“That’s fine, Mr. Watkins. If you give me your first name, I’ll just send all this to you and you can forward it to her.”

A pause. “All what?”

“This order she placed. I was calling to see if she wanted it mailed fourth-class or sent ground.”

“What order?”

He didn’t sound happy.

“The set of encyclopedias she ordered. There are six boxes weighing eighteen pounds each.”

“Well, you can’t be sending no encyclopedias here.”

“Then what do you suggest I do with them, Mr. Watkins? She’s already made the down payment and your business address was the one she gave us.”

“Shhhhooo. Hold on.”

I heard paper rustle; then keys clicked on a keyboard.

“Look,” the man said quickly. “The best I can do is give you a P.O. box. You just send the stuff there. Don’t be sending nothing to me.”

He gave me the address and abruptly hung up. The post office where Helen Grimes received her mail was in Goochland County. Next I called a bailiff I was friendly with at the Goochland courthouse. Within the hour he had looked up Helen Grimes’s home address in court records, but her telephone number was unlisted. At eleven A.M., I gathered my pocketbook and coat, and found Lucy in my study.

“I’ve got to go out for a few hours,” I said.

“You lied to whoever you were talking to on the phone.”

She stared into the computer screen. “You don’t have any encyclopedias to deliver to anyone.”

“You’re absolutely right. I did lie.”

“So sometimes it’s okay to lie and sometimes it’s not.’

“It’s never really okay, Lucy.”

I left her in my chair, modem lights winking and various computer manuals open and scattered over my desk and on the floor. On the screen the cursor pulsed rapidly. I waited until I was well out of sight before slipping my Ruger into my pocketbook. Though I was licensed to carry a concealed weapon, I rarely did. Setting the alarm, I left the house through the garage and drove west until Cary Street put me on River Road. The sky was marbled varying shades of gray. I was expecting Nicholas Grueman to call any day. A bomb ticked silently in the records I had given him, and I did not look forward to what he was going to say.

Helen Grimes lived on a muddy road just west of the North Pole restaurant, and on the border of a farm. Her house looked like a small barn, with few trees on its tiny parcel of land, and window boxes clumped with dead shoots that I guessed once had been geraniums. There was no sign in front to announce who lived inside, but the old Chrysler pulled up dose to the porch announced that at least somebody did.