"Why not!" Ethan snorted. "Maybe because the woman has higher hopes for her evening than spending it together with a gallon of mosquito spray and a barrel of homemade whiskey."

The darkness that eclipsed Rick's eyes was so fierce, Daisy instantly decided that it would be wisera"and far safera"not to discuss the matter further. She reached over to close the car door, but Rick slammed it shut before striding off in the direction of the old tobacco barn. He didn't look back.

Ethan pulled the car around the pebbly circle and onto the driveway. Daisy watched the house shrink in the side mirror as they headed toward the ridge and the road beyond. It seemed almost like a helium balloon that someone had released and was now floating up into the ether, growing gradually smaller until only a speck of porch and white paint remained. It was a sad, trifling speck.

"Thank you."

"Huh?" She wasn't listening. Daisy was too busy wondering if she would ever see the house again. She doubted it, and in a way she hoped that she wouldn't. Nothing good could come of it.

"Thank you," Ethan repeated, "for showing me Fox Hollow."

Daisy didn't respond.

"Is there any way," he went on after a brief pause, "I could talk you into coming with me to the diner? I know you said you'd rather have me drop you off at the inn, but I have a feeling it'd go a lot more smoothly with Hanka"and Brendaa"if you were there with us. I would really be grateful."

His gratitude was of little interest to her. Neither was she inclined to help make anything go more smoothly for Ethan in regard to interrogating her friends. But when Daisy reflected further, she realized that it might be better for Hank and Brenda if she was at H & P's. Then maybe she could steer the questionsa"or answersa"to benefit them, particularly in relation to Hanka"who clearly knew something about somethinga"and his apron.

"I guess I could go to the diner if you think it might do some good." She tried to make it sound like she was acting for Ethan's benefit. "I'm hungry anyway."

"Greata"" Without warning Ethan stepped hard on the brakes. "Sorry. I thought I sawa""

He leaned toward her side of the car and peered out the window. Daisy's eyes traveled with his. They had reached the top of the ridge and were just starting down the other side toward the road. There was a narrow field to the right of the driveway, followed by a line of dogwoods, then a brush border leading to the creek, which curved in at that part of the property.

"You saw something?" Daisy asked. She didn't see anything except untilled ground and a thicket of forsythias mixed with hollies.

Ethan put the car into reverse and crept backward until he suddenly slammed on the brakes again. "There it is! I knew I saw it."

"What?" She followed his outstretched finger. "What am I supposed to be looking at?"

"There. In between those two bushes."

"You're going to have to be a bit more specific. It's a whole row of bushes."

"You see that big boulder?"

Daisy nodded.

"About four feet to the left. There's a pair of bushes with red berries."

"You mean the hollies?"

"Hollies?" Ethan shrugged. "Is that what those are? Well, smack in the middle of them."

She was about to answer that his vision must be playing tricks on him, because there was only clay and clover in the middle of the hollies, but then she saw it too. The glint of sun on metal.

"It's too big for trash," he said. "Don't you think? A bunch of beer cans wouldn't reflect the light like that. And they'd be flat on the ground. It's too high."

"I guess." Daisy had never once in her life pondered how beer cans reflected the light. Nor did she really care.

"We should take a closer look," Ethan decided.

He shifted the car into park and turned off the engine. Climbing out, he glanced at her. "Aren't you coming?"

"I guess," she replied, with even less enthusiasm than she had a moment earlier. The car was just beginning to cool off nicely. Now it was going to get hot and sticky again, and so was she.

Ethan waded through the field toward the line of dogwoods.

"Watch out for ticks," Daisy muttered, marching after him.

"Watch out for what?"

"Never mind. Ia"" She squinted at the hollies. "Are those berries, or is that a red light in there?"

Quickening his speed, Ethan reached the brush border a dozen paces ahead of her.

"It's a light," he called. "And it's blinking."

"Blinking?" she echoed, perplexed. "How could it be blinking? How could it even be a light?"

"I think a Damn!"

"What? What is it?"

Daisy jogged over to him and saw the answer for herself. Up close the metal was blindingly bright in the sun. A red signal light flashed ceaselessly on and off. It belonged to a motorcycle. A black-and-chrome Harley-Davidson. A seriously smashed-up black-and-chrome Harley-Davidson.

"It must have hit that tree." Ethan motioned toward a nearby dogwood with its trunk freshly cracked almost in half. "Then it slid into these bushes."

