“Roads here are in pretty good repair.” The counterman’s eyes were on a spectacle across the street. A young blond woman was washing the sidewalk in front of a hardware store; as she bent over, her cutoffs hitched a little higher up her thigh. No doubt the highlight of his day.

“Airport?” Janson asked.

“Nearest real airport’s probably Roanoke.”

Janson took a sip of coffee. It coated his tongue like oil. “‘Real’ airport? There another kind around here?”

“Naw. Well. There used to be, back in the forties and fifties. Some sort of tiny airport that the Army Air Force built. About three miles up Clangerton Road, a turnoff to the left. The idea is they were training pilots how to maneuver around the mountains in Romania, on the way to bombing the oil fields. So they did some practice flights hereabouts. Later on, some of the lumber guys used it for a while, but the lumber industry pretty near died off. I don’t think it’s much more than an airstrip anymore. You don’t fly masonry if you can avoid it—you truck it.”

“So what happened to that airstrip? Ever get used?”

“Ever? Never? I don’t use those words.” His gaze did not leave the blonde in the short cutoffs washing the sidewalk across the street.

“Reason I ask, you see, is an old business associate of mine, he lives near here, and said something about it.”

The counterman looked uncomfortable. Janson pushed his empty coffee cup forward to be refilled, and the man pointedly did not do so. “Then you’d better ask him about it, hadn’t you?” the man said, and his gaze returned to the vision of unattainable paradise across the street.

“Seems to me,” Janson said, tucking a few bills beneath his saucer, “that you and your son both have an eye for the bottom line.”

The town grocery store was just down the street. Janson stopped in and introduced himself to the manager, a bland-looking man with light brown hair in a modified mullet. Janson told him what he had told the man at the diner. The store manager evidently found the prospect of a new arrival lucrative enough that he was downright encouraging.

“That is a great idea, man,” he said. “These hills—I mean, it’s really beautiful here. And you get a few miles up the mountain and look around and it’s totally unspoiled. Plus you got your hunting and your fishing and your …” He trailed off, seemingly unable to think of a third suitable item. He wasn’t sure this man would be a regular at the bowling alley or take much interest in the video arcade recently installed next to the check-cashing joint. Safe bet they had those things in the cities, too.

“And for everyday stuff?” Janson prodded.