“Be careful with that.”

I looked up and saw Jeff Losson, the store’s owner, peering at me from an aisle stacked with Supermans. He was a lean, ageless hippie type—probably around thirty-seven—with long hair tied in a ponytail and cold eyes covered by small round glasses. He always spoke in a snide whisper and his snickering laugh betrayed as much self-loathing as amusement.

“Unless you got five hundred bucks,” he added.

With an effort, I closed the massive tome. “I’m not a big fan.”

“You’d have to know how to read, Roy. Not just watch.”

As a comic book/fantasy novel expert, Losson looked down on mere movies. He only featured one meager row on the subject in his store. We knew each other mildly, and usually kept our distance. But I was aware that he edited the online fan site Quelman House.

“I bet you’ll be first in line when the movie comes out,” I said. “The movies, I mean.”

“Yeah, right.” Losson snickered. Then, as usual, he segued into a miserable sigh, admitting I was right. “But at least I’ll hiss Abner Cooley’s name.”

“That’s better than trying to kill him.”

Losson snorted. “I heard he’s been having trouble. Maybe he should think twice about adding the love story.”

“Don’t act so innocent. You pretty much put a price on his head on your site.”

“Give me a break.”

“You at least contributed to a violent atmosphere.”

“It was all in good fun.” Then he stared at me through his tinted lenses. “Since when do you care about Abner?”

“I don’t. It just seems a bit extreme, that’s all.”

Losson shrugged, still confused about my interest. At all costs, I wished to avoid admitting that I worked for Abner; it was too embarrassing. But how much longer could I keep it secret?

Losson was no dummy. His eyes grew wide. “What!” he blurted out. “You’re Cooley’s coolie now? The fat man’s bitch?”

Cursing, silently, I felt myself blush. Then I turned away. “I got a sick mother.”

Losson gave a full-fledged whinnying laugh. Then it melted into one more unhappy moan, before he wondered, “Who doesn’t?”

I turned back, slowly, sensing a connection neither one of us wanted to explore. But its existence allowed me to be direct. “You know who’s hounding him?”

Losson’s slight shoulders went up and down. “Beats me. But no jury would convict.”

It was my turn to sigh. “Yeah, I guess. Well, thanks a lot. For nothing.”

The conversation—and the bonding—was over. It was as far as two hard-boiled nerds could go. Still, the store was empty but for me. So I brought a used Robert Mitchum biography to the counter. I remembered that Peter O’Toole had replaced him in Otto Preminger’s disaster Rosebud.

I flipped out bills. After I had counted out change, he pushed some coins back at me. “Nice try.”

“What do you mean?”

When I looked down, I saw the three dimes I’d gotten at the diner. They were supposed to be evidence; I was using them to buy a movie book. It was only my second case.

“Try that trick on someone else.”

“Aren’t they …” I picked up the dimes, checking the faces of FDR.

“All those movies have ruined your retinas. Can’t you see they’re play money?”

“They are?” I stared, mortified, at the worthless faux-silver. “Well, I’m not a Treasury agent,” I said, abashed. “They were left behind by Abner’s stalker.”

The information just fell out of me, to divert Losson from my ineptitude. It had a different effect.

Losson moved back a bit, as if from a hideous smell. He paused, as if deciding whether to reveal something. Then he skipped his snicker and went right to his sigh that meant, what do I care? I’m crap.

“Look,” he said. “It must be Stanley Lager.”

I stared at him, shocked. “What?”

Stanley Lager was a trivial man I hadn’t heard of in a while. He was an amoral borderline nut who skipped from one expertise to another. In recent years it was said he’d fallen into dissolution, using drugs, altering himself with plastic surgery, living off of male and female lovers. He now just used trivia opportunistically, culling and selling collectibles online. The rest of us prided ourselves on knowing things; we lived through it, not off it; what Stanley did was a desecration.

In truth, he frightened us. Stanley Lager was, we secretly felt, our dark, unstable side. But trying to kill Abner over a fantasy novel?

“Can that really be true?” I asked.

Losson shrugged. “I’ve heard Stanley’s hiding from someone he ripped off. He’s been living in a maid’s room in an old, upstate mansion. One of those big-ass houses near West Point, used to be owned by the Roosevelts, or somebody. Now it’s open to the public. Turns out, despite tourism, the joint is crumbling and getting broken into a lot, so they took in a border. Those fake dimes are the souvenirs they hand out at the tour.”

I nodded. “Jesus.”

“It’s in Millwood, I think.”

The town rang a bell. It was near Rhinebeck, the site of a fan film festival, in which Ambersons had figured. I suddenly remembered a whiff of sour rye; it was also where Annabelle’s bakery was. It took me a second to snap out of the romantic reverie.

“Thanks, Losson,” I said, sincerely.

“Sure, Roy. But, if you see Stanley, be careful. He’s …” Losson circled the side of his head with a finger. He snickered. Then he sighed one last time, as if to say, look who’s talking.

—

When I got home, I was feeling pretty cocky. Even though the discovery was totally accidental, I now had a good lead on Abner’s tormentor. It wasn’t just a lead; I knew exactly who it must be: Stanley Lager.

An online search yielded one fuzzy photo of Stanley. It was an LA Weekly feature from a few years back; he was a guide on an I Love Lucy landmarks tour. His obscured face seemed ferrety beneath his jaunty cap. But if he liked plastic surgery, who knew how he looked today?

Then I stopped short. What an idiot I was. That meant it was the end of the case. I hadn’t even negotiated a bonus or anything if I found the perpetrator. One unsigned check from Abner—how much health care for my mother was that going to buy?

I had no stomach for doing anything else now. I turned back to my computer, hoping to divert myself on a trivia site.

Then one e-mail made me forget everything else.

It came from an address I’d never seen before: Ted6569. It was addressed to me personally. It read: