“Oh, it’s no trouble.” She dug out a book from under the register. “That’s right, County Road 9, just north of Kelton. Would you like their phone number?”

I wasn’t sure I needed it, but took it just the same. All I wanted to do now was burst out of the store, check my map, and find County Road 9.

“I’ll take this,” I said, pointing to the jumper and booties. I figured that to back out on the sale now would start raising suspicions again.

“Would you like it done up in a gift bag?” she asked.

I said that would be fine. I thought it would take forever, her arranging the tissue paper, scoring the string with the blunt edge of some scissors to make it go all curly, helping me pick out a card.

It was all I could do not to run out of the store. But once I was out the door, I made a mad dash to the car.

CHAPTER 24

24

I GOT OUT THE MAP. If I’d had the smarts to figure out the GPS system in Trixie’s car, I could have looked up Kelton and County Road 9, but finding it on a piece of paper not only seemed simpler, but a hell of a lot faster.

Using Trixie’s pencil, I followed the route west out of Groverton, up to Kelton, which was barely big enough to warrant a dot, then found County Road 9 heading due north from it. I turned the key, heard the engine’s powerful but understated roar—not the sort of thing I was used to behind the wheel of my hybrid Virtue—and started heading out of town.

It was only slightly after noon, and I could have used some lunch, but I felt that I was so close to finding Trixie, and to learning what was going on, that I didn’t want to stop. But as I drove, I found I wasn’t thinking of food anyway. I was burdened with doubts that finding Trixie would actually accomplish all of the things I hoped it would.

She’d already run away from me once. And she’d shown herself capable of taking desperate measures to make sure I didn’t come after her. But maybe this time, if we could have a conversation in a less unsettling environment—in other words, without a dead man in the room—she’d be more inclined to tell me what was going on.

It took twenty minutes to reach Kelton, and another twelve seconds to drive through it. A general store, a gas station with pumps from the middle of the previous century, maybe a dozen houses. Motorists were supposed to slow to forty miles per hour driving through, but most, like me, held pretty close to sixty and no one seemed to mind.