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maybe I'd thwart them and then maybe I'd have a name or a face or something clue-like for my efforts.
    Right now all I had was tiredness. I missed Susan. Friday afternoon. She'd be here in five hours.
    I drove back over to the Wheaton Library. Caroline Rogers was on duty behind the counter along with a young woman who looked like a college kid working part-time. "Hello," I said.
    "Do you wish to borrow a book, Mr. Spenser?" she said.
    "No, I want to know where to eat in the greater Wheaton area."
    "Eat?" she said.
    "Yes, the love of my life will be coming out here to spend the weekend with me and. I was wondering if there was someplace that didn't serve salmon loaf."
    Caroline stared at me for a moment. "Funny, it never occurred to me that there might be a love of your life."
    "A guy with this profile," I said. "Surely you jest."
    She smiled. "I mean I never thought of you as anything but an intrusion. I never thought of you as a person, someone who would love or want to dine well."
    "Or do both," I said. "Where can I do that?"
    "Well, this is not an area of haute cuisine."
    "I sensed that," I said. "That's why I came to you."
    "And once again," she said, "I'll fail you. The restaurant at Reservoir Court is all there is really, unless you wish to drive to Springfield, or Amherst."
    "Well," I said, "I'll improvise. Thanks anyway."
    "This time I wish I could be more help," she said. "Have you made any progress on the other thing?"
    "No ma'am," I said.
    "I wish you'd give it up," she said. "No good will come."
    "Well," I said, "maybe I can improvise there, too."
     
     

Chapter 9
     
     
    I stopped at a small roadside store called the Quabbin Sub Base and bought two submarine sandwiches, one turkey, one veggie, and each sliced in half before they wrapped it. I stopped at the Wheaton Liquor Store and bought a bottle of Chianti Classico. Everywhere I'd been since Monday a Wheaton police car had shown up and parked and a Wheaton cop had looked at me. Nobody had rousted me since Henry and J.D., but they kept an eye on me and let me know it. When I came out of the Wheaton Liquor Store I didn't see a cruiser. TGIF. Except cops don't quit for the week at five o'clock Fridays. I got into my car and pulled out onto Route 9 heading west toward my motel. No cruiser in sight. I felt like one of those cavalry troopers in western movies who says, "It's quiet," and his buddy says, "Yeah, too quiet." A small blue Chevy pickup appeared in my rearview mirror. At a stretch of road where passing was possible, I slowed. The Chevy slowed behind me. Okay. I picked up speed. So did the truck. Ahead of me a late-model Ford sedan, maroon with a beige vinyl top, pulled out of a side road and preceded me in the same direction. I took the Colt Python out from under my left arm and put it beside me on the seat. The three cars went in procession up a hill around which the road slowly rose, and then down into the valley. On each side the woods came down to the road shoulder, new woods, second-growth forest maybe fifty years old, bare-limbed in winter with dirty snow in harsh patches among the trees. We went left around another curve and began to climb up the next hill, the road curving in the opposite direction so that from the air it must have looked S-shaped as it went over the two hills. There was no other traffic on the road. Near the crest of the next hill the road made a sharp bend back right again and as we rounded it there was a green Ford van broken down in the oncoming lane. The hood was up and a guy in a red plaid mackinaw was leaning in under it. The sedan in front of me slowed to a stop beside it and I stopped behind the sedan. The pickup behind me slowed and then turned at right angles to the road so that one lane and most of the next was blocked behind me. It was late afternoon in December and already dark enough for headlights. With the cars parked in various directions the lights crisscrossed eerily in the woods and on the otherwise empty