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school," Janet said, perking up at the chance to change the subject. "Where did his nickname come from anyway?" she asked Timmy.
    "I don't know. He had it from when he was a little kid."
    "The Eldon I know is hardly mosquitolike," Dale said. "He's more ursine. But I guess it would make some people nervous having a tot around nicknamed Grizzly."
    "Eldon was big and already had hair on his chest even when I first met him in seventh grade," Timmy said. "He was in my gym class, and I think it might have been my first locker-room erotic response."
    "Mine was similar," Dale said. "Renee Boulanger was a French exchange student. She didn't have hair on her chest, to the best of my recollection, but she had it under her arms down to her hipbones, and I still get weak in the knees at the thought of her. I wonder what old Renee is up to now."
    Janet suddenly hopped up and said, "How about a swim? Aren't you two ready to cool off?"
    We'd brought our bathing suits along, although Timmy had said earlier in the car: "I know at some point they're going to whip off all their clothes, dash through the trees, and plunge into the lake—I guess you can't call it 'buck naked.' And they're going to expect us to do the same. Believe me, this is going to happen. I have a feeling about Janet Osborne and about any woman she might choose to live beside a lake with."
    I told him that if he was going to be involved in the investigation of a crime—which he still insisted he was—he'd have to quit being so prim. So he buttoned his lip on the subject of our skinny-dipping with
    lesbians, obviously a complex circumstance for him.
    Now, as Janet began to speak eagerly of watery recreation, Timmy said, "I'm really enjoying just sitting here, even with so many people living around the lake."
    "Stilton is big enough," Janet said, "to accommodate quite a crowd. Although if tranquility is what you're after, stay away from here on holiday weekends. It's Orlando-in-the-Adirondacks."
    "She's referring to the Florida city specializing in industrial tourism," Dale said to Timmy and me, "not the Virginia Woolf novel."
    Timmy said, "Oh, I see. Thank you."
    "Have you read it?" Dale said.
    "Orlando the city," Timmy asked, "or Orlando the novel?"
    "The great novel."
    "No, but I read To the Lighthouse. By the time. I'd finished it, I was experiencing the actual physical sensation of having multiple personalities. Only the greatest literature can do that."
    At this, Dale cracked an enigmatic little smile.
    Not daring to look at Timmy, I gazed out across the lake. The cigarette boat across the way was still zooming around with a skier in tow— a young man in multicolored boxers, it looked like—and a man in a baseball cap still paddled his canoe along the shore a quarter of a mile away.
    Timmy said, "Janet, you were going to tell us about Skeeter's suspicions surrounding Eric's murder and the Jet Ski attack, and how they could be connected to the Heralds situation. Does Skeeter have particular people in mind—in your family or at one of the newspaper chains—who might actually try to change the outcome of the vote by murdering people on the board of directors? Murdering Eric or you or your mother or your brother Dan?"
    Janet stood motionless, outlined against the sun, and said nothing for a long moment. Fit and rangy as a basketball pro in blue shorts and a lemon-yellow T-shirt, she was remarkably sturdy for a woman in early middle age, but now her fear made her seem vulnerable. She suddenly looked so anxious that I half expected her to dive off the dock and speed away in no particular direction.
    Dale said, "Some of the newer Osbornes have a part or two missing. Or six or eight. The gene pool got spread thin or something."
    Janet lowered herself to the dock again and sat beside Dale, who squeezed Janet's hand, then let go. Janet smiled weakly and said, "The
    Osbornes have always advocated peace and love." She forced a laugh and added, "But they haven't always practiced