We have a varied group of authors to welcome to this issue, and as always, we’re pleased indeed that they have joined us. Five new authors, as a matter of fact; that may be a record for us.

John Paxton Sheriff, author of “Fifth Time Dead,” is a Liverpudlian who now lives in Wales, with a fifteen-year stretch in the British army in between. He spent, he tells us, five years in Australia as a motor mechanic, among other jobs, “everything from bottle washer to computer operator,” and is now a full-time photo-journalist with many illustrated articles in national United Kingdom magazines to his credit. His previous short stories appeared in Australian and English magazines; we’re glad to welcome him to U.S. publication with this one.

William Pomidor, like the character in “M Is for Mayo,” is a doctor married to a doctor. He has had one prior story published as well as a lot of medical nonfiction, and is presently medical editor and researcher for a large community hospital. His wife is a geriatrician.

J. D. Blumberg (her first name is Juanita) is not only being published for the first time with “The Mystery of Lilac Cottage” — this is the first story she’s written. She is a pilot and an air racer who won two national titles in 1981. From 1985 to 1990, she was involved in organizing the Great Southern Air Race, has briefly worked as an air traffic controller, and headed up a family-owned glass business. At present, she does publicity and desktop publishing for nonprofit organizations.

Edie Ramer, author of “Picking Daisies,” has had two other stories published, one in Oui magazine, the other in The Second WomanSleuth Anthology. She has worked in “offices, restaurants, a factory, the phone company, a tax office,” and is now a proof operator in a bank. “I work part-time now and write full-time, which doesn’t leave much extra for hobbies, unless taking my dog Lulu for long walks counts.”

Michele Stone Kilmer has also had a diverse career. Besides doing stained glass work and model ship building, she has been a “horseback riding instructor, factory worker, fabric store salesgirl, artist, and secretary,” among other things. Presently, she is a presser at a dry cleaners (aha!), and “In by Ten, Dead by Five, or, Murder at the Dry Cleaners” is her first published story.

“You,” said a woman with two cameras. “You’re that upside down guy!”

Luis Balam smiled and said, “He was Maya, I am Maya.”

“Doesn’t the blood rush to your head?” someone else said.

After the laughter, Luis explained the “upside down guy,” a wall stucco of an ornately-dressed figure who seemed to be standing on his head. “He is guarding the doorway of his namesake, the Temple of the Descending God. Or the Bee God or the Diving God, some historians say. Nobody will be certain until the glyphs are completely translated. This deity is commonly represented in ruins throughout the Yucatan.”

The woman with two cameras snapped Luis’s picture. Through her viewfinder she saw a thirty-seven-year-old Yucatec Maya of average height: five feet three. She saw a round face, prominent cheekbones, an aquiline nose, and the almond eyes brought across the Bering landbridge millennia ago. She saw a deceptive musculature, she saw stockiness without fat.

Luis Balam was short but not small. Some had learned that distinction to their regret while Luis was with the police. Before the trouble, before he was forced out.

“The hieroglyphics are being translated, aren’t they?”

“More every day,” Luis said, leading his group to the finale, the largest structure at Tulum — El Castillo, the castle. “Still, only a fraction is known.”

“Do you?”

“I speak Maya,” Luis said. “I cannot read it. When the Spaniards came, they destroyed our writings. Only three codices survived. They are in European museums. Many times I have asked these walls to talk to me.”

Luis took his tourists up El Castillo’s steps. They caught their collective breath while looking out at the Caribbean. The midday sun was lost above puffy clouds but not forgotten. Intense tropical rays cast the sea the hue of blue topaz.

He said, “Tulum is the largest fortified site on Mexico’s Quintana Roo coast. Tulum means ‘wall’ in Maya. The wall behind us that we came through is up to eighteen feet high and twenty feet thick. The cliff El Castillo and we stand on is forty feet high.”

“Tulum was a fort?”

“And a trading center.”

“The Spaniards came to Tulum, didn’t they?”

This was Luis’s favorite part. “In 1511 a Spanish ship hit the reef and sank. Most survivors were sacrificed or died of disease. One Spaniard married a Maya woman, fathered three children, and commanded Maya troops who drove off the next Spanish foray in 1517. Hernán Cortez, no fool, sailed north and took on the Aztecs instead.”

“Human sacrifice,” a man said. “You Mayans still do that?”

This group was pleasant and playful if not generous. With a straight face, Luis said, “Not regularly.”

The laughter was hearty and just slightly nervous.

Outside the wall, in a seedy bazaar offering everything from T-shirts to postcards to ice cream, Luis recounted his money. Eight people, seven U.S. one-dollar bills. There was always a deadbeat in a crowd that size.

But Luis was not complaining. It was June, the beginning of summer. North Americans could stay home and lie on their own beaches and burn under their own sun. Many, many did. With the rabid competition amongst guides for those who came to Cancún, he had been fortunate to snag this cluster of eight. He conceded an edge, though, his resemblance to the “upside down guy.” Most of the others were mestizo, mixed European and native ancestry. He could think of no other advantage a full-blooded Indian had over a mainstream Mexican.

“Excuse me. You got a minute?” said a jowly, florid man.

He was in his fifties. His wispy, straw-colored hair was slicked straight back. He had been in the group, studiously anonymous, staying in the rear as if shy, smoking cigarette after cigarette. “I have a minute.”

The man extended a beefy, freckled hand. “Bud Lamm, Mr. Balam. I’ve got me one helluva problem, and I’ve been told you’re the best.”

Bud Lamm’s stomach protruded as if he were concealing a helmet under the chartreuse pullover that complimented tan plaid shorts. The quarry of a Cancún shop catering to golfers, Luis guessed.

“The best at what?”

“Investigating and getting to the bottom of things around here. I also toured Tulum with you day before yesterday. Remember?”

Luis remembered. He was the sort who endured cultural enrichment on his wife’s leash. “You were with a woman. She asked intelligent questions.”

“Helen. She’s my wife. This archaeology, that’s her thing. That and birdwatching. Me, I came for the sun and the margaritas and the golf. We’re from up by Chicago. We’re renting a condo up the coast a ways, which is what I need to see you about. Yesterday, I was checking you out. Making snap decisions got me in this mess.”

“Checking me out?”

Bud Lamm cocked his head, requesting privacy. They walked to the parking area. A line of tour buses howled at fast idle, to run air conditioners for absent passengers.

“You used to be a topnotch cop. That’s what your lawyer buddy Ricardo Martinez said.”

The engines were deafening, the air foul. Luis nodded an impatient yes.

“What I need is for you to find a guy who flimflammed me and get me my money back.”

“Did you go to the police?”

Lamm smirked. “I went in that little station in Tulum City. Three cops were sitting around playing with their handcuffs. They didn’t speak English. I got the hell out of there.”

Probably a wise retreat, Luis thought. “Swindled by whom, when, and for what?”

“Two days ago. This condo we’re in, it’s a beauty, right on the beach. The whole building’s for sale. This salesman was by with a couple who loved it, but they couldn’t agree on price. I bought it out from under them, on the spot. I’m close to retirement. I’d been looking to invest. I should of known better. I’m service manager at a car dealership. I ought to know a phony pitch by now.”

“How much money?”

“Sixty grand.”

Luis had to think a moment. Sixty thousand pesos was only twenty dollars. “Sixty thousand U.S.?”

Bud Lamm looked at his feet, then said, “Yeah, cashed in my pension fund. Thought I’d surprise Helen.”

“Does she know?”

“God, no!”

“How did you meet Martinez?”

“I was up in Cancún City, kind of crying in my beer in this bar. His office is up above it. Funny place for a law office. Will you help me?”

“I’ll talk to Martinez,” Luis said noncommittally.

“I owe you a buck,” Bud Lamm said. “For the tour. Didn’t mean to stiff you but, well, finances are tight. You can tack it on your bill.”

Eight kilometers north on the coastal highway was BLACK CORAL. It shared its generic name with others along Highway 307. This “black coral” was a large tent, a hand-lettered sign, and, inside, tables of hematite, silver, lapis, and, yes, black coral jewelry. Luis Balam was the proprietor.

Business was slow. Tour buses drove the local economy. Luis and fellow merchants bribed drivers to stop. But in the off season buses were scarce. Between his shop and Tulum, Luis was hanging on by his fingernails until winter. Investigative work for Ricky Martinez helped some, although his assignments were often like rainbows, dazzling but ethereal.

Luis’s adolescent daughters, Esther and Rosa, were minding the store. They and his parents ran it while Luis was gone. One bus, they reported. Two private cars. A hitchhiking American hippie who wanted to use the telephone and bathroom they didn’t have. Three sales altogether.

Luis told them about Bud Lamm.

“How much is sixty thousand dollars?” Esther asked, wide-eyed. She was eighteen, of his first wife who left him when he first went to Cancún to work.

“I can’t imagine,” said Luis, who could not.

“Then it isn’t real,” Esther said.

“Mr. Martinez—” Rosa hesitated, searching for a word “—magnifies everything, Father.”

“He does,” Luis conceded to his sixteen-year-old, child of his second wife, who died of a fever during his second and last Cancún employment. “Should I or shouldn’t I?”

“Talk to him as you promised,” Esther said. “After you eat.”

Strengthened by warm tortillas and a warmer bottle of Leon beer, Luis headed northward in a VW Golf he had bought as surplus from a Cancún Airport rental agency. Its running gear was shell-shocked from potholed roads, its engine malnourished by eighty-one-octane gas. The one hundred fifteen kilometer trip to Cancún City was always problematical, not to mention the eight kilometers of dust and ruts traveled daily between BLACK CORAL and Luis’s village. He had managed to keep his car running with bicycle tools and mechanical intuition. Soon he would need magic.

He worried about his girls. Was haggling with tourists over the price of beads their ultimate destiny? Perhaps. They could clean toilets at Cancún hotels. They could stay in the village, marry farmers, and become baby machines. There was much more a Maya could not do than do. Maybe, just maybe, this time he could get his hands around Ricky’s rainbow.

He passed the airport and entered Cancún City, old Mexico, circa 1977. When Mexico City began to develop Cancún Island from nothing in the early 1970’s as a tourist mecca, the city became its bedroom and market. Luis had as a teenager left his village to work as a construction laborer on both.

Downtown Cancún’s broad avenues were named for the Yucatan’s grandest ancient cities: Tulum, Coba, Uxmal, Bonampak. Ricardo Martinez Rodriguez’s law office was located in a cement building blocks from any reference to glorious history. Low overhead was an advantage, Martinez was given to point out. As was the proximity of doctors willing to validate Ricky’s calamitous diagnoses of his injured clients.

Castanets and guitars on the bar’s jukebox serenaded. Luis walked upstairs and found Ricky available. His office smelled vaguely of plastic.

“Luis, Bud Lamm saw you, yes?”

A year ago, Luis Balam had seen an old North American television show. It was called I Love Lucy. Shave Ricardo Martinez Rodriguez’s pencil mustache and he could be the twin of Ricky Ricardo, the Cuban bandleader. Ricardo had been Ricky to Luis ever since, like it or not. “Yes.”

Martinez clapped his hands. “Wonderful! Sixty thousand Yankee dollars. Do you know how much money that is, Luis?”

“No.”

“Me neither, but we’re rich. If we find it. If you find it.”

“The money belongs to the Lamms,” Luis reminded him.

“Yes, yes, I meant a percentage. We’ll be rich on a percentage.”

“What percentage?”

“To be negotiated. You have to find the money.” Martinez gave Luis a sheaf of documents. “Don’t bother to read the papers. They appear legal. Boilerplate real estate forms completed very professionally. They’re absolutely bogus. Since foreigners have been permitted to own beach property in Mexico through a trust setup, the land and home business has been crazy. What a trust. In Lamm’s case, blind trust, I think.”

“Did you recognize Lamm’s description of the salesman?”

“No. And that’s your department.”

Luis paused, thinking.

“Please,” Martinez said. “Sixty thousand dollars.”