"But howa""

"And there's the path it took from the driveway." He pointed behind them into the field. "You see where the grass is shorn down? He must have been really out of control. Look at how it zigzags."

"But howa"" Daisy began again, only this time she cut herself off when the full meaning of his words hit her. "He was out of control? Oh my God, where's the driver?"

Ethan's eyes widened, and he looked around hurriedly. "I don't see a Do you?"

She looked around too. "I don't either. Could they have walked away?"

"It's possible I suppose." He sounded doubtful. "Anything is always possible. Except that bike is pretty much destroyed. The front end's totally mangled, and the handlebars might as well be a pretzel."

"If they didn't walk away, then shouldn't they be around here somewhere?"

Ethan started pushing his way into the thicket. "The driver was probably thrown off."

"So maybe they're okay. Maybe they flew away safely."

"It's not the flying that's the problem," he responded. "It's the landing."

Together they searched through the forsythias and hollies, but there was no sign of anyonea"injured or not.

"It must have happened relatively recently," Ethan said, heading further into the brush. "The lights are still on, so the bike's battery isn't dead yet."

"We should have heard the collision," Daisy told him. "Everything echoes around Fox Hollow, including the sound of a motor when someone comes down the driveway."

"Then it had to have been before we arrived."

"And we missed it the first time we passed by?"

"We almost missed it this time too. The sun hit that chrome at just the right moment for me to catch it. Daisya""

She stopped picking her way through the shrubs and looked over at him.

"I hate to ask you this"a"Ethan cringed slightlya""but do you recognize the motorcycle?"

"No. I don't think so." There was something vaguely familiar about it, but nothing definitive that she could place. "It's a beat-up old Harley. There are a lot of beat-up old Harleys in this area, and to me they all kind of seem the same."

"Okay. That's good. Given the circumstances."

"We're almost at the end of the border," Daisy said. "Could the driver really have gone this far?"

"It's not actually that far," he corrected her. "With enough speed a Wait!"

Ethan dashed toward the creek. She quickly lost sight of him but soon heard the sound of shoes splashing in water. Daisy rushed to catch up. When she reached the curving bank, Ethan shouted at her to stay back.

"Don't! Don't come any closer!"

She didn't need to come any closer. Daisy could see it all before her with gut-wrenching clarity. The water looked just the same as it had that morning when they drove over the bridge. It was high for the middle of summer, knee-deep at the center and flowing briskly. And there he was in the heart of it, sprawled facedown with his limbs stretched out like a scarecrow. Hank was lying motionless in Frying Pan Creek.

CHAPTER.

18.

The funeral was quiet. A dreary, drizzly day would have been appropriate, but it was sunny and scorching instead. There had been no rain in Pittsylvania County for nearly a month, and everything was slowly becoming withered, dusty, and browned. The sick irony of it was that in another week or two Frying Pan Creek would most likely be dried to a muddy trickle. Then Hank Fitz wouldn't have been able to drown in it.

His only blood relations were very distant and lived on the opposite side of the country. Brenda and Daisy were Hank's family in Virginia, so it fell to them to handle the arrangements. They did it without fuss or excessive ceremony. Brenda had already buried a husband, and Daisy had buried a parent. They knew how to lay to rest a person they had loved. Afterward, they invited the small group of mourners back to the diner for one final meal.

"It was only last Monday." Brenda sniffled, peeling off the cover to a large bowl of potato salad. "Was it Monday? Or was it Tuesday?" She didn't wait for an answer. "We were talking about reordering peas and beans. And now he's gone. Can you believe it, Ducky? Hank's gone!"

Daisy replied with a sigh. She was the one who had put the wreath on his grave. She was the one who had informed Brenda and her momma and so many others of the dreadful news. She was the one who had helped drag his wet, limp body from the water. And she was the one who had been on her knees next to Ethan when he had checked for signs of life and found none. Daisy had done all those things, but somehow she still couldn't quite believe that she would never again see Hank pop his thick, red, creased face through the opening above the grill. Never again would she have to badger him to decide on the breakfast special. Never again would she be able to plead with him for more stories about his outrageous adventures with her daddy long ago when they were young.

"We were squabbling," Brenda went on. "Squabbling just like a couple of spoiled children about how many cans of this to get and how many cans of that." She turned to Daisy and sniffled once more. "Now we won't place another order. Never!"

