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her shouting was a revelation to them all.
    Miss C. took a deep breath, swiftly recovering her dignity. “Give me the skateboard, Noah.”
    “It was an accident. I didn’t hit him.”
    “You were pinning him on the ground. I saw it.”
    “But I didn’t hit him!”
    She held out her hand. “Give it to me.”
    “But—”
    “Now.”
    Noah walked over to his board, lying a few feet away. It was well-worn, one chipped edged crisscrossed with electrician’s tape. The board had been a birthday gift when he turned thirteen. He’d added the decals underneath it—a green dragon with red fire shooting out of its mouth—and had broken in the wheels riding the streets of Baltimore where he used to live. He loved this board, because it reminded him of everything he’d left behind. Everything he still missed. He held it for a moment, then, wordlessly, handed it to Miss C.
    She took it with a look of distaste. Turning to address the other students she said, “There’ll be no more skating on school grounds. I want all the skateboards brought home today. And if I see any boards tomorrow, I’ll confiscate them. Is that clear?”
    There was a silent nodding of heads.
    Miss C. turned to Noah. “You’re in detention until three-thirty this afternoon.”
    “But I didn’t do anything!”
    “You come to my office now. You’re going to sit and think about what you did do.”
    Noah started to argue, then swallowed his words. Everyone was looking at him. He glimpsed Amelia Reid standing by the track field, and his face flushed with humiliation. In silence, head down, he followed Miss C. toward the building.
    The other skaters sullenly parted to let them through. Only as Noah was walking away from them did he hear one of the boys mutter:
    “Thanks, Elliot. You screwed it up for the rest of us.”
     
    If one wished to take the pulse of the town of Tranquility, the place to go was Monaghan’s Diner. This was where the Dinosaur Club met every day at noon. It was not really a club, but a coffee klatch, six or seven retirees who, for want of a job to go to, hung around Nadine’s counter, admiring the pies under the plastic bells. Claire had no idea how the club got its name. Her guess was that one of the men’s wives, in a fit of pique over her husband’s daily absence, one day blurted out something like: “Oh, you and that bunch of old dinosaurs!” And the name stuck, as good names do. They were all men, all well past sixty. Nadine was only in her fifties, but she was an unofficial Dinosaur because she worked behind the counter and had the good humor to tolerate their bad jokes and cigarette smoke.
    Four hours after the thigh bone was found, Claire stopped in at Monaghan’s for lunch. The Dinosaurs, seven of them today, all wearing blaze orange over flannel shirts, sat in their usual place, the far left barstools near the milkshake machine.
    Ned Tibbetts turned and nodded as Claire came in the door. Not a Warm greeting, but gruffly respectful. “Mornin’, Doc.”
    “Morning, Mr. Tibbetts.”
    “Gonna be a mean wind blowing in today.”
    “It’s already freezing outside.”
    “Coming out of the northwest. Could have snow tonight.”
    “Cup of coffee, Doc?” asked Nadine.
    “Thank you.”
    Ned turned back to the other Dinosaurs, who’d variously acknowledged her entrance, and were now back in conversation. She knew only two of them by name; the others were merely familiar faces. Claire sat alone at her end of the counter, as befitted her outsider status. Oh, people were cordial enough to her. They smiled, they were polite. But to these natives, her eight months in Tranquility was but a temporary sojourn, a city girl’s fling with the simple life. Winter, they all seemed to agree, would be the test. Four months of snowstorms and black ice would drive her back to the city, as it had driven off the last two doctors from away.
    Nadine slid a steaming cup of coffee in front of Claire. “Guess you know all about it,