On Saturday morning I veered away from Lenox’s main street, walking along beautiful boulevards of redbrick Federalist-style houses. Jesse had parked in the center of town. I’d told him I had a couple of places I wanted to see, and he didn’t ask what. It was unlike him, but we were both raw from our fight the night before. Jesse was being oddly courteous. “Take care, now,” he’d said when I walked away. For some reason, I felt bereft without his meddling. I turned around and saw that he was behind me, but some distance away, and I didn’t look back after that.

When I found a small sign that read CURTIS HERROLD, D.D.S. my heart thudded heavily in my chest. The dentist had been odd on the phone, but it wasn’t just that. Lying awake in my motel bed, I’d remembered a fragment of my conversation with Mavis. I’d asked her about Trina’s boyfriend, and she’d said, His name was Curt. Trina said he was creepy but he had a lot of money. Could it be the dentist? I’d wanted to race out of bed and tell Bruxton. Instead, I’d eventually fallen sleep and missed him; Bruxton had gone out early with his friend Noyes to talk to Brenda Collins’s drug-dealing brother.

Herrold’s house was a three-story structure with a large, gabled verandah and a mansard roof; it appeared to be both home and office. At the door I rang the bell and heard it echoing through the house. One thing that wouldn’t stop niggling at me was the fact that Herrold had stopped sending past-due payment notices to Claudia after September. What did he know that the rest of us didn’t?

The man who answered the door was in his early fifties, with a large round head that had a few tendrils of ashy hair scraped over the top. He was an inch or two taller than me, with a belly that made his shirt gape as it sloshed over his belt. A small white dog nipped at his slippers. “Get back there, kiddo,” he said in a jolly voice.

“Cute dog.” I knelt so that I could pet her.

“Thank you. She’s always into everything.” His smile lifted his jowls slightly and revealed perfect teeth. When I stood, his grin vanished. “Do… do I know you?”

I introduced myself. “We never met in person, but we spoke on the phone. You said Claudia owed you money.”

“Oh, I… I just wrote that off. I never… I never thought you’d come all this way… I mean, it was just a couple of cavities I filled. It was no big deal.”

“That’s nice of you. I’d like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind.”