He set off down the hall at a good clip. I followed more slowly, stopping to pull the tuft of grass from my shoe. When I stood up he had disappeared. Two thirds of the way down the hall I found a door that led to a short corridor. My guide stood just inside it, his hands on his hips, his dark eyes sharp. When I caught up with him, he whirled without speaking and marched into the utilitarian hole he used as an office.

“Now, just who in hell are you and what are you doing snooping around our plant?” he said as soon as we were seated.

I looked around on his desktop, but didn’t see a nameplate. “You got a name?” I asked. “And a position with the firm?”

“I asked you a question, young lady.”

“I told you out in the hall there. I haven’t got anything to add. But if you want to talk it over, it would be really helpful for me to know your name.” I leaned back in my chair and retied my right shoe.

He glared at me. I took off the left shoe and shook some dirt from it onto the floor.

“My name is Chamfers. And I am the plant manager.” The words came out as though snapped through a peashooter.

“How do you do?” I took my wallet from my handbag and dug out the laminated copy of my PI license and showed it to him.

He looked it over and threw it contemptuously onto the desktop. “I don’t suppose you’ll tell me who’s employing you, but I’ve got dicks of my own. I can check you out fast enough.”

I made a disgusted face. “And when you’ve spent a couple of thousand bucks doing that, you won’t be any wiser than you are now. I realize it looks strange, me crawling around your premises, but there’s a simple explanation. Your guy Simon was the first person I saw. When I tried talking to him he got kind of ugly, so I scrambled for safety and found you.”

He scowled for a minute. “And what’s your story on what you want with me?”

“My story, as you put it, is also very simple. I’m looking for an old man who used to work here.”

“Did we fire him?”

“Nope. He left the old-fashioned way: he retired.”

“So there’s no reason for him to be here.” He wasn’t believing me. His tone and the curl to his upper lip made that clear enough.