“Real estate salesmen are more common these days than peddlers selling junk silver out of valises,” Luis said. “The beaches are black with time-share condo sellers. Like locusts.”

“Don’t be melodramatic, Luis. You can do it.”

Music began to waft upward.

“ ‘La Bamba?’ ”

“A mariachi trio. The tourists all request ‘La Bamba.’ I’m so sick of it. The new carpet muffles it some. Please, Luis. You can call me Ricky forever.”

The plastic odor, the carpet. “All right, Ricky.”

“Good, Luis, good. Locate the scoundrel. Lamm is broke. He can’t pay me until you do.”

Lamm’s condo was halfway between Ricky’s office and BLACK CORAL. A dirt road had been cut from the highway to the sea, through half a kilometer of scrub jungle. Houses and multiplexes Luis had never before seen lined this stretch of beach. Before long, he thought sadly, the beach from Cancún to Belize will be a necklace of vacation homes.

There were four units in Lamm’s building, two up and two down. It was stucco, painted flamingo, in arched, pillared Colonial Hacienda style. Three to four years old, Luis gauged, and aging fast, subtly crumbling and mildewing, victim of tropical humidity and substandard construction. Staked on the lawn was a Paradise Investment Properties Associates (PIPA) “For Sale” sign.

Lamm was waiting in a doorway, glass in hand. “Mr. Balam. It’s cocktail hour. Can I fix you one? Boy, it’s swell you’re taking the case.”

Luis declined a drink and said, “No promises.”

Lamm shrugged, said fair enough, and led him through the unit and out the sliders to a tiled verandah facing the Caribbean. “Pretty nice, huh? Except for doors that stick and a ceiling fan about to fall down, it’s in perfect shape.”

“What happened?”

“Like I said, this salesman came around with a young couple, showing the units. The place is owned by a guy in Mexico City. He’s trying to sell, the whole shebang or piecemeal, either way.”

“Through Paradise Investment Properties Associates?”

“Yeah. They got an office in Cancún. A legit outfit. The couple were looking around, real excited, and the salesman and me got to talking. He said they wanted it bad and the owner was in a squeeze and wanted to sell bad, but the couple probably couldn’t swing it. His name was Ralph Taggert, which was on the Paradise Investment business card he gave me.”

“Does Paradise—”

“First thing I checked. They never heard of any Taggert or anybody who looks like him. Anyway, we’re talking and he’s saying that the owner’s asking seventy-five grand for the two lower units, seventy for the uppers. That’s two ninety, too rich for my blood. But he says the seller is flexible. The couple comes back and they talk and the salesman takes me aside and says maybe they’ll get the money from her parents, but they’re trying to lowball the deal. I ask how much. He says two fifty. Before they leave, I say come back if it falls through. Meanwhile, I’m figuring what we can make, living in one and time-sharing the rest. Look.”

Lamm handed Luis a bar napkin with numbers scribbled on it. Printed in a corner was a grinning Mexican wearing a sombrero, shaking maracas. The figures made no sense to Luis. He handed the napkin back and asked, “What did Taggert look like?”

“Brown hair, glasses, thirty-five, medium height and weight. An average Joe.”

“And his clients?”

“Is that important?”

Luis shrugged.

Lamm lighted a cigarette and said, “They were your typical yuppies. Blond. Tanning parlor tans. The gal, her T-shirt had a toucan on it.”

“Taggert returned?”

“An hour later, alone. The yuppie gal called her daddy, but couldn’t swing a loan. I offered two hundred and forty thousand. It just sort of came out. Taggert acted like he was in pain, like I was taking advantage of him, but said his seller was desperate and that he was authorized to accept that low a price if I put a hefty chunk down.”

“Sixty thousand U.S. dollars,” Luis said.

“Twenty-five percent. In cash. Cash was the clincher.” Lamm rubbed thumb against fingers. “Money talks. So I thought. Talked me into the biggest jam of my life. We’ve been to Bermuda, the Bahamas, and Acapulco. The Yucatan beats them hands down. To retire here—”

A short elderly woman entered the verandah, limping on a brass-handled cane. She was festooned with binoculars, canteen, and knapsack. Smelling of bug repellent and sunscreen, Helen Lamm was a sprightly gray and pink elf. Luis Balam was immediately charmed by her.

Lamm gestured to her cane. “One of my old putters. She sprained an ankle yesterday. Helen won’t be happy till she’s scaled all those pyramids of yours.”

Helen touched Bud’s cigarette hand with the putter-cane. “This from a man who smokes three packs of coffin nails a day and compares eighteen holes of golf in an electric cart to a marathon. I climbed Coba’s biggest today. Twelve stories. On account of the gimpy ankle it took time, but it was worth it.”

They were teasing each other, Luis knew, but their words were tart. “I must go.”

Helen smiled and shook his hand. Bud walked him to his car. “You used to be a cop, Martinez said. How come you’re not now?”

Luis supposed that Lamm was entitled to a summary. “I went to Cancún to work construction. To escape the village and the cornfields. Back and forth I went. I made money, learned Spanish, then English, but had family problems. I later joined the police. A rich man’s son was drunk and speeding in a sports car on the highway. He hit a bicycle and kept going. A Maya man, wife, and child were killed. I investigated and arrested the boy. Money changed hands. The report was altered to show a phantom driver, case closed. He was released. I persisted. I had witnesses, signed statements, and pictures of the car. I made too much noise. He was convicted and jailed. I was fired for unrelated infractions that were manufactured.”

“An honest Mexican cop,” Lamm said. “You were a rarity.”

“I wasn’t an honest cop,” Luis said. “Not by your standards. Police are paid badly. They have to take small gratuities to feed their families. No amount of money can condone killing.”

“I don’t blame you, you being Indian, too.”

“Maya.”

“That’s what I said.”

“You said Indian,” Luis said. “That is like me calling you gringo. I am Maya.”

“Sorry,” Lamm said, raising hands in mock surrender. “A final question before I get in any more trouble. What’s Balam mean? It don’t sound Spanish.”

“Balam is jaguar in Maya.”

Bud Lamm gulped his drink, shivered, and said, “Jaguar. I can use one.”

Luis returned to Cancún City, reciting a prayer to any saint specializing in the longevity of Volkswagens. On a broad avenue of government buildings was the Quintana Roo State Judicial Police and Inspector Hector Salgado Reyes.

Salgado was dressed like Luis, in slacks, white shirt, and sandals. He eschewed the military uniform favored by his peers. Hector was roly-poly and nearly bald. Epaulets and khaki would have made him resemble a character in an operetta.

Hector was Luis’s mentor. During the scandal, he had tried to save his favorite young officer from Mexico City clout and his own zeal. He, of course, could not. Hector’s stand was unpopular. He barely saved his own career.

Luis related his story.

Hector was mildly sympathetic. “Poor stupid man. His wife will kill him.”

“Not if we recover the sixty thousand dollars.”

“Ricky Martinez and his golden clients,” Hector said, clucking his tongue. “Ricky would buy a sweepstakes ticket and be thunderously disappointed if he didn’t win. Ricky has no grasp on reality.”

“I realize Cancun has no shortage of con men, Hector, but have — you received other complaints fitting this pattern?”

“Not of this magnitude. Sixty thousand.” Hector whistled. “This could be his first and last job, you know. He accepts his wonderful fortune as an omen, a message from God that he retire from crime and spend it. No. Rental deposits hustled by bogus managers, five hundred, a thousand, that is the usual score.”

“I wonder if our Ralph Taggert has flown out already.”

“I would,” Hector said, rocking thoughtfully in his chair. “Then again, I might not. I might worry.”

“Why?”

“You fly home. Whichever city you fly to, you submit to U.S.A. Customs. They don’t like the shape of your nose, they search your luggage. They discover the sixty thousand. What do they think?”

“Drug money,” Luis said.

“Exactly. You have nothing to do with drugs, but you raise suspicions. They hold onto you and make inquiries.”

“Taggert waits in hiding or he converts the money.”

“Yes,” Hector said, raising a stubby finger. “Remember this, Luis. Dollars flow into Cancún. They do not flow out. That is an unnatural act.”

Cancún Island, the hotel zone, is a 7-shaped, fourteen-mile strip of luxury hotels, fine restaurants, a lagoon, and beaches with sand that could be mistaken for granulated sugar. In twenty years Cancún has gone from scrub brush to a sun-and-fun mecca that hosts a million visitors annually.

It got me out of the cornfields, Luis thought yet again as he cruised along Kukulkan Boulevard, the narrow island’s single street. Good or bad? he debated for the thousandth time, coming to the same nebulous conclusion.

Paradise Investment Properties Associates rented space in a newer hotel toward the southerly, least developed portion of the island. Luis didn’t recall seeing it before. They were springing up like weeds. The architecture was familiar, though: a latter-day Maya pyramid of glass and view decks.

Straight through the lobby was a disco boasting the latest electronic glitz, to the right a coffee shop serving tacos made with American cheese and iceberg lettuce, to the left an arcade of shops and realty offices. Luis, guided by a neon PIPA, asked a lovely, green-eyed mestiza receptionist to see the boss. She said that he was unavailable indefinitely. Luis sat on a sofa and said, fine, I’ll wait indefinitely. The receptionist went behind a partition. Luis heard whispering, including “Indian.”

A man of approximately forty came out with the pouting receptionist. He had Luis’s muscular build but was six inches taller. Luis surmised that his hairy arms and hands displayed more gold — watch, bracelet, several rings — than every piece at BLACK CORAL combined.

“Chester Cross,” he said. “Call me Chet. I’m the branch manager. Hortencia says you were gonna camp out.”

The levity was accompanied by a quick smile, but not in Call-Me-Chet’s ice-blue eyes.

“I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

“I didn’t peg you as a prospect. No offense.”

“Bud Lamm.”

“C’mon back.”

At his desk, Cross said, “I didn’t know Lamm from Adam until he came in to see a salesman we don’t have about a property this office didn’t sell him. Needless to say, he came unglued.”

“You don’t know Ralph Taggert? He has business cards.”

“Anybody can have them printed. Where do you fit in?”

Luis disregarded Cross’s question and repeated Bud Lamm’s description of Taggert.

“Sorry. He could be anybody. Listen, con artists make it tough. Creeps like that reflect on me. PIPA’s situated up and down the Pacific Coast along the Mexican Riviera, and in any other resort town where you can walk across the main drag without tripping over a chicken. Also Hawaii and the Virgin Islands. I make good dough honestly. Gimme half a chance and I’ll hand this Taggert clown his head.”

Chester Call-Me-Chet Cross was too passionately outraged to be believed. Ralph Taggert had made a fortune in a short afternoon of deception. Chet Cross was a salesman, too; he should have been catatonic with envy.

Luis waited across the street, with plans to follow Cross. An hour later, a visibly unhappy Bud Lamm strode into the hotel. He had changed into a shirt the color of his condo. And now his face. Lamm left in ten minutes, no less agitated. Chet Cross departed ten minutes later.

Luis followed him out of Cancún, south along the highway to a resort. It had a marina catering to fishermen seeking marlin and sailfish. Cross went into the bar and sat with Bud Lamm. Luis was willing to observe discreetly, but Lamm began shouting and jabbing a finger at Cross, who took Lamm by the wrist.

Luis entered, took them each by a wrist, and said, smiling, “Smile, gentlemen, like you’re having fun. You’re attracting attention.”

Cross and Lamm smiled, gritting their teeth. Luis wrenched their arms apart and sat down.

“Nice grip,” Cross said.

“That son of a bitch,” Lamm said. “I want my money!”

“Slow learner,” Cross said to Luis, shaking his head. “I’ve told him fifty times, I don’t know any Taggert and would string him up by the thumbs if I did. I invited him here to get him out of the office, he was raising so much hell.”

“You ought to know Taggert,” Lamm said, then to Luis, “Helen and I had a blowup after you were there. She knew I’d brought the money. She knew it was gone. She packs and unpacks us. Guess I didn’t hide it too good. I confessed the whole deal. Needless to say, she’s steamed. She’s getting up early tomorrow to go visit Xelha. I’m staying out of her hair till she hits the sack.”

