Suddenly, a few days later, Max came to visit Maxine at her office; he had a pleasant surprise.

"I've got a lead." he told her with a smile.

With a jolt, she stopped her work, swiveled her chair, and took off her glasses.

"What?"

"Stars Hollow....it has the same initials as....you know..." He wore a dark jacket over a Red Sox shirt.

"Oh..yes.....it's one of those quaint... little New England towns..." Maxine answered wrly.

"I was thinking we should go check it out." While he hoped for clues, he figured that the killer wouldn't be there.

"You still think that whoever mutilated Socrates, is the murderer?"

"Call it a gut feeling" He had his hands in his pockets.

She nodded, understanding exactly what he meant.

"I'll go talk to Sean."

Sometime later, after checking into an Inn at Star Hollows, they went to a local diner.

"Ready to order?" A brown haired man wearing a lumberjack shirt, jeans, and a backwards baseball cap asked, pad and pencil in hand, when they had put down their menus.

"I'll have the grilled cheese sandwich" Maxine told him.

"I'd like the meatloaf" Max said.

"Coming right up!" the server, scribbled on his pad and walked away.

"How do we snoop around without people getting too 'curious'." Maxine asked the former detective, as she sipped some water. Like many large city dwellers, she harbored assumptions about small town people one of which was that of nosiness.

"If asked, say you're an author doing research for a novel" he told her, as his attention diverted to a man pogoing close by. The couple sat next to a window. Soon, the man tripped, brushed himself off, and entered the diner, pogo stick in hand.

"Kirk!" the server, known to his friends as Luke admonished with exasperation. "What have I told you about dragging your stick in here!

"Dirty!" exclaimed, a women, tongue in cheek. She sat on one of the stools at the counter, sipping coffee.

"Where else can I put it while I eat?" the man whined in a loud voice, while Max felt as if he were in the middle of a Green Acres episode.

"Double Dirty!" the women repeated.

"Cut that out!" Luke ordered, in a voice of annoyance. He also owned the diner, and worried that this exchange would scare away the tourists. "Just leave the damn thing outside, Kirk, no ones wants your stupid stick......Loralai!......don't say it!" He glared at the woman when he said the last part.

"Must be something in the water" Maxine commented dryly, symbolically pushing away her glass.

The next day, they went to the main Stars Hollow library to look at newspaper archives. Thankfully, many back issues of the local town paper were in microfiche and electronic form, courtesy of the town's historical society.

"What exactly are we looking for?" Maxine asked him

"Anything unusual......" he vaguely told her, as he put on his reading glasses; he was too absorbed in research to explain properly.

Hours or research proved unfruitful until Maxine found something.

"There seem to be stories about this mystery guy known as the town loner, who hangs in the nearby backwoods" she told him. "A while back, he did some sort of protest in a church, but it was peaceful. No one could make out what he was protesting against."

Max sat in thought. "We should check it out." Both had distrust of people who avoided human contact like that.

With that, they decided to do research on this mystery man. There was not much.

Later, the two returned to the diner, to talk to Luke, standing at the counter. They felt that he'd be a good source of information, as he'd hear things.

"Welcome back!" the diner owner said with a smile. "What can I get ya?"

"Some information would be nice" Max said, leaning his tall, chubby frame on the counter with his elbows. "What can you tell us about the town loner?"

"We're writers doing research for a mystery novel" Maxine added.

"How is knowing about some guy who sulks around, carries a backpack, and lives in the hills gonna help you with your novel?" Luke asked cynically, not believing them. News had already spread about their trip to the library, where some of his regulars worked. Rumor mills worked overtime.

"We were thinking about basing one of the characters on him." the social worker responded.

"Why?" Luke astutely asked them in doubt. "Aren't they're enough mystery novels with psychopathic loners, who play stupid cat and mouse games instead of just killing the main character in the first place?"

"We plan to add a Kafkaesque twist to our novel" Maxine improvised. She'd heard her son Vincent, a writer, use that phrase a few times.

"Is that right?" He'd vaguely heard of Kafka, but wasn't buying their story.

"Could you tell us anything about the protest he mounted?" Max cut in.

"Well, no one could read his banner nor make out what he was sayin'." The local shrugged smugly.

"Thanks" Max said, as the two left the diner.

TBC