into the cabin. Annie is somewhere in her seventies, looks it in a handsome way, and stares at the world through hard, flat eyes that calm hurt, frightened animals and make humans squirm. It was Annie who labored over Cat after I appeared at her door with Cat’s maimed, blood-soaked body in my arms.

She nodded curtly, handed me the bag, which obviously held a large bottle, shucked out of her rain gear, and let it drop to the floor. Then she leaned her staff against the steps and, with a critical eye, surveyed the stacks of books, the two suitcases, the packed duffel, and muttered, “Going somewhere?”

A number of biting retorts rose, but I pushed them back and smiled thinly. “I’ll be gone by Friday.”

With pursed lips she nodded, sat down, and put her hands on the table. “I’ll have a large glass of that wine, please.”

So I poured her a glass from the two liter bottle she’d brought, which must have cost four or five dollars, sat down across from her, and raised my eyebrows. She ignored the inquiry, hefted Cat to the table, and ran her long, thin hands over Cat’s body. “I’m surprised. She looks pathetic but is fairly healthy. You’ve done well by her, Harry.”

“Perhaps, but the five hours you worked on her is what gave her a future.”

Annie smiled briefly and drank. She set the glass down and sighed.

“I visited Duncan yesterday. He also is doing surprisingly well. I thought prison would kill him, would reduce him to suicidal pathos. But he seems to be... well, if not thriving, certainly coping. The highly structured life behind bars obviously suits him — he was almost smiling.”

Duncan was going to spend a minimum of fifteen years in that prison, and Annie’s apparent case with that was disturbing, considering her initial reaction. So I just nodded and kept quiet.

She refilled her glass and studied me with those flat eyes as if I were an artifact someone had dug out of the south pasture. Then in a hoarse near whisper she said, “Harry, I’ve been doing a bit of thinking. Reasonable, unprejudiced thinking, and I’ve decided that, if you want to, you may stay. You’ve done well by The Farm and certainly by me, and to evict you over a difference in values is behavior that is repellent. So, if you want, you may unpack and remain here in the grove.”

Casually, and with a surprisingly steady hand considering the sudden increase in my heart rate, I raised my mug, drank deeply, and asked, “Where’s the string?”

She smiled, the genuine article this time. “No strings, Harry. Stay and do as you please. And if you aren’t interested in my little puzzle, that’s fine also.”

Aha. “Your little puzzle?”

“As I said, you’re free to stay. No restrictions. I would not endeavor to coerce you into anything you wouldn’t want to do.”

Unbidden, a smile crept across my face. “Your little puzzle?” I repeated.

She rummaged in her pants pocket, brought out a ring of keys, and dropped them on the table.

Rain started to hammer the boat, and a hard rumble rolled across the pasture and bowled through the grove. Cat struggled to her feet, teetered on the edge of the table, and with a sorrowful yowl dropped into my arms and laid her scarred head against my chest.

I picked up the key ring and fanned the keys across my palm. Four keys. Two were automotive, with Chrysler’s five-pointed star stamped on the end of each one. There was also a smallish key of tarnished brass and a large skeleton key with that characteristic notched piece of flat metal at the working end. I let the keys dangle in my hand, raised my eyebrows, and said, “The keys to the kingdom?”

Annie shook her head and muttered, “Unlikely. A few days ago I noticed that all my kitchenware was on the countertop or stuffed in the dishwasher and my kitchen drawers were filled with crap. It was obvious things had gotten a little out of hand and action was called for.”

She paused, took a healthy swig of wine, gave me a thin-lipped smile. “So I set myself to the task, and now my utensils are back in the drawers where they belong and about forty pounds of crap is residing in our illegal landfill.”

“A grand blow to the solar plexus of Entropy,” I murmured.

“Indeed. In the front of the last drawer, covered by seven hundred and eight pennies, was that key ring. I had forgotten about it. It was Bob’s; I found it in his coat pocket two days before he died. He had had two big strokes by then, and it was obvious he was dying. And it was equally obvious that we both wanted to get it the hell over with. At any rate, we were in the process of deciding what to do with things. What child should get what, what to do with The Farm, how badly to lie to the tax people, and all that.

“As I said, I found those keys in a coat of his, an old corduroy thing with a fur collar. He was wearing it the day he had his first stroke.” She paused, her eyes on the ceiling, then she mentally shook herself, looked at me, and forced a smile. “I showed him the key ring and asked him what the keys were for and what I should do with them. One of the last coherent things he said to me was, ‘My love, you hold the keys to your dream.’ ”

I picked the keys up and looked at them. “The keys to your dream. Did he explain?”

Annie shook her head. “He was drifting in and out, having good spells, bad spells, but usually not making much sense. Bob and I were married for forty-six and a half years, and he knew I didn’t have any dream or dreams worth mentioning. My idea of a dream was a trip to the theater or an art museum, and I rarely mentioned them ’cause I knew Bob had no interest in those things.”

I looked away and while pushing the keys around with my finger said, “But...”

“Yes, but. As I said, Harry, you’re under no requirement to poke around, but if you’re curious? Well, you are rather good at ferreting things out. Usually things people would rather keep hidden.” She pushed herself up with both hands, struggled into her official Gloucester rain gear, grabbed her staff, and glared at me.

I helped her up the steps, walked her across the rain-slashed deck and down the stairs. She gave me a gimlet smile and, like Diogenes off to search for that mythical honest man, stalked out of the grove.

I put another log in the woodstove, slouched on the settee, and watched the flickering shadows dance around the cabin. Like the ending of an eclipse, the darkness, the deep, dusky fear, slowly seeped out of my soul and allowed me to smile. The grove was mine again. I was, at least for now, spared the dingy hotel room, that fifteen by twenty cell with a sink and the ABSOLUTELY NO PETS sign on the door. I hugged Cat and whispered, “We’ve been pardoned.”

Cat, her claws hooked in my sweatshirt, yowled at the thunder and kept drooling on me.

I woke up early for the first time in days. Hands behind my head, I stared at the ceiling and smiled. Cat, annoyed that the blanket had slipped down her body, lifted her small head off the pillow, put a paw on my arm, and went, “Yeow?”

As I usually did, I gave her a little physical therapy, gently massaging the jagged scars and atrophied muscle. Then we had a quick game of wrestle-the-hand, the first in weeks.

Later, sipping coffee, I watched the squirrels try to get into the birdfeeders. While watching the struggle outside the window I toyed with the key ring I’d left on the table last night. “The keys to your dream?” I muttered. With Cat stretched out and purring in the sling across my chest, I marched through wet, dead hay across the pasture to the barn.

With Annie’s connected house, the barn is almost a hundred yards of sagging, much-patched lumber that looms three stories over one’s head. The years of renovation into rooms and tiny apartments have turned the interior into a dark maze that only the residents can negotiate without a guide. More than once newcomers have been found sobbing in a narrow dark hallway, lost and wondering what brought them to this groaning, creaking, windblown dump out in the middle of nowhere.

The front half of the second floor of the barn is a multipurpose room. It’s a kitchen and dining hall, and the back part of the room is dotted with islands of cast-off furniture. That’s the place to linger if your desire is to listen to an unlikely version of who’s doing what to whom and why.

I was a little late, but breakfast was still being served and I walked the serving line, gathering eggs, toast, and coffee. As I stood at the end of the line scanning the tables, Mildred Beede, a seamed, white-haired existentialist and sometime drinking acquaintance, gripped my shoulder.

“Harry, if you need help, I can drive you and your things to that hotel.”

I gave her a grin that stretched my face. “I’ve been forgiven and pardoned.”

Mildred glanced at Annie, sitting nearby, gripped my shoulder again, and whispered, “That’s good, that’s very good. But I hope you won’t have to jump through too many hoops.”

I carried my tray to Annie’s table, put Cat on the floor, smiled at Annie, and asked, “What happened to your Chrysler?”

She raised her furry white eyebrows. “Chrysler?”

“Two of the keys belong to a Chrysler Corporation car. What kind and what happened to it?”

“We never owned a Chrysler Corporation car. Bob was devoted to GM, and we owned a long string of Buicks. When they stopped putting those little portholes on the hood, Bob fired off a nasty letter to the Buick people. They wrote back and in a polite way told him to face reality.”

“So what was he doing with a set of keys to a Chrysler?”

“I have no idea. I take it you’ve decided to research my puzzle?”

I shrugged. “Any ideas about the skeleton key?”

“None.” She picked up a sausage and bit into it. “The last skeleton key I had was to the attic door of the last house we owned.”

“Would you happen to know what Bob was doing the day he wore the jacket?”

“Besides having a massive stroke? He was at the store, taking inventory with Philip.”

“The furniture store he owned?”

“Half owned. Philip Kinch was the other half of the business. As I said, they were doing inventory. Philip heard a noise, like someone choking he said, and turned around in time to see Bob fall. Said it was like the left side of his face was melting.”

“And he was wearing that coat?”

“Yes, he was. Duncan had given it to him for his birthday two or three years before.”

“Who did you and Bob know who owned a Chrysler product?”

She picked up another sausage link and bared her teeth. She chewed, looked at me, and shook her head. “Damned if I can think of anyone.”

“Is Philip still around?”

“The last I heard, and this was some years ago — I never did like the man — he was living in town with his daughter. I believe her name is Ogden, Donna Ogden.”

I mentally braced myself. “How about Duncan? Did he ever own a Chrysler product?”

Her stare was deadly, but she finally exhaled and whispered, “He always drove Fords.”

I found Cat hunkered down in the middle of a rickety card table surrounded by four cooing matrons dressed for a day of spring gardening. A fair-sized chunk of Canadian bacon was firmly grasped in her mouth, and her purr was audible above the baby talk the ladies were emitting as they pelted her.

