She headed for the counter.

"And Martin was in for his check," Cindy said. "I told him you'd be in later, and he said he'd be back. And another thing, you might think this is queer, but I didn't know what to do. Arthur got a check. You want me to send it back or what?"

To where? His estate? Probate court?

"Leave it and I'll take care of it," I said.

She high-heeled her way back to me and handed over two blue envelopes.

"All yours," she said.

I stuffed them in my pocket and walked out the door. Better to drop Martin's check at his house than get stuck talking with him all afternoon. And better for me to get out of Roxanne's brother's shirt. He might need it for the family reunion.

Martin's house was on Monument Street in a neighborhood of small brick Victorian houses originally built for middle management people at the mill. They weren't grand, but they were on a hill overlooking the town. What was more important was that they were downwind.

I left the car running in the driveway and went up the steps to the glassed-in porch. As I raised my hand to knock, the inside door rattled and dogs started yipping on the other side of the door.

"Michael! Tillie! It's Mr. McMorrow. Now you behave yourselves. Oh, these dogs. Now get down before I have to ..."

The door opened and two dachshunds flashed out past me and then back on to the porch, barking the whole way but at nothing in particular. I stepped in and saw Pauline Wiggins standing at the inner door that went into the house.

"Hi, Mrs. Wiggins," I said, and offered the envelope. "This is for Martin. His check. I was going home and I thought I'd save him the trip."

She opened the door wider.

"Come in now, Mr. McMorrow, don't worry about your shoes. I'll get Martin. What do you take in your coffee, dear?"

Martin's voice came from inside the house.

"That Jack? Well, have him come in, Pauline. Have him come in. Jack, come on in, good to see you. Get you a cup of coffee? Pauline, get Jack a cup of coffee. Mike. Tillie. No. Get in there."

Outnumbered and outflanked, I surrendered.

The house smelled old, like Martin's coats and old tweed jackets, and even like his breath. I'd been there twice before, but had never come in this far.

"Coffee cake, Martin," Pauline was saying, leading the way into the kitchen. "Did you finish that coffee cake? I told you not to eat all of it. Sometimes I wonder. Oh, good. That's enough. I won't have any."

She was a retired high-school English teacher and she ran the house like a study hall. I remembered that from the last time when she had been nagging Martin about the garden hose and leaving it out, and how she had told him to put it away and he hadn't, and now he'd driven over it and she didn't know if it had a crack in it and it was practically new.

Pauline was like the dogs, nipping and yipping at Martin's heels. He was deferential but resigned, like somebody who'd once thought of rebellion but had buried the idea deep over the years.

"Sit down, Jack," Martin said. "Give me your coat."

I handed him the coat and the check. He folded the envelope and put it in the breast pocket of his flannel shirt.

"Keep the bill collectors away another month," he said.

Pauline put coffee in mugs and cream and sugar on the table. Everything matched, with salmon-colored flowers that went with the wallpaper. She went to a drawer and took out matching cloth napkins with embroidered W's and put one at each of three seats.

Oh, Lord, I thought.

The last time I'd been at the Wiggins house, we'd sat on the porch and looked at bound volumes of the Review from the thirty years when Martin was editor. The papers were folksy, with correspondents from each little hollow who made sure that the readers knew everything everyone had done in the past week, whom they'd seen, where they'd gone after church on Sunday.

After that, Martin had taken me into the den to see his guns. They were oiled and polished and displayed on racks on the wall like trophies: rifles, shotguns, revolvers. A Parker twelve-gauge shotgun he'd inherited from his father. It didn't mean much to me but I'd tried to seem impressed. Nothing like an old gun to get your blood moving.

The guns and old papers were nice, but what really made an impression on me was Pauline's pride in her husband's work, and the implication that I had a big pair of shoes to fill. It was like he had to be somebody to be married to her. It was small-town status-seeking mixed up with affection and pride, and it was interesting to watch and listen. Interesting to a point.

"You working today?" Martin asked.

"A little," I said. "Yesterday was long, going to press and all."

"Oh, yeah. The big crunch. We used to get back at dawn, sleep for an hour, and then have to go back in to open at eight o'clock. But we loved it."

"We didn't have these computers," Pauline said, handing me the plate of cake. "It was all typewriters and hot lead and all the rest of it. But I'd be down there every night after school. Couldn't keep me away. Sometimes I think I chose the wrong career, don't I, Martin?"

Martin didn't answer.

"You'd go down after teaching every day?" I said, sipping the coffee.

"Oh my, yes," Pauline said, warming up. "I started going down to the Androscoggin Review back when I was still in high school and Martin and I were keeping company, back when I was a junior. I was just a girl, and my father, he was a manager at the mill; he thought this newspaper business was really not the most reputable thing, but I insisted, and he wanted me to be happy. Papa always did want me to be happy."

"So you've been together ever since high school?"

"Oh, yes," Pauline said, while Martin watched and perhaps listened. "High school and then teachers' college, and then it was that next summer we were married. That was right after the Depression, and then there was the war, but we survived, with the grace of God."

"That's a long time to be together," I said, finishing the coffee.

