Giselle gestured toward Tritia . "Is this your wife?"

"Yes. This is Tritia ."

Tritia nodded politely. "Hello."

"Hi." Giselle beamed. "You know, your husband's a really good teacher. I bet you're really proud of him. I never liked English much -- I was always more of a math person -- but I sure enjoyed his class."

"But did you learn anything?" Doug joked.

"I did. I really did. I learned the difference between 'that' and 'who.' "

Doug chuckled.

"Don't laugh. I'm serious. That's something that always stuck with me.

Before I had your class, I used to say, 'The person that went to the store,' or 'The guy that sold me the car.' But ever since you gave us that lecture, I say 'The person _who_ went to the store,' "The guy _who_ sold me the car.' "

"I'm glad I got through to somebody."

"You did. And it's helped me a lot. Now I'm a real snob about it, in fact.

Once I went to this party and there was a guy in really trendy clothes playing the serious intellectual. Only he kept saying 'that' when he should have said 'who.' , It made me feel so superior! Here was this man who should have intimidated the hell out of me, and I wasn't intimated by him at all. I felt sort of embarrassed for him, if you want to know the truth. It was great!"

Doug wasn't sure what to say. "Thank you, I guess."

"You're welcome."

"You're giving him a swelled head," Tritia said. "Now it's going to be even more impossible to live with him."

Giselle didn't pick up on the humor. "He's the best teacher I ever had,"

she said seriously. "Even though he gave me a C." She looked toward her shopping cart at the end of the aisle. "Well, I've got to get going. I'll be around for a while, though. Maybe we'll run into each other in town somewhere." She looked shyly away. "Maybe we can meet for lunch or something."

Doug nodded. "Maybe. Nice seeing you again."

The girl returned to her cart, retreating down the aisle, and Tritia raised her eyebrows. "Ha," she said.

"What does that mean, ha?"

"You know exactly what it means."

"The poor girl obviously came to the store to get herself a quarter-pound Hoffy, and you're picking on her."

"You're nasty!" Tritia laughed and hit his shoulder, and he felt a little better. He put an arm around her waist. They continued down the aisle and up the next one to the produce department and didn't hear a single word about The Suicides. When they reached the checkout stand, however, he heard snatches of words from various conversations, and the words "killed himself and "death" seemed to pop up an awful lot. His eyes rested on the _Willis Weekly_, displayed on its stand next to the counter, and he thought of BenStockley , the editor of the paper. He didn't know why he hadn't thought of the editor before. If anyone in town would listen to him, hear him out, perhaps even believe him, it would be Stockley. He said nothing to Tritia , but he decided then and there that he was going to pay the editor a visit later in the day.

They moved forward in line.

The Bronco seemed to hit every bump and chuckhole on the road home. There were eggs and other fragile food items in the back of the vehicle, and Doug tried to drive slowly and carefully down the dirt road. They drove over the creek and around the turn, and were heading along the straight stretch toward home when they saw, in the distance, what appeared to be two figures kneeling in the middle of the road. As they drew closer, they saw that the figures were Ron and Hannah Nelson and that they were crouched on the dirt before the unmoving form of a German shepherd.

"Oh, my God," Tritia said. "It's Scooby. Stop."

Doug pulled the car over to the side of the ditch just in front of the couple. They could see, this close, that Hannah Nelson's face was streaked with tears. Both of them hopped out of the car, hurrying forward. Ron stood up as they approached.

"What happened?" Doug asked.

"Scooby's dead." Ron's voice was choked and halting, and it seemed as though he too was about to cry. "I think he was poisoned. There's not a mark on him, but there's, like, saliva still dripping from his mouth. The saliva's kind of red."

"Do you need some help? Do you want me to take him to the vet?" '

"No. We'll take him. There's nothing that can be done now."

Doug looked down at the dog. There were, indeed, no marks on him, but the animal's eyes were open wide in an expression of terror and agony. The drool that hung in threads from his open mouth had pooled on the dirt in a muddy, bloody mixture. He met Tritia 's glance and saw in her eyes disgust and pity and anger. "WhocouJd've poisoned him?" she asked. "Do you have any idea?"

Ron swallowed hard. "No. But theWilkersons ' dog was poisoned yesterday, and someone told me that two or three dogs in town have been poisoned the last couple days."