Cat saw me and limped to the edge of the table, and I eased her into the sling. Rose Waterhouse, a thick, white-haired woman with the eyes of an abused Bambi, gave me a lopsided smile. “Rumor has it the Dragon Lady has granted you a stay of execution.”

I patted Cat and said, “It’s my radiant personality. Tell me, Rose, in your younger days what did you use skeleton keys for?”

She raised her eyebrows, put a finger against her lips, and said, “As I remember, mostly to open doors. My mama’s two houses took skeleton keys on the doors as did my first two houses.”

“Inside and outside?”

She waved a finger in front of Cat’s nose. Cat withdrew into the depths of the sling. “Now that you mention it, mostly inside.”

Although cars are handy, they’re expensive. So I ride bicycles. My current model is a gray and black marbled mountain bike with twenty-one gears, click shifting, and a suspension system. Instead of panniers I have a yellow and red trailer, which is fortunate, as Cat would object to being stuffed in a pannier.

I put her in the trailer, wrapped her in the patchwork quilt that my ex-wife’s grandmother had labored over, and pedaled the seven miles of bad roads to town.

It was a classic spring day, the kind that induces an ardent desire to do nothing of consequence. I wanted to head for the small tree-filled park in the common, plant my aging back against a budding maple, and smile at the world while working my way down a bottle of Lancers. But curiosity prevailed, so I looked up Donna Ogden’s address in a graffiti-laden phone booth and headed for Taylor Street.

She lived in a long ranch house with yellow vinyl siding faded nearly white by the sun. On my fifth knock she pulled the door open and gave Cat and me the once-over with smiling brown eyes.

She was dressed in a burlap-colored sweat suit and wore oversized slippers that looked like bear feet, complete with claws that hung over the threshold like thick white worms. Her brown hair was streaked with kinky strings of gray; she was about thirty pounds overweight, and I doubted she gave a damn. She stepped back, grinned, and said, “A leaned-out man and his mangy cat. This should be interesting.”

I smiled and dipped my head. “Mrs. Ogden? My name is Harry Neal. Is your father in?”

“Harry Neal, my father is never out. My father has not been out for something like six goddamn months now.”

I nodded again. “Is this voluntary or do you have him chained to the furnace?”

She smirked, pulled a pack of menthol cigarettes out of her pocket, fired one up, and said, “If you leave the cat upstairs with me, you can go see for yourself. Papa is allergic to the things.” She turned and walked back into the house.

I followed her into a small living room filled with thirty-year-old furniture. She slumped in a misshapen black recliner, put her cigarette in a glass ashtray filled with smoldering butts, and held out her arms. I slipped Cat out of her sling and with some apprehension handed her over. “Please be gentle, she’s rather fragile,” I said.

“Rather,” she said. “The poor thing looks like she’s just been liberated from Dachau. The basement door is in the kitchen, to the right of the dishes.”

I paused at a gray door to the right of several stacks of dirty dishes, then pulled it open and descended a staircase made of unfinished two by sixes. Past the furnace, sitting on bare cement, was a new-looking bright red recliner. An old man with a hatchet face and limp, shoulder-length gray hair was slumped in it in front of a huge black television. His left hand, which lay on his thigh, trembled badly. His right hand gripped a stopwatch. The television was off. The man’s eyes were open.

I tapped him on the shoulder. “Mr. Kinch? My name is Harry Neal. I wonder if I may talk to you a moment. It concerns your old business partner, Bob Kokar.”

He looked at me, looked at the stopwatch, licked his blue lips. “Maury comes on in three minutes and fifteen seconds.”

I sighed, avoided looking at that trembling hand, and said, “Mr. Kinch, do you remember your partner, Bob Kokar?”

His manic gray eyes never left the television. “Of course I do. I have Parkinson’s, not Alzheimer’s.”

“Sorry. The day of his stroke, when you and Bob were doing inventory, he had the keys to a Chrysler-made vehicle. Would you happen to know why?”

“Cost you a dollar.”

“What?”

“I said, cost you a dollar.”

Jesus. I fished a dollar out of my pocket and dropped it in his lap. The spastic hand grabbed it and slowly crushed it into a little ball.

After a long silence I asked again, “Mr. Kinch, what was he doing with keys to a Chrysler car?”

“Because he was driving one that day. Had it parked by the loading dock.”

“What kind of car was it?”

“A Chrysler-made vehicle.”

“What kind of Chrysler-made vehicle?”

“Cost you a dollar.”

I fished another dollar out of my pocket and dropped it in his lap.

“It was a 1976 Plymouth. Station wagon.”

“Why was he driving that? Where was his Buick?”

“Cost you a dollar.”

I dropped another dollar in his lap. I had three dollars left.

“Buick was at the garage with a flat tire. He was going to make a delivery. The people who ordered the piece let him borrow their car.”

I dropped a dollar in his lap. “Who were the people?”

The television came to life. The screen glowed, and an excited voice roared, “And only three flex payments of forty-nine ninety-five, so order now! Order now!”

“Mr. Kinch, who were the people with the Plymouth station wagon?”

He flapped that twitching hand at me. “Get out of here. Maury’s on.” And on the huge screen appeared a middle-aged man with a stewardess’s grin and the eyes of an evangelist. Underneath in black letters I read WOMEN WHO MARRY DWARFS.

I stepped in front of the screen, leaned into his face, and said, “Who were the people with the station wagon?”

Mr. Kinch pushed at me with that spastic hand, leaned way to his left so he could see the screen, and hollered, “I don’t know. I never saw them.”

I dropped another dollar in his lap, leaned to my right, stared into his eyes, and hollered, “What was the piece? What did they order?”

Mr. Kinch frantically sat upright. “A chest, a big goddamn chest, like a pirate’s treasure chest.”

Mrs. Ogden was sitting in her recliner, a cigarette hanging out of her mouth and Cat nestled in her arms. She smiled at me. “He give you any trouble? I heard shouting.”

“Not much. He was upset that I was causing him to miss the start of something called The Maury Show.”

She smiled again. “How much?”

“Five dollars.”

She dipped into her sweat suit, pulled out a damp looking fistful of balled-up bills, and counted off five. “Every time I go near the sonofabitch it costs me six or seven dollars, but I get them back when I do the wash.”

I smiled sympathetically, eased Cat into her sling, and asked, “Do you remember any of the people who worked for Bob Kokar and your father? Any who are still around?”

Mrs. Ogden lit a fresh cigarette from the butt of her last one. “Cost you a dollar.”

I dug in my pocket, found a faded, wrinkled dollar, and dropped it in her smoldering ashtray. She grinned. “You’ll find C. C. Dorfman at the health club.”

I said, “Thank you,” and, as my dollar burst into flames, headed for the door.

There are two health clubs in town. The Muscle Stop, located in the old train station, and Blood Sweat and Black Iron, in the old town garage. I phoned The Muscle Stop, and an angry voice informed me that C. C. Dorfman owned Blood Sweat and Black Iron.

Thanks to a significant raise in taxes, the Public Works Department moved into a new garage four or five years ago, leaving a rundown building of gray cement and red brick. In a line along the front of the garage were four bay doors; stuck on the north end was an awkward looking two story barracks.

I pedaled across a gravel parking lot filled with pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles with tough sounding names and leaned the bike against the first bay door. A confused jumble of noise came from inside the building, and I thought I heard someone scream. I put Cat in her sling and walked through a small door built into the first bay door.

And confronted primordial grunting, cries of exertion, weights crashing and banging, and rock-and-roll music screaming from large loudspeakers hanging by clotheslines from steel beams high above my head. The thick, humid air smelled of dirty socks and pizza.

Perhaps thirty people were working the weights. Blood Sweat and Black Iron was just what it said. No treadmills, stairsteppers, or other modern exercise gizmos, just free weights, I-beams with cables, and crude looking devices with discs of black iron hanging on them.

I must have appeared lost and confused, which was accurate, for a short bald man dressed in billowing red pants strutted up to me. He was muscle on muscle, almost as thick as he was tall, and his eyes spoke his devotion. He stared a moment at Cat, who was hanging half out of the sling taking everything in, looked at me, and raised his eyebrows.

I bent down and yelled in his ear, “I’m looking for C. C. Dorfman.”

He pointed to the far end of the garage, gave Cat a last look, shook his head, and strutted back to a barbell with a massive amount of black iron hung on it.

Clutching Cat, I threaded my way through thousands of pounds of grunting, sweating, absurdly veined muscle to the other end of the garage and huddled in a corner, wondering which one of the mutated creatures might be C. C. Dorfman.

Finally I approached a man who was lying on a bench with a loaded barbell above his chest and hollered, “Are you C. C. Dorfman?”

He laughed. “Don’t very damn well think so,” he yelled. “Try the one with the tits.”

I looked to my left and saw a woman standing behind a barbell. She was my height, looked a young forty, and was dressed in drab gray spandex shorts and halter. Her brown hair was cut very short, and like everyone else in the place she was superbly muscled with veins like rope and her face was a lesson in angles and hollows.

As I watched, she stooped, picked up the bar — which had at least a hundred pounds hung on it — and pushed it from her chest to as far above her head as she could reach. She did this fifteen times, then dropped the weight on the floor and did a series of stretches.

I walked over, gave her my friendliest smile, and hollered, “Hello, my name is Harry Neal, could I talk with you for a moment?”

She gazed at me with placid, judging eyes, shrugged, and pointed to a small back door. I followed her out the door into a blissfully silent field of dead weeds and rocks.

Actually I walked, C. C. Dorfman strutted, her highly muscled hips undulating with a primitive sensuality that brought a silly, bemused smile to my face.

