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she let him ride off into a tornado by himself—then she never saw him again.
    "So, if you didn't see him that night, then I assume you went out there next morning, Sheriff?”
    "You aint so good at assuming, mister, I’ll tell you that.  Jonas's boy Geshen come out to the house that morning to tell me what Braun Donnan found out front that morning.  I couldn't do anything to help Tommy by then, so I tended to my farm and my house—I took on a lot of damage in that storm.  I went in to town, but by then everyone knew already.  Later that day I went out there, that evening, had me a look.  The mayor had already been out there, same as Doc Rosen-zeeg, with his camera, of course—nothing dies in this county without Doc takes pictures of it.  By the time I got there, Marnie Donnan had him wrapped up in a quilt in the front room, all cleaned off and wrapped up tight—what there was left of him.  I saw the pictures later:  what it looked like to me was a boy fell off his wagon.  That's what it looked like, that's what it was.  We get enough farm accidents, automobile and tractor accidents, what-have-you around here that we aint gonna throw a parade when someone falls off a horse—"
    Millie was suddenly yanked from the wall upward and backward, then deposited firmly on the ground in her boots.  The hulking presence at her back then moved to the side to block the hot September sun from her pink scalp.
    Millie's face had gone pink too.  The severe lines were back in her forehead and her chin had been pulled up into a walnut shell under her bottom lip.  When she spoke, it was with a sneer.  “Awright goddamnit-all, to hell with it.  Let’s go get what’s comin’ to us.” 

 
     
    5.
     
    The lobby of the Old Price Hotel was a holdout from the grand times of hotels, with huge paintings on the walls, two ornate chandeliers, high mirrors and parlor furniture.  Two loose rows of neat, white-clothed tables lined one wall, at which town and country folks breakfasted in twos and fours. The hotel's staff was busy serving coffee, rolls, corn cakes, eggs, bacon, ham and fat links of sausages.  The babbling of conversations left off little by little when Sterno and the mayor stepped into the lobby, as the members of the staff and the diners alike stopped whatever it was they were in the act of doing to take in the mayor's guest.  Then little by little the murmur of the dining room resumed.
    "Good morning, Abner."  This was from the woman who seemed to be running the room.  "Hotcakes and ham this morning?"
    He shook his head, clearly disappointed.  "Wish so, wish so, but I got my hands full this morning.  Tess Helmcamp, meet Charlie Sterno, a Pinkerton detective.  Mr. Sterno, meet Mrs. Helmcamp.  This is her place."
    She wore a sheen on her brow, and her sleeves rolled up.  Sterno liked her immediately for not noticing him, for not stopping to take in the gossip fodder.  She was a worker.  “Please to meet you, Mr. Sterno, I heard you were coming, but unless you want some coffee or a plate of eggs, I have no time for chit-chat."
    "We'll be on our way," the mayor said.  "Is Doc Rosen-zeeg in?"
    She was already turned from him, cleaning a table, two dirty plates in one hand.  With the other hand she pointed straight up.  "You know the way."
    Together the two men clopped up a loud wooden staircase with a worn down Oriental runner on it of the same baby blue as the bricks outside.  A narrow hallway with one tall window at its end took them to room 214.  Greentree simultaneously knocked upon and opened the door, led Sterno inside.  The room barely resembled the hotel room it had been once.  A gramophone in the corner by the window scratched out an opera.  Cabinets filled with utensils, bandages, and pill and medicine bottles lined one of the four walls.  The doctor's desk ran along the windowed wall, a hard wood table functioning as an examination table along another wall.  Against the last wall was a