“That's spelled S-T-R-A-I -N-G-E,” the man said as he shook my hand.

“Strange spelling,” I said. He didn't smile. I guess he'd heard that one before.

Before Luscious could tell me why the strange Strainge man was there, the door swung open and Henry Hoopengartner entered.

“Please come in,” I said.

“I already am in,” Henry said, not getting it. Cassie wiped the smile from her lips and removed a dish of baked lasagna from the oven.

“Everything's ready,” she announced.

“Would you like to have lunch?” I asked the three men.

Of course they would. In fact, they followed Cassie like the children of Hamelin following the Pied Piper.

As the men loaded their plates with food, I heard knocking at the back door. “That would be Chief Yoder,” Luscious explained. “I asked him to drop by.”

The fire chief was already inside by the time I reached the kitchen. And, “Yes, I would like a bite to eat, thank you.”

The six of us sat down in Ethelind's large front parlor, the one that had been recently refurbished due to fire. Henry and Mr. Strainge sat on the modern couch that Ethelind had unwillingly bought to replace the charred Empire sofa. It was much nicer to lie on but not nearly as elegant-looking. Cassie and I sat side by side on the piano bench, while Luscious and the fire chief took the carved rosewood chairs that I knew from experience were even more uncomfortable than they looked.

I picked at my food and waited for the men to tell me why they were there. Surely they hadn't just dropped in for lunch! They appeared to be in no hurry as they all went back for second helpings.

After a long, quiet interval, where the only sounds to be heard were the sounds of chewing, lip smacking, and an occasional dainty belch, Cassie asked if anyone would like to have dessert.

“What do ya got?” Chief Yoder asked.

“Pumpkin, apple, shoofly and Montgomery pie, molasses cake, cornstarch cake, cracker pudding, cherry fritters, and sticky buns. Shall I continue?”

“No sticky buns for me,” Henry Hoopengartner said with a shudder. “That's what that poor bastard was eating when his throat was cut.”

Luscious shook his head solemnly. “Just imagine, you're sitting there, quietly minding your own business, when zap…”

“Looks like he tried to grab the guy behind him. All he managed to do was yank out a big hunk of his own hair. It was right there in his hand.” Henry smiled at me as if talking about a man's death throes was normal at mealtime.

“Please!” I screamed. “I don't want to hear this.”

“Sorry,” the two men said in unison.

“Why don't you tell me who Mr. Strainge is, and what he's doing here today,” I said.

Luscious nodded. “Okay. But first, let me explain how he got here.”

“Whenever you're ready,” I said.

“After I got back to the office, I got to thinking that a working merry-go-round was a real peculiar thing to find in a barn. And because all them things in the boxes was stolen, I thought maybe the merry-go-round was stolen, too. So I called my nephew Sam and asked him to check the Internet and see if he could find something out.”

“And did he?” I asked.

“Sure did. Didn't take him long, either, so his mother made him go back to middle school for the afternoon.”

“So what did this sixth- or seventh-grade genius determine?” I'd get the story out of him even if I had to pull it out word by word.

“This.” Luscious handed me a black-and-white laser printout. “$10,000 REWARD,” I read, “for information leading to the return of this carousel.” Below the message was a photo of Darious's carousel, only it had been taken many years ago, for it was out-of-doors, under a pavilion. Happy-looking children straddled most of the animals.

“It looked like the same merry-go-round to me,” Luscious said.

“It is, I'm sure of it. I recognize my favorite animal, the hippocampus.”

“So I called the number. Turned out to be this gentleman, Mr. Strainge.”

Mr. Strainge took up the narrative. “When I got Chief Miller's call, I told the wife I was going straight up to Lickin Creek to check it out for myself. It's my carousel. No doubt about it.”

“Yo u ’re sure of that?” I wanted to doubt him, but in my heart I knew he was right.

“It was made by the Dentzel factory in 1920 for my pap-pap's amusement park down in Boiling Springs. It ran there until my father closed the park in 1950. He had the carousel took apart and stored it in the barn on his farm in Dillsburg. It's my farm now, since he passed.”

“So how do you think it got to Lickin Creek?” Cas-sie asked.

“I'm getting to that,” Mr. Strainge said, frowning slightly. “Three summers ago a young guy came by, driving an old pickup truck, and offered to do farm work for nothing if we'd give him a place to stay. I told him he could sleep in the barn if he liked, and he said that would suit him just fine. He'd been injured during Desert Storm, he said, and all that Agent Orange Juice he drank there gave him Gulf War syndrome. Said the docs at the veterans’ hospital told him fresh air was the only cure.”

Cassie threw an amused look my way. I pretended I didn't notice.

“Me and the wife both got jobs down in Harrisburg because farming don't pay enough to leave us stay home, so we was glad to have the help. Especially when it didn't cost us nothing except for his meals. Round about the end of that September, he just up and disappeared one day. I didn't mind too much because most of the hard work was done.

“In fact, I never gave him another thought till a few months later. That's when a couple of men showed up at the door with a magazine-I think it was called American Carousel-something like that. They showed me an article about collecting carousel horses, and I'll be darned if there wasn't a picture of my pap-pap's carousel right there in the magazine.

“I told them it was stored in my barn, and they got all excited and said they'd be willing to pay me a million dollars if the animals was in restorable condition. A million dollars! The wife near burst with excitement. We went right down to the barn, and guess what…”

“The carousel was gone,” I said.

“Yep. Every last bit of it. All I could think of was that young guy spent all summer hauling it away while me and the wife was at work. He must have seen the article about it, too, and tracked it down just like the collectors, only he got to me before they did. The buyers was real disappointed, and they suggested I offer a reward. I thought ten thou was too much, but they reminded me I'd get a million from them when I got it back. They took care of putting ads in the carousel magazine and on the computer. It's been so long without any word that I darn near forgot about it. That is, till Chief Miller called this morning.”

“The young man you think took it-do you remember his name?”

“Oh yeah, it was Darren Detweiler. I thought he was related to the Detweilers over in Littlestown. He never said he weren't. Good-looking man the wife said often enough. If you like that type.”

Yes, I wanted to say, I liked that type.

“I got a picture of him.” He pulled an envelope out of the inside pocket of his suit jacket and handed it to me. “I was snapping a picture of the wife with my new John Deere, and it turned out he was in the background painting the house.”

I had to force myself to look at the photo. Behind the large yellow tractor and the dumpy little woman was a golden-haired, bare-chested man, so busy with his paintbrush that he never knew his picture was being taken. Darious hadn't changed at all in three years. My eyes misted over, and I passed it over to Luscious.

“So I guess the reward's yours, little lady. I'll see you get a check as soon as I get my million bucks.”

“I don't want it,” I told him. “Why don't you give it to Luscious's nephew Sam? He's really the one who did all the work in finding you.”