She was at least sixty with dyed red hair and jowls, and a squat body that pushed against every inch of her brown polyester slacks and yellow sweater. It was obvious that she was fond of black and white cows. There were carvings and ceramic ones on shelves and tables and fastened to the wall. A small fish tank was populated with an odd assortment of tadpoles and minnows, and I couldn't help asking her about them.

'Home grown?' I said.

She gave me a sheepish smile. 'I catch 'em in the pond out back. One of them turned into a frog not long ago and it drowned. I didn't know frogs can't live under water.'

'I'm gonna use the pay phone,' Lucy said, opening the screen door. 'And by the way, what happened to Marino?'

'I think some of them went out to eat somewhere,' I said.

She left with our Burger King bag, and I suspected she was calling Janet and that our Whoppers would be cold by the time we got to them. As I leaned against the counter, I noticed the clerk's messy desk on the other side, and the local paper with its front page headline: MEDIA MOGUL'S FARM DESTROYED BY FIRE. I recognized a subpoena among her clutter and posted notices of reward money for information about murders, accompanied by composite sketches of rapists, thieves, and killers. All the same, Fauquier was the typical quiet county where people got lulled into feeling safe.

'I hope you aren't working here all by yourself at night,' I said to the clerk, because it was my irrepressible habit to give security tips whether or not anyone wanted them.

'I've got Pickle,' she affectionately referred to her fat black cat.

'That's an interesting name.'

'You leave an open pickle jar around, and she'll get into it. Dips her paw right in, ever since she was a kitten.'

Pickle was sitting in a doorway leading into a room that I suspected was the clerk's private quarters. The cat's eyes were gold coins fixed on me as her fluffy tail twitched. She looked bored when the bell rang and her owner unlocked the door for a man in a tank top who was holding a burned-out lightbulb.

'Looks like it done it again, Helen.' He handed her the evidence.

She went into a cabinet and brought out a box of lightbulbs as I gave Lucy plenty of time to get off the pay phone so I could use it. I glanced at my watch, certain Benton should have made it to Hilton Head by now.

'Here you go, Big Jim.' She exchanged a new lightbulb for bad. 'That's sixty watts?' She squinted at it. 'Uh huh. You here a little longer?' She sounded as if she hoped he would be.

'Hell if I know.'

'Oh dear,' said Helen. 'So things still aren't too good.'

'When have they ever been?' He shook his head as he went out into the night.

'Fighting with his wife again,' Helen the clerk commented to me as she shook her head, too. 'Course, he's been here before, which is partly why they fight so much. Never knew there'd be so many people cheating on each other. Half the business here is from folks just three miles down the road.'

'And they can't fool you,' I said.

'Oh no-sir-ree-bob. But it's none of my business as long as they don't wreck the room.'

'You're not too far from the farm that burned,' I then said.

She got more animated. 'I was working that night. You could see the flames shooting up like a volcano going off.' She gestured broadly with her arms. 'Everyone staying here was out front watching and listening to the sirens. All those poor horses. I can't get over it.'

'Are you acquainted with Kenneth Sparkes?' I wondered out loud.

'Can't say I've ever seen him in person.'

'What about a woman who might have been staying in his house?' I asked. 'You ever heard anything about that?'

'Only what people say.' Helen was looking at the door as if someone might appear any second.

'For example,' I prodded.

'Well, I guess Mr Sparkes is quite the gentleman, you know,' Helen said. 'Not that his ways are popular around here, but he's quite a figure. Likes them young and pretty.'

She thought for a moment and gave me her eyes as moths flickered outside the window.

'There are those who got upset when they'd see him around with the newest one,' she said. 'You know, no matter what anybody says, this is still the Old South.'

'Anybody in particular who got upset?' I asked.

'Well, the Jackson boys. They're always in one sort of trouble or another,' she said, and she was still watching the door. 'They just don't like colored people. So for him to be sporting something pretty, young, and white, he tended to do that a lot… Well, there's been talk. I'll just put it like that.'

I was imagining Ku Klux Klansmen with burning crosses, and white supremacists with cold eyes and guns. I had seen hate before. I had dipped my hands in its carnage for most of my life. My chest was tight as I bid Helen the clerk good night. I was trying not to leap to assumptions about prejudice and arson and an intended victim, which may have been only Sparkes and not a woman whose body was now on its way to Richmond. Of course, it may simply have been the former governor's vast property that the perpetrators had been interested in, and they did not know anyone was home.

The man in the tank top was on the pay phone when I went out. He was absently holding his new lightbulb and talking in an intense, low voice. As I walked past, his anger flared.

'Dammit, Louise! That's what I mean. You never shut up,' he snarled into the phone as I decided to call Benton later.

I unlocked the red door to room fifteen, and Lucy pretended that she hadn't been waiting for me as she sat in a wing chair, bent over a spiral notebook, making notes and calculations. But she had not touched her fast-food dinner, and I knew she was starved. I took Whoppers and French fries out of the bag and set paper napkins and food on a nearby table.

'Everything's cold,' I said simply.

'You get used to it.' Her voice was distant and distracted.

'Would you like to shower first?' I asked politely.

'Go ahead,' she replied, buried in math, a scowl furrowing her brow.

Our room was impressively clean for the price and decorated in shades of brown, with a Zenith TV almost as old as my niece. There were Chinese lamps and long-tasseled lanterns, porcelain figurines, static oil paintings and flower-printed spreads. Carpeting was a thick shag Indian design, and wallpaper was woodland scenes. Furniture was Formica or so thickly shellacked that I could not see the grain of the wood.

I inspected the bath and found it a solid pink and white tile that probably went back to the fifties, with Styrofoam cups and tiny wrapped bars of Lisa Luxury soap on the sink. But it was a single plastic red rose in a window that touched me most. Someone had done the best with the least to make strangers feel special, and I doubted that most patrons noticed or cared. Maybe forty years ago such resourcefulness and attention to detail would have mattered when people were more civilized than they seemed to be now.

I lowered the toilet lid and sat to remove my dirty wet boots. Then I fought with buttons and hooks until my clothes retreated to a wilted heap on the floor. I showered until I was warm and cleansed of the smell of fire and death. Lucy was working on her laptop when I emerged in an old Medical College of Virginia T-shirt and popped open a beer.

'What's up?' I asked as I sat on the couch.

'Just screwing around. I don't know enough to do much more than that,' she replied. 'But that was a big fucking fire, Aunt Kay. And it doesn't appear to have been set with gasoline.'

I had nothing to say.

'And someone died in it? In the master bathroom? Maybe? How did that happen? At eight o'clock at night?'

I did not know.

'I mean, she's in there brushing her teeth and the fire horn goes off?'

Lucy stared hard at me.