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girl, by the Miller family. They made their money on the summer people and the leaf peepers who came up each fall.
    I undid my mother’s seatbelt and walked with her into the store, which also served as the New Canaan post office. Jim Haskaway, the bearish man who owned the store, was town postmaster and chief of the volunteer fire department. It was an old-time general store with a few aisles of groceries, a case of guns and ammo, a good selection of hardware and camping supplies, and, of course, the obligatory displays of maple syrup and I LOVERMONT keychains. The wide-planked pine floor creaked, a coal stove burned in the corner, and Jim’s fire and police scanner sounded out chimes, with staticky voices reporting the latest disasters.
    “Why are we here?” my mother asked. She looked around suspiciously.
    “To get eggs, Ma, remember?”
    “The Griswolds have eggs. Lazy Elk says they’re no good because they’ve got a speck of blood in them—oh, look! It’s Jim Haskaway!” She said this in the tone of delight and surprise she’d use if we’d run into him by chance at the San Diego Zoo, not in the store down the road from her home, the store he’d owned and operated for a good thirty years.
    “Morning, Jean! How are we doing today? And Miss Kate, back in town, huh? Grown up to be just as pretty as her mom.” Jim gave us a wink. He stood resting his elbows on the counter. There were two other men talking with him in low voices. All of them wore plaid. They continued their conversation as I guided my mother to the cooler.
    “Said the body was the same as that other girl. Same cuts. Naked,” one of the men reported.
    “They’ve had dogs in those woods all morning,” another said. “Brought in the forensics van. I heard the F.B.I. is up there now.”
    “The troopers picked up Nicky first thing this morning,” Jim said.
    “Won’t keep him long,” replied the shorter, fat man. “He was drinking at Flo’s ’til closing. Made some trouble with a guy from outta state who come up to huntin’ camp. Yeah, you bet everyone at Flo’s will remember Nicky being there. It wasn’t him who hurt that girl.”
    I grabbed a dozen eggs from the cooler, then fixed myself a large coffee, trying not to be too obvious about eavesdropping. So Nicky was still in town, picking fights at Flo’s. Old outlaw Billy the Kid. I had to smile.
    My mother followed me around docilely, humming quietly. At the counter, I picked up the morning paper and saw the headline: “Murder in New Canaan.” There was a school photo of a pretty girl with shoulder-length blond hair, a smattering of freckles, and a slight gap between her two front teeth. Jim nodded at the front page as he rang me up.
    “Happened right in those same woods. Right behind your mother’s little shack. Kids say it’s a haunted place up there. I say it’s a hell of a place to go fooling around in. Now this. Poor kid. Just thirteen. She wasn’t gone from the others fifteen minutes. They didn’t hear a peep. You all didn’t hear anything strange last night, did you?” The other two men studied me, waiting to gauge my response. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in plaid.
    I shook my head, feeling inexplicably like I was about to lie. I thought of my mother’s dirty nightgown and socks, wondering when she’d gone out, where she might have wandered to, what she might have seen. Surely nothing. She’d probably just strolled around in the yard. Ghost of New Hope Past.
    “Not a thing. We didn’t hear a thing. We just noticed the police cars on our way here. There’s a news truck there now, too. Channel Three.”
    “Opal must be a mess,” Jim went on.
    “Opal? Raven’s daughter?” I said.
    Jim gave me a look of pity—which Opal did I think he was referring to?
    “Lord, Kate, she was there in the woods. It was her best friend who got killed.”
    “Jesus,” I said, shivering.
    “Damn terrible thing,” said Jim. “They’re saying she was killed the same way