Chapter 6: The Flour Bin

We laid the two postcards side by side on my kitchen table.

The tram was the same, the stamp was the same, and the postmark said the same day in Lisbon, three days ago.

Mine said, Hip is wonderful! Don't trust Aksel's boy. Love, Babi.

His said, Fish are biting. Don't trust the Zeman girl. A.

"Canada," said Soren, "does not have trams."

"Arizona doesn't either."

"There was a bell behind my grandmother on the phone," I said. "She told me it was a cactus wren."

"Wrens don't ding."

"No."

We stared at the cards.

He took out an index card and wrote LISBON at the top, and under it, in a neat column, ARIZONA? and CANADA? and WHY.

"Don't write that down," I said.

"If I don't write it down I'll think about it all night."

"You're going to think about it all night anyway."

He looked at the card for a long moment.

"The Back Room," he said. "She told you where the key was and nothing else about it."

"That's a lot of lies for one room."

"That's a lot of lies," I agreed, and I was already getting my jacket.

At eleven-thirty at night we stood in the Back Room with the bulb swinging and the oven ticking as it cooled.

"Grid search," said Soren.

"Absolutely not. We're not doing a grid."

"A grid is how you find things."

"This is a bakery, Vinter. If you were a secret, where would you hide?"

He thought.

"In the flour," he said.

We both turned to the big steel flour bin by the wall.

It had a hinged lid, and FLOUR was stenciled on it in my great-grandfather's hand.

I lifted the lid.

It was full of flour.

Soren stuck his arm in up to the shoulder, felt around and made a face.

"There's a bottom," he said.

"Of course there's a bottom."