“Tomorrow!”

“Right now!” she insisted.

“All right,” he said, and turned onto his back.

The girl stroked the hair on his chest.

“I learned some interesting things from Johnny,” she said.

“Who?”

“Johnny. The parking lot attendant.”

“Don’t tell me he knows Théo!”

“No, but he knows a man who met him. A reporter . . .”

“Huh?” said Jack.

He sat up abruptly.

“Now don’t get all excited,” said the girl. “The reporter didn’t really meet him, he heard about him.”

“How come? What do you mean?”

La Grande Sauterelle got up, heated some water and made herself a cup of Nescafé, then she lay down again, propped on her elbow. The black cat jumped onto the bed and curled up in a ball against her stomach.

“Well,” she said, taking a sip. “The other night, Johnny asked me what we were doing in St. Louis and I told him we were looking for Théo, that we’d picked up his trail first in Gaspé and then in Toronto, and that the trail had led to St. Louis. Then he told me he knew a reporter and that if there was one man who could give us any information, it was him, because he was doing research for an article on St. Louis’s French background and he’d met a lot of Francophones. And last night, there was a bluegrass concert at the museum and Johnny and I went to it and the reporter was there. He gives talks to the tourists who visit the museum. He’s old, about forty-five, but very nice . . .”

“Hmm!” said Jack. “That really is very old. No doubt about it, he’s a fossil!”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Anyway, he’s older than you. But he’s very nice and he speaks French very well. He told me the whole story of St. Louis — how it was founded in 1765 by Pierre Laclède and young Auguste Chouteau, and about the first colonists and the fur traders — and he knows all kinds of interesting things: for instance, he told me Laclède was in love with Chouteau’s mother and it’s possible he founded St. Louis out of love for her.”

“Hmm!” said Jack.

“And he told me about Daniel Boone,” she said. “He was one of the first colonists who crossed the Appalachians and settled in the Kentucky forests. He lived in harmony with nature as easily as the Shawnee, the Cherokee and the other tribes of the region. I may be developing a crush on him.”

“Hmm!” said Jack. “And what did the reporter have to say about Théo?”

“Oh yes! He said he’d seen his name in a newspaper. Not a St. Louis paper. It was in Independence, a suburb of Kansas City, and the paper was called The Examiner. There was an article about Théo. He remembered Théo’s name very clearly, because it was written in the French way, with an accent, and also because the article described an incident that reminded him of the first colonists.”