“Staying out of her hair and threatening me,” Cross said.

“Wanna know why?” Lamm asked Luis.

“Oh, yes.”

“This slick talker here, Helen ran into him while he was showing the condo, the morning before Taggert clipped me.”

Cross spread his hands and raised his eyebrows. “Prospective clients wish to view a property. I show it. Is that a crime?”

“No crime except if you know Taggert, which I think you do. You show up at the condo. Then Taggert drops by.”

“What’s your point?” Cross asked him.

“My point is, it’s a small world, but it ain’t that small.”

Luis refereed three rounds of beer, compliments of Cross. The men were surprisingly mellow drinkers. Luis encouraged them into their respective cars before they became traffic menaces. He drove to BLACK CORAL. The sun was setting, and Esther and Rosa were closing.

“I smell beer on you, Father,” Rosa admonished.

“In the line of duty,” Luis said. He explained.

“Do you think Cross was lying?” Esther asked.

“I don’t know.” Luis unfolded a military cot and slapped dust from the canvas. He slept at the shop during high season, pistol under his pillow, when there was too much merchandise to lug to the village. “I have to be at Xelha early,” he explained.

“What can Mrs. Lamm tell you?” Rosa asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Ask everything that occurs to you, Father,” Esther said. “She may be the only person involved who will speak the truth.”

The Xelha (shell-HAH) ruins were ideal for tourists who merely wanted to say they had seen a Maya ruin. Located across Highway 307 from the immensely popular Xelha lagoon, the structures were modest, an isolated and easy walk on a jungle path. At the ruins was a small, brushy cenote — a sinkhole well. The Yucatan was a limestone shelf, flat as a tortilla, riverless and possessing few lakes. Cenotes were considered bodies of water and were sacred to Luis’s ancestors.

Luis waved to the visitor center’s caretakers. They had soft drinks and souvenirs, but no customers. Xelha, lacking towering pyramids, had once been described to Luis as “not very sexy.”

Helen Lamm was aiming binoculars into a copse of trees. She heard Luis’s footfalls, lowered her glasses, and said, “Mr. Balam, your homeland is a birder’s dream. This morning I’ve already seen a tody-bill, three species of flycatcher, and a bananaquit.”

Luis smiled.

“Our genial and knowledgeable Tulum guide, you aren’t a coincidence today either, are you?”

Luis shook his head no.

“I sensed Bud had involved you. We had words. He came home last night and cried. He’s a big, strong man. I’d never seen him cry in forty years of marriage.” Helen limped by Luis toward the entrance, unaided by the putter-cane, and continued, “Bud’s a good man and he isn’t stupid. He’s punched a time clock all his life. He hoped to finally make a special splash for our retirement. I appreciate anything you and your attorney friend can do to recover our money.”

“Your husband is convinced that Cross and Taggert are conspiring.”

“I couldn’t say. I never met Mr. Taggert.”

“You met Cross.”

“I did. He showed the condominium to some people. Bud was playing golf.”

“What did you and Cross discuss?”

“Not a lot,” Helen said. “It’s funny, you know. I would have sworn he’d make the sale.”

“Why?”

“His clients were an attractive young couple who were positively giddy about it. Evidently they didn’t smell the mildew. As they scampered through the rooms like children, Mr. Cross remarked to me how he hoped they could qualify financially, they loved it so, and it was such a bargain. Well, in the final analysis, they couldn’t swing it. They were so disappointed.”

“What did the couple look like?”

“The picture of health. They obviously exercised and ate right. Mr. Bud Lamm could learn a lesson from that pair.”

“How were they dressed?”

“Normal for Cancún and the Caribbean. Beach casual. Between you and me and the gatepost, Mr. Balam, he was a cutie. He wore a tank top. Nice skin tone. The young lady, a gorgeous toucan was printed on her T-shirt.”

“Did you exchange names?”

“No, but when I spotted that toucan, I asked if she liked birds. She loves them. She has parakeets and finches at home, and she was worried whether their housesitter was caring for them properly. Oh my.”

Helen was looking above and behind Luis. He turned and saw a flock of black vultures circling.

“What could be enticing them?”

“The jungle,” Luis said. “It always has what they want.”

Luis picked up Ricky Martinez as persuasion ammunition and went to Hector Salgado.

“Luis, let me understand,” Hector said wearily. “I am to don my uniform and we as a threesome are to intimidate Chester Cross?”

“And scare him witless!” Ricky said, shaking a fist.

“I perceive my role,” said a glaring Hector, who did not especially like lawyers.

“I don’t believe he will reveal the identities of that couple unless he is frightened,” Luis said. “The couple can lead us to Taggert.”

“Luis, do I have to put on the uniform?”

“Hector,” Luis said, “you are a kind and reasonably honest man, but in khaki and epaulets you are a stereotype of corruption, torture, and filthy Mexican jails.”

Hector Salgado Reyes rose, smiled, unbuttoned a shirt button, and said, “Yes, I am, aren’t I?”

On the drive to Paradise Investment Properties Associates, Ricky proposed that they stop and buy Hector a riding crop, as an added dash of implied cruelty. Luis and Hector in chorus told Ricky not to push it.

Hortencia was respectful and immediately ushered them in to Chet Cross, who provided scant resistance.

“Salting the mine, what’s wrong with that? Their excitement is infectious. They get the renters enthused. They’re possibly motivated to make the best investment decision of their lives.”

“A valuable public service is performed,” Hector said, looking at Luis.

“Who are they?” Luis asked Cross.

“Real nice kids named Beth and Corky. I don’t know their last names. I met them at a bar in the hotel here. They had long faces. It was their last night. They were broke and had maxed out their credit cards. They didn’t want to go home.”

“You provided a means to remain in paradise,” Luis said.

“Money,” Cross said, twirling a finger, “makes the world go around.”

“Where are Beth and Corky?” Luis asked.

“I’m not exactly sure. They’re scraping by, but they’re not flush enough to stay in these digs.”

Inspector Hector Salgado Reyes stood and asked. “Where are Beth and Corky?”

“Xcacel,” Cross said quickly. “The campground. They bought a tent.”

Xcacel (sha-SELL) was a beach near BLACK CORAL. A sign at the highway advertised “The Wildest Beach Around.” This was not true, Luis knew. The waves were not particularly hazardous, and resort accommodations were primitive. Budget travelers with expectations of tranquility were drawn to Xcacel.

Xcacel was out of Hector’s jurisdiction, but he went along for fun and procrastination of paperwork at the station. His value to Luis persisted. The caretaker snapped to attention and directed them to Beth and Corky. They were beside their tent, drying off after a swim, lean North Americans in skimpy bathing suits, blond hair sunbleached more white than yellow, skin as brown as Luis’s.

“Chester Cross told you where we were, I presume,” Corky said, focused on Hector. “I’m an attorney, incidentally. What we’re doing isn’t illegal.”

“I’m an attorney, too,” Ricky said. “And this isn’t California. Incidentally.”

“Why did you mention Cross?” Luis asked. “He isn’t your only client.”

“He is,” Beth said. “Honestly.”

“You don’t have to answer their questions,” Corky told Beth.

“Correct,” Hector said. “You have the right to remain silent in jail while we investigate further.”

“What did we do?” Corky said defiantly.

“Bud and Helen Lamm,” Luis replied.

“Helen,” Beth said. “Isn’t she that sweet older lady who likes birds?”

Luis nodded. “Wife of Bud, who was cheated out of sixty thousand dollars, sold the flamingo condo on phony papers.”

“Fraud is a crime in any land, attorney,” Hector said to Corky.

Corky’s and Beth’s lower jaws dropped and their suntans momentarily faded.

“Now wait a sec,” Corky said, “we were hired as cheerleaders. If a deal turns kinky, we can’t be held liable.”

“Accessories, before and during and after the fact,” Ricky pronounced.

“My partner is taking over my clients,” Corky said. “We love the Yucatan. We never want to leave, but it’s expensive.”

“Live in Mexico for ever,” Luis said. “On the beach. Or if you continue lying, in prison.”

Corky puffed his chest in defense of his mate’s honor. “She didn’t lie. We do our thing for Chet Cross exclusively.”

“Ralph Taggert,” Luis said.

“Same difference,” Corky said. “Ralph used to sell for Chet. They’re still associated somehow.”

Beth and Corky gave them the address of a cement block apartment house in Cancún City. After repeated knocking, Hector rattled the doorknob and said, “Deadbolt.”

“We must obtain a search warrant,” Ricky advised.

“Article 16 of the constitution of the Mexican United States permits officials to enter private homes for the sole purpose of ascertaining whether health regulations have been complied with,” Hector said.

Luis sniffed. “I smell rotten food, too.”

“For the record, I am elsewhere,” Ricky said.

Hector kicked the door. “Ow!”

Luis grasped the knob with both hands, pulled, then slammed a shoulder into the door. It opened, splintered jamb and all. Luis said, “You loosened it for me, Hector.”

Nowhere in the three cramped rooms was spoiled food or Ralph Taggert. Clothing hung in the closet; suitcases were stacked on the shelf above. Travel brochures on Hawaii and the Mexican West Coast were scattered on a rickety dining table. Ralph Taggert’s wallet was in a drawer. It contained California and Quintana Roo driver’s licenses and a little cash. There was no other money in the apartment, not sixty thousand dollars, not a peso.

“Why would a person walk out without his wallet?” Ricky wondered.

“You’re forgetful when you’re in a hurry,” Luis said.

“He heard our footsteps or he made a recent transaction,” Hector said. “It became time to go.”

“Either path,” Luis said, “leads to the airport.”

In excess of a million people per year fly in and out of Cancún Airport. They tend to congregate in clumps, herded by flight schedules and the demands of Immigration and Customs bureaucracies.

The trio concentrated on the outgoing clumps, checking the identification of men who fit Ralph Taggert’s appearance. Given Bud Lamm’s “average Joe” description and the fact that they had never seen Taggert, it was a despairing task. They were about to send Ricky for Lamm when Luis pointed out a man and woman.

Hector muttered a curse and quickstepped toward them, parting the crowds as if he were a vehicle. They reached Chester Call-Me-Chet Cross and the beauteous Hortencia as they were handing their boarding passes to a Mexicana Airlines flight attendant.

“What gives?” Cross demanded. “My assistant and I are going to a PIPA management seminar at Mazatlan. There’ll be hell to pay if we miss our plane.”

“Your airplane flies to Mexico City,” Hector said.

“We were going to catch a connecting flight at Mexico City.”

“From Mexico City you can catch a connecting flight to anywhere in the world,” Hector said, taking his arm. “You will talk now, fly later.”

They escorted Cross and Hortencia to seats and asked people in adjacent seats to please move. Travelers sensing a real life Mexican drug bust obeyed promptly. At a safe distance they removed cameras from carryon luggage and recorded the drama.

“Talk to us about Ralph Taggert,” Hector said.

Cross shrugged, sighed, and said, “That topic’s getting old, guys. I’d love to help but—”

“We’ve talked to Beth and Corky,” Luis said. “What did Taggert buy from you with the Lamms’ money?”

“Okay, I didn’t tell you the complete story. Taggert worked for me. I fired him. He was lazy and dishonest.”

“Taggert’s dishonesty offends you?” Luis said. “Ironic.”

Cross lunged out of his chair. Luis blocked his path. Cross swung. Luis ducked, assumed a crouch, and took a solid blow to a shoulder. He drove a fist into a midsection softer than it looked. Cross made a noise like an airlock in a science fiction movie and slumped into his chair.

Shutters clicked. Film-advance motors whirred.

Cross was momentarily speechless. Hector spoke gently to Hortencia, “Your lover boy is foolish, and you are too lovely to languish in my filthy jail.”

“Ask me anything,” Hortencia said.

“He bought Hawaii,” Luis said.

“How did you know?”

“It is farther from Cancún than any other resort Paradise Investment Properties Associates sells.”

