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he saw him up somewhere near Indian Nook Pass.”
    She took a very deep, obvious breath as if to bring herself under tighter control. I waited for her to say something but then she didn’t.
    The front door opened and a man who looked as if he wouldn’t mind beating somebody to death—fists were a lot more personal than six-shooters—came in and stamped snow off his feet.
    “Good evening, Mr. Tremont.”
    “Good evening, Mrs. Flannery,” he said in a tight voice that didn’t sound all that friendly.
    “How’s your wife doing?” she asked.
    “She’ll be a lot happier when we find Chaney and make him stand trial for killing our boy.”
    I decided that would be a good time to leave. The woman put her eyes back on the magazine. Mr. Tremont just stood there and seethed.
    But I couldn’t get out the door just yet, either. A small woman with a freckled, pretty face came in carrying an infant wrapped in several baby blankets. The infant was done up like a mummy, not that you could blame the woman. Not in weather like that.
    “Evening, Mrs. Nordberg,” the woman with the magazine said pleasantly.
    The sheriff’s wife smiled nervously. “I just stopped in to see if my husband was busy. I can see that he is. I’ll just see him at home.”
    The woman brought out the gentleman in Tremont. He doffed his bear fur hat and said, “Evening to you, ma’am.”
    Then she was gone. And so was I, soon after.

Chapter 8
    E mma Landers’s house was a two-story adobe affair with two swings and several chairs on the front porch. But winter had given them all the look of orphans. Nobody would be swinging that day.
    A stout woman with a pair of thick eyeglasses came to the door shooting the sleeves of her faded gingham dress.
    “All filled up, mister. Sorry.”
    “I’m looking for Tom Daly.”
    “So am I.” She didn’t sound happy when she said it. “You see him, tell him he owes me money for the glasses he broke last night.” Her gray hair stuck straight up in jagged pieces. She was in need of a comb. But I doubted she cared. “I told him to leave the glasses alone, I’d carry them to the kitchen. He was too drunk to carry ’em and I told him so. But he wouldn’t listen. Oh, no, he was perfectly fine to carry them. There wouldn’t be any trouble at all. So what does he do? He trips over his own feet and breaks every single one of them. Ordered them from Sears. They weren’t even three weeks old. I had to go shopping this morning so I wasn’t here when he woke up. I can imagine the hangover he had. Anyway, if he remembers what he did he’s probably too scared to come back.”
    She shook her head. “You know what’s the worst of it? You never met a nicer little feller in your life when he’s sober. But you got to catch him before eight o’clock at night because afterward—”
    “Well, I’ll stop back then, ma’am.”
    “Before eight.”
    “Before eight.”
    I started to walk away.
    “I say who stopped by?”
    “No, that’s all right. I’ll just see him later.”
     
    I had a piece of chicken and a baked potato with butter just after one o’clock that afternoon. The businessmen were just starting to leave, heading back to their stores.
    The woman from the jail came up and sat next to me at the counter.
    “You’re Mr. Noah Ford?”
    “I am.”
    “My name is Laura Flannery. I saw you in the sheriff’s office a while ago. Do you remember?”
    “Now how could I forget such a fine-looking woman in such a short amount of time?”
    She had a sweet melancholy girl voice, the sort you could almost listen to if she was just reading a list of names.
    “Deputy Rolins told me that you’re a federal agent.”
    “Yes.”
    “But you’re not with the other two.”
    “No, I’m not.”
    The woman behind the counter was pretending to arrange several loaves of bread to build them into a kind of presentation. What she was really doing was eavesdropping.
    “Feel like taking a walk?”
    She touched my