“I’ve put two and two together for you the best I can,” he said.

He grabbed a bandanna out of a back pocket and mopped his face.

“I’ve told you all I know. Damn. I’m sore all over.”

“One last thing,” Marino said. “Sparkes is an important, busy man. He must’ve used helicopters now and then. To get to the airport, for example, since his farm was sort of out in the middle of nowhere.”

“Sure, they’ve landed on his farm,” Dorr said.

He gave Marino a lingering look that was filled with suspicion.

“Anything like the white one you saw?” Marino then asked.

“I already told you I’ve never seen it before.”

Dorr stared at us while Molly Brown jerked against her halter and bared long stained teeth.

“And I’ll tell you another thing,” Dorr said. “If you’re out to railroad Mr. Sparkes, don’t bother poking your nose around me again.”

“We’re not out to railroad anyone,” Marino said, and he was getting defiant, too. “Just looking for the truth. Like they say, it speaks for itself.”

“That would be nice for a change,” Dorr said.

I drove home deeply troubled as I tried to sort through what I knew and what had been said. Marino had few comments, and the closer we got to Richmond, the darker his mood. As we pulled into his driveway, his pager beeped.

“The helicopter ain’t fitting with nothing,” he said as I parked behind his truck. “And maybe it has nothing to do with nothing.”

There was always that possibility.

“Now what the hell is this?”

He held up his pager and read the display.

“Shit. Looks like something’s up. Maybe you better come in.”

It was not often that I was inside Marino’s house, and it seemed that the last time was during the holidays when I had stopped by with home-baked bread and a container of my special stew. Of course, his outlandish decorations had been up then, and even the inside of his house was strung with lights and crowded with an overburdened tree. I remembered an electric train whirring in circles along its tracks, going around and around a Christmas town dusted with snow. Marino had made eggnog with one hundred proof Virginia Lightning moonshine, and quite frankly, I should not have driven home.

Now his home seemed dim and bare, with its shag-carpeted living room centered by his favorite reclining chair. It was true the mantel over his fireplace was lined with various bowling trophies he had won over the years, and yes, the big-screen television was his nicest piece of furniture. I accompanied him to the kitchen and scanned the greasy stovetop and overflowing garbage can and sink. I turned on hot water and ran it through a sponge, then I began wiping up what I could while he dialed the phone.

“You don’t need to do that,” he whispered to me.