Angie shrugged and went to the front hall closet where we keep, on the top shelf, highway maps, old phone books, and scarves no one wears anymore. She was back in a few minutes with an old map, torn around the edges, which she opened onto the kitchen table. “Who folded this up last time?” she asked, dealing with unnaturally folded creases. I found the index and ran my fingers down to the Gs.

“Groverton. L-7.” I found the box where the L and 7 intersected. “Here it is.”

It was a small town, about a hundred or more miles east of Canborough. Pretty much in the middle of nowhere.

“Hmm,” I said.

“What?” Angie asked.

“Well, I could ask some questions in Canborough on my way to Groverton.”

“That’s my dad,” said Angie.

CHAPTER 16

16

I MADE MYSELF a mental list of things to do.

First, I wanted to know what made Trixie run, what she was mixed up in, who’d killed Martin Benson. I thought maybe, if I could get the answers to some of those questions, it might mitigate the damage caused by my getting mixed up in this whole mess in the first place.

Second, I wanted to get my job back, and get Sarah out of Home! She was about to have her first day with Frieda. I could just imagine Sarah’s reaction when Frieda passed over to her what I’d managed to get done so far on the linoleum story.

And finally, I had to repair things between Sarah and me. I thought that if I could accomplish the other things on my list, this last and most important thing on it would fall into place.

A trip to Canborough and Groverton, I hoped, might help me accomplish a few of my goals.

Once Sarah had left for work, I put in a call to a local car rental agency and reserved a sedan. I told them I’d probably need it a couple of days. I just didn’t know whether one day out of the city would be enough to do everything I might need to do, so I grabbed an overnight bag from the closet and tossed it onto the bed. I had saved packing until Sarah was gone so I wouldn’t have to answer any questions about what I might be up to, assuming, of course, that she would even have asked me. Even though we’d slept in the same bed the night before, and been in the kitchen at the same time grabbing some breakfast, we had not spoken.

I didn’t want to give her the wrong idea, seeing me pack a bag. She might think I wasn’t coming back. No sense getting her hopes up.