As she turned around, I whipped the smile off and said, “I’m a friend of Annie Kokar, and I’m trying to trace Bob’s movements on the day he had his stroke. I was talking to Philip Kinch and his daughter, and she said you were working at Kokar and Kinch that day.”

She gazed at me, gave Cat a long searching look, and nodded. “Whew, that brings back some memories. You saw Kinch? How is the old bastard? Sometimes when I have five or six dollars to spare I pay him a visit, but I haven’t been there in weeks. Frankly, he makes my ass tired.”

“I’m not sure how he is. He sits in the basement and seems fixated on something called The Maury Show. It cost me five dollars to talk to him. He says he has Parkinson’s. Do you remember the day Bob Kokar had his stroke?”

With long callused fingers she slid Cat out of the sling and ran her other hand over Cat’s body. “Car get her?”

I nodded. “Yes, it was touch and go for a bit, but Annie pulled her through. She’s pretty gimpy but manages.”

C. C. Dorfman nodded thoughtfully, squatted down, and laid Cat on her back in the weeds. She held Cat’s body with one hand, grasped her bad front leg with the other, and, as she slowly, gently pulled it forward, asked, “So what’s the interest in Bob’s last normal day?”

“He was carrying some keys with him. Before he died, he hinted to Annie that they might lead to something of value. And he was driving another person’s car, a 1976 Plymouth station wagon. Listen, what are you doing to Cat?”

Cat’s eyes had suddenly bulged and her purring turned to a drawn-out yowl. C. C. Dorfman now took both front legs and very slowly pulled them forward.

“She’s extremely stiff. She needs to be stretched out daily. It’ll reduce the scarring of the deep muscle tissue and increase her mobility. With increased mobility she’ll be able to build up the atrophied muscle, reduce her discomfort and pain, and lead a better life. So stop screwing around, she’s your responsibility, and you’re not doing the work. Once a day minimum, stretch her out. If you’re too damn lazy, give her to someone who will.”

She laced the fingers of both hands in Cat’s front and back legs and pulled. Cat yowled and looked at me with what I assumed to be pleading eyes. I put a hand on C. C. Dorfman’s extremely muscular back and said, “I want you to stop, you’re hurting her.”

She stopped, flowed to a standing position, and looked at me with eyes gone fierce. “Listen, turkey, I know what I’m doing. I did three years of vet school at UNH and two summers with a vet in Hanover before I quit. I quit because every time I had to put an animal down, I cried and got drunk. My liver and wallet couldn’t take it anymore. So don’t give me any crap, all right? I know what I’m doing.” And she squatted down and put Cat on her digital rack again.

I pulled a dollar out of my pocket and let it float down to the grass. “Do you remember that ’76 Plymouth wagon?”

She stopped torturing Cat, smiled, and tucked the dollar in her halter. Her chest was so muscular that the inside edges of her breasts were striated. “I put a big trunk into that car for Bob. He’d sold it to somebody, and when a tire on his Buick went flat, they lent him the station wagon. I was going to follow him to the person’s house and give him a ride back. But then his face melted along with a lot of good stuff in his head, and that was that.”

“So what happened to the car?”

She pressed her right thumb deep into Cat’s neck muscles. I stood above her, my eyes wandering over her amazing body, and waited. Finally she said, “You know, this is the first time I’ve thought about it. And I’ve got a dollar that says Philip never remembered it either, until now I mean. So the answer to your question is, ‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’ ”

She put Cat on her left side and dug her fingers into Cat’s scarred right shoulder. Cat was making noises that would break an executioner’s heart; to distract her I threw another dollar down. “What does C. C. stand for?”

She rolled Cat over and started torturing her other shoulder. “It’s not C. C., it’s CeeCee, that’s C-e-e, C-e-e, CeeCee.” She lifted Cat, placed her in the sling, and gently rubbed the top of her head with a knuckle. “Remember, Neal, once a day minimum. If you don’t, I’ll find out about it and hunt you down and turn you into a gelding.” And she not so gently rubbed the top of my head with several knuckles.

Gretchen’s Restaurant is located at the gloomy, litter-strewn end of an alley off Main Street. A bowl of her buck-a-bowl soup weighs about two pounds and keeps financially desperate senior citizens going until the green check comes. I spend a lot of time in Gretchen’s, usually sitting alone in a booth that seats six, drinking wine or coffee and on occasion actually buying something to eat.

Gretchen is my age, has never ventured farther than Concord, thirty miles to the south, and could not care less about the human comedy outside the town limits. She does, however, know just about everything about the never-ending comedy outside her door.

I pushed open the heavy, peeling door with the front tire and rolled my bike down the narrow room to the back wall. It was fairly cold out, and the big potbellied stove was spewing out heat and wisps of birch-scented smoke that mixed with the aromas of chicken curry and good coffee.

I leaned the bike against the wall, put Cat in her sling, and, instead of taking the rear booth, walked to the counter and sat down next to the only person who knows more about the townspeople than Gretchen.

Betty Worthen, all hundred and sixty-some-odd pounds of her, is the only policewoman in town. She started out as, and still is, a meter maid; any arrests she makes are on foot and are the result of her own private investigations or an occasional push from a local. Betty and I owe each other some fairly significant favors and generally tolerate each other’s numerous flaws.

Cat struggled out of the sling onto the counter and poked her nose in Betty’s cup. After a few tentative sniffs she bent her head and lapped up coffee spiked with five or six teaspoons of sugar. Then she licked her nose and limped down the counter to check out what the other patrons had in front of them.

I stirred Betty’s coffee with my finger just to watch her round face break into a grin, ordered my own coffee from one of Gretchen’s geriatric waitresses, and said, “Were you around the day Bob Kokar had his stroke?”

Betty stared at her coffee a moment, then drank. “I was fresh out of the police academy, had just kicked my husband and son out of the house, and generally thought I was a hot ticket because I was single again and running around with a revolver on my hip and putting parking tickets on people’s windshields. It was Kokar’s stroke that brought me back to earth. I was the first official type to get to the store. I heard crying and ran into the back and there’s old Philip Kinch and CeeCee Dorfman on the floor holding Kokar. His face had sagged like warm taffy, and he stared up at me with the eyes of a gutshot doe. I was about as helpful as Philip and generally stood around with my thumb up my butt watching him drool.”

I pulled out the keys, laid them on the counter, and gave Betty the short version of what I’d been doing.

She moved the keys around with a finger, gave me a side-eyed look, and said, “Glad to hear of your reprieve. I was worried about you living in Teller’s Hotel, sitting in one of those musty old rooms drinking yourself to death. I’d feel just a little guilty because I was the one who arrested Duncan, thanks to you.

“As for that station wagon, I can’t do anything for you. There’d be no reason for the DMV to keep any records this long, so where would I start? If I were you, I’d ask Philip where the store records are. Maybe you’ll get lucky and they’re still around. Then you can hunt up the bill of sale for that chest and find out who bought it. Odds are, they’re the ones who came down and drove off in that wagon with it.”

As I coasted into the barnyard, I noticed that Annie’s kitchen window was open. I pulled up to the house, leaned against the window, and said to Annie’s back, “Did Bob ever mention a chest he sold that day?”

Annie jerked and dropped a cast-iron skillet on the floor. She stepped over the skillet, which was oozing gray, thick liquid, and said, “Next time knock. A chest? I don’t believe so. Is it important?”

“That day, the day of his first stroke, he was going to deliver a chest to someone. Apparently it resembled the classic treasure chest. His Buick had a flat tire, so the someone lent him a car. It was a ’76 Plymouth station wagon.”

She frowned. “So the Chrysler keys are to the station wagon, and the smaller key could be to the chest. Which means he was babbling when he said they were the keys to my dream. What he might have meant was that he had a key to a chest like a hope chest.”

“Possibly,” I said. “There are still a couple of things I’m going to check on, but I wouldn’t count on going to Key West next winter.”

“I won’t plan on it.” She stared at me a moment, gave me a thin smile, and said, “You’ve got a bit of a gleam in your eye.”

“Your reprieve has swept the acidic fog from my mind and replaced it with mild euphoria.”

She nodded and got down on her hands and knees to clean up the mess on the floor. “Well, Harry, as I said, you’ve been good to The Farm, and after a bit of rational thought I realized it would be ludicrous to punish you for doing what you thought was right.”

I watched her a moment. “What I’ve been wondering is, did you really come to that decision yesterday? Or did you plan on letting me stay weeks ago and allow me to suffer for a while as punishment?”

She slowly raised her head and gave me a heavy-lidded look and a smile that would curdle icewater. We stared at each other for several seconds; then she bent her head to her task, and I left the window and pedaled to the boat.

After supper I spent an hour or so unpacking, then, with Cat snuggled in my lap, sat in the settee with a mug of wine and looked out the window at the grove.

My grove.

After breakfast the next morning I finished unpacking and decided to start Cat on her daily stretches. CeeCee Dorfman was undoubtedly right. I spend twenty or thirty minutes a day stretching, and it made sense that Cat, as handicapped as she was, would also benefit from a daily workout.

I put her on her back in the middle of the cabin, gently took her front legs and pulled them over her head. She yowled, struggled to her feet, gave me a shocked look and a squeaky little hiss.

I petted her for a bit, massaged her scar tissue, and tried again. As soon as I started pulling on her legs, she yeowled, lurched to her feet, and paw raised, claws extended, gave that squeaky little hiss and limped into her nest under the cockpit.

Apparently my technique was just a tad off.

