"She's charming, you need to go meet her," I said, in a conversational tone, dumping the quarters into the slots on the machine.

Tolliver glanced her way, started to say something, tried not to smile.

"I mean, it's just adorable when she glowers," I told him. "What a character! You just can't find old ladies like that anymore!"

"Shh," he said, but not as if he meant it.

I wasn't sure if she'd heard me or not—her expression of extreme disgust never changed. Was there something personal about us that she loathed? Or did she distrust us simply because we weren't from Sarne? Hard to tell. I wasn't sure I cared.

We finished washing and folding our clothes pretty quickly, since the Laundromat had few customers early in the morning. Maybe the dragon had driven all the self-serve customers away.

Our next stop was closer to the center of town. The county clerk's office was in the old courthouse in the square. It was the first time we'd actually entered the building. The ceilings were just as high as I'd imagined, and the windows just as huge; obviously this building predated the widespread use of air-conditioning. The room we entered was so disproportional, the distance from floor to ceiling to much more than from wall to wall, that I felt a little uneasy. I couldn't imagine working in such a room.

The two women who did work there were definitely surprised to see strangers come in, but the older of the two, a very round woman with dyed brown hair, immediately rose from her desk and came to the counter. When we asked to see a map of the county, she pointed silently to the wall behind us.

"Snake," I muttered to Tolliver after we turned around. There was a huge map of Colleton County right there. He nodded, understanding that I'd meant, "If it had been a snake, it would have bit us." I tried to orient myself by following the two main roads that formed a waggly X through Sarne, but I was still working it out when Tolliver pinpointed the area where we'd gotten out of our car when we'd been searching for Teenie's body.

After some cross-referencing, we decided which parcel of land that was, and the clerk handed us the appropriate ledger. According to the ledger, Colleton County Land Development was the owner of the property, and of several other parcels on both sides of that road. I couldn't see that we were any further along than we had been. Tolliver asked the county clerk if she knew who was actually behind Colleton County Land Development.

"Oh," she said, smiling. "That's Paul Edwards, Terence Vale, and Dick Teague. They bought up quite a bit of property over the years, thinking that someday we'd become another Branson. I don't think that's ever going to happen."

"The same names keep showing up over and over," I said when we were alone in the car.

"That's going to happen in a small town with a long history," Tolliver said, logically enough. "I'm not sure it means anything. Where next?"

We got to the newspaper office about nine forty-five, where we discovered that all the past issues of the Colleton Mountain Gazette (at least for the past ten years) were on computer. We were free to look through the computer archives, all we wanted, right there at the newspaper. This unexpectedly enthusiastic reception was due to a woman about my age, a brand-new reporter, who hoped we might be good for some kind of story. She was plump and dark-haired and wearing a color I'd call mustard. I am no clotheshorse, and fashion trends aren't of much interest to me, but even I could tell it was maybe the worst color she could have picked. But she was a person who liked bright things, as attested by her gold chain and gold bracelet and shiny bronze lipstick, so maybe the mustard was part of the same syndrome. Her name was Dinah Trout, according to the plate on her desk. She offered us coffee, she strode past us about eleven more times than was necessary, and she eavesdropped on every word we said to each other. Today was our day for meeting challenging women.

In self-defense, Tolliver and I took turns sitting at the computer. The one who was not reading had the job of deflecting the extremely curious Ms. Trout. If some of the people of Sarne knew about my unusual career, they apparently hadn't shared it with Ms. Trout, and I was really grateful.

In about an hour, I was sure we'd read every article that dealt with the death of Dell Teague, the disappearance of Teenie Hopkins, and the "tragic accident" of Sally Hopkins Boxleitner. I was fascinated by pictures of the Hopkins sisters. It was a shock to see them living.

I'd been so overwhelmed by the multiplicity of pictures in Helen's living room that I hadn't taken any time to examine the subjects.

The sisters didn't look alike. Sally, Hollis's wife, had been light in coloring, with reddish-blonde hair and freckles. She had a broad face and broad shoulders and a pleasant look about her. I couldn't see anything lurking in her eyes—no hidden misery in her stance, nothing that hinted she knew she was going to die. I tracked down her wedding picture (it was eerie to see a much younger Hollis feeding her wedding cake) and an employee photograph taken at Wal-Mart, where she'd been the manager of the baby department.

Her younger sister Teenie was shown in her school picture, the saddest accompaniment to an obituary. She'd been a little over made-up for the occasion, and her hair was dramatically combed in two solid falls of darkness on either side of her face. She had her mother's narrow features and small build, and she had a sharp nose, perfectly straight. It was hard to extrapolate anything about her character from a class picture. She was smiling, of course, but it was just an arrangement of her lips. There wasn't anything genuinely happy about it. She was a deep well, and I wasn't surprised Dell Teague had been intrigued.

Dell Teague was blond like his mother. I found a shot of Dell on an old sports page, where he was shown dressed in his football uniform. It was enough to break your heart—even my heart—seeing the young man standing there smiling at the camera, full of youth and pride and strength. I wondered if he'd known what was happening to him, or if the shot had been a complete surprise—if he'd had a chance to worry about his girlfriend's fate. The feeling I'd gotten, while I stood on his grave, was that he had known what was happening. I felt sorry for that.

I looked at Dell's picture, then back at Teenie's. Then again. They shared something, these two. I checked the years the pictures had been taken. Teenie's had been taken earlier in the fall, so had Dell's. Too early for Teenie to think she might be pregnant. What secret was it they shared? I wanted to print out the articles and take them with me. Then I realized I was getting too caught up in the lives of these two teenagers who were dead and buried.

While I was getting so much good stuff, I searched the computer for any stories or pictures including Mary Nell Teague. Mary Nell was in lots of pictures; she was a cheerleader (no surprise there), she was her class president, she'd been on the homecoming court. I even took a second to look at a picture of Dick Teague, the deceased husband of Sybil. He was a medium man; medium stature, medium brown hair, light complexion, narrow shoulders, and a tentative smile, at least in the newspaper pictures. He had a definite overbite, a generous nose, and he'd died of a sudden heart attack in his home.

Nonetheless, it was sad to hear that such an abrupt end had come to a man who'd done a lot for the community, at least according to his obituary. Dick Teague had been a county judge. He'd been in the Lion's Club and the Rotary. He'd been a member of the Chamber of Commerce, and he'd been on the Board of the Boys and Girls Club. He'd even been a local leader for Habitat for Humanity. I wondered if Sybil was upholding his banner in the civic department. Somehow I doubted it.