"Yes."

"I talked to Tom," Mark said.

"Yes. And?"

"The guy's turning into some kind of private eye."

Ambler concentrated on driving. The roads were narrow and wound in tricky meanderings past horse and dairy farms. He had a tendency to wander onto the shoulder if he didn't think about his driving. He asked Mark, "What do you mean?"

There was a pause and he heard Mark spit. A young man chewing tobacco-it was stupid. Maybe he did it to darken his moustache. Mark continued. "He's been asking a lot of questions about his friend and the car. He was down to R &W."

"The junkyard."

"Right. Looking at the wreck of the car."

Ambler felt the car bobble as the right front tire dipped noisily off the asphalt. "Damn." He forced the car back onto the road, overcompensating. It slipped over the broken yellow line before he got it steady again.

Mark asked, "What should we do? I was thinking maybe we could offer him some money. You know, bribe him to leave."

"Then he'd think I had something to do with the accident."

"Not necessarily." When Ambler didn't answer, Mark said, "But maybe."

Ambler said, "I've got an idea. I don't want to talk about it on the phone. Come see me."

"Now?"

"I'll be busy for a while. I'll call you."

They hung up, and it took Ambler the rest of the drive to the cabin to shake off his concern at Mark's news. In fact, it wasn't until he turned into the leaf-packed driveway and saw his lover's car sitting obliquely in the turnaround of the cabin that his spirits lifted. He climbed out of the Caddie, eager and buoyant as a seventeen-year-old en route to a homecoming date.

10

The Cleary Volunteer Fire Department had a long history of proud firefighting and a photo gallery to prove it.

Dozens of faded pictures of hand-pump, horsedrawn wagons, even a few of bucket brigades, were scattered on the walls of the tiny office-as if the company had had a Matthew Brady protégé on staff to record every major fire before, after and including the big one of 1912. The firemen seemed to have been arranged by the photographer and Pellam wondered if they'd actually stopped working momentarily, smoothed their pushbroom or handlebar mustaches and posed for the leisurely exposures.

"Afternoon," said the man sitting at the desk, rocking back in a metal chair. He was in his early thirties, wearing a black T-shirt over good muscles, blue jeans, a New York Mets cap.

"How you doing?"

"Not bad."

Silence.

Pellam looked through a glass window at a big, yellow Seagrave fire truck. "Got some nice equipment there."

"Town don't scrimp, I'll say that."

"You all volunteer, huh?"

"Yep. There's pay for one man on duty to take calls twenty-four hours."

"He must get pretty tired."

The man snagged the joke right away and fired back with, "But makes a hell of a lot of overtime."

Pellam said, "I'm the one with the movie company."

"I know."

"You mind if I ask you a few questions?"

"Nosir."

"You on duty when that car blew up? The one in the park?"

"That your friend's car?"

Pellam said, "That's right."

"I answered that call, yessir. All of us did."

"You tell me what happened?"

"You mean what caused it?"

"Whatever you can tell me."

The man said, "There was most of it in the coroner's report."

"This isn't official or anything like that. I'm just curious. He was a good friend."

"Yessir, I understand." The fireman squinted up at the spotless, red-enameled tin ceiling. "I recall the back end of the car was burning pretty good when we got there. Somebody'd driven past and called it in."

"You know who?"

"Nope. I think it was a call from a pay phone. Anonymous."

"You showed up and then what happened?"

"No hydrants, course, so we had to use the tank on the truck to get things cooled off enough to get close to your friend. Then half the crew started on the brush fire with extinguishers and shovels. That was about it. We got the body away from the wreck and finally got the fire out. He died right away. It was pretty quick."

"The gas tank had blown up?"

"Yessir."

"You opened the trunk?"

"We popped it open, that's right."

"How do you do that?"

"Usually, we just pop out the cylinder, then reach in and flip the release bar. But the steel'd been pushed outward, so what we did was whack it a couple times with a pike. That jarred the bar and popped it open."

"Why'd you open the trunk?"

"The sheriff wanted us to. To see what was inside. Anyway, it's standard procedure. In case there's cans of gas or oil. Also, your spare'll burn for hours you don't douse it good."

"You find anything interesting?"

"Sir?"

"You said the sheriff wanted to look inside."

"I don't know. I was at the hood."

"You have one of those pikes handy?"

He wasn't yet uncomfortable under this questioning but he was growing warier. "They're mounted on the truck, sir. We're not really supposed to let civilians into the house, you know."

Pellam nodded. He looked at the truck through a greasy window. The pikes looked blunt and heavy. It didn't seem they'd leave holes as small as the ones he'd seen in the car.

"What're they made out of?"

"Steel of course."

"One last question. Why was the area dozed over?"

"Sheriff ordered it. Somebody called him up and told him to, I heard. I don't know why."

"You don't know who called, do you?"

"Sure don't."

Pellam thanked him then said, "Aren't you going to ask me?"

"Ask you what, sir?"

"Whether we're going to be making a movie here?"

The man shrugged. "Don't make a lick of difference to me, sir. I work in feed and grain, not movies."

At noon, Meg Torrens walked out the door of the Dutchess County Realty office, set the hands of the Be Back At clock at 1:15. She looked around the square. Pellam's Winnebago camper was parked opposite. She looked up and down the street, then crossed over and circled the camper. Taking in the tan and brown paint, the battered fenders, the mud stains, the chips in the windshield.

What the hell was she doing here?

Going shopping on my lunch hour, that's all.

And when was the last time, my dear, you bought anything in one of these rip-off antique stores? Three, four years ago, wasn't it?

She imagined herself in one of the campers, on location. She imagined what it was like to be in a movie. The modeling she'd done had been pure effort-exhausting. And she'd been treated like a dim-witted cocker spaniel. Making a movie would have to be different, she believed.

She caressed the metal skin of the camper. Noticed the faint remains of some graffiti on the side. It looked like two crosses.

Meg slung her leather bag over her shoulder and strolled up and down the street, looking at sights she'd walked past for years and never noticed. A cornerstone dated in late September, 1929-could that have been Black Thursday? A painted wooden barrel on the side-walk emblazoned with the number 58 in red paint. One building was topped with a weathervane in the shape of a whale-why here, a hundred fifty miles from the ocean? Another was decorated with a beautiful round stained-glass window.

Meg was gazing into the window of Steptoe Antiques when she heard slow footsteps. A voice asked her, "Could use seconds on the brownies."

Meg turned, looking blank at first, the way she'd rehearsed in case this happened. She said, "Should've eaten them while you had the chance, cowboy."

Pellam stepped next to her to look at what she was examining. "How're the driving lessons coming?"

"'Bout the same as your photo classes."