I spent ten minutes on my hands and knees with my head in the berth staring into Cat’s dilated eyes and spewing forth a lot of pleading nonsense. Finally I reestablished a semblance of trust, got her bundled up in the trailer, and headed to town. I didn’t want to play Talking for Dollars with Philip Kinch again, so I pedaled to Blood Sweat and Black Iron.

The parking lot was empty except for a rust-spotted maroon van with a black iron weight painted on the driver’s door. I leaned the bike against crumbling brick, put Cat in her sling, and pulled on the small door built into the first bay door.

It was locked. I stood there a moment, looked at the van, then slapped the door several times with the flat of my hand. I waited a few moments, then smacked it again.

The door opened suddenly, and CeeCee Dorfman said, “The door to my apartment is around back, up the stairway.”

She was dressed in jeans and a tight yellow T-shirt and was barefoot and braless. She also looked pale, bleary-eyed, and not exactly delighted to see me. I pasted a smile on my face. “I apologize. Am I interrupting something or may I come in?”

She gave Cat a quick knuckle rub and stepped back. “Come on up. I’ll spot you a cup of coffee and a glass of CeeCee Dorfman’s Magic Stuff.”

I followed her into the garage, through a silent dark forest of black iron to an open red door marked PRIVATE in white letters. We climbed narrow stairs, turned right, and entered a large room that was half kitchen, half living room.

The kitchen part was dominated by a commercial gas stove with eight burners and a large grill. She pointed at an unpainted picnic table squatting in front of the stove, and I pulled out a bench and perched on it. Cat immediately hauled herself out of the sling, climbed on the table, sat by a restaurant napkin holder, and stared at CeeCee Dorfman.

CeeCee gave me a mug of steaming coffee and set an empty glass next to it. From a large blender she poured a thick purple liquid into the glass. “My Magic Stuff. One quart would keep half a Mongol horde raping and pillaging for a week.” She sat next to me, smiled, and said, “So why the visit? You want to join up? Become a bodybuilder? Or do you just want to hang around and stare at my boobs?”

“I’m too old for the former and too reserved for the latter. I came to see you for two reasons. One, I’d like to hire you to stretch and massage Cat. This morning I tried and hurt her, and she got mad at me. If l keep it up, I’ll lose her trust. I also want to ask you if you happen to know what happened to Kinch and Kokar’s records, especially the bills of sale.”

She plucked Cat off the table and scratched her cars. “You’re still dogging that car?”

“Not compulsively, not like you dog weights. But I would like to find out who bought the chest. Perhaps they can shed light on Annie’s puzzle.”

She pursed her lips and nodded. I tried her Magic Stuff. It was thick, smelled like vanilla, and tasted like overripe bananas and malt. I took several gulps and followed it with a few sips of excellent coffee.

“Actually, I do know where K and K’s papers might be. After Bob stroked, Philip just barely hung on. Bob was the businessman and kept everything going. Philip was the salesman, liked to gab with the customers and couldn’t care less about the rest of it. After Bob had his second stroke and it was obvious he was heading out, we had a going-out-of-business sale and then Philip sold the building to the Catholic Church.”

“And the Catholics turned it into a center for senior citizens.”

“That they did, but originally, before it was K and K Furniture, it was Osborn’s Restaurant. From what Bob said, the place was very popular for several years; then Mrs. Osborn was diagnosed with cervical cancer, fought the good fight, and croaked. Mr. Osborn was devastated, sold the place to Bob and Philip for a song, and the rest you know.”

“So where are the records?”

With a small, twisted smile on her face she stared at me. When I didn’t say anything, she tapped me lightly in the middle of my forehead and whispered. “Turn on your lights, Neal, or is your battery getting low?”

I finished the Magic Stuff. “The records are still in the building.”

“They may still be in the building, down in the basement, in the old walk-in cooler. After Bob had his stroke, I did all the bookkeeping, and when the joint was sold, I gave copies of everything to the tax people and the state. But if the nuns didn’t hoe the place out, the original paper is still there.”

“You don’t remember any bill of sale for that chest?”

“It probably crossed the desk, but it wouldn’t have rung any bells. As for Cat, I’ll do her four times a week. In return I’d like you to join Blood Sweat and Black Iron for a year. I’ll only charge you half, three hundred.”

“Surely you jest.”

“I jest not, and don’t call me Shirley.”

“I’m sixty-three. Your proposition is ludicrous.”

She smiled, shrugged, and said, “You’re a very good sixty-three, and after a year doing weights you’d be a fabulous sixty-four, but it’s your choice. I don’t open the place until two. Bring Cat by any morning. I’ll charge you a pound of coffee for four sessions a week.”

“Thank you.” I reached for Cat. “I’m going to go to the senior center and peek into that walk-in.”

“Leave Cat here. As soon as I gulp down some more caffeine, I’ll stretch her out. But I gotta do the caffeine first. I was up until three watching a Xena festival on cable.”

“A Xena festival?”

“Xena, the kick-butt warrior princess, you dolt. She’s my role model.”

With Cat gripped in CeeCee Dorfman’s thick arms, I left. Cat wasn’t happy with the situation, and I could hear plaintive meows as I closed the door and headed down the outside stairway. Halfway down I turned around, went back up, opened the door, and said, “Don’t give her any milk or cream; it wreaks havoc with her digestive system.”

CeeCee Dorfman looked up from petting Cat and smiled. “Got it. No cream. No milk. See ya later.”

Again I started downstairs and again turned around, went back up, and opened the door. But before I could speak, CeeCee pointed a finger at me. “Neal, get a grip and get out.”

After stopping briefly at Kreb’s Hardware, I pedaled to the senior center. The parishioners were obviously putting their drachmas somewhere besides the collection box, for the center needed paint and more than a few new clapboards. The parking lot looked like a tank platoon had been using it for maneuvers, and I didn’t see anyplace to lock my bicycle.

I pushed bike and trailer up two wood steps, pulled open one of the big entrance doors, and managed to get everything inside without damage or mishap. I stood in a wide, short hall and looked into a room the approximate size of a high school basketball court.

People were milling about or sitting in a strange collection of recliners and easy chairs, reading. A sizable group was seated in a semicircle around a big television set watching a movie. The movie was in black and white, and all the men wore suits and hats and all the women were smiling.

Outside of a nun dressed in traditional garb I was probably the youngest person in the building. I leaned the bike against the inside wall and strolled into the main room. Trying to look Catholic and casual, I scanned the place for a likely looking door to the basement.

To my left was an island of overstuffed chairs and a couch. Most of the chairs were filled with shapeless, doughy-faced people with white hair, and most of them were sleeping. And sitting on the sunken, torn, leather couch, her arm around a sobbing woman with very thin white hair, was Mildred Beede.

She saw me and gestured, so I walked over to the couch and raised my eyebrows.

She nodded at the sobbing woman beside her. “I’m a volunteer. Twice a week I drive in and help Sister Marie run the center. This place is open to all seniors, and they’re short-handed and welcome any help they can get, even from an old Baptist like me.”

Her smile pushed her crinkled face into an overlapping series of semicircles. “The real surprise is seeing you. What game induces you to enter this Christian stronghold?”

“I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d drop in. I must have passed this place a million times and I...”

“Harry Neal, a Catholic-run senior center is the last place on earth you would visit voluntarily, so please don’t insult what little intelligence I still possess by feeding me one of your I-just-happened-to lines.”

“Well, I will admit to a certain mercenary bent to my visit.”

The sobbing woman patted Mildred’s hand, mumbled, “Thank you,” gave me a wet, red-eyed glance, and shuffled away. Mildred slumped against the back of the couch, sighed, and said, “Life is truly a harsh mistress, Harry.”

“To quote Annie misquoting Thomas Hobbes. ‘Life is nasty, brutal, and short.’ He wasn’t, but he could have been referring to the winter of one’s life.”

Mildred sighed again. “A certain mercenary bent?”

“In the basement of this building is an old walk-in cooler. It’s possible that some records I would like to look at are still in that cooler.”

Mildred stared at me a moment, then snorted. “I suspect, Harry, that you will have a lot to answer for when you are dragged before the gods.” She dug a clawlike hand into my shoulder for support and stood. “Why don’t I show you where the bathrooms are? By coincidence the basement door is just a few steps beyond the men’s room.”

Side by side, we strolled across the room, weaving through a mixed bag of men and women for whom sixty was young. As I glanced at them, a sharp-edged stone of gloom grew in my consciousness. A few scant years up the road and I might be slumped in one of those recliners drooling on my shirt.

We came to a wood door that appeared to have trench foot. Mildred opened it and motioned me into a dim hall cluttered with stacks of folding chairs, card tables, and two broken couches. She pointed to the end of the hall and whispered, “The key is above the door, the walk-in is near the front, on the north side. But don’t get your hopes up. The basement has always been empty ’cause of all the water.” She went back into the main room.

I walked down to the end of the hall and stood in front of a peeling, dirt-streaked door. I ran my hand along the sill and found a skeleton key much like the one on Bob Kokar’s key ring. I unlocked the door, turned the rusty knob, and fumbled for the light switch.

I went down solid, dirty stairs into a large cement room and walked along the north wall toward the front of the building. Except for a rumbling, foul-smelling furnace and several stagnant pools of black water, the basement was empty. Near the front, cm-bedded in the cement block wall, was a thick, wood-faced door with a large metal handle.

I gripped the handle and yanked. Groaning like a sick animal, the big door opened, and I looked into a musty, foul-smelling blackness that spoke of mold, fungus, and dangerous microbes. I found a light switch, and an encrusted twenty-five watt bulb revealed a small filthy room with wet and corroded metal walls and a damp looking wood floor.

Taking a deep breath, I carefully stepped in and immediately punched through the wood, going ankle deep before hitting cement slab. I took another step and punched through again. With both feet through the wood I squinted and looked around the room.

