Spencerville

been a week since his return, and Keith decided it was time to go downtown. He drove in at midday and headed directly for Baxter Motors, a Ford dealership on the eastern end of Main Street. His family had done business there for years, and Keith vaguely recalled that his father did not really care for those people. But the old man was perverse and felt that he could strike a better bargain with people he disliked, and he got a thrill from it.
    He was not unaware that Baxter Motors was owned by the family of Annie’s husband, and perhaps that influenced his decision, too, though he couldn’t get a handle on that reasoning.
    He got out of the Saab and looked around. The dealership was strictly Ford, with no foreign car franchise attached, as was common back east.
    A salesman beelined across the parking lot and inquired, “How’re you today?”
    “Very fine. Thank you for asking.”
    The salesman seemed momentarily confused, then stuck out his hand. “Phil Baxter.”
    “Keith Landry.” He looked at Mr. Baxter, a baby-fat man in his early forties with more chins than a Chinese phone book. Phil Baxter seemed pleasant enough, but that came with the job. Keith asked, “This your place?”
    Phil laughed. “Not yet. Waitin’ for Pop to retire.”
    Keith tried to picture Annie married to one of these genetic fumbles, then decided he was being uncharitable and petty. He got to the point, perhaps too quickly for local tastes, and said, “I want to trade this customized Ford in for a new one.”
    Phil Baxter glanced at the Saab and laughed again. “That ain’t no Ford, buddy.” He got serious and said, “We try not to take foreign cars. I guess you know that.”
    “Why’s that?”
    “Hard to move ’em. Local folk drive American.” He squinted at the license plate. “Where you from?”
    “Washington.”
    “Passin’ through, or what?”
    “I’m from around here. Just moved back.”
    “Yeah, name sounds familiar. We done business before?”
    “Sure have. You want to sell me a new car?”
    “Sure do… but… I got to talk to the boss.”
    “Pop?”
    “Yup. But he ain’t here now. What kind of Ford you lookin’ for, Keith?”
    “Maybe a Mustang GT.”
    Phil’s eyes widened. “Hey, good choice. We got two, a black and a red. But I can get you any color.”
    “Good. What’s the book on mine? It’s last year’s, eight thousand miles.”
    “I’ll check it out for you.”
    “Are you going to take the Saab?”
    “I’ll get back to you on that, Keith. Meantime, here’s my card. Give a call when you’re ready.”
    Keith smiled at the small-town, low-key approach to sales. In Washington, any car salesman could be an arms negotiator or Capitol Hill lobbyist. Here, nobody pushed. Keith said, “Thanks, Phil.” He turned to leave, then the imp of the perverse turned him around and he said, “I remember a guy named Cliff Baxter.”
    “Yeah, my brother. He’s police chief now.”
    “You don’t say? He did okay for himself.”
    “Sure did. Fine wife, two great kids, one in college, one about to go.”
    “God bless him.”
    “Amen.”
    “See you later, Phil.”
    Keith pulled onto Main Street and stopped at a traffic light. “That was a stupid move, Landry.”
    He certainly didn’t need to go to Baxter Motors; he knew they wouldn’t want the Saab, he didn’t even know if he wanted a Ford, and surely he didn’t have to mention Cliff Baxter’s name. For an ex-intelligence officer, he was acting pretty stupid—driving past her house, going to her father-in-law’s place of business. What next? Pulling her pigtails? “Grow up, Landry.”
    The light changed and he drove west, up Main Street. The downtown area consisted of rows of dark brick buildings, three and four stories high, with retail space at ground level and mostly empty apartments above. Almost everything had been built between the end of the Civil War and the start of the Great Depression. The old brickwork and wooden ornamentation were interesting, but most of the ground-floor storefronts had been modernized in the 1950s and ’60s and looked tacky.
    Street and sidewalk traffic was light, he noticed, and half the stores were vacant. The ones that remained open were discount clothing places, church thrift shops, video arcades, and other low-end enterprises. He recalled that Annie, in a few of her letters, mentioned that she managed the County Hospital Thrift Store located downtown, but he didn’t see the shop.
    The three big