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had promised the doctor I would take it easy, so I took a break before tackling
the third wall. I ate lunch, packaged up Aram Goran’s hard drive and rode into town
to post it.
    Riding a bicycle on a country road is trickier than riding in the city. Sure, there’s
less traffic in the country, and that’s good. But the cars and trucks that are on
the road zoom by, unlike slower-moving city traffic, and the road I was on was a
two-lane blacktop with a straight two-inch drop from the pavement to the gravel alongside
it. That drop could throw a person off balance. I know that because when a truck
raced past me close enough to graze my shoulder, I panicked, swerved and ended up
slipping off the pavement. The gravel gripped my tires and almost stopped me dead.
I just missed ending up in the deep ditch that ran between the gravel and the field
on the other side. Also, it quickly became clear that people around here weren’t
used to sharing the road with cyclists. Two pickup-truck drivers and one other motorist
yelled at me, “Get off the road, you dumb kid.” I was relieved when I finally reached
Moorebridge’s town center.
    Aunt Ginny and I had driven through town on our first day here. The place looked
pretty small. My only other visits had been to the hardware store and the hospital
on the outskirts of town. This trip confirmed my first impression. The mostly commercial
main street was exactly twelve blocks long. The side streets had businesses for the
first block and then quickly gave way to churches and houses. According to Aunt Ginny,
more than two-thirds of the people in Moorebridge County lived in more rural areas,
either on farms or in houses spaced out on the highway or on the roads leading to
and from the other towns—villages, really—in the area.
    But for a small place, there were a lot of people on the street, probably because
it was summer and because Moorebridge was on a large lake with long sandy beaches
that attracted tourists. Also, school was out, so there were lots of kids hanging
around with seemingly nothing to do. I smiled as I passed them, but hardly anyone
smiled back. Maybe they were surly locals. Or maybe they were bored city kids on
vacation.
    I spotted a supermarket on the main road just west of town and made a note to go
back there later to buy some fruit and veggies. But first I went to the post office,
which was a small counter at the rear of the pharmacy. The clerk said it would take
three days at the most to get the package to IT. I sauntered down the main street
and bought a local newspaper, which I took to a coffee shop—the Sip ’n’ Bite.
    The place was packed with people enjoying snacks or beverages and some conversation.
I found a vacant table and sat down, then leafed through the paper for news about
the arson case. There was nothing.
    A waitress came over. “What’ll it be, honey?”
    “Iced tea, please.”
    She frowned as she peered down at me. “Hey, you’re that girl, aren’t you?”
    “What girl?”
    “The one whose picture was in the paper last week. The girl who called the fire department.”
    “My picture was in the paper?”
    “Sure.” She tucked her order pad into her apron pocket and strode across the café
to a bulletin board beside the cash register. From where I was sitting, I could see
that it had a section for items for sale and another for upcoming events. News articles
were tacked in one corner. The waitress removed one and brought it back to me.
    “See?” She held it out. Sure enough, there was a picture of me from last year, when
I’d figured out where the money from an old robbery was hidden. “It says you got
hurt trying to rescue that Goran fella.”
    “He’s our next-door neighbor.”
    “Well, he’s lucky it’s you who lives beside him and not a lot of other folks around
here.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Sharon, order up!” someone barked. My waitress—Sharon, apparently—shouted that
she was coming.
    “I’ll be back in a jiffy