Except for a row of dirt-covered metal boxes stacked two high, the walk-in was empty.

Breaking through the wood floor with each step, I struggled to the boxes. I put on my Wal-Mart reading glasses and pulled out my brand-new overpriced penlight. Turning it on, I knelt and squinted at the faded labels in metal slots in the middle of each box.

Barely discernible in neat, hand-printed letters was the name Kinch and Kokar, and below the name was a date. Each box seemed to hold a year’s worth of paper. Crabbing along, I scrolled through the years until I came to a rusted box that should have contained paper from that fateful day.

Pulling it off the stack, I lugged it out of the walk-in and headed for the dank halo of light created by a lone bulb hanging over the furnace. Halfway across the floor the bottom of the box gave way, and forty pounds of paper fell on my feet.

I sat on the floor next to the mess and held my toes while contemplating the infinite number of things I’d rather be doing. When the pain subsided to a tolerable level, I got on my knees and started pawing through the stuff.

Another year and it would have been too late. The bulk of the papers were black with mold and had a damp, clammy feel. Several thick bundles were stuck together, and when I attempted to peel them apart, they turned to mush in my hands. Kneeling on the wet cement floor I went through what papers I could salvage. It was like working an archaeological dig — ever so carefully leasing apart moldy, moist paper and peering at faded scribbles.

I got lucky.

I threw what remained of the box and the rotting piles of paper back into the walk-in, slammed the door, and made my way back to the big room upstairs.

Surrounded by snoring elders, Mildred was sitting alone on the couch reading last Tuesday’s Boston Globe. I sat beside her, and she looked at me, smiled, pulled a lace-trimmed handkerchief out of her dress pocket, and wiped my face. “So, Harry, was your trip to the dungeon successful?”

“Would you happen to know an Elinor Obermeyer?”

Her face turned stern, and her voice was suddenly rimmed with flint “Harry Neal, Elinor Obermeyer is a kind woman who is as innocent now as she was the day she was born. She and Mill are one of the nicest couples I know.”

“All I asked was, do you know her.”

“And I know you, Harry. You’re up to something. You’re on the scent. The only thing Elinor and Milt have ever done is be nice, so leave them alone.”

I stared at her a moment. “And just what is it that qualifies Elinor and Mill for sainthood?”

“Don’t be flip with me, Harry. I didn’t say they were saints, I simply stated that they were nice people. They’ve had their share of troubles over the years and don’t need an old ferret like you to come sniffing around their burrow.”

“What kind of troubles?”

“Well, quite a few years ago Elinor’s brother was killed in a car accident in Connecticut just a week after he moved there. I had attended a going-away party she and Milt held for him. He was a professor at the college and had gotten a nice offer from a Connecticut university. Elinor was devastated.

“And they’re in poor health. Sometimes I used to see them around town or having lunch at Gretchen’s, and I sometimes see her at church, but not lately, she finds it so hard to move around. They’re both quite... overweight and frail.”

“You, in church? I thought you were a backsliding Baptist.”

“I am. And I’m here to tell you the services can be more than a trifle irritating. It’s hard to understand how adults can believe that stuff. It’s what’s after the services that I sometimes enjoy. The coffee and doughnuts in the church basement. I get to talk and mingle with people, and I’ve made some new friends by my hypocrisy.”

“I don’t think you could be labeled a hypocrite, Mildred, just a bit devious.” I stood, touched her shoulder, and said, “Thanks for your help. Without it I’d still be wandering around looking for the basement door.”

“Buy me a drink sometime and tell me what you’re up to. Your forays into other people’s lives are more interesting than coffee and doughnuts in a church basement. And do leave the Obermeyers alone.”

I pounded on CeeCee Dorfman’s door, heard her yell, and walked in. She was reclining on a battered futon with Cat stretched out on her stomach, watching television. Cat looked up, opened her mouth, licked her gums, and limped toward me. I took the sling off the picnic table, put it on, and picked her up. She opened her mouth and licked her gums several times, then pawed at my chest and slithered into the sling.

CeeCee Dorfman was watching a tape of a superbly muscled black woman dressed in a white bikini lecturing on nutritional supplements. I watched a moment, then said, “Do you happen to remember Elinor and Milt Obermeyer?”

Without looking up she said, “Sure, nice old couple, both about forty pounds overweight and haven’t got a muscle between them. When K and K was open, they bought a bunch of stuff. Spent a ton of money. Actually I think it was Rabart’s money.”

“They also bought that chest you put in the station wagon the day of Bob Kokar’s stroke,” I said. Cat kept opening her mouth and licking her chops. I watched her a moment. “Who’s Rabart? And what did you do to Cat’s mouth?”

“Rabart is — was Elinor’s brother. He was killed in a car accident in Connecticut. It’s his house that Milt and Elinor live in. It’s now their house, of course. They bought a lot of furniture for it.”

She stopped talking and focused on the woman, who was flexing her arms and chattering on about proteins. “Cat?” I prompted.

She aimed a remote at the television, which went black.

“I brushed her teeth. It should be done at least three times a week.” She flowed off the futon, picked a bag off the picnic table, and waved it at me. “This is her food from now on. Feed her this and only this. No table scraps, no human tuna, no crap.”

“You brushed her teeth?”

She plucked a toothbrush out of the kitchen sink. “Three times a week. And don’t use any fancy toothpaste, just basic stuff. If you don’t want to do it, I’ll do it when you bring her here. Any morning. But make it before two, that’s when I open up.”

At the sight of the toothbrush Cat slid out of the sling, hit the floor, and, moving faster than I’d ever seen her move, hobbled over to the stove and crawled under it. I stared at the stove, gave CeeCee my tough look, which made her grin, and said, “You brushed her teeth?”

I leaned the bike against the back wall and sat in the last booth. Cat pulled herself out of the sling, perched by the napkin holder, and stared at Gretchen. The place was as quiet as a foggy night, with just the gentle whisper of gray voices mingled with an occasional clink of spoon on bowl.

Gretchen put a chilled mug and a carafe of red wine on the table and slid into the opposite seat. As I poured the wine, she pulled a long pink cigarette out of her pocket and lit it with a hissing lighter. She blew smoke past my right shoulder and pulled a piece of beef out of her other pocket.

CeeCee Dorfman’s stinging lecture on why cats should have their teeth brushed and why they should never eat table scraps still hummed in my brain, but I couldn’t break up what had become a cherished ritual and told myself that just these times with Gretchen would be okay.

Cat pounced on the beef, shook it, dropped it, and attacked it again before dragging it to the napkin holder, where she put her good front paw on it and looked around the room with narrowed eyes. As she always did, Gretchen smiled and gently pulled Cat’s good ear. I drank, set my mug down, and asked, “How well do you know the Obermeyers?”

“Milt and Elinor? Pretty good. They used ta come in here all the time when they were stronger.”

“I know a woman who thinks they’re candidates for sainthood.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Nice is the word for them. Always polite, always inquiring after your health and such, and anyone will tell you what nice damn people they are. But the tiling I noticed was, someone else always seemed to pay their way, usually her brother Gordon. When he died down in Connecticut, they got his money and the house, so I guess he’s still paying.”

“Gordon Rabart,” I said.

“Yep. Milt worked for a bit at Kreb’s Hardware back when it was Mill’s Hardware. And Peter Mill used ta call him Flash Obermeyer ’cause Milt moved about as fast as your average snail. But he didn’t last but five or six years. I guess it was easier ta live off of Rabart. As far as I know, Elinor never worked a day in her life.”

“So they always lived in Rabart’s house.”

“Yep. Milt sure didn’t make enough working at Mill’s to keep a house and all that.”

“Rabart paid their way?”

“Yep.”

“Then he got killed.”

“Yep.”

“And then it was Milt and Elinor’s house.”

“Yep, along with a bunch of dollars. Gordon Rabart was an economics professor and practiced what he preached. Rumor had it he made a fair dollar playing the market.”

I pedaled through a cold light rain to The Farm. The wide, knobby tires made a muted hissing sound that lulled me into a trance and the trip seemed short, but when I reached the boat, it was dark and I was cold and irritated.

I got a fire going, fixed myself a plate of stir-fries, and washed them down with a half bottle of Lancers. By the time I finished eating, Cat was giving me meaningful looks and batting her bowl around the floor. So I opened up a box of CeeCee Dorfman’s special food, poured some in Cat’s bowl, and held my breath.

Cat sniffed at the stuff, which looked like large mouse turds, looked at me, sniffed again, and hunkered down and ate with gusto. Relieved, I poured another mug of Lancers, settled back in the settee, and thought about keys and chests and Gordon Rabart.

Wrapped in a maroon Gore-Tex rain suit, and with the trailer’s canvas hood zipped up, I pedaled through a driving rain to town. By the time I reached the common my system was begging for hot caffeine, but discipline prevailed and I locked the bike to a steel railing, put the rain suit in the trailer, and slipped Cat inside my sweat jacket. Head bent into the rain, I trotted across a wide brick walk to the college library.

Fortunately, the front desk was manned by an inattentive coed chatting on the phone. Acting calm and casual I strolled by the desk and ducked into the reference stacks. Slinking from aisle to aisle like a hunted rabbit, I circled around the reference desk, which was manned with manic intensity by one Gloria Somerville, an excellent researcher but hell on illiterate felines.

Safely past Reference, I skulked across two open aisles and, without knocking, burst through a door marked DR. JEREMY HANSON, STUDENT GUIDANCE COUNSELOR.

Before I dropped out of the world, I was a card-carrying member of the college faculty, and Jeremy and I often refought wars, censured world leaders, and reformed the planet while drinking large quantities of cheap wine.

