LEXINGTON - Just when it seemed as though Lexington and environs didn't really give a hoot that Tom Cruise was around for the filming of Steven Spielberg's "War of the Worlds," Marge McMullen waltzed into the Virginia Born and Bred gift shop.

Within minutes, she was holding court on the whereabouts of Cruise. "He's not out Jacktown Road, I'm convinced," she said. "You want to hear the tackiest thing I've heard so far?" the local real estate agent went on. She'd heard that Cruise had wanted to stay at the 19th-century home of the daughter of Today Show personality Willard Scott, but he had wanted to make improvements to it.

Moments earlier, it had seemed there was no buzz about Cruise.

Across Washington Street at the Lexington Coffee shop, Washington and Lee University senior Sarah Jafri admitted that she didn't know a thing about the movie until a few days ago, when her friend Megan Zingarelli told her. But then she'd been studying for finals a lot lately.

Zingarelli, also a senior, thought that she saw actor William H. Macy a few days back. But he's not in the cast, so she decided it was a hallucination.

"It doesn't faze me that there are actors around. They're people," Nancy Conner said while wrapping gifts at Virginia Born and Bred.

Maybe the area was just jaded after the filming of both "Somersby" and "Gods and Generals" there in recent years.

McMullen rejected that premise.

"We can't be cool," she said. "We're not that sophisticated."

It was the talk of downtown Lexington, she swore. To test her claim, the seasoned raconteur was enlisted to troll the historic shopping area in search of the buzz on Cruise.

After running into Lexington-Rockbridge County Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Sammy Moore (who was quite happy about the 400 hotel rooms occupied by film crew members), McMullen waltzed into the Artists in Cahoots shop and told her sister that Cruise is staying at Moore's house.

"Is he really? I heard he's at Karen's," said Bee Zwart, referring to a friend, as she rang up a purchase behind the counter.

A customer in the store had heard that Cruise was being carried to the set each day by helicopter.

Zwart, tongue in cheek, offered that Cruise is rumored to be dating a certain popular talk show host.

"If he's staying at Karen's, then Jeri who lives next door is watching the place and she's going to take a picture of Tom and his new girlfriend, who is Oprah Winfrey."

Across Main Street at the Pumpkinseeds gift shop, McMullen plied her snooping ability to manager Cathy Kaiser.

"I heard he flew in from Norway yesterday," Kaiser said. It had been on CNN that he and Winfrey co-hosted a Nobel Prize-related concert last weekend.

"And he's staying at the House Mountain Inn."

This seemed to hold some promise. Earlier, the inn's chef, David Faulds, had said that he had the week off because movie people were staying there and had brought their own chef.

Kaiser went on: "And Steven Spielberg was at the Southern Inn the other night."

Down Main Street at the chic Molly Gilbride shoe store, the owners confirmed that child actor Dakota Fanning, most recently of "Uptown Girls" and "Cat in the Hat," had shopped both there and at Pumpkinseeds.

"People were having sightings of Tom Cruise when he was on the news in Norway," Tom Lomax offered.

But no confirmed sightings yet.

The further McMullen went, the more the House Mountain Inn rumor seemed to have taken hold.

Everyone she passed - she knows EVERYBODY - added to the rumor stew:

He's staying not in the inn, but in the owner's home on the same property.

He requires fresh flowers in his room each morning.

He required a flat-screen television at the foot of his bed, and someone had driven to Roanoke to buy one.

Then Zwart pulled up in her car.

More news: Someone saw him screaming down U.S. 60 in a white sports car and cut somebody off pulling into the road toward the House Mountain Inn.

But that was two nights ago. Wasn't he supposed to be in Norway then?

Whatever. McMullen was convinced that Cruise is staying somewhere in the House Mountain Inn compound. "I mean, you don't have to be Sherlock Holmes, right?"

Not that Cruise held much allure for her.

"I personally want to see Pee-wee Herman," she said.