"All right, then tell me this: Why is she being so nice to you? If she hates biographers so much, why did she invite us to dinner and then drive you out to the Queen of Oil's house today?"

"That's one of the strange things that I was talking about, Sax. Either David Louis is screwy in the head, or else he just detests Anna France for some reason. Almost everything he said about her so far has proven wrong."

"But remember that she did lie about her father a few times last night, didn't she?" Her voice was triumphant.

"Yes, she did. She welcomed us with open arms and then started lying when she was talking about him." I flipped the spatula in the air and caught it by the handle. "Don't ask me about these things, dear, I only work here."

"It's interesting, you know?" She walked to the cabinet and got out two bright blue plates.

"Yup." I scooped the sandwiches out of the skillet at exactly the right moment and slid them onto a piece of paper towel to take up the extra grease. The secret of the perfect grilled cheese.

7

The next few days nothing much happened. I poked around town and talked to people. Everybody was very nice, but no one told me much that I didn't already know. Marshall France was a good old boy who liked to hang around and shoot the breeze just like any other mortal. He didn't like being famous, no sirree: a good family man who maybe spoiled his daughter a little now and then, but what's a father for?

I went to the town library and reread all of his books. The librarian was an old lady with oyster-shell-pink rhinestone glasses and puffy, rouged cheeks. She bustled around as if she had a million things to do every minute of the day, but I saw that the bustling was all busywork and that what she really liked to do was sit behind her big oak desk and read.

A couple of kids were plagiarizing reports out of the World Book Encyclopedia, and a very pretty young woman was glued behind a month-old copy of Popular Mechanics.

I went over all the France books with a mental magnifying glass to find parallels between them and Galen, but the search was uneventful. I assumed that what France did when he wrote was to take a grain from something real and then drastically reshape it for his own purposes. So Mrs. Lee had been a blob of human clay that he had sculpted into the Queen of Oil.

When I was done investigating, I pushed away from the desk and rubbed my face. I was working in the magazine room, and when I came in I'd noticed a surprisingly good selection of literary magazines on the periodical shelves. I got up to get a copy of Antaeus. The librarian caught my eye and crooked her finger for me to come over to her desk. I felt like the bad kid who's been caught making noises in the back of the stacks.

"You're Mr. Abbey?" she whispered sternly.

I nodded and smiled.

"I'll make up a temporary card for you if you'd like. Then you can take books out instead of having to read them in here."

"Oh, that's no problem, thank you anyway. It's a nice room to work in."

I thought my charm would at least make her smile, but she kept a kind of prim frown. She had those little vertical lines under her nose that come from a lifetime of pursed lips. Everything on her desk was orderly too. Her hands were crossed in front of her, and she didn't move or drum or twiddle them when she talked. I was sure that she'd kill anyone who put a book back on the wrong shelf.

"There have been people who came before to write about Marshall, you know."

"Yes?"

"Anna didn't like any of them, especially the man who wanted to write the biography. He was so rude…" She shook her head and clicked her tongue.

"Was that the man from the East? The man from Princeton University?"

"Yes, he was the one who wanted to write the biography of Marshall. Can you imagine? They tell me that Princeton is an excellent university, but if they're turning out graduates like that man, they wouldn't get my vote."

"Do you happen to remember his name?"

She cocked her head to the side and raised one chubby hand from the desk. Tapping her chin with a finger, she never took her eyes off me.

"His name? No, I never asked him and he never offered it to me. He came in here like Mr. Mucky-Muck on a high horse and started asking me questions without so much as a please." If she were a bird and had had feathers, she would have ruffled them then. "From what I've heard, he was that same way with everyone in town. I always say that you can be rude, but don't be rude on my doorstep."

I could picture the toad from Princeton with his little Mark Cross briefcase, a Sony tape recorder, and a deadline on his thesis, going from person to person trying to pump them for information and getting exactly nowhere because they didn't feel like being pumped.

"Would you like to see one of Marshall's favorite books, Mr. Abbey?"

"I would love to, if it isn't too much trouble for you."

"Well, that's my job, isn't it? Getting books for people?"

She came out from behind the desk and moved toward the back shelves. I assumed that she was heading toward the children's section, so I was taken aback when she stopped at the shelf marked "Architecture." She carefully looked all around to see if anyone was nearby. "Between you and me, Mr. Abbey, I think she's going to let you try. From everything I've heard, she's going to let you."

"Oh, yes?" I wasn't sure I knew what she was talking about. Her voice had fallen back to its front-desk whisper.

"Do you mean Anna?"

"Yes, yes. Please don't talk so loud. I'd put money on it that she'll let you try."

It was heartening news even if it did come from such a strange source. What I couldn't understand was why we had to come all the way back here for her to tell me that she thought Anna was going to let me write the book.

Somebody came around the corner and looked at us. The librarian reached out and took a book about railroad stations off the shelf.

"This is the one I've been looking for! Here you are." She opened the back cover of the book, and sure enough, France had taken it out five or six times. Very few other names were on the card. When the other person got the book he wanted and left, the librarian closed the train-station book and slid it under my arm. "Walk out with it like this. That way no one will suspect that we've been talking back here." She looked around and peered through a shelf to the next aisle before speaking again. "It's Anna's decision is all I know. We all know that. But it's hard not to be impatient. Ever since –" The sound of approaching feet stopped her in mid– sentence again. This time for good, because a young woman with a little girl in tow came up and asked for a book on raising goldfish that she hadn't been able to find.

I took my book back to the table in the magazine room and skimmed through it. Picture after picture of American railroad stations.

The guy who wrote the accompanying text was a little overenthusiastic about things like the "grandeur" of the Wainer, Mississippi, "antebellum masterpiece," with its three ticket windows instead of one. But I spent some time with my nose in the book because I could envision France doing it and because, for whatever reason, it was a subject that interested him. I remembered Lucente talking about his Sunday train rides and the postcards of train stations at his house. On my third time through I flipped past Derek, Pennsylvania. A half-second later my eyes widened and I frantically turned back, almost afraid that it might not he there when I got to it. But it was. Someone had penciled extensive notes all along the border of the page. I had seen France's handwriting only a couple of times, but this was it. The same careful up and down letters. The notes had nothing to do with either Derek, Pennsylvania, or its train station. In true artistic fashion, it looked like my man had been inspired and had written his inspiration down on the first scrap of paper he could find.