When I burst through his door, his head jerked up from a computer screen. Me looked at my dripping face and grinned. “Ah, ’tis Professor Neal seeking refuge from his quixotic ventures, obviously ready to humble himself and slather his mentor with profuse apologies for being such an existential ass.”

Jeremy is a year older than me, looks it, and would have achieved greatness if not blocked by numerous dysfunctions, one of which is a fondness for Johnny Walker Red. I sat in the one chair across from his tiny desk, nodded at his computer, and asked, “Can you get the University of Connecticut on that thing?”

Still smiling, he turned back to the screen, tapped on his keyboard for maybe twenty seconds, sat back, and said, “Now what?”

“Seventeen years ago Gordon Rabart, professor of economics, quit his post here for a job at UConn. A week after he arrived, he was killed in an auto accident. I’m curious about what, if anything, they might have on record.”

Jeremy’s eyebrows rose as his smile faded. He rubbed his face and said softly, “I remember, I went to his going-away party. When I tried to leave with a bottle of champagne, Elinor, his sister, waylaid me and made me return the bottle. The bitch.”

He turned to the computer and for the next fifteen minutes either tapped away or watched lines of type scroll up the screen. Finally he went “Aha,” leaned back with his hands behind his head, and watched the screen.

Then, his face an empty mask, he turned to me and in a near whisper said, “According to Dr. Franklin Shaw, who has been in the UConn economics department for twenty-two years, Dr. Gordon Rabart never showed up for faculty indoctrination — his sister called and said he was killed in an auto accident just outside his hometown in central New Hampshire.”

“Interesting.”

“Yes, very. I must say, Harry, that is one damp and seedy looking cat you have there.”

I looked down. Cat had stuck her scarred head out of the jacket and was checking out the office. I stood. “Thank you, Jeremy, I appreciate your time.”

“Harry, think back to those golden days of yesteryear and remember the good times we had. And now if we tip the glass once a year I consider it lucky. We’re friends, Harry. Just because you turned left at life’s fork doesn’t mean you have to forfeit your friends.”

CeeCee Dorfman, dressed in threadbare jeans and a tight white sweatshirt with large red hands printed over her breasts, opened the door. “Come in out of the rain, Neal, before you get a terminal case of Wet Brain.”

I dropped my coat on the floor under the picnic table and sat down, put fifty dollars on the table, and said, “This is for the food and therapy. When you want more, let me know.”

She shrugged, put a cup of coffee and an empty glass in front of me, filled the glass with Magic Stuff from the ever-present blender, grabbed Cat, and hauled her out of the sling. With a piece of towel she rubbed her down, then pried open her mouth and smelled her breath. “I’ll be damned. You’re actually feeding her the food I gave you.”

“Of course. Miss Dorfman, would you mind if I left Cat with you for a while? I have a few things I’d like to do, and it would be easier if Cat weren’t along.”

CeeCee nodded. “No problem. I’ll give her her workout and feed her a dish of the Good Stuff, and then we’ll lie back and watch a couple of hours of Xena, butt-kicking warrior princess. And if you ever call me Miss Dorfman again, I’ll kick you in the cahunas.”

“This Xena is on all day?”

“I have a bunch of Xena tapes.”

“Why don’t you turn off the television and live your own adventures?”

“Why don’t you piss up a rope?”

With Miss Dorfman’s Magic Stuff gurgling in my stomach I pushed open the door to Gretchen’s, walked the creaking floor to the hack, and leaned the hike against the wall. As I walked back to the front door, I smiled at Gretchen and said, “I’ll pick it up later.” She waved a greasy spatula at me and nodded.

Milt and Elinor Obermeyer had inherited a large Victorian house complete with turrets and wraparound porch. The muted shades of brown looked like they had been brushed on yesterday, and the flagstone walk was a study in spatial relations. A blacktop driveway ended at the back of the house, and parked just beyond the porch was a new looking Plymouth Caravan.

I walked across the porch and pushed a gold button to the left of the oak door. After a few moments I pushed the button again, wailed a decent interval, then beat the door with the butt of my hand. Finally the door swung inward a few inches, and a white head peeked around the edge just above the knob.

Elinor Obermeyer’s face was round and pink and marred by thick horn-rimmed glasses. Her cap of curly white hair looked like it had been carved by a very good artisan, and the rings on the fingers gripping the edge of the door could keep Cat in sushi for all of her mythical nine lives.

I bobbed my head, smiled my best smile, and said, “Mrs. Obermeyer? My name is Harry Neal. I wonder if I may speak to you and your husband for a few moments. It pertains to the 1976 Plymouth station wagon you used to own.”

Her eyes widened behind the thick lenses. She stared at me a few moments, then opened the door and straightened up. “Why, that vehicle was wrecked years ago. What possible interest could it have for you, Mr. Neal?”

“Well, it’s a rather odd story involving Kinch and Kokar Furniture and the chest you bought from them.”

That got me another minute of silent appraisal. Finally she cleared her throat and said softly, “I sec. Well, perhaps you’d better come in.” She turned and with a shuffling waddle led me into the house. “Would you care for a cup of tea? Or perhaps a glass of sherry?”

“A glass of sherry would be nice,” I said.

I slowly followed her through a music room dominated by a grand piano and three loveseats, past a curving staircase, and through an arched portal into a large, opulent living room. To the right, beyond the living room, was a formal dining room. Elinor motioned toward a pale blue wing chair by the fireplace.

She wore a full length dress of subdued red that swished when she walked. I sat, hoping to hell I didn’t have any bicycle grease on my pants, and accepted the small glass of sherry she held out to me.

She swished over to a white couch with blue flowers embroidered on it, and sat down. “Milton is taking his bath, and as he is just getting over a bad cold, I don’t want to rush him. Now, you say you are here about our old station wagon and a chest we bought?”

I took a minuscule sip of the sherry. “The day you purchased the chest from Kinch and Kokar, Bob Kokar’s car was in the garage, and you lent him your station wagon so he could deliver the chest to this residence. Before he could do so, however, he suffered a stroke and was taken to the hospital. Because of the crisis the station wagon was forgotten.” I took another sip of my sherry and stared unsmiling at Elinor.

Pulling at the fabric of her dress with hands mottled with brown and purple splotches, she stared wide-eyed at me. Finally, in a low voice she said, “The chest was a present for my late brother Cordon. He was moving to Connecticut the next morning. When Mr. Kokar failed to deliver the chest by late afternoon, I called the store and learned of his accident. I walked to the store and retrieved the car and the chest and drove home. Gordon packed the chest and early the next morning drove down to the University of Connecticut.”

“And a week later died in a car accident.”

Her eyes glistened behind the glasses. She nodded slowly, “Yes. We — we couldn’t believe it. Even now, Mr. Neal, after all these years, I still can’t comprehend what happened. It was devastating.”

“And he was driving the station wagon when he had the accident?”

She nodded slowly again. “Yes, even at the time it was an old vehicle, but Gordon said it was still very functional and wouldn’t trade it in. When the Connecticut police called, they said he went off the road during a heavy rain and hit a tree. They said he probably died instantly. May I inquire why you are asking questions after all these years?”

“Bob Kokar’s wife Annie recently discovered the set of car keys you gave him. They were lying in a drawer, forgotten all this time. She remembered that Bob had mentioned leaving his coat in the car. It was one she had given him on their fortieth anniversary, and she asked me to seek you out and inquire after the car on the very slim chance the coat could be located. Apparently it was a strong symbol of their love.” I pasted a smarmy smile on my face, downed the sherry, and wished for more. Lying is thirsty work.

Her pink, flaccid face molded into her version of a sympathetic look. “I don’t remember any coat. I think Gordon would have mentioned finding it, and surely he would have found it while packing the car.”

I stood and placed my glass on the small table beside her. “I’m sure you’re right, Mrs. Obermeyer. Annie undoubtedly has it tucked away somewhere, like the keys to Gordon’s station wagon. Someday she’ll clean out a closet and there it will be. I’m sorry to have awakened such unpleasant memories.”

She struggled to her feet. “Don’t fret, Mr. Neal. There is not a day goes by that I don’t think of dear Gordon. And I’m sure you’re right, someday Mrs. Kokar will find that coat hidden in the back of a closet and she will have fond memories to dwell on.”

“Thank you for your time and say hello to your husband for me.”

She beamed at me. “It was no trouble at all, Mr. Neal. You may see yourself out, it’s getting to be quite a trek to the front door.”

I nodded, smiled like an idiot, said, “Thank you,” one more time, and headed for the door.

I stopped at the door, took three quick steps backward, and looked toward the living room. Elinor was shuffling through the dining room toward the rear of the house. I opened the front door, closed it hard, and hurried to the stairs. With one hand clamped on the polished oak banister, I watched Elinor disappear through a swinging door, presumably into the kitchen.

Probably looking like a cartoon version of a burglar, I darted through the living room into the dining room and hurried through the dining room to an open doorway into a short hall painted gloss-white. Across from a wall phone was a door. Clenching my teeth, I slowly turned the knob, pulled it open, and stared at shelves of what I assumed to be The Good China. I closed the door, crept to the other end of the hall, and put an ear to a door with at least five coats of high-gloss white paint on it.

Hearing nothing, I eased the door open and entered a pantry crowded with condiments, a toaster, a coffeemaker, two other doors, and silence. I could hear water running and Elinor humming a tuneless ditty on the other side of the left-hand door. With infinite caution I turned the knob of the right-hand door, inch by inch eased it open, and stared down a flight of steep, dirty stairs.

Trembling like a veteran wino, I pulled the key ring out of my pocket and tried to get the skeleton key into the damned keyhole. I finally made it, took a deep breath, and tried the key.

