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been built over one or more of them, it must have been well hidden from the road. |
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Calvin drove up and down Franklin hoping to find a sandwich shop, gas station, storeanything that looked as if it predated Sherwood Estates, where somebody might remember BiOmega Labs. Adamsville center was located where Franklin crossed Route 113. No library, police station or country-store wooden Indian. Just a clutch of small homes, a hardware and video rental, a Global Gas, with convenience store and a small luncheonette called Dotty's Kitchen. |
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At the Global station was a lone kid who wouldn't have been born in 1973. The hardware looked as if it could have been around that long, so did the proprietor. But when Calvin asked, the man said he was from Virginia and bought the place just twelve years ago. He suggested asking at Dotty's because the woman who owned it was born and raised in Adamsville. ''She's like the town historian," he said. |
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Calvin thanked him and headed for Dotty's. The interior was black and the small sign on the window said the place closed at three on Saturdays. It was nearly six. |
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He walked across the street to his car and drove out of town, thinking that Dennis Waite was right. Just a lot of false leads. |
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He drove to Boston and spent the next four hours in his office doing grades. There was a message on his answering machine from Terry that Public Works called to say that the DPW toxicity tests on their water and soil came up negative. None of the known industrial wastes the state tested for turned up in the screening. That still did not explain the raccoon rapine or the stunted flowers, but it got Calvin off the hook for his lawn chemicals. |
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