“I should probably just go home for dinner,” I said.

“Want dinner,” came a voice from the shrubbery.

I peered in the direction the voice had come from.

“Timmy?” I asked. “Is that you?”

He giggled, and stuck his head out from behind some leaves. Then he ducked in again and giggled.

The leaves, I noticed with a sinking feeling, were poison ivy.

Sixteen

I managed to extricate Timmy from the poison ivy grove with promises of chocolate, though I had to wade through some of it to get back to the car. I postponed any notion of picking the lock and snooping inside Jasper Walker’s house. I knew that if I could get home and wash the poison ivy oil off myself and Timmy immediately, we might have a chance of escaping an outbreak of the dreaded rash. Then again, either I was having psychosomatic itching or it was already too late. For me, anyway. Dad always said that children didn’t develop sensitivity to poison ivy until after they’d been exposed several times, so Timmy would probably be all right. Then again, active as Timmy was, he could have already used up his immunity. I strapped him into his car seat and took off.

But as I reached the fork in the driveway, I saw the tail end of a red pickup truck disappearing in the direction of the canary farm. I hesitated. Washing off the poison ivy oil was important. So was finding Karen.

What the hell, I decided. I might not find the denizens of the canary farm home another time. The car and truck skeletons strewn on either side of the road made it difficult to turn, but I finally managed it. As we rattled down the lane, I told myself that if Aubrey Hamilton was a friendly soul, maybe I’d even beg the use of a bathroom to wash off the poison ivy oil. Come to think of it, the first aid kit probably contained some Fels-Naptha soap, which Dad recommended for that purpose.

I pulled up behind the pickup in front of a large, comfortable-looking farmhouse. The grass was a little unkempt, but the house itself looked in good repair, and the white board siding had been painted not that long ago. To the left and a little behind the house was a large barn, also in good repair, as was the fence around the barnyard.

A man came out of the house and stood at the top of the steps looking down at me as I got out of the car. He was youngish—probably around twenty-five—but had a faintly worn air about him, as if life hadn’t treated him that well. And if we were friends, I’d have tried to convince him that nature had not designed him to wear a goatee—it made his already pointy chin look even pointier.

“Can I help you?” he said. He leaned on the top rail of the porch. He looked ill-at-ease but not unwelcoming, as if his country dweller’s ingrained suspicion of unexpected visitors was at war with his hope that we might be here to buy canaries.