It wouldn’t turn.

Jamming the key ring back in my pocket, I retraced my steps as fast as I dared. Quick-walking into the music room, I grabbed the gleaming banister and, taking them three at a time, lurched up the stairs. At the top I stepped onto lush pale gray carpeting and looked down a long hallway with cream-colored wallpaper and numerous doorways. I took a deep breath, and started down the hall. Looking into the first doorway on my left I saw a large bedroom with a huge canopied bed and about ninety square yards of pink.

Across the hall was a smaller bedroom with a single brass bed, a dark bureau, a gray wing chair, and two end tables cluttered with magazines. I turned, heard a coughing, grunting noise, and jumped into the pink bedroom.

Mumbling and snorting like an old bear shuffling through a cornfield, someone came up the hallway, hesitated, then walked into the bedroom across the hall. Blinking sweat out of my eyes, I peeked around the doorjamb and stared at the wide back of an old man with a fat, bulbous neck and a frizzy band of gray hair over his ears. He wore a red and white striped bathrobe and was methodically placing soap dish, razor, and other pieces of bath paraphernalia on top of the bureau.

My eyes nailed to the man’s neck, I stepped out of the pink bedroom and, taking giant strides on tiptoe, got the hell down the hall.

I scooted past a bathroom with a black and white checkerboard floor, wafting out moist fumes of aftershave, and crept down three stairs to a closed door. I opened the door and looked into a small, square bedroom in which all the furniture was covered with sheets. I closed the door and started down the hall again, stopped, and went back and entered the room.

I carefully closed the door, crept between two single beds, and faced two doors very close together.

Behind the first door was an empty closet. I opened the second and looked up narrow, dusty stairs. Taking the key ring out of my pocket, I fumbled the skeleton key into the lock and turned it. As I did so, a thick steel bolt slid out of the door and with a soft snick locked in place. I almost giggled.

The attic was a dark, musty confusion of still shadows and primitive silence. One small window cast a murky shaft of light down a narrow aisle between stacks of boxes and trunks. In slow motion, every creak of the sagging floorboards sounding like a gunshot, I made my way down the aisle to the dust-caked window and scratched at the encrusted glass with a fingernail.

Well beyond a back yard layered with last fall’s leaves, the roof of a shed or garage peeked over the top of a thick nest of spindly maples and high brush that hadn’t been trimmed since Hector was a pup.

It would have taken twenty minutes with a putty knife to scrape off the encrusted grime on the window. I gave up on the idea of more sunlight and pulled out my overpriced penlight.

Crawling down the aisle on my hands and knees, I examined the trunks. At the end of the aisle, near the stairs, I found a wall of boxes stacked four high, lifted sheets, and peered at old leather chairs, a desk, and a dried-up leather sofa.

Apparently the Obermeyers didn’t care for Gordon’s taste in furniture.

I finally found it tucked in a dark corner covered by a gray wool blanket and surrounded by boxes full of plain, functional china and several decades’ worth of The Journal of Applied Economics.

And it did indeed look like the movie version of a pirate’s treasure chest except it was perhaps twice as large and the brass trim looked suspiciously like aluminum. Every move carefully choreographed, I cleared a path through the boxes and, teeth clenched, slowly, ever so slowly, moved the chest away from the corner timbers.

Again I pulled out the key ring, wiped the sweat off my face, and with a fairly steady hand inserted the brass key into the chest.

It turned easily. The penlight between my teeth, I lifted the domed lid until it was fully open and resting on the large hinges.

It was stained and mottled black, probably from fats and fluids and perhaps fungus, and it fell apart at my touch. But there was enough of the original to make out some of the letters. Gordon Rabart had died with his new University of Connecticut sweatshirt on.

I looked down at the jumble of clothes and bones, took a deep breath, and with one finger started poking and pulling at the clothing and pushing at the bones.

And found several ribs with gouges in them. Something had gone through Gordon Rabart, doing terrible, lethal damage in the process.

Slowly, carefully, I closed the lid and, again thinking through every move before I made it, replaced the chest and boxes as I had found them, covered the chest with the dust-heavy blanket, and made my way down those narrow stairs.

I was halfway down the main stairway before I realized Elinor and Milt were having drinks in the music room. I turned around and, with teeth clenched so hard my ears were ringing, crept back up the stairs. Their mumbling, mingled with the occasional clink of bottle on glass, was indistinct. Perhaps I should go down, help myself to some sherry, plant my tired butt on a loveseat, and join the conversation. “I say, Elinor, which one of you did Gordon? And why? Why on earth kill your own brother? The brother who was so kind to you and Milt? The brother who allowed you to live your parasitic life for so many years?”

I sat on the top step, arms on knees, head on arms, for a good twenty minutes before it occurred to me that there must be a back staircase to a house this large. With the caution of a rat in a Park Avenue kitchen, I slunk along those cream-colored walls until I came to the rear of the house and the back stairs.

I tiptoed down and entered a large kitchen teeming with expensive looking gadgets and saturated with the smell of baking ham. In a corner was a wine rack. I grabbed the first bottle that came to hand, eased through the back door, crept across a large screened porch and into the back yard.

The bottle tucked under my arm, I plunged into the heavy growth surrounding the shed and headed for the next street. I thought about Inning a peek in the shed but didn’t want to push my luck.

It was almost five when I made it back to Blood Sweat and Black Iron. I locked the bike to the van with the Black Iron logo painted on it and went into the building.

Wading through the noise, the smells, and the glistening, straining muscles, I found CeeCee talking to a grossly muscled young man with a black ponytail and no neck. She was dressed in yellow spandex and pointing to the muscles on her right inner thigh. Arms folded, his face a blank mask of seriousness, the kid with no neck was staring at her thigh and nodding.

Then the kid, apparently enlightened, walked away. I went up to CeeCee and yelled, “Where’s Cat?”

She pointed to a steel-framed apparatus festooned with cables and weights. Hanging from the top of a steel beam was the sling. Cat, her head and left front leg hanging out of it, was fast asleep.

CeeCee plucked the sling off the beam, handed it to me, and yelled, “I stretched her good and brushed her teeth again, just to get her used to it. Where the hell were you? I thought maybe I’d inherited a cat.”

“I was catching up on some work,” I hollered. “Thank you very much for taking care of Cat. May I drop by tomorrow?”

“You may. Want to stick around and do some iron? I won’t charge you.” I gave her my famous look of disdain and, with Cat snuggled in the sling, fled Blood Sweat and Black Iron.

Slumped on the settee, one hand gripping a mug of Lancers, the other gently kneading Cat’s neck, I listened to the wind whisper in the trees and thought about unfulfilled dreams, self-concern, and murder. Later I refilled my mug, took the cover off my ancient Underwood, and started typing.

I leaned the bike against the wall, then stood by the woodstove and stared at the broad back of Betty Worthen. After a moment she raised her head and looked my way. She picked up her coffee and blue cap, lumbered to the last booth, and slid into the back seat. I sat opposite. “Good morning, Betty.”

She took off her cap and carefully placed it dead center on the table. “You’re going to screw up my day, aren’t you, Harry?”

I pulled the sheet of paper out of my sweat jacket pocket, unfolded it, and slid it across the table. Betty gave me a sour look, fished her glasses out of her blouse pocket, stuck them on the end of her nose, and picked up the paper.

She put the paper down, took off her glasses, and savaged her face with both hands. Then she sipped her coffee, gently set the cup down, and in a near whisper said, “Elinor is what? Sixty-five? Sixty-six? And Mill? He’s at least that old. The last time I saw them they appeared to be in the very peak of bad health. They eat more than I do.” She shook her big head. “What put you onto them?”

I pulled out the key ring. “Elinor gave Bob Kokar this key ring. It has the keys to that station wagon, which is natural since Bob was going to use it to deliver the chest to their house. It has the chest key, which Bob probably slipped on the ring per Elinor’s instructions.

“The skeleton key must have been on the ring with the others when Elinor gave them to Bob. And the question I asked myself was, why have a key to your attic or basement on your car key ring?”

Betty grunted. “Because you are planning to kill your brother, stuff him in his new trunk, and hide his dead ass up in the attic, and you want to make sure everything is handy. It would be frustrating if you wanted to lock the body in the attic and couldn’t find the key.”

“That’s what I assume,” I said. “Although locking the attic was somewhat unnecessary, since everybody would think Gordon was buried in Connecticut.”

“Sure. But you’ve just killed your brother. He’s up there, rotting. Locking the door was probably like sealing a tomb: it finalizes the act, gives it distance, and you don’t have to think about it so much. Except the key was in Kokar’s pocket... but I don’t think it bothered those two all that much.” She picked up the paper and carefully put her cap on. “Well, I’ll go slip this under Chief Morin’s nose and tell him we have to arrest that nice old couple, the Obermeyers, for murder. That should get his juices flowing.”

I grabbed her wrist. “What are you going to say? Or, to put it another way, how are you going to keep me out of it?”

“I’m not sure, probably tell him I did a little private investigation. Somewhat like I did with Duncan Kokar. What you gotta hope is Elinor doesn’t mention your visit. She’s a bit dim, but your visit and her and Milt’s arrest are going to be very close together. If she mentions you, I’ll take a shot at covering it.”

“The citizens of this fine community will judge you a wise and diligent policewoman.”

“Perhaps, but the gods will judge me a lying hypocrite and no doubt punish me accordingly.”

“A woman said much the same about me.”

“Harry, when it comes your turn to face the gods, I don’t want to be anywhere around.”

