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The corner of his mouth moved. “No. You didn't.” He glanced around the store, where Brian had given up pretending not to listen and was now holding a Fleetwood Mac album upside down.

The investigator nodded once and made his way over to the door.

Otis remained where he was as Martin stopped and looked down.

Otis opened one eye.

“You have to negotiate,” Brian offered.

He glanced at me. “I'm afraid I'm unprepared.”

I tore off a piece of sausage from my biscuit and leaned over the counter.

Otis accepted the sausage with the solemnity of a dog receiving protection money, then shifted his body just enough to allow Martin through.

The bell rang behind him, and I watched through the front window as he headed east toward the Capitol, leather folder tucked beneath one arm, disappearing into the stream of people beginning to fill the sidewalk.

Brian waited until the investigator was halfway down the block.

“Financial?”

“We have a lot to do if we want to finish inventory tonight.”

Brian scrubbed at the stubble on his cheek. “I've heard those names.”

I looked at him as recognition moved slowly across his face, then he pointed the pencil at me.

“Lorrie's boyfriend.” Brian sat back on his heels. “You going to tell her?”

I picked up Martin Vale’s card and turned it over. The back was blank.

“I don't have anything to tell.”

“An investigator walked into your store asking about the father of the guy she's dating.”

“He didn’t really tell us anything other than he’s investigating them. It could be nothing.”

Brian made a face and returned to the count, though I knew the conversation wasn't finished.

I wanted to know why an investigator was looking for Alan Ellsworth badly enough that the curiosity stayed with me after I'd shoved the card beneath the register.

Lorrie had said Paul’s father headed up some big finance firm. If the brokerage was in trouble, or if Paul was mixed up in something he hadn't told Lorrie, that information would be useful. It could turn the man waiting at the end of her family-approved road into somebody less perfect, which might make the other road easier to see, the one that led to me.

I picked up the next inventory sheet. And that was exactly why I shouldn't be the person telling her.

Lorrie already had her parents and Paul's family, deciding what her future ought to look like. I wasn't going to be the guy who blew everything up, no matter how much I wanted to be with her.

By ten, Side A was officially open, which made inventory considerably harder because customers insisted on buying the things we'd just finished counting.

A college kid came in for Purple Rain and left with Prince, The Time, and Talking Heads. Two girls in neon green T-shirts stood beside the cassette rack debating whether Footloose belonged in the car or at home and eventually bought two copies, which was the kind of decision I applauded.

A man in a Brewers cap brought in a box of records from his divorce and was happy to take the store credit.

By noon it was sweltering, and the box fans were mostly moving warm air from one end of the store to the other. Brian complained that the building violated at least three standards necessary for human survival as the bell over the door rang again.

I looked up automatically to see Lorrie walking in wearing white shorts and a coral T-shirt. Her chestnut hair was pulled back, although the humidity had already freed several curls around her face, and she had her favorite oversized sunglasses pushed up on the top of her head.

“Inventory day,” she said, stopping to look around. “You weren't exaggerating about the chaos.”