The Book of Old Houses
Chapter One
Driving up I-95 through New Hampshire and on into Maine, Dave DiMaio noticed as if from a distance how anger made the familiar route look alien to him. The Way Life Should Be, the sign welcoming visitors to the Pine Tree State proclaimed. But to Dave it was as if he were seeing it all by moonlight, everything bleached by rage.
Once he was nearly overcome by the urge to lean forward onto the steering wheel and howl over the murder of his friend Horace Robotham, whose death Dave had learned of only the night before. But he was speeding along the turnpike, so he couldn't.
He pulled off at a service area to use the restroom and wash his hands. Blinking tourists, kids with dogs straining on leashes, vans and campers with bikes, canoes, and kayaks lashed to their roofs crammed the asphalt parking area. Coming back out into the sunshine with the air faintly tinctured by exhaust fumes and the smell of breakfast sandwiches from a nearby fast-food place, he was tempted to linger, stretch his legs and work the kinks out of his neck.
But Horace's death--murder, Dave reminded himself fiercely, his friend's brutal murder--wasn't all tha ...
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