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living selling cars. He could and did. Russ was a born salesman. Within a few months, he was back on top, had moved back to town, and had been concentrating on his real-estate business. Even with the downturn in the economy, we all knew Russ was doing well. He was well-liked, smooth as a well-shaved eel, and along with his wife, Brianna, had even started chaperoning the St. Barnabas youth group. Together with another couple, Gerry and Wilma Flemming, they hosted a Sunday night youth get-together at their respective homes that the Staffords had christened Afterglow.
    “ Not only didn’t I remember you were his accountant, but I certainly didn’t know he had an interest in the Bear and Brew.”
    “ I think he owns sixty percent,” said Meg. “Something like that. Francis Passaglio has a smaller share. They don’t do any of the day- to-day stuff, though. Why do you think the youth group gets all those pizzas at half price?”
    The Bear and Brew had begun life as a feed store in the 1920s. The new owners had kept the heart-pine floor boards; the tin signs advertising tractor parts, chicken feed, windmills and most everything a farmer could want from a mercantile; and the ambiance that comes with an old store that had seen four generations gather around the pickle barrel, swap stories, play checkers, and whittle untold board-feet of kindling. It had good, sturdy tables, wooden chairs, and an old 1950s juke-box in the corner, the kind that played 45’s. There was still just the hint of saddle soap and leather in the air, but mostly what the Bear and Brew had was pizza. Good pizza and good beer, a bar and a couple of sixty-inch plasma televisions. The owners thought they could sell a lot of beer on a Sunday afternoon when the Carolina Panthers took the field or if North Carolina, or Duke, or Wake Forest, or any one of a hundred other college teams was shooting hoops.
    “ Well, either way,” I said, “it’ll all be over next Tuesday, and we can get back to normal. As normal as we get.”
    “ Have you seen the weather forecast?” asked Meg. “We’re supposed to get a squall on Saturday. It should be a doozy. One of those summer thunderstorms.”
    “ That could be a blessing in disguise. The protesters might stay home.”
    “ You should be so lucky,” said Meg.

Chapter 4

    Saturday morning loomed like a movie special effects spectacular, something out of Twister or maybe Lord of the Rings, Part Two . I woke at 7:30 to the sound of distant thunder—not just the occasional clap, but the rolling kind, the kind that comes in waves that make the windows rattle, the thunder that makes you think that maybe there are bowling alleys in heaven and makes you wonder if angels have their own bowling shoes or if they have to wear rentals. But maybe that’s just me.
    We had our windows open, and, until this morning, the weather had been pleasant and cool. Now the air was warm and heavy and uncomfortably sticky. I gave Meg a kiss, left her to her Saturday morning dozing and headed for the kitchen to make some coffee, closing the windows along my trek through the house. Archimedes, sitting primly on the kitchen counter, greeted me with two great blinks as I walked in. He hadn’t been around for a few days, but he sensed the storm and obviously preferred waiting it out in the house. I didn’t see Baxter, but knew he’d probably taken refuge under the bed in one of the guest rooms, his usual place during a thunderstorm. Fearless in most circumstances, Baxter was a sissy when it came to thunder. I started the coffee, then went outside to the garage and fetched a couple of mice out of the fridge for the owl. Coming back in, I saw some towering thunderheads toward the southwest, huge clouds with puffed edges standing straight up. The overshooting top, that cauliflower-like bubble of cloud that peeks out of the flat top of the thunderhead, told the story. This was going to be bad. The clouds were gray and menacing and were lit almost