“A Maui condo. Taggert was coming by to sign papers today, but he didn’t show.” She canted her head at the hyperventilating Cross and wrinkled her nose. “My hero. He panicked. He said there would be trouble and that we had to leave. He was right. The old gringo lady, Helen, she worried him.”

“Why?”

“She came to the office yesterday. Chet told her the lies he told you. She refused to accept them. She said she would stand outside and sob and complain to everybody that PIPA was crooked. She would carry a sign and picket. She is made of iron. Chet gave her what she was after, and she went away.”

“Which was?”

“The truth about Ralph. And his address.”

“Do you have the money?”

Hortencia took an envelope from Cross’s bag. “Fifty thousand. Chet was going to wire the money to our Maui office when Taggert signed. No Taggert, so we kept the money. Chet said it was a blessing in disguise.”

“The other ten thousand?”

“Ralph had problems,” Hortencia said. “He snorted cocaine and gambled.”

“Expensive problems,” Hector said, taking the envelope.

“Very expensive problems,” Luis said, taking the envelope from Hector. “I suppose the Lamms should feel fortunate to recover a penny.”

“You will have to mail it to them,” she said. “They didn’t see us, but we saw them an hour ago. They flew out on United, to Chicago.”

Hector and Luis looked at each other. Hortencia had been looking at Ricky out of a corner of her eye. Ricky kissed her hand and presented a business card. Hortencia flushed and smiled. Chet Cross threw up on the floor and in his own shoes.

Shutters clicked. Film-advance motors whirred.

Assisted by a bank, Luis Balam sent forty-nine thousand dollars to Bud and Helen Lamm. He split the fiftieth thousand equally with Ricardo Martinez Rodriguez and Hector Salgado Reyes. It came to three million pesos, a million each.

Hector said his share would be devoted to unspecified administrative costs connected with the prosecution of Chester Cross. Hortencia would be his chief witness. Luis bought tires and a tune up for the Golf. Ricky treated Hortencia to a lavish evening of dinner and dancing in the Cancún hotel zone. Hortencia treated Ricky to a night upstairs. His legal fee thus exhausted, Ricky’s romance with Hortencia stalled.

Luis in retrospect was not surprised when the body of an unidentified white male was found in the Xelha cenote. It had not yet been ravaged by black vultures beyond recognition. The true surprise was the facial expression, an eternal countenance of amusement and shock. The federal judicial police and the state judicial police investigated. The localized break in the back of the skull, a button-sized fracture that had thrust bone fragments into the brain, was the stated cause of death.

The police interviewed the Xelha caretakers, who did not recall seeing the victim. They did remind the police that the ground surrounding the cenote was treacherous because of moisture and exposed tree roots.

A homicide required blatant clues. Murder was as bad for Yucatan tourism as a hurricane. The death was ruled accidental.

Luis interviewed the Xelha caretakers. Although they answered him, they were ambiguous. An older woman limping on a cane might have rendezvoused with a younger man early that morning. But who really notices those things?

Helen pressing Taggert into a private encounter, insisting on a refund. Taggert laughing at a little old lady, turning his back on her — pure speculation, Luis thought. He ruled the death accidental.

In a month a package and letter and photograph came to BLACK CORAL. The photo was of Helen and Bud on a Hawaiian beach. They were grateful for the money and had applied it as a down payment on a marvelous townhouse with an ocean peek-a-view.

Bud had cut back to two packs a day and walked his daily eighteen holes rather than riding a cart, and was the picture of health.

Bud looked to Luis like the same Bud. Helen appeared haggard, as if she had been sleeping badly. The package was a macadamia nut gift assortment. Luis tried one and thought that it was tasty, but a bit waxy. He did not have an opportunity for a second opinion. Esther and Rosa loved them and polished them off before the day was done.

Richard Brocia III squirmed with fury on the couch, kicked his stumpy legs, pounded a chubby fist against the wall, and continued his familiar chant.

“—and then I’ll kill him. I’ll kill him. I’ll kill him...”

The doctor curled deeper into his chair behind the head of the couch. He was touching his thinning gray hair, then his thin face, finally massaging his left temple gently with the tips of two long tapering fingers that quivered very slightly on the ends.

The old aching blood-throb was coming back. He squeezed shut his eyes and snapped them open, resisting a stupor of bored impatience the way a late-night driver desperately battles road euphoria’s deadly spell.

One must hang in there, of course. Wait, listen sympathetically for clues, wait for Richie’s defense to break — and it would. It always breaks if you wait patiently enough, and Richie’s defense — this rigid, obsessive, repetitive account of his wife’s imagined affairs with ghostly lovers — must wear itself out like the groove of a stuck record. Then the shriveled and desiccated fragments of Richie’s personality could start limping out into the open.

Only we mustn’t draw it out too long, Richie. Three months isn’t really long, not in here. Three months is only a beginning when the path leads to the end of darkness; but you haven’t moved at all, Richie. You revealed so little, then stopped there in the groove and it just goes round and round and round; Lara and her demonic fantasy lovers and your plans for sweet vengeance. That’s all I know, Richie, and I must know more; a great deal more about many things.

In your case we simply cannot wait too long. Paranoia, in any form, even that of delusional jealousy and hallucinated lovers, can be dangerous. Proper clinical measures might call for a private sanitarium; but perhaps not. One must be sure — one must have sufficient information...

The doctor stopped writing in the spiral notebook. He stared wistfully at the oversized, prematurely balding top of Richie’s head, the way it twisted like a wounded turtle’s.

“Richie? Where are you?”

“Last night. I almost had him.” Richie’s mouth quivered in a baby’s primal snarl. “I cut out early from my Wednesday bowling and caught them sneaking around at poolside. Heard them laugh as I slipped in through the garden and climbed over the patio fence. Same guy I told you about before when I nearly caught them parked in the car out at Hanson’s Lake. I told you about that.”

“Yes, you told me.”

“Same guy. Tall, with the low voice.”

Richie pounded the wall harder. The doctor rose as quietly as possible and rescued a gold-framed certificate before it jarred loose from the wall and fell to the floor. He put it carefully on the glass-topped desk, Columbia Institute of Psychiatry, Bayne Kessler, M.D.

As the doctor turned to tiptoe back to the chair, Richie was elbowed up on his side, his odd, pale sheep eyes straining up with petulant accusation. “You weren’t even listening!”

Dr. Kessler sighed and managed a benign smile. “Of course I was listening, Richie. I always listen.” He sat down and picked up the spiral notebook and pen from the side table. “Please go on, Richie. You climbed the patio fence—”

Richie flounced over onto his back again. “I had him. See?” He breathed hard as he fumbled from under his suede jacket a strip of raveled white cloth and waved it like a banner. “I chased him. Just as he went over the fence I grabbed his sleeve. He tore loose and ran off through the trees. But I got this. It’ll be his neck next time, and I won’t lose my grip.”

Dr. Kessler squinted uneasily. Tom from a shirt cuff, all right, but from whose shirt, and how? Richie often brought in trophies he claimed were left behind when he frightened away one of Lara’s lovers. The cigarette lighter, the fountain pen, the handkerchief, the cigarette butts, the pocketknife, and the rest, like this bit of shirt cuff, never had initials or any other way of identifying their source. Never a wallet, a driver’s license, a credit card, or anything that might separate substance from shadows.

Their faces or any distinguishing body features were never quite clear to Richie. It was always night, always too dark, or he was too far away for them to be anything but fading outlines, fantasies of men who were never caught in flagrante delicto. They would never be caught except in wish-fulfilling dreams; and then, of course, there would be murder most foul.

But how to murder a delusion? Paranoids were clever at turning up substantiative evidence of systematized delusions.

“Know how I knew she’d be with him last night?” Richie waved the raveled snag of sleeve.

“Tell me, Richie.”

“The night before last, Tuesday, I told Lara I was dead from lack of sleep and had to have a good night’s rest. I pretended to take sleeping pills, only they were aspirin I’d put in the sleeping pill bottle. Then I pretended to be really knocked out on the couch. Lara hung around and shook me to be sure. Later, after she left, I lifted the phone and heard her on the extension setting it up with lover-boy for Wednesday night while I bowled. Same voice, like I told you. I felt sort of cruddy listening and spying... but I have to find out who he is so I can get him.” He curled up on his side, fists clenched against his chest like a baby with colic.

Dr. Kessler was conscious of covering his growing irritation with a deliberately low, gentle tone. “And Lara? She, of course, denied again that there was anyone there?”

“Sure. Same old business. Maybe it’s a plot. Maybe they’ve made Lara go along with a plot to brainwash me, to make me think I’m out of my tree and seeing little men who aren’t there.”

“Why would they do that?”

“Some of my daddy’s bank. Nearly a million dollars in community property. Hell, don’t you know? But I don’t care. I know what I see and next time I’m going to get what I see.”

Yesterday upon the stair, Dr. Kessler thought, I saw a man who wasn’t there. He wasn’t there again today. Oh, how I wish he’d go away.

This really mustn’t go on. Continuing treatment depended on knowing the exact nature of the disease. Persisting doubts about the original diagnosis must be settled. Either real or delusional lovers could serve Richie’s defensive needs, but his possible cure could not be served at all by insecure, unsubstantiated diagnosis.

His original, tentative diagnosis of delusional pathological jealousy still seemed right; what evidence he had been able to gather pointed to it. Richie could never identify a lover. He heard their whispers on the phone, in the dark, through walls, in his nightmares and daydreams — but he never turned up a single supportive fact or clue, never any addresses, phone numbers, names, or descriptions. He said they used secret codes, even used telepathic extrasensory perception to frustrate him. On several occasions during sessions, Richie insisted that while Lara waited for him in the car, she was talking with some ubiquitous playmate. When Dr. Kessler looked down there, however, he saw the car, but no one in it — no Lara — no lover.

“There they go,” Richie shouted. “Around the corner!”

Dr. Kessler saw no one disappearing around a corner, or into a crowd, or even into thin air. Delusional jealousy was not uncommon. Many had such a low opinion of themselves they couldn’t imagine anyone not preferring someone else; but Richie’s case added up to a rather extreme, dangerously paranoid form of the disorder. Dr. Kessler still believed that was his problem.

Yet what if that tentative diagnosis had been wrong — or just partly wrong? What if Richie’s “delusions” were based on justified suspicion? What if Lara really cheated? Very discreet social inquiries had turned up nothing about Lara that supported Richie’s claims, but those inquiries had been very limited by necessary prudence.

Dr. Kessler didn’t believe he was wrong, but it was always possible. If he were, it called for a radically different approach to Richie’s therapy.

On the other hand, if he were right, he couldn’t allow a dangerous state of delusion and fantasy to continue; not without direct clinical action.

Irritation flared up suddenly, out of control. Dr. Kessler stood, leaned over Richie, and heard himself using a surprisingly hard and critical tone. “You’re not kidding me, Richie. And you’d better stop kidding yourself. It isn’t getting us anywhere, is it?”

Richie looked up and blinked incredulously. After a while he whispered, “What?”

“You don’t want to find out who these guys are, Richie. And you never will, because you’re a coward. You’re afraid to find out. If you do, you know you’ll find out something else, the final, unbearable truth — that you’re too weak and helpless and afraid to face up to them.”

Richie sat up slowly and slid down the couch away from Dr. Kessler’s shadow. His face was a pale mixture of betrayed trust — and fear. He began shaking his head from side to side in painful denial.

“Yes, that’s how it is, Richie, and in your heart you know it. In your imagination, your fantasies, you enjoy endless plans of bloody vengeance, but all the time you know that in reality you can only face the terror of your own helplessness and cowardly cringing—”

“No,” Richie said. He jumped up and backed away. “You’re all wrong. So wrong it’s ridiculous.”

“Am I?”

“Yes, yes, and when I catch him you’ll find out how wrong you are, damn you!”

Dr. Kessler shrugged. “It’s so easy to find out who they are, Richie. Do what anyone else would do — hire a private investigator.”

Richie stared for half a minute. “Why... how can you — a doctor — suggest such a filthy thing? How can you even think of it?”

