She gave me a sheepish smile. “I catch ’em in the pond out back. One of them turned into a frog not long ago and it drowned. I didn’t know frogs can’t live under water.”

“I’m gonna use the pay phone,” Lucy said, opening the screen door. “And by the way, what happened to Marino?”

“I think some of them went out to eat somewhere,” I said.

She left with our Burger King bag, and I suspected she was calling Janet and that our Whoppers would be cold by the time we got to them. As I leaned against the counter, I noticed the clerk’s messy desk on the other side, and the local paper with its front page headline: MEDIA MOGUL’S FARM DESTROYED BY FIRE. I recognized a subpoena among her clutter and posted notices of reward money for information about murders, accompanied by composite sketches of rapists, thieves, and killers. All the same, Fauquier was the typical quiet county where people got lulled into feeling safe.

“I hope you aren’t working here all by yourself at night,” I said to the clerk, because it was my irrepressible habit to give security tips whether or not anyone wanted them.

“I’ve got Pickle,” she affectionately referred to her fat black cat.

“That’s an interesting name.”

“You leave an open pickle jar around, and she’ll get into it. Dips her paw right in, ever since she was a kitten.”

Pickle was sitting in a doorway leading into a room that I suspected was the clerk’s private quarters. The cat’s eyes were gold coins fixed on me as her fluffy tail twitched. She looked bored when the bell rang and her owner unlocked the door for a man in a tank top who was holding a burned-out lightbulb.

“Looks like it done it again, Helen.” He handed her the evidence.

She went into a cabinet and brought out a box of lightbulbs as I gave Lucy plenty of time to get off the pay phone so I could use it. I glanced at my watch, certain Benton should have made it to Hilton Head by now.

“Here you go, Big Jim.” She exchanged a new lightbulb for bad. “That’s sixty watts?” She squinted at it. “Uh huh. You here a little longer?” She sounded as if she hoped he would be.

“Hell if I know.”

“Oh dear,” said Helen. “So things still aren’t too good.”

“When have they ever been?” He shook his head as he went out into the night.

“Fighting with his wife again,” Helen the clerk commented to me as she shook her head, too. “Course, he’s been here before, which is partly why they fight so much. Never knew there’d be so many people cheating on each other. Half the business here is from folks just three miles down the road.”

“And they can’t fool you,” I said.