I patted the roof of the LeSabre and felt the cold steel under my fingers.

“We can take the highway back to Oak Creek,” I said.

“Skip the gravel trucks by the hardware store.”

“That sounds fine to me,” Claire said.

“I’m done looking at that hardware sign.”

Just after one in the afternoon, we stopped at Howard Cobb’s house on the edge of Oak Creek.

The retired probate lawyer was sitting on his screened porch in a green wicker rocker, holding his unlit pipe against his right palm.

When he saw my car pull into the gravel drive, he set the pipe down on a side table and came down the three wooden steps to meet us.