2

The car that turned off the blacktop county road into the gravel parking lot beside the theater was a bronze Plymouth with Texas plates. Grofield stood on the ladder with the scrub brush in one hand and the hose in the other and looked at it.

He'd been working an hour now. Seven gray-white flats were lined up along the side wall of the barn, drying; he was working now on the eighth. The ground all around him ran with colors, reds and yellows and whites and blues and greens, all different shades, running together and making new colors, a bright kaleidoscope of color spread out on the ground in colored water, running and flowing every which way through the tough new spring blades of grass. Grofield, too, was varicolored, in his work pants and sneakers and T-shirt, wet and colorful. He stood leaning on the ladder, elbows resting on the top rung, scrub brush in his right hand, hose dribbling in his left, and watched the car angle across the parking lot toward him and finally come to a stop. He waited for the driver to get out and ask directions; what else would this be?

It was Dan Leach. He got out from behind the wheel and called, "Hello, Grofield, what are you doing?"

"Washing flats," Grofield said. "You got good news for me?"

"Could be," Dan said. "Come on down off the ladder, lemme show you something."

Grofield got down off the ladder. "What I want to know is, do you have a job for me. Better than that Myers thing, I mean. Did you ever find him?"

"I'll tell you all about it." Dan looked around. "How private are we here?"

"Nobody can hear us."

"What about seeing us?"

Grofield nodded at the farmhouse across the county road. "There's people home over there."

"You know any place private?"

Grofield looked at him. "What for?"

"I wanna show you something. Come on, let's take a ride."

Grofield looked at his wet hands, down at his wet clothes, back at the flats. "Is this something real, Dan? What's the big secret?"

"I don't want to open the trunk where anybody else can see us," Dan said. "You know me, Grofield, I don't make jokes."

"That's right," Grofield said. "My clothes are a mess, you know. You want me in the car, or should I go change?"

"It ain't my car," Dan said. "It's Myers'."

Grofield brightened. "You found him, eh?"

"Get in. That's what I've got to show you."

Grofield got in, on the passenger's side, and Dan got back behind the wheel. Dan said, "Give me directions."

"Pull out onto the road and turn left," Grofield said.