"But how could they have gotten Scooby? I mean, you always have him tied up."

"Actually, he broke his chain yesterday and ran off," Hannah said. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, obviously willing herself not to cry. "It took us a few hours to find him."

"He was up past your place," Ron added.

Hannah began sobbing again, turning away from them.

Doug put a comforting arm around Tritia . "You sure there's nothing we can do?"

Ron shook his head. "Thanks, though."

"Let us know what you find out." Tritia moved forward and put a hand on Hannah's shoulder. "Call me."

The other woman nodded silently, and Doug and Tritia made their way back to the Bronco. Doug put his key in the ignition, started the engine, put the car into gear, and they pulled away from the ditch, moving slowly around the Nelsons and heading toward home. Glancing in the rearview mirror, Doug saw Ron pick up the dog and carry him toward the driveway.

Neither of them said a word as they pulled into their own drive. Doug parked next to the house and got two sacks of groceries from the back of the vehicle. Tritia carried the other sack. They walked into the living room. As usual, Billy was sprawled on the couch, watching TV. _The Brady Bunch_. Doug put his sacks down on the kitchen counter. Next to the sacks was this morning's mail. It had been delivered before breakfast, before they had even awakened, but neither of them had been brave enough to open the envelopes.

Now Doug shuffled through the mail and set aside the three envelopes addressed to himself. As Tritia put down her sack, he tore open the first one and unfolded the enclosed letter: "Dear Tim . . ."

His name wasn't Tim. He frowned, reading on: You missed the meeting, so I'll fill you in on the details. We passed resolutions five through nine unanimously and hired the new custodian. That assholeAlbin gave us a sob story about books and we told him we'd find the funds just to shut him up, but to be honest, there are several more important items we could be spending the money on. I'd like you to write him a letter explaining that our budget for this fiscal year does not allow for new curriculum expenditures other than those already approved, etc. etc. . . .

His eyes jumped to the bottom of the letter. It was signed by Willard Young, the president of the school board. "Tim" had to be Tim Washburn, the only board member who hadn't attended the meeting.

"Those sons of bitches," he swore softly.

"What?" Tritia asked.

"They're not going to give me my books."

"But I thought you said --"

"They lied to me." He handed over the letter. "I can't believe it."

"I can." She read the letter, then threw it down on the counter. "What else is new? They've been screwing the teachers every year since we've been here. What made you think they were going to change?"

Doug picked up the second envelope. As he'd suspected, it was an official letter from the board, apologizing for not having enough money in the budget to buy his requested copies of _Huckleberry Finn_.

He tore the letter up and opened the cupboard under the sink, throwing the pieces into the garbage sack.

Tritia was starting to unload the grocery sacks, but Doug handed her the single envelope addressed to her. "Open it," he said.

"Now?"

"I have a theory."

Tritia took,theenvelope from him and carefully opened it, reading the short enclosed note. No, she thought, this can't be real. She read over the letter once more: What makes you think I would want to meet with you? You were always a smug self-satisfied bitch, and I have no reason to believe that you have changed . . .

Smug self-satisfied bitch.

It was a phrase Paula had often used to describe women she did not like, and it lent the message an authenticity not found in the stilted phrasing of the rest of the letter. Tritia 's lips suddenly felt dry. Of course, she had never told Doug of her last meeting with Paula, of what had been said on both sides.

She had let him believe that they had simply drifted apart after the move and she had kept up the pretense of a friendship long after contact had been cut off. But after all these years, and after reading that letter, she had honestly thought that Paula might want to get together again. Lord knows, she had often thought of Paula in the intervening years, had often regretted the things she'd said. The two of them had been such good friends and their falling out over such a relatively minor item that she'd had no trouble believing that Paula wanted to meet.

_Smug self-satisfied bitch._ "What is it?" Doug asked.

She quickly folded the letter, not wanting him to see. "Paula's not going to be able to come," she said. "She changed her mind."

"Apparently so did Don," Doug said dryly. He handed her a letter from Don Jennings. There were only two words between the salutation and the signature: "Fuck you."

Tritia blinked, not believing her eyes. She could not recall hearing Don ever use profanity. Not even "shit" or "hell" or "damn." She glanced up at Doug.

"That's not like him," she said. "Not unless he's changed an awful lot since we knew him."

"I don't think it's from Don."

