Mr. Albert Parks worked with me for the better part of an hour, and then I walked out of the cool quiet of his library into the damp midday Louisiana heat feeling about three inches tall. Lying sucks.

Chapter 4

O f the seven names on the list, four lived in town and three lived in the outlying area. I decided to speak with the townies first, then work my way out. Mr. Parks had recommended that I start with Mrs. Claire Fontenot who, as the widowed owner of a little five and dime just across the square, was the closest. He said that she was one of God's Finest Women. I took that to mean that she was kind and caring and probably easy to manipulate. Son of like Mr. Albert Parks. As I walked over I thought that maybe I should just cut out this manipulation business and proclaim for all the world who I worked for and what I was after. If I did, I would probably feel much better about myself. Of course, Jodi Taylor probably wouldn't, but there you go. Her privacy would be violated and her confidence breached, but what's that when compared to feeling good about oneself? Elvis Cole, detective for the nineties, comforts his inner child. Going into Fontenot's Five Dime was like stepping backward in time. Cardboard cutout ads for things like Carter's Little Liver Pills and Brylcreem - a little dab'll do ya! - and Dr. Tichnor's Antiseptic were taped and retaped to the door and the windows, filling the same spaces that they had filled when they were first put up forty years ago. Some of the cutouts were so faded that they were impossible to read.

An overweight girl in her late teens sat on a stool behind the counter reading a copy of Allure. She looked up when I entered.

"Hi. Is Mrs. Fontenot in?"

The girl called out, "Miss Claire," and a stately woman in her early sixties appeared in the aisle, holding a box of Hallmark cards. I said, "Mrs. Fontenot, my name is Elvis Cole. I believe Mr. Parks over at the library might've phoned."

She looked me up and down as if she viewed me with caution. "That's right."

"May I have a few minutes?"

She viewed me some more, and then she put down the box of cards and led me to the rear of the store. She seemed rigid when she moved, as if her body were clenched. "Mr. Parks told me that you want to know something about a baby that was given up for adoption." She arched an eyebrow when she said it, clearly suspicious of the practice and disapproving.

"That's right. Somewhere around the time that Max was born." She had delivered a son, Max Andrew, sixteen days before Jodi Taylor's birth.

'Tm afraid I don't know anything about that. I kept all my children, believe you me." Daring me to deny it. When she spoke, she kept both hands folded together between her breasts, as if she were praying. Maybe you did that when you were one of God's finest.