ON HER WAY HOME Charlotte, who was worried about Janet, decided to detour via the Barr Head Road and swing over to the Valley River Gorge Road. Not wanting to make a mountain out of molehill, she decided against the 911 call, convinced that if Janet had thought that there had been any real danger, she would have encouraged her to do it.

The temperature gauge in her car read forty degrees Celsius. The air-conditioning had broken down several months ago and, somehow, she had never got around to getti...