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downtown area, passing restaurants, office buildings, and shops. Kids with University of Minnesota at Duluth jackets hurried along the streets, stepping into coffee shops. They passed the arched gateway leading to the Canal Park area, then continued northward on Highway 61, driving by the beautiful old mansions built with iron ore money perched on the cliffs overlooking Lake Superior.
    Jo pointed out the largest mansion to John. It was tucked behind enormous wrought iron fencing. “That’s the Glensheen Mansion. It was built by Charles Congdon in the early 1900s. He had his fingers in all kinds of business pies, particularly iron ore. His daughter, Elisabeth inherited the house when he died just ten years after he moved in. She didn’t have any biological children, but adopted a daughter. A wild child, to say the least. The daughter got into drugs, the wrong sorts of men, all that. She ended up killing her elderly mother and a nurse in the mansion in the seventies.
    “It’s open to tours now. ’Course, they don’t bring up the murders on the tour, unless someone asks them. They think homicide is bad for business.” Jo shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know about that. Seems to me they’d have more tours because of it. People are suckers for ghost stories, you know?”
    “You seem to know a lot about this town. Are you from around here?”
    She took a moment to respond. When she did, she was looking straight ahead, not at John. “Yes, I am.”
    He waited a beat for her to add more. When the silence dragged on, he said, “And now you live in Minneapolis and are an agent of the F. B. of I.”
    Her voice had an edge to it. “That’s me. I live in Minneapolis and I’m an FBI agent. Listen, you’re not going to be one of those know-it-all experts who asks nosy personal questions, are you?”
    John was taken aback at her abruptness. They stared at each other a moment. He wasn’t quite sure what note he struck, but it obviously wasn’t a good one. John spoke first. “You know, I think we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry. Just making small talk.” He looked around. They seemed to have left civilization behind. “Um, are we almost there?”
    “Damn it! Missed the turn.” She pulled into the next parking lot and did a U-turn. Once they were headed back into town, she spoke up. “Look, I’m the one who should apologize. You asked a perfectly innocent question and I overreacted. Please accept my apologies.”
    “No problem. I am a bit nosy sometimes.” He smiled at her and her lips curved upward in response. He found himself trying to think of ways to get a glimpse of that smile again.
     
     

Chapter Five
    Turners Bend
    Thanksgiving Week
     
    During the next week Chip fell into a daily routine attuned to the rhythm and pace of life in Turners Bend. Sandwiched between breakfast at the Bun and an evening beer at the Bend, he worked on Brain Freeze . From his vantagepoint as a stranger in town, he keenly observed the events playing out before him, and these observations began to show up in his story in sometimes subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, ways.
    The Bun had last been furnished in the sixties with gray linoleum floors and a gray Formica-covered counter. The counter stools and booths were upholstered in dark-red Naugahyde, and the tables were covered with red-and-white-checked plastic tablecloths. Roosters and chickens were printed on the café curtains that covered the bottom half of the front windows. Customers could sit at the tables and still see over the top of the curtains, so as not to miss any action on Main Street.
    The café was a beehive of activity every weekday morning. Chip saw the same people, sitting in the same places and eating the same breakfasts morning after morning. This was a routine he had never observed in the Baltimore deli where he got a bagel and schmear to go every morning. No regulars lingered at the deli.
    By the end of the week, he