Martha Guidry answered on the sixth ring. "Hello?"

I identified myself and told her that Mrs. C. Thomas Berteaux had suggested I call. I said that I was trying to find someone who was born in the area thirty-six years ago, and I asked if I might pay a visit. She said that would be fine. She told me her address and gave me directions and said that, as old as she was, if I didn't hurry she might be dead before I arrived. I was going to like Martha Guidry just fine.

I hung up and stood at the phone, waiting. A blue Ford pickup pulled in and a young guy with a scraggly beard went into the bait shop. An older man came out of the shop with a brown bag and got into a Chevy Caprice. The young guy came out with a Budweiser Tall Boy and hopped back into his truck. The Mustang didn't return.

I climbed back into my car and followed the directions toward Martha Guidry's house. Maybe this business with the Mustang was my imagination, like the heat.

I had gone maybe three-quarters of a mile when the Mustang swung around a Kleinpeter Dairy milk truck and eased in behind me. He came up so close that I could see the driver in my rearview mirror. He had a scoop-cut pompadour maybe six inches high and long nasty sideburns carved down into points so sharp you could cut yourself.

And he had red hair.

Chapter 5

T he guy in the Mustang wouldn't let anyone get between us, as if he wanted to follow me and thought he had to stay close to do it. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt with the sleeves rolled, and he drove with his left hand hanging down along the door. One of those. I turned off the state road and headed back toward town, and the Mustang turned with me. I pulled into an Exxon station and topped off my tank and asked a kid in a grease-stained uniform about the local bass fishing. The Mustang drove past while the kid was telling me, but a couple minutes later it pulled up to a stop sign a block away and sat waiting. Following me, all right.

I took it easy up through town, letting him follow, and twice managed to stop for traffic lights. Each time I stopped he eased up behind me, and each time he made a big deal out of staring off to the side. The ostrich technique. If I don't see you, you can't see me. I had to smile at this guy. He was something. At a four-way stop a kid in a red Isuzu pickup tried to turn in behind me, and the guy in the Mustang jumped the stop sign and blew his horn, cutting him off. Maybe he thought I wouldn't notice.