The driveway was filled with detritus: bits of appliances, chunks of Styrofoam, old plastic bags. When I stopped to stare, trying to imagine what it might have looked like sixty-five years ago, a dog charged around from the back of the house, letting out a deep-throated bellow, hurling itself along the length of a heavy chain. Peppy growled softly, the fur on her back ruffing up. She was ready to go to war, very uncharacteristic.

A young woman came to the front door to see what the commotion was. I waved and started to move on but then thought I’d ask if she knew or had heard anything about Ferring. Perhaps old school records or a change-of-address card had survived the deluge.

I tied Peppy to a lamppost, where she and the house dog started a salvo. A dark blue Buick Enclave slowed to watch me. I frowned at it. Was this the SUV that had pulled up behind me at the train station? When the driver saw me looking, he gunned the engine and took off. Same driving technique anyway. I made Peppy quiet her threats back to throat rumbles before going up the walk.

The young woman was still in the doorway, watching me with active hostility. “You try to set one foot in this house and Peeta will eat your throat right out of your neck.”

I heard a whimper and realized that she had an infant on her hip. She barely looked into her teens herself, her dirty blond hair pulled back from a narrow face with feather-covered clips.

“I’m not from a collection agency, and I’m not going to challenge your dog,” I said. “I have a strange kind of errand. I’m guessing you’re too young to help me, but I’m trying to find someone who might be old enough to remember the family that lived here sixty years ago.”

Her small rosebud of a mouth opened in surprise. “You mean that black lady?”

I held my breath. “Yes, the black lady. Did she come here?”

“She was here with a man who was taking pictures. I came out with Peeta to drive them off—I thought they were trying some funny business with the house. Peeta chased them back to the car, and the man, he called out that she was a famous actress who grew up here. My boyfriend, when I told him, he said they were probably escaped convicts.”

The homeless man yesterday had guessed August was a runaway football player. Lawrence seemed to breed highly active imaginations in its citizens. I showed the young woman Emerald’s and August’s photos.

“She really is a famous actress,” I said. “Emerald Ferring. Look her up on Wikipedia.”