I woke up at eight-thirty. For me, that’s sleeping in. I had a quick shower, dressed, and went to the hotel lobby for breakfast. They’d laid on Special K and Frosted Flakes in sealed, single-serving plastic bowls, muffins, doughnuts, Danishes, coffee and tea. It was self-serve and all-you-can-eat, and a family of four was taking full advantage, stuffing cereal and pastries into bags for the road ahead.

Once in the car, I got out my map and double-checked how I was going to reach Groverton. There was a yellow wooden pencil in the tray between the seats, and I used it like a pointer, tracing the route I would take.

It was a long shot, of course. All I had was a gas receipt leading me there. But it was the best, and only real clue I had. Groverton was farther away than I’d first realized-two hours, and still heading in the direction away from home.

I didn’t have much of a game plan for when I reached my destination. I figured I could find the gas station where Trixie got her receipt, but beyond that, I couldn’t think of much to do but drive around looking for my car, the one Trixie had fled in. Perhaps, once I got there, other opportunities would present themselves.

As I drove, tuning in Trixie’s eight-speaker stereo to a jazz station-my friendship with Lawrence Jones had expanded my musical tastes in the last couple of years-that was playing some Stan Getz, Oscar Peterson, and Diana Krall, I tried to sort out the things I had learned in the last day.

Trixie, if she was the person I’d been hearing about named Candace, or Candy, certainly had a colorful background. She’d come to work at the Kickstart, fallen in love with a man named Swain, who ended up plastered onto the front of a locomotive. She’d had a child. She’d disappeared after three members of the Slots motorcycle gang were murdered at the Kickstart. And the surviving gang leader, Gary Merker, trying to earn a bit of cash selling presumably stolen stun guns, had been putting the word out, for years, that if anyone ever saw her, they were to let his mother know, so that she could pass the message on. And shortly after that happened, Martin Benson was found dead in Trixie’s basement dungeon, with two telltale marks on his body indicating that he’d been shot with a stun gun before he’d had his throat slit.

And Merker’s charming mother had said that the reason her son wanted to find this Candace so badly was because she’d taken something from him. Something that he wanted to take back from her.

I had a hunch that Merker wanted more from Candace than just something she’d stolen from him. He wanted to take from her the memories of what had transpired the night of that massacre, her memories of what she’d witnessed. And I was guessing Merker would have a permanent way of dealing with a witness.

There’d been that little voice in the back of my mind, wondering whether Trixie might have played any role in the deaths of Merker’s gang associates, but his mother’s responses seemed to suggest otherwise. Gary seemed to have moved on with his life pretty quickly after the tragedy. “He got over that,” Mrs. Merker had said.

The highway to Groverton was two-lane all the way, and between all my ruminating and the music, the trip went quickly. I passed through some gently rolling hills the last twenty miles or so, and the outskirts of Groverton were marked by a lumber store and, across the street, a tractor dealership. There wasn’t much to get excited about once I passed the Welcome to Groverton sign advertising a population of 4,500-maybe twice the size of the closest town to my father’s fishing camp north, and west, of here. There were enough locals to justify two grocery stores, half a dozen convenience stores, another lumber operation on the other side of town, and a main street with three traffic lights and about ten blocks of businesses.

It didn’t take long to find Sammi’s Gas Station, a block past the center of town. Eight self-serve pumps, five do-it-yourself car-wash bays, and a kiosk just big enough to hold a cashier, a counter, and a rack displaying candy bars, chips, and pine-scented car deodorizers.

The car needed gas, so I pulled up to the pump and popped the fuel lid by pulling on a lever on the floor by the front seat. There was a label on the lid advising me to use the high-octane stuff, so I hit the button for super unleaded, shoved the pump into the car, and squeezed the handle.

Rather than pay by credit card at the pump, I went into the kiosk when I was done and handed the short, dark-skinned, East Indian-looking man at the computerized cash register my credit card.

“How you doing?” I said.

He nodded as he swiped my card through the reader. “You want anything else? Some snacks? I have got the chips and candy bar.”

I passed. I’d had my fill of junk at the hotel. “I wonder if you could help me, though,” I said. “Do you recognize this car I’m driving?”

The man peered out the window at it. “That is a nice car,” he said. “Very expensive, I am betting, yes?”

“It was in here a few days ago, but there would have been someone else driving it. A woman.” I took the Suburban clipping from my jacket pocket, unfolded it, and showed it to the man.

The man shrugged. “We get many people, mostly from around here, but some passing through too, so I don’t know. She is very pretty, though. This woman, she is your wife?”

“No, she’s not, but yes, she is pretty. Do you recognize her at all?”

He shook his head. “No. I am so sorry. I do not.”

“Or the car? I bet you don’t get that many cars like that one.”

“Oh, it is a nice car,” he said again. “You don’t see many like that around here. Most people, they drive pickups or four-times-four. That car, it is no good in snow, right?”

“Well, I don’t know. I’ve never driven it in the winter. So did you see the car here last week?”

“What day was it?” I handed him the receipt I’d found in the car. He glanced at it. “This was Thursday. See?” He pointed to the numbers at the top of the receipt indicating the date. That would have been the day before Martin Benson was killed. It would have meant Trixie had driven up here probably just for the day, maybe driven back the morning of the day Benson had his throat slit.

“Thursday, I do not work, also Wednesday,” the attendant said. “That is my weekend, but then, on the real weekend, I work both of those days, the Saturday and the Sunday. I am here from eight in the morning until eight at night. It is a long day. At least I do not get robbed, not like my cousin, who runs a gas station in the city. He’s a surgeon.”

“Who would have been here on Thursday?”

“Well, Hector, he would have been here. He is here most days of the Monday to Friday. He is over there, in the car-wash bays, getting the change out of the machines. He might have noticed something. He is always looking for, you know, what he calls it, the snatch.”

“Yes, well,” I said. “If he’s always looking for that, then yes, he might have noticed this woman.”

The man beamed, glad to be helpful. “I have to stay here, but you go find him.”

Hector, a tall, fat, bearded man who looked like he’d be more at home on a pirate ship than maintaining a car-wash bay, had opened a locked panel on the self-serve car-wash controls and was dumping quarters into a plastic pail. Before he noticed I was there, I saw him grab a small handful of quarters and slip them into his pants pocket.

“Excuse me, Hector?”

I nearly gave him a heart attack. He whirled around, saw me, put his hand to his mouth and coughed nervously. “What?”

“Are you Hector?” I asked.

“Yeah, I guess. Sure. What can I do for you?” He turned so that I couldn’t see his pocket bulging with coins.

“The fellow at the cash register said you might be able to help.”

Hector rolled his eyes, as if his fellow employee was always fobbing things off on him. “Yeah, what is it?”