With Cat mewing nervously, I climbed the stairs to CeeCee Dorfman’s apartment and banged on the door. She answered dressed in a baggy gray sweat suit and wearing a tattered yellow headband with PAIN printed on it in bold black letters. I held out Cat and the bottle of sherry I’d stolen from the Obermeyers. “I’ll try to make it back before you open.”

She took Cat, who immediately calmed down, and looked at the bottle. “Well, well. This stuff costs around forty bucks. Does this mean you’ve come acourting?”

“It simply means I’m grateful for your kindness to Cat.”

As I reached the bottom of the steps, CeeCee yelled, “Hey, Harry.” I looked up at her. “This business of yours, does it have to do with that station wagon?”

“Yes, it does.”

She stroked Cat. “You’re a sneaky bastard, aren’t you, Harry?”

I pedaled back to Gretchen’s, left the bike against the back wall, and hurried to Winter Street. Turning the corner, I looked down the street and muttered a few strong words, for I was too late. Three police cars were parked in front of the Obermeyers, and Betty Worthen, Chief Morin, and two other policemen were mounting the front steps. I watched as they knocked, waited, knocked again, and were finally let into the house.

Walking like a tourist, I ambled back to Gretchen’s and slumped in the last booth. Gretchen put a chilled mug and a carafe of red wine in front of me, slid into the other seat, and lit a cigarette.

“You look kinda squinty-eyed and restless, like some animal that’s been hunted for most of the night and is far from the den.” Her eyes widened. “Cat? Where’s Cat? She’s all right, ain’t she?”

I nodded. “Cat’s fine. She’s at CeeCee Dorfman’s getting some physical therapy.”

She grinned, and blue smoke drifted from between her yellowed teeth. “CeeCee Dorfman, huh. You giving that gal the benefit of your glittering personality?”

I put a shocked look on my face. “Hardly. She’s too young and too tough. You know her?”

“She ain’t all that young, and if ya look back far enough, you’d see we’re kin. I lent her some money so she could buy the town garage and turn it into a gym. Paid me back within the year. How’d you happen to meet CeeCee? Your lifestyles ain’t exactly in sync.”

“She used to work at Kinch and Kokar, and I found out she’s good with cats.” I finished my wine and stood. “I have places to go and things to do. Will you keep an eye on the bike for me?”

“Of course I will. That’s one of the perks ya get when ya drink at my restaurant. I watch over all the bicycles along the back wall.”

As I walked past Winter Street, I looked toward the Obermeyer house. One police car was parked in front, and a lone policeman, fenced in by long ribbons of yellow crime scene tape, was pacing back and forth on the porch. I walked a block, turned up Summer Street, and walked until I was opposite the Obermeyer house.

Trying to look like I did it every day, I ambled through the back parking lot of a small apartment house and traced the path across the vacant lot I’d taken yesterday. As I neared the Obermeyers’, I scanned the rear windows, didn’t notice any faces staring back, so plunged into the thick island of trees and brush surrounding the shed I’d seen from the attic window.

The shed was a garage, and after seventeen years of neglect, about the only reason it was still standing was its sturdy build and a network of thick vines that gripped it in a tight web.

I forced my way along its side to a set of sliding double doors. The top guide wheels had long since rusted to the tracks, but the bottom guides were gone so I pulled one door out and slipped into a moist blackness that smelled like a zoo and reminded me of the walk-in at the senior center.

Pulling out my handy penlight, I flicked it on and cut a narrow swath through the black space. The left side of the garage held an ancient lump of rust that might have once been a riding lawn-mower, a wheelbarrow with a plastic tub that still glowed a faint red and was filled with some sort of muck, and several lumps that probably had once been bags of fertilizer.

The right side held a rusted, grime-encrusted 1976 Plymouth station wagon. The tires had rotted away, and the car had sunk into the dirt floor to the bottom of its doors. I crept to the driver’s door, gripped the handle with both hands, put my right foot against the metal, and with the hinges shrieking in protest, forced the door open.

Time and critters had turned the inside of the station wagon into a primitive landscape. As I gingerly crawled into the remains of the front seats, small furry things scurried in every direction.

Finding nothing in the front, I climbed over the seat into the back. The rear seats were folded flat and piled with rank, decayed clothing infested with tiny, squeaking creatures. I had to put my head into that fetid mess, but I found it under a pile of cloth on the floor behind the front passenger seat.

With effort and some noise I managed to get the door closed and slipped out of that dark world. I plowed through the trees and brush, took several deep breaths, and made my way back to Gretchen’s, washed up, and reclaimed my bike.

CeeCee Dorfman opened the door, held out Cat, and smirked. “She didn’t scream nearly as much as she did the first couple of times. Not that it bothers me. I just duct-tape her mouth shut and keep going.”

I narrowed my eyes and said in a low voice, “Your treatment of Cat has not gone unnoticed. A herd of animal lovers are going to descend on this den of pain any minute now.”

“No problem. I’ll sign them up for a term of Black Iron. When I’m through with them, they’ll be animals. Listen, I’ve got to open up. See you tomorrow?”

I nodded, said, “Thanks,” and headed down the stairs.

“How’s the thing with the station wagon coming?” CeeCee asked.

“It’s almost over.”

“Listen, you’re going to tell me about it, aren’t you?”

I stopped at Gretchen’s for a mug of motivation to get me home and saw Betty Worthen sitting alone in the last booth drinking coffee. I bought a carafe of wine and slid into the seat beside her. Cat pulled herself out of the sling, sniffed at Betty’s empty cup, sat down by the napkin holder, and stared across the room at Gretchen, Bringer of Beef.

Betty picked up the carafe and filled her cup and my mug. Then she held out her cup. I tapped it with the mug, and we drank.

“Rabart was going to sell the house,” she said. “He gave them three months to find another place to live. Apparently his new position in Connecticut was the perfect excuse to sever the cord.

“After all those years of good living at Rabart’s expense, spending their golden years in a trailer wasn’t in the cards. So at five o’clock the morning after the party they helped him load his trunk into the back of the station wagon. When he turned to Milt to give him a last handshake, Elinor pulled Milt’s Knights of Columbus ceremonial sword from under the car and rammed it through his chest.

“Now, if you think about it, even if that thing had severed his aorta, it still would have been a terrible minute or so until he died. Chief Morin asked them if they said anything to him while he lay there with three feet of steel through him, and they looked at Morin like he was some kind of lizard.”

Betty drank some of her wine. “They unloaded the chest, folded Rabart into it, and hauled it up to the attic. They called Connecticut and told the university that he was killed in a car accident up here. They waited a week, then spread the word and drove down to Connecticut in a rented car for the ‘funeral.’ While there, they found a printer who made up a newspaper facsimile describing Gordon’s accident and sent it up here to the Gazette, which printed the thing. They told everyone that Gordon had always wanted to be buried in Connecticut because that’s where his parents were buried, which happens to be true.”

She poured more wine in her cup and gave me a sideways look. “They have a good lawyer, and tomorrow everybody meets with the D.A. for a plea-bargain session. Gloria Barbara, our new assistant D.A., thinks they’ll get five or six years in the locked ward at the county home.”

“Five or six years in a county home?”

“This is rural America, Harry. The courts are backlogged into the next century, and the prisons are jammed. And no one in the

D.A.’s office wants to be the one to take those two nice, fat, sick old people before a jury of their peers.”

We drank in silence for several minutes. Then Betty tapped me on the hand. “We’re going to haul the station wagon out of the garage later this afternoon.” She smiled thinly. “About an hour ago Donny Pavia, our new gung-ho apprentice patrolman, radioed in that he thought he’d heard someone prowling around back there and wanted to know if he should check it out. I told him to stay on the porch. Didn’t want him to waste some curiosity seeker hiding in the trees.”

I nodded slowly. “That was probably a good idea.”

Annie was in her kitchen, but I decided against any theatrics. I backed away from the window and rapped on the door. When she answered, I said, “Perhaps a glass of wine?”

She nodded, stepped back into the kitchen, and ran her hand through hair that looked like it might have been combed last Christmas.

She pushed a pile of magazines off an ancient wood chair painted three different colors and seated me at the kitchen table, which was a cluttered mishmash of cast-iron pans, three working toasters, about six weeks’ worth of newspapers, and a wire cage with a sleek looking gerbil in it.

Cat pulled herself out of the sling onto the table and despite her handicaps threaded her way through the junk without bumping into anything, sat down in front of the gerbil’s cage, and clamped her good paw on the wire door.

Annie put a water glass full of white wine in front of me. She raised her own glass, and we toasted and drank.

I pulled the package wrapped in brittle gold foil from under my sweat jacket and handed it to her.

She stared at it for a long time, took a sudden deep breath, and looked at me.

I smiled, gently I hoped, and said nothing. She carefully slipped the stiff, mold-blackened ribbon off the package and tried to unwrap the thick gold foil paper. It was too brittle and fell apart in her hands, so she just pushed it off, revealing a cedarwood box. She studied the box, then pried up the clasp. Reaching in, she plucked several small pieces of yellowed pasteboard out of the box and fanned them out like a hand of cards.

She looked at them a few moments and then whispered, “Two tickets to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts for a special showing of modern Impressionists, two tickets to The King and I, and two tickets to the new Boston Aquarium.”

She raised her glass and gulped down the wine. Then she pushed herself up with both hands, grabbed the bottle off the counter, and refilled her glass.

We sat in the dim, cluttered kitchen. Annie, the tears flowing down her face, gazed at the tickets in her trembling hand. And I looked out the window at the coming night and listened to the distant rumble of thunder.

Finally Annie came around the table, patted my shoulder twice, and shuffled out of the kitchen.

Cat limped over to the edge of the table, fell into my arms, laid her small head against my chest, and meowed softly as thunder rolled over The Farm.