“The question is, Richie, why haven’t you thought of it?”

“No! Do you think I’d really have some stranger, some outsider, sneak and spy on my — on Lara — to find out... to see what she...”

“Sorry, Richie. Your time’s up.”

Richie straightened, snarling, “My time’s up here, period. I’ve had it with you, doctor. You can’t do me any good. You don’t even know why I came here, do you? I came here hoping to be able to help Lara. She’s the one who is sick. She blames me for everything and won’t admit she needs help. But you don’t understand and you can’t help, and I don’t need your help. I know what to do.”

“You may feel differently tomorrow, Richie. I hope so. Call me whenever you feel like it. And—”

Richie went out and slammed the door. His squatty shape blurred on the other side of the frosted pane and seemed to drift away through murky water.

Dr. Kessler moved a hand as if to call him back. Then he sank onto the couch while the office slowly turned gray and the aching blood-throb pulsed past his left temple. He massaged the ache ritualistically with the fingertips of his left hand, the way his mother used to do, knowing it was anger at himself — and fear. Also guilt and uncertainty, for losing his professional control, and giving in to exasperation — letting Richie have such an unprepared shocking broadside of cold truth.

Really shook Richie up, though, the doctor reflected. Shocked through his defenses a little. Really frightened him, without warning, without preparation. Suddenly switching from the role of warm, supportive, sympathetic listener to hard, uncompromising, directive coercion. Sometimes that can be effective; so can shock therapy — sometimes. Coercive, manipulative, authoritarian methods can also be dangerous. He really did not approve of the technique, especially with a patient about whom he still knew so little. It was almost like performing a surgical operation in the dark. Sometimes it seemed necessary to take risks, but he should be ready to assume responsibility for the result.

Dr. Kessler stood up heavily. He kept massaging his temple as he went to the window and opened the Venetian blind and realized that it was the first time all day that he’d looked out on the world. It had been snowing for hours, and it was nearly dark. There was no sky or earth in the falling quiet, only sifting snow. The world could end and he would never know it as he sat immersed in the debris of some wrecked personality.

He sat at his desk, switched on the green-shaded lamp, and a tatter of white caught his attention. The tom bit of shirt cuff fluttered on the rug near the door like a dead moth.

After peering at it for a moment, Dr. Kessler picked up the phone book and flopped it onto his desk. He riffled nervously through the yellow pages.

Dreams, delusions, lies — they are helpful clues to the unconscious; but first you must have a fair idea what is or is not true.

Ice Cream... Ignition Service... Illustrators... Incinerators... Insurance...

Investigators — Private.

“Flynn Detective Agency,” he read. “Investigations made everywhere. Domestic troubles, personal relations, shadowing, tracing missing persons, locating, surveillance. Skillfully performed — low rates — quick results. Strictly confidential.”

He called and told Mr. Flynn to start work at once, that same Friday night, even though it would count as a full day, at fifty dollars a day plus expenses. When Flynn found out anything — or an indisputable absence of anything — he was to phone Dr. Kessler at home or at his office.

Dr. Kessler waited with a tension of which he was conscious even while listening to other patients. Richie did not turn up for his Monday appointment, nor for his Tuesday or Thursday appointments, and he didn’t call.

Mr. Flynn phoned Thursday night. “Mrs. Brocia never played around, I can assure you of that. And I’m absolutely sure she isn’t playing around now. I’ll have a full report for you tomorrow, but first I want to check something out. Something’s weird here, doctor.”

“Weird?”

“Yes, I think it’s weird. I’ll call you later.”

Friday morning, as Dr. Kessler showed his ten fifty patient out, a heavy, solid man wearing a dark suit of uncertain vintage and a porkpie hat stood in the waiting room.

“Dr. Kessler?” he said softly. His face seemed dour and inflexible, with a permanent cleft of distrust between thick eyebrows.

“Yes,” Dr. Kessler said, noticing that the man also had an odd sadness marking the corners of his eyes.

He opened a worn wallet. A golden badge glittered. “Detective Bates,” he said. “Homicide.”

Dr. Kessler felt a drop of sweat slide down the left side of his nose. It loosened a nervous flush down his back that rippled painfully. “Homicide?”

“We just took Richard Brocia into custody on suspicion of murder. You know him?”

Dr. Kessler realized that his mouth was open and the inside of it was dry. “He’s a patient of mine.”

“So Mr. Brocia has been telling us.”

Dr. Kessler touched his fingers to his left temple. “Can you tell me what happened? Can I see him? I’d like to see him as soon as possible.”

“He said he didn’t want to see you,” Detective Bates said without expression. “But he wanted me to give you this.” He held out a folded paper.

Dr. Kessler took it, unfolded it, and read:

“I’m... I’m—” Dr. Kessler held the paper out as if he didn’t know what to do with it. Detective Bates took it, folded it, and put it back into his pocket as Dr. Kessler went on, “—I’m sorry... very sorry to hear this. Who—”

“His wife, first of all.”

“Lara?”

“Found her buried, or rather half buried, in the basement. Medical examiner says she’s probably been buried there for about three months.”

Something skidded slightly.

“The other victim was a guy who evidently tried to dig her out. Brocia came into the basement from the side door and surprised the intruder and started shooting. The victim ran, and died on the stairs leading up out of the basement.”

He held out a card. “He had your calling card on him, Dr. Kessler. You know anything about him? A private investigator, name of Flynn?”

Miss Evangeline Sabrina Withermane couldn’t believe her eyes as she looked out the window of her bedroom and saw the flying saucer circle, spin to the left a little, and then set down just as pretty as you please in the middle of her front lawn flowerbed with not so much as a by-your-leave.

“Well, I never!” she exclaimed aloud. “Right in the middle of my jack-in-the-pulpits. They’re ruined beyond repair, no doubt about it.”

She didn’t wait for the little green men to disembark. There simply wasn’t time. She would have to make a report to the police at once. It was urgent. Why, perhaps the whole town was being invaded — the entire planet maybe.

She scuttled downstairs, picked up the telephone in the hall, dialed the familiar number of the police station, and waited for the ringing to begin. When it didn’t after two agonizing minutes, she remembered. They had disconnected her; nonpayment of bills or some such nonsense. She had told the phone company that she was certain she had paid her bills, but they insisted she hadn’t — not for months. Being the lady that she was, she had refused to argue further and spent the rest of the day in a blue sulk.

She put down the phone with distaste. Actually, she had never really liked the machine to begin with, not since the very day her papa had had it installed all those lost years ago. She preferred face-to-face contact with people, preferably genteel.

She hurried out to the garage behind her ancient house, which was circa 1800, and got into the vintage Packard her papa had taught her to drive not long before he was unkind enough to die and leave her not only heartbroken but all alone. She rolled out the open doors of the garage like a Sherman tank and rumbled down the driveway.

The saucer, she noted, was still sitting insultingly on her lawn. Well, she’d see about that, oh, wouldn’t she just!

Later, as she parked in the central square of the small southern town, she noticed the letters lying on the seat beside her. She picked them up. One was from someplace called the City Tax Bureau. Another was from the water company. Would they never leave a lady in peace? She got out of the car and dropped them, unopened, into the trash can on the corner.

Past the statue of the Confederate soldier, past the tiny post office and all the little shops, went Miss Evangeline Sabrina Withermane. She marched up the steps of the police station and into its relatively cool interior. Flying saucers on a Monday! It was simply no way to begin a week.

“Afternoon, Miss Evangeline,” said Patrolman Carson, who was standing near the entrance reading the notices on the bulletin board. “Nice day.”

She gave him a polite nod and asked to see Sergeant MacReynolds.

“Something wrong, Miss Evangeline?” Carson inquired.

“Indeed there is. I want to register a complaint.”

“Something bothering you again?”

“Yes, officer. A flying saucer.”

Carson whistled softly through his teeth. “A flying saucer, is it? Last week, when we met over at the drugstore, you told me you wanted to report — what was it you wanted to report that day, Miss Evangeline?”

“The Mulberry Mall Monster,” she replied. “But I haven’t time to go into all that now. Where is Sergeant MacReynolds?”

“In his office.”

Miss Evangeline marched down the hall and into Sergeant MacReynolds’ office, trailing magnolia scent like an elegant feather boa behind her.

As she entered his office, MacReynolds glanced up from the papers on his desk and sighed at the sight of her. “Good afternoon, Miss Evangeline,” he said, and sat back in his chair.

“Good day to you, sergeant. I want to report a flying saucer.”

“Well, well.”

“It landed on my front lawn at exactly three oh-nine this afternoon. I looked at my watch as it landed — three oh-nine exactly. Will you send a squad car or whatever it is that should be sent — at once? It’s sitting right there in the middle of my jack-in-the-pulpits, which you know I prize most highly.”

“Is it from Mars?”

“However would I know? That’s for you to find out. I notice you’re not writing this down.”

MacReynolds sighed a second time before picking up a pencil and beginning to write on a blank piece of paper.

Miss Evangeline turned toward the door, but before leaving the office she glanced back at MacReynolds, who had stopped writing. “You do believe me, don’t you?” Her voice was plaintive. MacReynolds heard a lost little girl hidden in it.

“Now, Miss Evangeline,” he said. “I’ll send someone over to investigate. Don’t you fret.”

“Thank you ever so much, sergeant. You see, my jack-in-the-pulpits—”

“I’ll have Patrolman Carson investigate first thing. Goodbye, Miss Evangeline.”

When she had gone, MacReynolds looked down at the piece of paper on which he had written: Bats in the old girl’s belfry. “Carson!” he yelled.

Carson appeared instantly in the doorway. “She’s at it again, right, sergeant?”

MacReynolds frowned. “Don’t they teach you youngsters respect for your elders any more? Yes, she’s at it again. But why wouldn’t she be? She lives on a pittance from her father’s estate, which is doled out to her annually by a law firm up in New York, and what was good enough twenty years ago isn’t worth a damn today. You ever heard of inflation?”

“Sorry, sergeant.”

“I’m sorry, too. A lady like Miss Evangeline just isn’t properly equipped to deal with our nervous world. Sometimes I’m not so sure I am, either.” MacReynolds muttered something about the bomb.

Carson cleared his throat a moment later.

MacReynolds looked up and drifted back to the present and the matter at hand. “A flying saucer landed on Miss Evangeline’s lawn at three oh-nine this afternoon.” His expression warned Carson not to smile. “I want you to drive by — make sure she sees you — and do whatever a policeman is supposed to do when investigating a flying saucer.”

Carson promised that he would do just that. Right away.

They brought the sheriff and the procurator-fiscal over from mainland Scotland for the Serious Accident Enquiry, but it was midwinter and blowing a gale and they stumbled over the step into that hastily prepared room in Tobermory still looking green and shaken from the ferry trip. And that just about set the pattern. There were a lot of disgruntled faces, and I drew some black looks, but I’d heard enough gossip to know why. It was unnecessary, they argued; legal procedure should be adhered to, right enough, but it had been an accident, so what the hell.

So in that bare, cold room on the Isle of Mull, with its crude wooden benches and iron-legged tables, I listened with the sour taste of fury in my mouth as big, bearded Dougail Gaunt told them what they wanted to hear with soft words and a twisted tongue. And long, long before he’d finished I was outside, leaning into the wind as I stumped disgustedly towards my car through the salt spray whipping in from the harbor.

It was twenty miles of single-track, twisting coastal road to Craignure. In the deepening gloom of that winter evening I drove blind with rage, and poor, dead Jamie was with me all the way. Jamie, and the hypocrisy of Dougail Gaunt’s words.

He’d been on his way back to his motel, he’d told them, fighting the wheel of his old truck as it bucked and slewed in the wind swirling across that icy, pitted road. He must have nudged Jamie’s Land Rover as the lad tried to go past at Wilson’s Gap, he said, and his heavy brows lowered over black eyes narrowing at painful memories. Aye, he said, he’d have stopped, had he known. But in that shrieking, westerly gale he’d heard nothing...