"Do you --"

"I don't think the first one was either," he said, anticipating her question. "I don't think Don got a job in Phoenix, I don't think the Jennings are moving to Arizona, I don't think he wrote to me at all."

Tritia felt a tremor of fear pass through her. "That's an awful lot of trouble for someone to go through just to play a practical joke," she said.

"That first letter was so detailed. Whoever wrote it either knew Don or knew you, because there were things in there that a stranger couldn'tpossibly've known."

"It wasn't a joke," Doug said. "I don't know what it was, but it wasn't a joke." He held out his hand. "Let me see your letter."

She didn't really want him to read the letter, but she handed it to him anyway. She watched his eyes dart quickly from left to right as he scanned the words.

"That's what I thought."

They were silent for a moment. Tritia looked over at Billy, who was watching TV, pretending he hadn't heard what they were talking about. He'd heard, she knew. But she was glad he was pretending he hadn't. She didn't want to talk to him about this, didn't want to explain what she couldn't explain.

She turned away from Doug. She didn't want to talk about it to him either.

She didn't want to talk about it at all. She began unpacking groceries.

16.

"That's a very interesting theory,"Stockley said. "Very interesting." He broke open a fortune cookie, reading his fortune, throwing the slip of paper away and slowly chewing the cookie as he mulled over what Doug had just told him.

A slovenly paunchy man in his mid-fifties, BenStockley looked like a stereotypical reporter. His pants were always black, his shirt always white, and both were always wrinkled. His hair was gray and thin, combed back over his scalp, and was slightly too long for both his age and contemporary fashion.

Stockley'sface was rough and leathery, with blunt Broderick Crawford features, and he always seemed to be sweating, no matter what the temperature. In his lower right desk drawer, the editor kept a box ofrisque fortune cookies he ordered directly from some company in New York. He bought the fortune cookies because he loved them and said he didn't want to have to pay for a whole meal just to get one, but he also enjoyed giving the cookies to unsuspecting visitors and watching the reactions on their faces as they read their usually obscene fortunes. He particularly liked giving the cookies to bashful young women and prim old ladies.

"Well, what do you think?" Doug asked.

"You going to blame the mailman for poisoning dogs, too?"

Doug slumped in his seat. "You don't believe me."

"I didn't say that."

Doug looked up at him hopefully.

The editor broke open another fortune cookie. "Have you gone to the police with any of this?"

"Well, I told them about the letters to shut off my phone, water, and electricity. I even gave them copies. But I haven't told them anything else."

"Maybe you should go to them."Stockley raised his hand. "I'm not saying I believe you, but if you're right, this is definitely a matter for the police."

"I don't know if I'm right either. That's why I came to you. If I walk into the police station and tell them what I just told you, they'll probably think I'm crazy."

The editor chuckled. "You didn't want publicity, so you came to a newspaper. That's a good one." Doug started to protest, butStockley cut him off. "I understand. I know what you're trying to do, but the problem is that a newspaper deals with facts. If a story doesn't have the five Ws, I don't print it. I could do a feature on you, let you put forth your ideas, but everything would be attributed to you, and I don't think that's what you want."

"Actually, I'm not really looking for an article, although I think people probably do need to be warned. What I really came in for was confirmation. I mean, you know what goes on in this town. If someone stubs his toe or catches a cold, you're aware of it. I just thought that if anyone had noticed something unusual lately, it would be you. Am I right?"

Stockleywas silent, chewing.

"Just tell me what, if anything, is going on. What have you heard?"

The editor's gaze was troubled. "The relationship between a journalist and his source is very sacred," he said finally. "It's analogous to a lawyer/client relationship, a doctor/patient relationship, a priest/confessor relationship. I could pussyfoot around this, but I'll be honest. Yes, I have heard some talk.

Nothing specific, nothing like what you've told me, and nothing that anyone would admit to if questioned, but other people have noticed odd things occurring lately. And I think they'll notice even more after Bernie Roger's suicide. I should remain neutral, objective, and impartial, but I'll tell you the truth.

Yes, I think something strange is going on around here. And I think it's centered around the mailman."

Doug felt relief flood through him. He hadn't realized how good it would feel to have an ally, to hear someone, a third party, say that he was not crazy, that he was actually on to something. At the same time, it made everything that much more frightening. If all of this was true, the mailman was at the very least dangerously unbalanced and deranged.