“So?”

“So I paid Eric to clean it up, get rid of all the crap on the premises. There were gallons of chemicals and fixes, things I had no use for, things so old even people backward enough to be using them wouldn’t want to buy them. Eric said he would do it right, and I’d never have to worry about this.”

“This?”

“Investigators up my ass, trying to bust me for improper disposal of chemical waste. He promised.”

“So the last time you saw him six years ago-”

“He came to pick up his last payment.”

“In cash?”

“In cash.” Ashe shrugged. “He was a bargain. And he did what he said he would do. He cleaned the place out so I could put it on the market. Too bad the market went south. But if I ever do get a contract on it, I won’t have to sweat the inspection.”

“Except for the lead paint and the asbestos in the insulation,” his wife said matter-of-factly from the kitchen, as if she wanted to remind Ashe that she was there, within earshot, and she knew some of his secrets, if not all of them.

Carl frowned. “Doesn’t the law say you have to make full disclosure? Won’t you have to tell a prospective buyer that you once stored all sorts of chemicals and shit on the site?”

“What are you, anyway, real estate cops? It’s a photography studio. If a buyer wants an environmental inspection, he can fuckin‘ well pay for it.”

Tess took the lead back. Carl was too prone to tangents. “The last time you saw Eric-do you remember the day?”

“It was March, and winter was still hanging around. That’s the best I can do. Sorry.” His tone indicated he was anything but.

“Did he ever talk about his personal life?”

“We were in business. I never asked about his life and he never asked about mine. Do you show your baby pictures to the garbageman?”

Could be a lie, Tess thought. Ashe had shown himself to be a liar, and he might be the jealous, vindictive man they sought. But his very posture spoke of an endemic laziness. It was hard to imagine him mustering the energy to kill someone for any reason.

“And all he did was come by for his money. How much?”

“I dunno. Couldn’t have been more than three hundred dollars, because I got it from an ATM.”

“You said you don’t remember the date,” Carl put in. “What about the time?”

“Night, after dark. I was the only one left on the street.”

Carl glanced at Tess, and she nodded. Eric had checked in at the motel at midday and gone on his “rounds.” He had returned by evening, and the van had been parked there the rest of the night, according to the observant manager. The Maryland state troopers came for Eric the next morning and roused him from sleep to tell him that his fiancée, and his life, had been shot through the heart. One trooper drove Eric’s van home because he was too upset to drive himself.

“What was he driving?” she asked.

“Driving? I don’t know. What does it matter? There was nothing left to haul.”

“Tell us again.”

“Tell you what?”

“What time did he get there? What time did he leave?”

Slumped in his chair, his chinless face receding into his neck, Ashe looked like a turtle half in his shell. “I don’t know. It was six years ago. It was dark, it was late. How much more do you need to know?”

“We need to know,” Tess said, “if there’s a car rental place within walking distance of the motor court, the one near the river.”

“A car rental by that dump? Jesus Christ, I doubt-”

“But there is, Henry,” his wife interrupted. “You probably never noticed, but there’s one of those combination gas station and convenience stores with a car rental franchise in it. If you want to rent a car after six P.M., it’s pretty much the only place in town. Remember when you cracked up the Explorer and we had to get a rental for a whole month, while it was in the shop? I called around and-”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Ashe said. “So there’s a car rental. So what?” Tess already had a pen out and was turning over the map she had used to find Ashe’s home. “Could you give us directions? Real explicit ones. Because we’re strangers here, and it’s getting dark.”

“A convenience store with a car rental and a car wash and video rentals,” Carl said. “What’s next? How many more things are they going to put under one roof?”

“Everything,” Tess said absently. “I’m surprised the big hospital companies haven’t started buying up those corporate funeral home chains and started advertising ”birth-to-earth‘ service.“

“That’s from-”

“West Side Story. I know. But I bet I know something about that movie that you don’t.”

“What?” Clearly, Carl didn’t think this was possible.

“In the stage version of West Side Story, the character said they would be friends ”from sperm to worm.“ But you couldn’t say that onscreen, not in the sixties.”

“Really?”

“Really. No sperm, not in the sixties. I don’t even think they could say womb to tomb.”

“And now every other word on HBO is fuck this or fuck that. But you don’t really need that hard-core language. In The Wild Bunch-”

But they were in the store now, so Tess was spared any more discussion of William Holden and the opening shot of the scorpion.

The manager at this multidimensional convenience store was a veteran-he had been there for a staggering three years, “two years longer than anyone else on staff,” he told them proudly. Which was an impressive feat, no doubt, but of no help to Tess and Carl.

“Unless-” Tess said, drumming her fingers on the change mat.

“Unless what?” Bright-eyed and eager to please, he was one of those rarities, a young man in the service industry who wanted to provide service. “How can I help you?”

“We’re screenwriters.” The lie just popped out, a by-product of their West Side Story conversation. “And we try to be as accurate as possible. We’re working on a thriller for-”

“A director we dare not name.” Carl jumped in, sensing that Tess was about to falter. “But trust me. It’s someone you know.”

“Are you going to film here in Spartina?” The manager’s eyes were wide.

Carl held a finger to his lips and smiled conspiratorially.

“Well, gosh, what do you need to know?”

“Do you keep records of your car rentals? If you had someone’s name going back, say, six years, could you find him in the system?”

“Maybe with a date-”

“How about-” Carl had taken complete charge, and Tess let him go, impressed by his skills. In day-to-day life, he was an odd little fellow. But when he snapped into cop mode, he could be effective, as long as he stopped short of kicking people’s legs off their ottomans. “How about March nineteenth, six years ago. And use the name-oh, Eric Shivers.”

“That’s kind of an odd name.”

“It’s the name of our major character,” Carl said, winking at him. “Know about clearances? We can’t use the name if it turns out there really is an Eric Shivers renting cars in Spartina.”

The starstruck manager pounded the keyboard with those one-note clicks peculiar to car rental clerks and ticket agents, but found nothing. “You’re in luck. No Eric Shivers, not even a Shivers in all this time. I told you it was an odd name.”

“So you can search by name?” Tess asked.

“Yeah, most of the time. We put people in the computer so we can call up their stats, remember any preferences they have. Company pretends it’s a service, because it cuts a few seconds off the time it takes to do the paperwork. But just between us, I think they sell the information to direct-mail firms.”

“What about by date? Could you print out every car rented from here on that particular date?”

“I’m pretty sure I can’t do that.” More clicks. “No, we changed computer systems since then, and we never reconciled the records. Maybe back at corporate.”

“Oh.” Tess leaned against a rack of chips, disappointed. They had seemed to be on to something. What, she wasn’t sure. The fact that Eric Shivers had left his van at the motor court all evening, and taken a different vehicle to see Ashe, had seemed fraught with significance, the way jagged pieces of information often do. But he might have taken a cab. Or the motor court manager could be mistaken. What would have prevented Eric from going out for half an hour and coming back, with no one noticing?