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By Root 906 0

doing?" She asked this question loudly, several times ― the band had finished the song and were watching us, as we'd become the real attraction ― and then she disappeared and several guys took her place, guys who I think were either related to the woman or wanted to be, all of them wanting to know if I had a problem. Peter and his friends had noticed what was going on, and they came over and asked these guys if they had a problem. All this took a while to straighten out, since each of us had so many problems, and by the time it was, my mother and Mr. Mirabelli were nowhere to be seen. I ran out into the parking lot; they weren't there, either, and there was no sign of her Lumina or his Continental. But as I walked through the parking lot, I passed by my van, and there, on the windshield underneath one of the wipers, was a bar napkin. On it were the words "I think I know you." I took this to be my mother's note (the handwriting was familiar in its loops and slants), although what the words meant exactly, I didn't know. There was so much I didn't know. How had my mother and father-in-law known where I was? Who had told them I was driving to New Hampshire? Was it my father? Had one or both of them been involved with the phone call? Did they know each other? How did they know each other? Had they driven there separately, or together? Did my mother know I'd told my wife, my in-laws, too, that she and my father were dead? Did Mr. Mirabelli know now that they weren't? Were she and Mr. Mirabelli talking right now about the woman I'd kissed and the wife I'd betrayed? Why would they follow me to the bar and then leave before saying anything to me? And what was that note supposed to mean? Why did my mother think she knew me? I was her son, was I not? Why would she need to think about that?

These were all questions I couldn't answer or at least didn't want to, and as a detective you learn, sooner or later, to stop asking yourself these sorts of questions and start asking questions that you actually can answer. So I asked myself: What time is it? Then I looked at my watch: it was twenty minutes after midnight, and that meant I was already late.

19

I was late but not entirely stupid. I didn't drive all the way to the Robert Frost Place, didn't park in the parking lot as I'd done earlier. Like a real detective might do, I pulled off the road about a quarter of a mile from the house, into a slot in the snowbank that the snowplows must have used as a turnaround, parked my van there, and sneaked up to the house. This cost me some more time, of course, and by the time I got there, the bond analysts had already set fire to the Robert Frost Place and were standing in the parking lot watching the house burn. Their Saab was next to them with its engine on. The parking lot was ringed by white pines, and I hid behind one of them, close enough to hear what the bond analysts were saying.

"He's not going to show up, is he?" one of the Ryans said, referring, I was pretty sure, to me. It was the first time I'd heard him speak. "What good is this if he doesn't show up?"

"He's missing one hell of a fire," Morgan said, and then I knew why they'd called me: to show me that they could set fire to a writer's home in New England without my help. They wanted me to be a witness. The bond analysts had always been like this: during their memoir-writing sessions in prison, they were always so eager to show one another how beautifully they'd written about the bad things they'd done. "One hell of a fire," Morgan repeated.

"Who cares how good the fire is if he's not here to see it?" the other Ryan said. Tigue and G-off were leaning against the Saab, staring silently at the fire, as though it had taken their voices and given those voices to the Ryans.

"Shut up," Morgan said. "Trust me. He'll be sorry." He held up an envelope and then placed it in the middle of the parking lot, which had been plowed and was mostly clear of snow. With that, they piled into their Saab and drove away from the fire. As they pulled out of the parking lot, the Robert Frost Place's