At five minutes after twelve Karen Shipley came out and got into her LeBaron. She was wearing a tweed pants suit and brown flat-heeled shoes under a slim leather topcoat, and she carried a briefcase. She pulled out of the lot and turned south, and I hustled out to the Taurus and went after her. Twenty minutes later we turned into a shopping mall in upper Westchester where Karen went into a little café. A man in a gray suit took her hand and kissed her on the left cheek and they sat at a window table. I sat in my Taurus. Midway through the meal she opened the briefcase and took out some papers and gave them to the man. He put on tortoiseshell half-glasses, read the papers, then signed them. She put the papers back in her briefcase and they resumed their lunch. Business.

At ten minutes before two Karen was back in the First Chelam and I was back in the John Deere showroom. Opie and Aunt Bea were nowhere to be seen.

At three o’clock Karen Shipley came out again, climbed back into the LeBaron, and drove half a mile out of town to the Woodrow Wilson Smith Elementary School. Toby got into the car and they drove back across Chelam to a single-story medical building with a little sign that read B. L. Franks, D.D.S. & Susan Witlow, D.D.S., a dental corporation. They stayed for just under an hour.

After the dentist, we went back through Chelam along a two-lane county road between fields and woods and a scattershot of ponds and small lakes until we turned down a broad new black-topped road past a stone sign that said Clearlake Shores. Someone had come in with a bulldozer and carved out a housing development around a couple of lakes that were too round and too sculptured to be natural. Most of the lots were still unimproved, but some of them had houses under construction, and some of them held completed houses warm with life.

Karen Shipley pulled into a one-story brick colonial with a wide cement drive and white pilasters and virgin landscaping. Maybe a year old. Maybe less. Four white birch trees and a live oak had been planted in the front yard. The trunks on the birch were only a couple of inches thick, the oak was maybe a little thicker. They weren’t much now, but if you gave them a little time they would grow tall and strong and you would be glad you stayed with them. There was a basketball backboard suspended over the drive at the lip of the garage. Toby and Karen went inside through the front door and lights came on. They didn’t come out again. Home.