I’d turned away then, gazing in mute fury towards the high white windows, because back there in the night Jamie had bitten through his lower lip in agony and, pinned beneath tom and twisted metal, had bled his life away into the purple heather of Glen More.

That last bit was mine, and true, and all the rest was lies. Jamie had died, whisky-swilling Doug Gaunt had killed him, and it had been no accident. But the verdict was there in all their faces, and I’d left before the end because I didn’t think I could listen to it without the anger spilling over.

I drove home like a madman, with a dead boy’s ghost at my shoulder and the echoes of a murderer’s voice all around. At Craignure I roared up the hill and onto the forecourt of the filling station and repair shop I owned, and I sat for a while, gripping the wheel to still the trembling. When I got out and limped towards the office, Frank was in the workshop doorway, wiping his hands on an oily rag.

“How’d it go?” he called.

“Accident,” I mumbled, the word lost in the wind. I went inside and slumped behind the desk, and in a surge of fury I swept vehicle parts, books and old invoices, and chewed pens to the floor and reached for the telephone.

She’d been with him three weeks. This was the first time I’d called her.

“He got off,” I said when she answered. Her voice was husky, her breath so close to my ear my skin tingled all the way down to my hip. “They called it an accident, so now he’s taken my girl and killed my brother and got away with it both times.”

There was a silence while she thought that over. Her heady perfume was there, in my nostrils, and I could picture her, blonde hair brushing the shoulders of the flame housecoat I’d given her, hip thrusting and a half smile on her full lips as she closed her eyes and waited for him to come through the door.

“I’m glad for him, Will, and sorry for you, truly I am. But word got around, there were rumors you and Jamie were about to do something because of me, and if you put Jamie up to some trickery on that wicked night...”

“If we were going to put the fear of God into Dougail, that’s one thing; knocking the lad clear off the side of a mountain is something else again,” I gritted, almost choking with fury and grief. “He must have seen him, it had to be deliberate, coldblooded...”

“It was an accident,” she cut in, and for a moment there was nothing but the whisper of her breathing. “You know that truck, Will. It’s like riding inside a tin can full of rocks, and on a dark night with that wing mirror flopping around...”

“Then get it fixed,” I said stupidly.

“Coming from you, Will McGair, that’s priceless, you pushing grease into the truck and fixing all the broken bits on Fridays when he’s playing cards. The mirror’s your concern, not his.”

I sat gripping the phone and watching my knuckles whiten, because cards had been the beginning and before he’d taken my girl he’d taken my money. Yet as I listened to the breathless way she used words, and remembered the whiteness of her body in the warm darkness, I knew I had to have her.

“When are you coming back to me, Chrissie?”

“Give me one good reason, Will, I’ll come running.”

“I’m reason enough,” I said hoarsely. “You can’t be enjoying life at that fleabitten motel he runs. And besides,” I added desperately, “what good is a man who’s drunk most of the week and a hungover wreck the rest?”

She chuckled, a wicked gurgle that made my throat ache. “Look around you, Will. What’s so cosy about a poky room over a filthy garage? Doug Gaunt’s got an acre and a half down here at Pennyghael, and this time of the year, guests all gone, there’s a different bedroom for every night of the week. And he’s all man, Will, so if you want me, come and get me...”

I cut her off, putting the phone down with a gentle click to avoid smashing it in my rage.

Because that last, vicious taunt was a cruel reference to the twisted left leg I drag around, a legacy of one afternoon’s lobstering when frantic haste to haul in the pots had seen me caught astride the gunwale of the crazily rocking boat and dragged bloodily across the jagged rocks. Dougail Gaunt’s pots, I remembered. We’d been hauling them up, Jamie and I, because in his habitual alcoholic haze Gaunt had dropped them into deep water and they’d drifted across ours, tangling lines and dragging buoys — but all I’d got for my pains had been half a dozen of his derelict pots, three months in hospital, and a leg so shortened it needed a wooden block to depress the clutch pedal of a truck and could do precious little else.

My money, my girl, a crippled leg, and now a dead brother.

Were those four strikes reason enough for cold, calculated murder?

Outside again in the darkness I stood for a moment, shivering. The drone of an approaching car swelled above the moaning wind. Headlights flashed back from the workshop windows, blinding me so that in my grief and anger for a moment I was disoriented, not knowing from which direction it was coming.

And in that instant, as the car went past, it all clicked, came neatly together; that loose wing mirror that needed fixing, the flash of reflected headlights, big Dougail Gaunt and his liking for cards and drink. I grinned bleakly, tossed the workshop keys to Frank, and, ignoring his direct gaze, thumped up the narrow wooden staircase to that cramped room Chrissie Stewart had once been happy to share.

But that was before Dougail Gaunt had set lecherous eyes on her and stayed half sober for the seven days it took him to lure her away with smooth talk and a fat wallet. I brooded over that, and a bottle of Glenfiddich, while overhead the loose asbestos sheet slapped in the wind and every corner of that mean room was dark and empty.

By the time I crawled into my lonely bed I knew how I was going to kill him. I had it all worked out.

It seemed that half our blotter reports lately had something to do with gambling.

Maybe it was the beautiful autumn in Korea, when the green leaves of summer turn to orange and yellow and brown and people realize that they are heading for that long cold winter we call death.

“Take a chance! You only go round once.”

Not what Buddha or Confucius would have said, but this is the modern Korea and the rules are changing. And the GI’s stationed over here have got nothing better to do anyway than throw away their money.

I thumbed through the blotter reports. A Korean businessman busted in a poker game on the compound; an NCO Club bartender rifling the night’s receipts to cover his “flower card” losses; a GI collared running a shell game in the barracks.

And so when the first sergeant called me and my partner, Ernie Bascom, into his office and gave us our assignment, it didn’t come as much of a surprise.

“Somebody stole the football pool on the army and navy game over at the Officer’s Club.”

We stared in mock horror. Ernie spoke first.

“Has the 8th Army been put on alert?”

“Yeah, wise guy. On alert. This may not seem too serious to you two, but the 8th Army chief of staff is about to soil his shorts. ‘Besmirching the honor of the army-navy tradition,’ he said.”

Whenever they start talking tradition, honor, or country, look out for your brisket.

“How much money did he have invested?” I said.

The first sergeant sighed, took a sip of his lukewarm coffee, and ignored me.

“I’d put Burrows and Slabem on the case — they got more respect for the officer corps than you two guys — but they’re on a case out at ASCOM City right now. So all I got left is you two.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Top.”

“Don’t mention it.”

The first sergeant set down his coffee and smiled at us. There was a warning in that smile. Something about not screwing up.

“The pool money was collected by the bartender, Miss Pei...”

“A female bartender? On a military installation? I thought the union didn’t allow that.”

“Normally they don’t, but this is the Officer’s Club and the union honchos want to keep the 8th Army staff happy.”

“At the Enlisted Club, all we got to look at is that crusty old Mr. Huang.”

“You should have gone to Officer’s Candidate School.”

“Too late to become a brown-noser,” Ernie said.

The first sergeant shook his head. “All right, Bascom. And you too, Sueño. I don’t care what your personal feelings are about the Officer’s Club. This is a simple matter, and I want you to keep it that way. No nosing around for things that don’t concern you, and no mouthing off to those officers over there.”

Ernie pointed to his chest and mouthed a silent, “Us?”

“Yeah, you! Miss Pei is over there now, tending bar for the lunch crowd. At about thirteen hundred I want you to check it out and give me a complete report. Keep it simple, keep it neat, and don’t get yourselves into any trouble.”

“Piece of rice cake,” Ernie said. “Not to worry, Top.”

The first sergeant frowned as we got up and walked towards the door. All I could think about was the number of times I’ve gagged on a wad of thick chewy rice cake.

Terrible stuff.

As I scanned the rest of my mail, I absentmindedly opened the one letter my secretary had left sealed, thinking it might be personal. Absorbed as I was, I failed to notice the return address, so its message came as rather a shock: Since we could find no evidence of next-of-kin, and you seemed to be her only correspondent and visitor, we thought you would want to know that Miriam Winters passed away quietly in her sleep on the 25th.

The sun pouring through the Venetian blinds of my office seemed suddenly chilled. I had been standing while I opened the letter, but now I sat, swung the big leather chair around, and gazed out the window. So she had died — at last. Her only visitor. I wasn’t even that. When was the last time I had seen her — five years ago? Six? I remembered receiving a card from her this past Christmas and making sure Meg sent one in return. How lonely she must have been these last years. Suddenly I was filled with the worst kind of remorse — the kind you feel when someone’s gone and it’s too late to make up any neglect.

I was only a kid, no more than sixteen, when they let Old Man Winters out and, since I was the one responsible for his release, I went around that summer swaggering like a damn hero. It wasn’t until later that I came to think differently of myself. I haven’t been back to Wilton Falls in a good many years, and I wonder if they still tell their kids and their grandchildren about that summer. I wonder if they still tell it the wrong way, too — making Miriam Winters out to be some sort of witch. Well, they’re wrong. She wasn’t a witch. I talked to her enough later (too late) to know.

Swinging my chair back to the desk, I looked at the letter again. It was strange, but I was probably the only living person who had ever heard the full details of her side of the story. Certainly the newspapers had never given her her due. They were too busy making sensational copy out of the horror she had perpetrated — and it was horror. I have never denied that, or condoned what she did, but it was my fate to get a more rounded picture than anyone else, and so I always have felt differently about Miriam Winters...

Miriam stopped to wipe the perspiration from her brow. There were two more shirts to iron. Harry was due home tonight, and he’d ask about them first thing. He had a lot of shirts, enough to last him four weeks on the road while an equal number were being done up at home. A salesman had to be well-groomed, Harry always said. Still, it seemed that he took more shirts than necessary. Miriam, after her first blunder, never mentioned it when she found lipstick or powder smudges on any of them.

She looked fearfully at the clock over the kitchen sink. Why had she waited until the last minute? Well, it had been a difficult month. Bobby had been sick, and then she’d had so many of those awful headaches. Ever since Harry had knocked her against the stove the last time he’d been home, she had been bothered by the headaches and that funny confused feeling that came over her from time to time. She put down the iron and rubbed her head. She didn’t mind the headaches so much, but worried about the confused feeling. She wondered if she blacked out at such times and fervently hoped not. Bobby was pretty self-sufficient for a four-year-old, but who could tell what he would do if he found his mother unconscious someday?

Fortunately she had just put the final touches on the last shirt when she heard Harry’s car drive into the old barn behind the house. He came banging in — a big man, a good twenty years older than Miriam — set down his luggage without an answer to her quavering “hello,” and went out again. He returned with a couple of paper bags which he carefully placed on the kitchen table. Miriam’s heart sank. It hadn’t been a good trip, then. She could always tell by the amount of whisky he brought back with him to ease the few days’ rest at home before he started off again.

“I have your supper all ready,” said Miriam, poking at the pots on the stove.

Harry, fussing with the seal on one of the whisky bottles, stopped only long enough to glare at her. “My shirts done?”

“Yes — oh, yes — all of them. Now just you sit down and I’ll dish out your supper.”

He grunted and seated himself heavily at the wooden table.

Two hours later he was wildly drunk.

He would not allow her to go to bed, and although she was able to avoid his drunken lunges for a while, he finally had her backed into a corner. The whisky fumes of his breath and the feel of his fumbling hands at her clothes sickened her. “No, no, H-Harry...” Her voice involuntarily rose in a crescendo.

Then there were other hands plucking at her, and she looked down at Bobby. Aroused by the noise, he had come weeping into the kitchen. “Mama, Mama,” he said, trying to pull her away.

Miriam swallowed and tried to speak calmly. “You must go back to bed, Bobby. Come, I’ll take you.”

But Harry held her firm. “You’ll do no such thing. You can just stop being the damn mother for once. When a man comes home from the road he wants a little comfort — a little wifely comfort.” Then to the child, who still clung, “G’wan, dammit. Get to bed.”

