He tilted the chair forward and came over and put in the nozzle. A dirty blond Labrador retriever was lying between the chair and a Pepsi machine. The Lab had its chin down and its paws out to either side. He didn’t move when the old man got up, but his eyes followed the old man to the car. Someone had put down a piece of cardboard for the dog to lie on.

I said, “Pretty town.”

The old man nodded.

“Picturesque.”

He made a sucking sound through his nose, then hocked up something heavy and spit it toward the road. “You want me to check the hood?”

“Hood’s okay. If I wanted to stay a few days, where would I go?”

“Ho Jo’s out on the highway.”

“Here in town.”

He squinted at the gas pump. Nine-forty and rising.

I said, “There a little hotel? Maybe a boardinghouse? Something established?”

He made the sucking sound again, and this time he swallowed it.

I fed seventy-five cents into the Pepsi machine, pulled out a Barq’s root beer, opened it, then sat down in the old man’s chair. The dog still hadn’t moved, but now it looked at me. So did the old man. Neither of them liked me in the chair. I said, “Think I’ll set for a spell and chew the fat.” Elvis Cole, the Bumpkin Detective.

The old man said, “Guess you might try May Erdich’s place.”

“She the only place in town?”

“Ayuh.” I guess that meant yes.

“Were there any other places, say, about ten years ago?”

“Shit.” I guess that meant no.

“How do I get to the Erdich place?”

The gas pump dinged. He put the nozzle back in the pump, then reset the counter. The dog’s eyes moved from the old man to me, then back to the old man. Every time its eyes moved, its eyebrows shifted like it was watching a tennis match. It looked like Fred MacMurray.

I said, “May Erdich.”

He told me, but only after I got out of his chair.

I drove back through the town and found May Erdich’s place on a residential street two blocks behind the square. It was a big yellow two-story house with a gravel drive and a covered porch and a little sign out front that said rooms to let. Pockets of hard snow hid in the eaves and under the porch, safe from the sun. I parked in her drive and went up to the front door and knocked.

A woman in her late forties opened the door and looked out at me. She had fair skin and a pale green apron over blue jeans and a coarse yarn sweater, and her hair was held up with bobby pins so that wisps of it floated down into her eyes. It was warm in her house, and the warmth rolled out at me and felt good.