Leland took his time buttoning his coat. “Mine?”

“A figure of speech. Leave, please!” She went ahead of him.

Leland stopped in the foyer. “Did your son contribute to your support?”

No answer. The door was open. He nodded, stepped out, and the door slammed so suddenly, so close behind him, that the rush of air slapped his coat hard against his back. If he had hesitated, he would have been hurt badly. She had taken that chance. He hurried out to the car, not looking back. Mrs. MacIver wasn’t as sane as she thought she was. She was sane and the rest of the world was mad—even her son? Leland meant to find out.

The quickest way from Canby to High View was over high-crowned secondary roads that cut through the last truck farms in Cuyahauga County. Every half-mile or so was a small tract of houses, occupied or still under construction. In five years at the most, the area would be just another suburb. The population of Manitou was supposed to double as soon as the war babies began to marry—that meant Steffie, too. He could be a grandfather in another five or six years. It frightened him but made him more than a little happy.

He stopped at a roadside shack to call in and try to get his head up for the interview with Betty Kaminsky. Florence had nothing new. There was no one in the office and the girls had the radio playing. He asked about the news. She said that she had heard nothing on the Shoftel case. He hadn’t been thinking of it. He hadn’t been thinking of anything; the question had just come out of him. He was beginning to see what talking to the senior Mrs. MacIver had done to him.

Over coffee he tried to memorize what she had said. It wasn’t much, but he thought he had more than he had before. Simply having seen her had advanced the work, but he had to do better with Betty Kaminsky. He had not forgotten that Mrs. MacIver had said that she had been ill. All it meant to him was potential trouble. This time he would be on his guard.

There was no difficulty with the Argyle Road address. He had been prepared for the house by the preceding half-mile, threading through a maze of bright cracker boxes exactly like it. In the shadows the pockets of snow clung with a grimness the owners could not have foreseen in the springs and summers they had come here househunting. These places were built and sold like automobiles, and the bright warm months were their showrooms. Leland could feel the mountain wind whipping up the slope; no child’s coat could cut such a wind—in this good place to bring up children.

A man opened the door. Leland presented his identification again. “I’d like to speak with Mrs. Kaminsky, if I may.”