But the weeping child did not move, and swift as lightning the big hand of the man swung out. The body of the small boy seemed to fly through the air before landing in a crumpled heap at the base of the sink. From the gash on the forehead blood spurted first, then flowed in a horrible red sheet down the face of the child. His mouth opened but no sound came out.

Even Harry seemed stunned by the sight and made no move to stop Miriam as she tore from his arms with a strange animal-like sound. The child’s breath had come back, and his sobs mingled with hers as she rocked him in her arms and sponged at his face with a wet dish towel. There was no hope of outside help in this emergency, for there was no phone and Harry was too drunk to drive to a doctor. The house itself was isolated, situated as it was on the edge of a meadow. Beyond that stretched a wooded area. The nearest neighbor, Miriam knew, was at least a mile away.

Finally, thankfully, the flow of blood lessened and then stopped. As Miriam gently swabbed her son’s head, she noted how wide the gash was and how frighteningly near his eye. Tomorrow morning she would have a doctor look at it, but now bed, probably, was the best therapy. She picked the child up and went past Harry, who had again settled himself at the table, silently drinking. She improvised a clumsy bandage, and tucked the still faintly sobbing child in bed. He did not want her to go, so she sat on the edge of the bed until, with a last convulsive shudder, he allowed himself to be overtaken by sleep.

She went quietly back to the kitchen. Harry had succumbed finally, and sat sprawled at the table, his head on his arms. Miriam shook him, but when he did not respond, she went to the knife drawer and selected the largest, sharpest knife she had. She shut the drawer and went and stood behind her husband, hefting the knife, gauging the angle of thrust that would be best...

It was odd. Her role in life up to this minute had been that of follower. She was ever stumbling after some stronger-willed person, often hating it but never knowing how to break away; indecisive. That’s why it was odd that suddenly she should know just what to do. She didn’t have to agonize over her decision or consult someone else. Harry must be done away with. It was right. She knew it.

What stayed her hand, then?

A haunting phrase from her childhood Sunday school: Thou shalt not kill? An awareness of how difficult it would be to dispose of a dead body? Perhaps. But more probably it was the sudden image that flashed across her mind, an image of herself behind bars and Bobby alone. Murderers were always caught, weren’t they? She had made no plans to cover her “crime,” nor had she any belief that even if she did, the police wouldn’t find out sooner or later. She was not that clever — merely right.

Slowly she lowered her hand. Perhaps she could not kill Harry, but he must be restrained in some way — the thing tonight was too close. Miriam shivered as she recalled the bloodied face of her child. No, just as wild beasts must be killed or locked up...

Locked up? She thought a moment. Of course. That was the answer. The big old house with its large expanse of fenced-in grounds had been purchased less than a year ago from former kennel owners. They had been breeders of Great Danes, as a matter of fact, and in the cavernous cellar one area had been sectioned off with sturdy cyclone fencing set in concrete. The area was about nine by nine feet, with the fencing extending even across the top. This “cage” had been used for whelping bitches and their puppies. Harry in such a cage would never be able to hurt Bobby or herself again.

She stared at Harry’s bulk. Tomorrow she would wonder how she had been able to drag such a heavy man across the kitchen, down the cellar steps, and into the cage, but tonight she merely knew that it must be done.

Harry stirred and moaned once or twice in the tortuous journey but never fully awakened from his drunken stupor. Perspiration trickled down Miriam’s back and between her breasts, and by the time she had hauled her unconscious husband into the caged area she was wringing wet. A wooden platform, raised a few inches from the floor, took up a portion of the cage. Apparently the dogs had slept on this. Miriam went upstairs and dragged two blankets from their bed and threw them in on the platform. Then she closed the cage door. There was a heavy padlock on the latch. She clicked it shut. She had no key for it, but that did not matter because she did not expect to open it again — ever.

The first few days were terribly noisy, of course. It was fortunate the house was so isolated or surely Harry’s bellows of disbelief, anger, and frustration would have been heard. Miriam took Bobby to the doctor the next day to have his wound attended. The doctor was aghast and wanted to know why she hadn’t come when it happened, and how did it happen?

“He fell against the latch of the sink cabinet last night and it would have been too difficult to come all this way on foot in the dark. My husband isn’t home with the car,” Miriam lied, confident that Bobby would not refute her story, and he did not. He was a quiet, obedient child, solemn beyond his years.

When they returned from the doctor’s, they could hear Harry’s shrieks of rage as they walked in the door. Bobby shrank against his mother. Miriam sat down on the straight chair near the door and took her son onto her lap. “Listen, Bobby, you mustn’t let those noises in the cellar bother you. It’s only...” She paused a moment, suddenly thinking of a different approach. “You remember those fairy tales we were reading the other night?”

Bobby nodded.

“Do you remember the one about the prince being turned into a frog?”

“Yes...”

“Well, something like that has happened, I think, to your father. He has been turned into a bear, a great shaggy bear, as punishment, I imagine, for not — for not being more kind. Well, anyway, he’s in a cage in the cellar so he cannot hurt us.”

Bobby’s eyes were round. A particularly loud bellow rose from below at this point, and the child trembled. “He-he c-can’t get out...” he quavered.

“No.” Miriam’s voice was firm. “He absolutely can’t get out — and after a while he’ll probably stop making so much noise.” She slid the child from her lap and stood up. Then she added, “By the way, Bobby, you mustn’t tell anybody at all about this, or they will make us let him out.”

Glancing down at him, she saw his eyes widen with horror at the thought. She smoothed down her dress, satisfied. Bobby would never tell.

Miriam allowed three days to pass before she went down to Harry. He was lying down, seemingly exhausted by three days of shouting, but at her approach he sprang up and clutched with trembling fingers at the heavy cage meshing. Miriam stopped a few feet from the cage and set down on the floor the plate of food and shallow bowl of milk she was carrying. Then, as if repeating something she had rehearsed many times, she picked up a broom that lay nearby and shoved first the plate and then the bowl toward the “gate” of the cage, which cleared the floor by about three inches.

Harry’s lips twitched. “All right, you, what’s this all about?”

She did not answer but continued to shove the food toward him.

Harry’s voice was shrill. “Dammit, Miriam, let me out! Miriam — Miriam, do you hear me...” His voice became uncertain. Her silence seemed to unnerve him. Was this the same woman whom he had browbeaten so king? The same woman who had heretofore quaked at his every command? He tried again, a conciliatory tone suddenly in his voice. “Listen, Miriam, I admit you may have a beef. Look, I know I had too much to drink, but you can’t keep me locked up here forever, can you?”

She answered him then. She straightened up and looked with her unblinking clear blue eyes into his. “Yes,” she said.

He was taken aback. “W-What?”

“Yes,” she repeated. “I can keep you locked up forever. I can and I must.” She indicated the food with her foot. The two dishes were half under the gate. “Here’s some food. I’ll bring you more tomorrow night.” Then she turned and started up the stairs.

He was apparently shocked into silence for a moment, but then an outraged bellow of venomous anger escaped him. “You’ll never be able to get away with it, Miriam!” he screamed. “People’ll find out. Don’t you realize, you idiot, you can’t get away with something like this. You’ll be arrested...”

The young woman on the stairs continued ascending as if she heard nothing. At the top she switched off the cellar light and shut the door carefully, quietly, behind her.

Every evening she took him food, seldom speaking herself, letting his increasingly hysterical screams of abuse cascade over her with no comment. When the stench in the cage became unbearable she employed the same means of cleaning it the former kennel owners apparently had used. She coupled a hose on a nearby spigot and hosed off the cage floor, the water and filth easily channeling themselves into the slight gully in the cement floor outside the cage. The gully led to an open drain in the floor, and this she kept sanitary by a periodic sprinkling with disinfecting powder. Several times a week she also slid a shallow basin of soapy water in to him so that he might clean himself if he wished.

As the weeks passed, Harry’s vilification, his threats, became less. He tried a new tack. It was just a matter of time, he assured her. His company would be checking up soon. And, anyway, how long did she think she could hold out by herself? How would she live? How would she earn money? If his questions did not seem to disconcert her, it was only because she had given those same questions great thought herself.

For instance, Miriam had already telephoned Harry’s company. She was sorry, she told them, but her husband had taken another job and wished to terminate his employment with them. As Harry had never been one of their better salesmen, they were not overly upset. Fine, they said, they wished him luck, but would he please send back his sample case and stock book. Miriam said she’d see that they were in the mail that day, and they were. Thus the company, which the man in the cage so desperately counted on to start a hullabaloo over his disappearance, quietly washed its hands of him.

The weeks immediately following Harry’s incarceration were idyllic ones for Miriam and Bobby. They went to the nearby fields to pick wild strawberries, they frolicked in the woods. Never had Miriam been so happy. Her childhood had consisted of one indifferent foster home after another. Her marriage to Harry, which she had thought would be an escape, had merely had the effect of putting her in a new foster home with a new foster parent — and a more brutal one, at that. But now she was free — free for the first time in her life. Even her headaches and that confused feeling seemed to be bothering her less. In the fall Bobby would be starting school, and she must then consider her future. Harry’s remarks about her inability to support herself were not lost on her, but there was enough money in the savings account for the present, and she was determined not to worry about anything until the fall.

In the fall her decision not to worry was completely justified because things fell into place beautifully for her. Old Mrs. Jenkins, the town librarian, died, and Miriam, ever a lover of books, applied for the position. There were few applicants for the job, and Miriam, although a comparative newcomer to town, made by far the best appearance. She was quiet, neat, and seemingly conscientious. Also, her implication that her salesman husband had abandoned her didn’t hurt her chances. If anything, it aroused the town board’s sympathies, and they gave her the job. The position didn’t pay much, but Miriam’s wants were few: merely enough money to maintain Bobby and herself and to feed the “Shaggy Bear” in the basement. The latter epithet had become particularly appropriate, for Harry had grown quite a beard and there were times when Miriam had difficulty recognizing the shaggy lumbering creature in the cage as her husband — so much difficulty that she soon stopped trying. He was merely the “Bear” who must be fed nightly and ignored as much as possible the rest of the time.

Ignoring him became more difficult during the winter months, for a change came over him. Until then he had been an abusive, vilifying creature, shaking the cage mesh violently, slamming his metal dishes around, screaming deprecations upon her head. But one night she went down with his food to find him holding onto the mesh and whimpering. He saw her, and a great tear rolled down his cheek and glistened on the rough beard. It was followed by others. The Bear was crying! “Miriam, Miriam,” it sobbed.

How strange that a bear should know her name. But then, she must remember, it really was Harry in that bear suit.

“Miriam, please... please set me free. I know I haven’t been good to you, but I promise I’ll go away and never bother you again. Just set me free...” Great sobs shook the creature’s frame.

Miriam felt tears well up in her own eyes. She was a sensitive person and could feel great sympathy for this caged creature. Carefully she set the dishes down for the Bear. “I’m sorry,” she said softly before turning back to the stairs.

That night she had difficulty sleeping. What sadness there was in the world! How sorry she felt for that poor Bear. If only there were something she could do to ease his unrest, but of course there wasn’t. Many was the time in the years to come that she had to remind herself that, sorry as she was for the Bear, there was nothing she could do about it, really.

Bobby, destined to grow up in such an unusual household, knew without asking that he must never bring boys home from school to play with him. His friends soon came to accept this eccentricity, just as the townspeople came to accept the fact that their sweet-faced librarian, although friendly enough at the library, lived a rather hermit-like existence with her son, and never asked anyone to visit.

Surely Bobby could not have long believed the father-turned-into-a-bear story. There must have come a day when curiosity overcame him and he peeked into one of the cellar windows. While still quite young, he may have been fooled by the sight of the shaggy creature, thinking it really was a bear, even as his mother had come to think of it as a bear. But as he grew older he must have looked again and known, and knowing, what could he do? Go to the police? Have his father, whom he only dimly remembered as a bellowing brute, freed? And where would his gentle mother be sent? To a jail — to a madhouse? No, no. He did not know — could not afford to know — what was in the cellar.

