Over the next week she saw Healy three times. She sensed he wanted to see her more but one of her mother's warnings was about men on the rebound. And getting too involved with an older man on the rebound didn't seem real wise at all.

Still, she missed him and on Thursday when she called she got a pleasing jolt when he said, “Tomorrow's my day off, how about we go —”

“Blow things up?”

“I was going to say, have a picnic someplace.”

“Oh, yeah! I'd love to get out of the city. The streets smell like wet dogs and it's supposed to hit ninety-seven. The only thing is I've got this interview at a restaurant.”

He said, “You're making a movie about a restaurant?”

“Sam, I'm applying for a job as a waitress.”

“Postpone it for a day. We'll get out of the city.”

“You're twisting my arm.”

“I'll call you tomorrow with details.”

“I haven't said yes.”

“Tomorrow.”

He hung up.

“Yes,” she said.

Death of a Blue Movie Star

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Kent was a small town in Putnam County, sixty-seven miles north of New York City, near the Connecticut state line. The population was 3,700.

The town hadn't changed much since the day it was incorporated in 1798. It was too far from New York or Albany or Hartford for commuters, though a few people drove to and from Poughkeepsie for work at Vassar. The residents mostly made their money from farming and tourism and the staples of small-town economics: insurance, real estate and building trades.

Travel books about the area generally didn't mention Kent. The Mobil Guide gave the restaurant in the Travel-lodge near the Interstate a couple of stars. The Farming Museum got mentioned. So did a spring flower festival. It was a quiet place.

Outside of the small downtown, about a mile from the last of the seven Protestant churches in Kent, was an old rock quarry. The huge pit did double duty: a Saturday night hangout for teenage boys who had either dates or six-packs of Bud, and an informal shooting range during the day. This afternoon, three men stood at a disintegrating wooden board that served as a table for bench-resting rifles and for holding ammo and targets and extra magazines.

All three were in the NRA — accepted standing firing position — right foot back, parallel to the target, left forward and pointed downrange. They were tall men with shortcut hair sprayed into place. Two of the men had graying hair and were thin. The other, a younger man with black hair, had a beer belly, though his legs were thin and his shoulders broad. They all wore light-colored shoes, light slacks (two pink and one gray) and short-sleeved dress shirts with ties kept in place with a tack or bar. In the shirt pocket of the fatter man was a plastic pen-and-pencil caddy.

They all wore teardrop-shaped shooting sunglasses tinted yellow and made out of impact-resistant glass. In their ears were flesh-colored earplugs.