On Harrow Hill

Gurney followed the path. When he arrived at the cabin, he found a young couple wearing biking tights the color of chartreuse tennis balls, sitting on the rickety porch steps. The woman’s hair was artfully disarranged. The man’s hair had been wound into a bun on the top of his head, samurai-style. They were using a pail of water to wash dirt off some kind of greens. They looked up at Gurney, the woman smilingly, the man apprehensively.

“Hi,” she said, brushing a few strands of hair back from her face.

“Ramps?” asked Gurney, recognizing the wet greens in her hand.

“Isn’t it incredible? We were biking on a trail up in the woods this afternoon and we found a whole hillside covered with them. You know what they charge for these in Brooklyn? Do you live around here?”

“Up at the end of the road. I’m Dave Gurney.”

“I’m Chloe. This is Jake. You live here, like, all the time?”

He laughed. “Yes, all the time.”

“It’s so absolutely gorgeous now, like a perfect spring, and the air, my God, but I can’t imagine what these mountains are like in February. You have a big plow or something?”

“Pretty big. Winters can be interesting.”

“Wow. I can imagine.”

The friendlier she was sounding, the less friendly Jake was looking. Gurney decided it would be best to get to the point.

“I have a question—about early traffic on this road. Did either of you happen to be awake before dawn this morning?”

They glanced at each other. “Both of us, actually,” she said, a little warily now.

Gurney took out his wallet and showed them his Larchfield PD credentials. “I’m working with the police department, and we need to know if there were any cars using this road between four and six this morning.”

Jake spoke up. “Is there some kind of problem here?” He had worry in his eyes and pique in his voice, as though he were suspecting the cabin’s rental agent of concealing something.

“Nothing that should concern you. We just need to know if anyone drove up or down the road before dawn today.”

They looked at each other again.

Jake nodded reluctantly. “There was one car. We saw it leaving.”

“You were out here in front of the cabin?”

“Out by our car. By the road.”

“What time was this?”

“Had to be around four thirty.”

“Had to be?”

“We were meeting an instructor down on the Willowemoc Creek at five.”

“Fly fishing?”

He nodded.

“Jake fell in the creek,” said Chloe with a wicked grin.

“So,” said Gurney, “you saw a car at four thirty this morning. Do you remember make, model, color, style, anything specific?”

“It was super quiet,” said Chloe.

“I’m pretty sure it was a BMW,” said Jake. “Looked like a 5 Series.”

“Did you notice the color?”

“It was too dark out to be sure. I’d guess black or dark blue?”

Gurney knew that the precise color would not have been clearly discernible in the moonlight. He just wanted to be sure the man wasn’t “remembering” more than what would have been visible. He couldn’t count the number of investigations that had gone awry because witnesses “recalled” details that never existed.

In this case, Jake was passing the credibility test.

“Do you remember seeing the license plate?”

He shook his head. “Now that you mention it, I think maybe the bulb was out.”

“Okay. Anything else you noticed?”

He started shaking his head again, then stopped. “Oh yeah, like Chloe said, it was quiet.”

“Quiet?”

“Like zero engine noise. Could’ve been a hybrid.”

Back up at the house, Gurney went into the den and checked his phone. He found messages from Madeleine, Morgan, and Hardwick. He listened first to the one from Madeleine.

“Hi. It’s me. Obviously, I had to cancel the Winkler dinner for tonight. But when I mentioned it later to Gerry, she told me that she knows the Winklers, too. So, we’re thinking about doing the dinner at her house tomorrow night. Is that okay? Talk to you soon.”

Social occasions held an obvious attraction for Madeleine. The more the better, the sooner the better. They had the opposite effect on Gurney. His initial reaction to proposed get-togethers was invariably negative, although he usually ended up agreeing to attend events that were important to Madeleine. This one seemed to fall into that category.

Like a child accepting an unappealing vegetable, he called, got her voicemail, and left his message of agreement. He reminded himself that these things occasionally turned out to be more pleasant than he’d anticipated—although his past experiences with the Winklers made that outcome seem unlikely.

Morgan’s message was, as usual, agitated.