Next I tried Arch, who said, “I’m fine, thanks, Mom. Is Tom working on the Drew Wellington case?”
“Yes.”
“That’s awful,” Arch said. “He was a good guy.”
“How did you know him?”
“He came to our American history class and showed us maps. They were really cool, with lots of colors and stuff. He didn’t bore us with a lot of dates either. We asked him how he’d learned so much, and he said he was an autodidact.”
“Is that Latin?”
“No, Mom, it’s Greek. It means you taught yourself.”
“So what made him such a … good guy?”
“I don’t know. He said his favorite thing to study was smuggling.”
“Smuggling? That’s what he taught himself? As in, how folks used to smuggle rum?”
“He talked about how the countries that had the maps controlled trade. In the fifteenth, sixteenth, or even the seventeenth
