I go to gas up Garrett’s Subaru at a Circle K. I guess it’s my Subaru now, but in my mind, this car will always be his. It’s as much a part of him as his ratty sweatshirts and beat-up tennis shoes. And that precious Martin guitar.

I wish to hell Garrett could talk to me right now. Garrett said that he met with Cole Wright at an airport near Hanover. You’d think it would be easy to find the right one in a state with fewer than thirty airports, but it’s not.

My first stop was Lebanon. The manager checked the records but found nothing. She said she’d been there six years and had never seen an incoming flight from DC.

Next I’d checked out a private airport in Canaan, but it was little more than a grassy field. I couldn’t imagine anything bigger than a Cessna landing there, and I doubted the Secret Service would let the president’s husband travel in a plane that small.

When I get to the pump, I notice the handwritten sign: Please Pay Inside.

Pain in the ass. That’s how my day is going.

I lock up the car and head inside to pre-pay at the register.

I grab a bottle of Pepsi from a cooler and put it on the counter. “I’ll take this, and forty bucks’ worth of gas,” I tell the gray-haired cashier who rings me up. I hand her a ten and a couple of twenties. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Questions and answers still free around here,” she says.

“I’m a writer and I’m looking for some background on the area. I need to talk to somebody who knows the local history, especially the kind that doesn’t get into the history books.”

“Local history? You mean like Revolutionary War stuff? They’ve got a historical society over at the library.”

“I’m thinking more recent history. This century or last.”

She hands me my change and a receipt. “Then you should talk to the Romeos.”

“The Romeos?”

“Yeah. ‘Retired Old Men Eating Out.’ They hang out at Olie’s, a coffee shop about five miles down the road.” She points east. “Wind ’em up and they’ll talk your goddamn ear off.”

Olie’s turns out to be a run-down brick building with a counter covered with coffee urns and glass pastry containers. I get a cup of black coffee.

In a back corner, six white men with the lined faces of seventy-somethings are clustered around two tables pushed together, talking and laughing. The three men facing the door give me the eye. The others just keep on yakking.

I gather my nerve, drag a chair over, and give the men my brightest smile. My secret weapon. “Morning! I heard you gentlemen know everything there is to know about this area.”