"Oh, sweetie." Daisy set down the aluminum tray filled with Brunswick stew that she had just pulled from the oven and wrapped a consoling arm around Brenda's shoulders.

"It's why there's that old saying," Aunt Emily interjected. "God laughs at those who make plans."

With a soggy handkerchief, Brenda dabbed at a tear creeping out from the corner of one eye. "God laughs? Surely God wouldn't laugh at a good, generous man like Hank Fitz."

Daisy frowned at Aunt Emily, who was standing in the open doorway leading to the kitchen. Sometimes she could be a little too blunt and satirical.

Quick to catch the hint, Aunt Emily said, "Hank was a good man, wasn't he? I'll always think of him fondly for how he helped out our darling Duckya"and her momma tooa"in their time of need. Speaking of which, what's going to happen to the diner? Have you heard anything?"

Brenda shook her head. "We're gonna have to shut it."

"You are? Why?"

"Hank was the cook."

"Couldn't you do the cooking?" Aunt Emily replied. "You and Ducky together. One or the other of you already prepares most of the breads and sides, don't you? I know Ducky does all the delicious desserts. Couldn't you just hire somebody to handle the grill?"

"Hire somebody to replace Hank?" Brenda stared at her in dismay.

"It's not as easy as it sounds," Daisy told her. "Aside from not having a stitch of cash to hire anyone for even an houra"let alone full-timea"all the necessary state licenses and health department certificates are in Hank's name. Plus every piece of equipment belongs to H & P's, and we have no idea who now owns H & P's. Technically I think we're trespassing just by being here today."

"Trespassing? Rubbish!" Aunt Emily waved her hand like she was swatting away a bothersome gnat. "How could you possibly be trespassing in a place your daddy helped build and who's one-half of the name? As to the equipment, we could get Carlton to rig an auction for you. Buy it all cheap! He's sitting out there now, if you want me to go arrange it with him."

"Thank you, but I don't think we're quite at that stage yet." Daisy smiled. "And I'm not worried about trespassing, not when the sheriff and his wife are also sitting out there, sipping tea and trespassing right along with us. I wasn't talking about today. I meant tomorrow. Tomorrow H & P's will be closed, and it's going to have to remain closed until somebody tells us who inherited it and what that person wants to do with it."

"I suppose you're right." Aunt Emily's brow furrowed as she walked toward the long table on which they were organizing the food. "Except what are you going to do in the meantime?"

Daisy and Brenda looked at each other. It was a question that they had already begun to discuss. They had a few ideas percolating, but today was about Hank.

"Well, I'm sure you'll figure out something grand," Aunt Emily declared with her usual chirpy assurance. "At least you don't have to worry about going hungry in the interim. My dining room is always open for you. And your momma will be thrilled to see more of you, Ducky. You've been working so hard lately, you're hardly ever at the inn. And while we're on the subject of the inn, do you know how long Special Agent Kinney is planning on staying with us?"

"I'd like to know that too," Beulah chimed in, taking Aunt Emily's place in the open doorway. "Because if he's going to hang around for a whilea" She let the sentence trail away with a grin.

"Seriously?" Daisy pursed her lips. "You want to start flirting with Ethan?"

"Why not? If you're okay driving everywhere in Chalk Level with him, there can't be anything wrong with me inviting him to have a couple of drinks." Her grin grew. "He is pretty easy on the eyes. Don't tell me you haven't noticed, Daisy."

"Just make sure those drinks are all legal," she retorted dryly. "Lest you forget, he's ATF."

"It's a good thing then I'm not Rick Balsam and I don't have a giant secret stash of 'shine." Beulah shook her head with a mixture of amusement and disdain. "I still can't believe he's been using the old tobacco barn at Fox Hollow to cook up white lightning."

"I can," Aunt Emily retorted. "Pittsylvania County is the moonshine capital of America, after all."

"I thought that was Carroll County," Brenda said.

"Carroll. Franklin. Pittsylvania." Aunt Emily shrugged. "Might as well be the same thing. It's not like those boys with their stills out there in the backwoods know where the county lines are anyway."

"Ain't that the truth," Brenda agreed.

"I think Rick knows exactly where the county lines are. And all the other lines too." There was a marked sharpness to Beulah's tone. "He's a clever weasel, and he's always playing a weaselly game. One that's full of trouble. I've said it before, but I'd bet every last drop of shampoo in my salon that the weasel's looking for something from Daisy."