"Fifty-one years," Pauline said. "We weren't blessed with children, but we were blessed in other ways. These young people today-oh, you'll think we're old codgers or something-but these young people today. Divorces and not getting married and fighting over the children and this and that. We were lucky, I think. Martin had the paper and I had my teaching. Felt like half the town was my children, what with the school. But it was much smaller then. Oh, a different town. A different time, but that's life, right?"

"Surprised you never tied the knot, Jack," Martin said abruptly.

I smiled. How did he know I hadn't been married five times?

"I'm waiting for the right one to come along," I said. "This girl I saw in the office last week. She looked like the right woman to me. Pretty thing; you would have thought so, Pauline."

"Local girl, Mr. McMorrow?" Pauline asked.

"Portland," I said.

The doorbell rang and the dogs went skating across the linoleum on their claws. I got up and drifted that way with Martin. An older woman was at the door with an empty dish that she gave to Pauline.

Martin and I went out on the lawn, where a man in a pickup truck was waiting.

"Martin," I said. "I was going to tell you. I was at Arthur's, and I saw this old picture of you-at least, it looks like you. I don't know. You're sitting with this girl. I figured it was back when you were a swinging bachelor."

He looked at me funny and didn't say anything.

"I took it by mistake, looking for some stuff for the paper. I was going to give it to you."

Martin still looked funny.

"Oh, yeah," he said vaguely, and then the dogs had bolted out the door and he was calling them and I walked to the car, which after a half-hour was still running. Nothing like Swedish technology.

I got in, waved, and drove off.

I went home, and at four-thirty, was back at the office in a clean shirt and corduroys.

Martin was waiting on the sidewalk.

11.

He was at my side as soon as I got out of the car.

"Jack," Martin said. "I was just wondering about that picture. The one with me in it. I was wondering if I could have it now. Probably wouldn't mean much to anybody else, so long ago. Nice to hang on to, you know? I know you're busy, but I'll go in with you and get it, take it off your hands."

I shut the car door. A four-wheel-drive pickup with loud exhaust blared by, and I waited.

"You knew what I was talking about? Which one?"

"I think so," Martin said.

He looked cold, with pale cheeks.

"You and a girl," I said. "You're sort of hugging. Maybe not hugging. Sort of leaning. And she's got her head on your shoulder."

"Old friend of mine. Nancy, I think. We were part of the same crowd, way back when."

"How would Arthur end up with something like that, of yours?"

"Oh, you know him. Pack rat. That place out there. You know he's lucky he didn't have a fire, all that stuff in there. That way for years."

"So he picked it up someplace?"

"Could have been anywhere. In the office. The old office, I mean. On Cross Street. Upstairs; you don't remember that."

His voice trailed off and we stood there on the sidewalk with the cars going by and every once in a while, somebody waving. It wasn't supposed to be important, but I got the feeling that it was. That something very important was going on in this awkward little conversation.

"Pretty girl, Martin," I said.

"Oh, yeah," he said.

He looked distressed.

"I'll just run in," Martin said.

"I don't have it," I said.

"But I thought you said-"

"I had to give it to the cops. I told you I was going to give it to you but I couldn't. It was part of Arthur's belongings."

Martin stammered, "But it belongs to me. It didn't belong to him."

"Cops don't know that. I didn't know that. It's old. They probably won't even know who it is."

A woman walked by and said, "Hi, Mr. Wiggins."

Martin didn't seem to hear her.

"What will they do with it?" he asked.

"I don't know. Maybe put it in with his estate. All that other stuff. Depends on how long the investigation takes. You could ask them."

I took a couple of steps toward the office door. Martin started following me, then stopped. I said, "So long," and went inside.

First fighting, I thought. Now lying.

More beginner's luck.

The picture was in the manila file folder in the drawer in my desk.

Young Martin and the pretty girl. Embracing and mooning at each other. A soulful gaze. Not an old buddy. And the girl was not a girl.

It was quiet in the office. Everybody had been paid and they had left, except for Cindy, who was on the phone to a friend, and Marion, who was setting copy. I sat at my desk and looked at the picture more closely.

The girl was not a girl. She was a woman. She had long slender legs and she was wearing clunky white shoes. Not shoes from the early thirties. Shoes from the forties. Postwar shoes. Martin would have been in his early thirties.

And married.

So Martin had been screwing around. That intimacy in the gaze. Complicity. Knowing eyes.

Fifty-one years, they had been together. From high school to the war, through two other wars to today. With a little something on the side, as they used to say.

I stuck the picture in the folder with the picture of Joy the Wonder Waitress, shut and locked the drawer. I was in deeper. But maybe I wasn't alone.

Martin didn't want that picture to hang on the living room wall. He knew what it was. He'd known exactly what I'd meant, even back at his house. I'd seen the look in his eyes. The look was fear and it was immediate, more immediate than it would have been if he hadn't seen this picture in forty years.

I thought of Roxanne's questions. Why would Arthur take pictures of women? For fun or blackmail? Now, why would Arthur have a picture of Martin? Why would it be in his private collection?

I got up and, with a wave to Cindy, who was still on the phone, walked out the door.

The questions were with me all evening. I cleaned the kitchen and the bathroom. I picked up all the soiled clothes and put them in trash bags and brought them to a Laundromat in the Village Shopping Center, just west of town, miles from anything that resembled a village. The Very Edge of Civilization Shopping Center, maybe, but not a village.