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don’t mind my asking?”
    “A couple of thousand or so,” Otis lied. He was not about to tell this policeman or anyone else that he paid $7,500 for the old scooter.
    “Mine cost two hundred and fifty-seven dollars in 1954. I remember that exactly because my dad loaned me the money, and it took me three years on a paper route and bagging groceries to pay him back.”
    The scooter had been secured to the trailer with large leather straps. Detective Elkhart and Dr. Gidney helped Otis roll and lift the red scooter down and onto the driveway.
    Otis immediately sat down on the scooter’s seat, hit the kick starter with his right foot, gunned it with the throttle on the right handlebar, released the brake with his left foot, and smoothly moved off. He did four big U-turns out into the street—there was no traffic—and came back.
    “Want to give it a twirl for old times’ sake?” he asked Elkhart.
    It had been a while since Otis had seen such a wide and glorious smile on another man’s face. Elkhart, proving that you never forget how to ride a motor scooter as well as a bicycle, took possession and control and rode off as if he did it every day.
    When he returned after two long spins down the street and back, Otis asked Bob Gidney if he’d like a turn.
    Bob smiled, mounted the Pacemaker, and rode off down the street.
    It was only then that Otis thought to look back at the front of the house to see what the rest of his welcoming committee might be doing. Dreary Pete Wetmore was still standing there, looking stunned. The other detective, who appeared to be about twenty-five, was talking on his cellphone.
    Sally was no longer there. But Annabel was. Her face was frozen in a look of absolute amazement.
    IT WAS A lovely, quiet, dreamy Sunday afternoon on the soft grassy bank of Farnsworth Creek. The daffodils, petunias, and sunflowers smelled sweet and shone brightly under the April Kansas sun. The temperature was in the comfortable low eighties, the breezes were gentle and fluffy.
    Under a majestic cottonwood tree lay an exquisitely tanned beautiful young woman on a flowery quilt, reading a book,
Taking Charge
by Michael Beschloss. She was dressed in pleated yellow shorts and a pastel blue short-sleeved blouse. Her long blond hair lay above her head on a small pillow.
    Into this tranquil scene came the soft putt-putt of a small gasoline motor. From down a narrow gravel path emerged a red 1952 Cushman Pacemaker ridden by a man wearing a red Kansas City Chiefs football helmet, with a Daisy Red Ryder BB gun strapped to the right side.
    The woman, who appeared to be in her mid-twenties, sat up at the intrusion and watched in clear fear as the armed man and the scooter came to a halt under ten yards away.
    Otis Halstead waved to her and turned off the motor. “Sorry to bother you,” he said as he leaned forward from his seat and put both feet on the ground.
    The woman said nothing, did nothing.
    “You should listen to the tapes, too,” said Otis after noticing her book, which she had set down on the quilt beside her. “Hearing Lyndon Johnson’s voice saying all of that is truly a most special experience.”
    The Beschloss book and accompanying tapes from Lyndon Johnson’s first months as president after the assassination of John F. Kennedy had been one of Sally’s Christmas presents to Otis last year. He enjoyed reading contemporary American history.
    Otis stepped off the scooter on the left side and whacked down the kickstand with his right foot.
    The young woman, sitting with her arms across her bent legs, remained perfectly still and silent.
    Otis removed the BB gun from the scooter and held it sideways toward the woman. “It’s a Daisy Red Ryder air rifle,” he said. “It’s a kid’s toy, bought it out of a catalog.”
    The muscles in her face seemed to loosen a bit. The expression of fear and concern was replaced by one of interest and curiosity. But she said nothing. The only sounds were the water flowing in