Gene checked his gold wristwatch, his eyes narrowing.

“The store manager’s tied up with inventory until two.”

“I just need five minutes in the back hallway,” I said.

I turned and walked out to my LeSabre without waiting for an answer.

The brass bell over the glass door of Miller Hardware rang twice as I pushed my way in at ten past one.

The store smelled of cedar mulch, motor oil and dry lawn fertilizer, just as it had thirty years earlier when Frank stood at the register.

Tim, who had run the service counter since 1994, looked up from a pile of wholesale plumbing catalogs.