However slowly the years may have passed for the Bear, they passed quickly enough for Miriam and Bobby. Grammar school. High school. War! War was in the air. Hitler was marching through Czechoslovakia... Poland... Then Pearl Harbor. Bobby enlisted the next day in the navy. He kissed his mother’s tearstained face and hugged her comfortingly. It would all be over soon, now that he was in it, he said to make her smile, but she did not smile. Her whole life was leaving.

Miriam told the Bear about it that evening. Over the years she had developed the habit of sitting outside the cage in an old rocking chair in the evenings when Bobby was at a basketball game or at some other school activity. She enjoyed chatting with the Bear — now that he had learned not to talk about the possibility of his freedom and instead quietly listened to her tell of things in the outside world: Bobby’s athletic exploits, incidents at the library, and so on. It was quite cosy, really. She had placed an old floor lamp next to the rocker and sometimes she would read aloud from books she brought home from the library. The Bear seemed to appreciate that. This evening, when she told him of Bobby’s leaving, he seemed most sympathetic.

“Miriam,” he said, his voice rusty with disuse, “I-let me out now. Let me take care of you while Bobby’s away.”

She looked at him, stunned. After all this time and he still didn’t understand — still could bring that up! Sorrowfully she got up from the rocker, snapped off the lamp, and started up the stairs. At the top she shut the door quietly but firmly on his pleadings. After all these years he still didn’t understand that you don’t let wild beasts loose. No matter how sorry you feel for the lions and tigers in the zoos and no matter how tame they seem, you just don’t go around letting them loose on society.

Soon there were long newsy letters from Bobby, which she read to the Bear at night. (He had apparently learned his lesson after his last outburst and had become more docile and quiet than ever.) It didn’t seem long at all before Bobby was home on his first leave, healthy, bronzed, wonderful to look at. Miriam wished the Bear could see him.

Bobby used his leave to good advantage, too, by painting the house and making other repairs that were needed. The morning before he left he stood staring out the kitchen window. Miriam went over to him, and he looked down at her thoughtfully. “Mom, I noticed some kids cutting across the back lot yesterday. The fencing must be down back there.”

Miriam nodded. “I dare say. After all, it’s pretty old fencing.”

Bobby shifted his weight and frowned. “I don’t like it — kids cutting across the property. I’m going to town today and get some new posts and barbed wire.”

He worked all that day and until it was time for him to leave the next evening. He came in hot and sweaty, but looking satisfied. “I put ‘No Trespassing’ signs up and strung the fencing real tight. I’d like to see any kid get through all those strands of barbed wire.” He came over and put his arm around his mother. “It’ll be good for years, Mom. Long after I come back...”

But he didn’t come back. She was at the library when the telegram arrived. Everyone was terribly kind. There were offers of lifts home, but she refused them all, preferring to walk the two miles by herself — the last mile over the now overgrown private road that led to her house. She did not break down until she had sought out the Bear, and then she slumped down on the cold cement outside his cage and sobbed over and over, “Bobby’s gone, Bear. Bobby’s gone.” Through the heavy wire mesh the claw-like fingers with the unclipped nails pushed, as if trying to stroke her. Tears rolled down the shaggy beard, but whether the Bear was shedding tears over the loss of his son or over the futility of his own life is not known.

Life goes on. By spring Miriam had come to accept with a kind of dull resignation Bobby’s passing. She continued her job at the library, of course, for without Bobby’s allotment check she was again the sole support of herself and the Bear. Bobby’s insurance money she did not touch. Someday she might be unable to work and would need it.

The days in the old house at the end of the overgrown road established themselves in a seldom-varying pattern. The Bear had become quite trustworthy, and on weekends when the weather was nice Miriam even dared open from the outside the small window over his cage. It gave her much pleasure to see him rouse himself from his usual slump on the wooden platform and stand directly under the open window, inhaling great breaths of fresh air. Sometimes he would suddenly fling his arms up but then as suddenly drop them as they contacted the meshing on the top of his cage. Sometimes he rose on tiptoes as if straining to see out, but of course he could not. Often she brought him bouquets of flowers picked from the meadow, and he seemed to like that, burying his face in the blooms and sniffing hungrily. She was glad to do these things, for she had become quite fond of him, really, and more and more her prime concern in life became his comfort and contentment.

The years, one by one, passed slowly, quietly by. There were a few times of crisis, of course — the time the Bear was so sick, for instance. It was sheer torture for Miriam to listen to him call out hoarsely for a doctor and know that she could not possibly get one. She could do nothing but pray, and eventually her prayers were answered. The Bear stopped sweating and moaning, finally, and began to get better. Then there was the time she herself was sick. It was one summer during her vacation. She was too ill to go to the doctor and had no way to summon him to the house, nor would it have been advisable for her to do so even if she could for, as keeper, she was in a sense as much a prisoner as the Bear. The fever raged through her for several days and the only thing that kept her from succumbing was the distant sound of the Bear’s plaintive calls. It would be so easy just to let go and die, but she could not. The Bear was hungry — needed her... So she fought, and lived to see the Bear fall upon the food she finally weakly brought to him. It was worth the fight.

Perhaps the worst time of all was when the pan of hot grease caught fire in the kitchen. With frantic efforts she managed to put it out, scorching her arms quite badly in the process. It was not the pain in her arms that left her trembling, though, but the thought of what might have happened had the fire spread. The Bear would have been trapped, burned alive. The thought left her weak. She wracked her brain for a solution to the possibility of such a thing’s happening again, and suddenly remembered that Harry, her former husband (she had not thought of him in years), had owned a revolver. She went upstairs and found it in an old cupboard. She felt much better. This way the Bear was assured of a quick, merciful death.

The time the furnace broke down required even more ingenuity on her part, and the coffee she offered the Bear at that time was heavily laced with sleeping pills. When he fell into a deep, drugged sleep she threw dropcloths over the cage, ranged discarded furniture against it, and called the repairmen. The men worked for an hour over the furnace, completely unaware that within a few feet of them a creature, once-man, slept.

And the years ticked on...

I was kind of at loose ends that summer I was sixteen, anyway. Having lost my mother and father in an automobile accident only a few months before, I was spending some time with my grandfather in his “hunting shack” at Wilton Falls. My grandfather was a judge downstate and normally used the shack only once or twice in the fall for hunting, but this year he had taken time off in the early summer and come up with me. Guess he thought some fishing and general rambling in the woods would be good for me; get my mind off my loss.

I was out in the woods by myself that day, though, when I came across the rusted barbed wire that surrounded the Winters place. I tested it with my foot and it gave way. Nimbly I leaped over the broken strands and soon found myself in a choked meadow, on the edge of which perched a weatherbeaten Victorian house. I regarded the apparition with surprise. Was it occupied? Probably not; much too neglected-looking. I sauntered over to observe more closely, and then bent to peer through one of the cellar windows. The cellar was quite dark and it was a moment before my eyes accustomed themselves to the feeble light. Almost directly under the window there was a cagelike arrangement, with a hulking shape in one corner. A shadow? No, it seemed to move, and suddenly I was looking at a matted tangle of hair, out of which stared the deadest, most vacant eyes I had ever seen. My heart gave a sickening lurch. What I was seeing was impossible. I stayed a moment longer, as if riveted by those terrible dead-man eyes. Then the shaggy head turned away and I was released — released to run across the sunny unreal meadow, over the broken strands of barbed wire that tore at my clothes, through the adjoining woods. I had slowed down somewhat by the time I reached my grandfather’s cabin and was a little ashamed of myself. After all, I was no kid — ye gods, I was sixteen — and here I was running like a scared rabbit. Then the memory of those eyes returned in full force and I felt cold sweat pop out all over me.

My grandfather, looking strangely unjudgelike in his plaid shirt and denim pants, was fussing at the stove when I came in. “Hello there,” he said. “I was wondering where you were. Lunch is almost ready.”

I stood, my back against the door, still breathing hard. “Gramp,” I said, and there was, despite myself, a quiver in my voice.

My grandfather looked up then. His glance sharpened. “Something the matter, son? You look upset.”

I tried to wave my hand deprecatingly but failed in that gesture, too. “Gramp, who lives in that big old house at the edge of the meadow?”

My grandfather frowned. “At the edge of the meadow... Oh, you must mean Mrs. Winters’ place. Why?”

“I was just over there now and I saw—”

“Over there? That place is posted. You shouldn’t have gone there.”

“But the fencing is all rusted and I didn’t see any No Trespassing signs...”

“Well, maybe the signs are too weathered to read any more, but everyone around here knows it’s posted.”

“Well, I didn’t know, and I looked in one of the cellar windows. Gramp, there’s something in a big cage there. A-A man, I think it is...”

My grandfather pulled out a chair and seated himself at the table. “Now, let’s hear this from the beginning. What are you talking about — a cage, and a man-you-think in it?”

I told him the whole thing, but I could see he wasn’t convinced.

“You’re sure your eyes, and imagination, weren’t playing tricks on you, son? I mean, everyone knows Mrs. Winters lives there all by herself. She’s had a very tragic life, actually. First her husband abandoned her and she had to bring up their son all alone. Then he was killed in the war. I wouldn’t want any wild rumors circulated by a grandson of mine to hurt her.”

“But it’s no wild rumor, Gramp, it’s true. Please, Gramp, you’ve got to go look yourself.”

I guess the urgency in my voice decided him. He stood up. “Okay. Best to squelch this now. You’ll see it was just your imagination...”

By nightfall all Wilton Falls was in a state of shock. The police had sawed off the old padlock and led a stumbling, half-blind Harry Winters into the fresh air of freedom, and the town’s gentle middle-aged librarian had been taken into “protective custody.” She did not seem to mind. Her only concern seemed to be that “The Bear” be taken care of. When assured that he would be, she went along docilely enough. Actually, both of them were taken to the county hospital for observation — but to different wings.

How the town did buzz the next couple of weeks. The story made even the downstate papers with a banner headline: husband kept in cage 30 years BY wife. Under my picture it said: He dared to look in the Witch’s dungeon. Under Mr. Winters’ picture it said: Caged like a beast for 30 of his 75 years. And under Mrs. Winters’ picture: The Witch of Wilton Falls — She turned her husband into a “Bear.” It was all pretty heady stuff for me, being hero-of-the-hour, as it were. But then I looked more closely at the pictures of Mr. and Mrs. Winters and suffered my first feeling of disquietude. They both had the look of puzzled children on their faces as they were led away.

Miriam Winters, of course, was sent to the state mental hospital, but deciding what to do with Harry Winters was more of a problem. The county psychiatrists had difficulty testing him due to his refusal (or was it inability?) to talk, and finally came to the frustrated conclusion that although his mind had undoubtedly been affected by his imprisonment, he was harmless enough, and could be released to proper care. But what was “proper care”? There was a great outcry against sending him to the county home, for it was felt that in the few years that were left to him he deserved to be “free.” The public conscience was stirred on this point and it was finally arranged that the old man go back to his own house. A volunteer committee of townspeople was set up in which one member every day would check on the old man, bring him groceries, take away laundry, etc. Part of the volunteers’ duties included “socializing” — but that aspect was dropped as soon as it became evident that Harry Winters had no desire to chat with anybody.

Just what did Harry Winters’ freedom mean to him after all those years? I found out, unfortunately, one hot August night about six weeks after his reinstatement in his old home. I had been into town and decided to take a shortcut past the old Winters place on the way back. As I approached the house, I noted that it was unlighted except for a faint glow from the cellar windows. I recalled rumors I had heard in town. Nothing in the house ever seemed disturbed, they said — even the bed not slept in. Could it be that after all these years Harry Winters only felt comfortable sleeping in his cage and returned there each night?

Stealthily I crept up to a cellar window and peered in. In the dim light I could make out the outlines of the cage. Next to it was the rocking chair that Miriam Winters had used, but it was a moment before I realized that the hulking shape nearby was Harry Winters himself. He was sitting on the floor with his chin resting on one of the rocker’s arms. There was a familiarity about the scene which I could not at first place, but then it came to me. In my grandfather’s house there was a large painting in one of the bedrooms called The Shepherd’s Chief Mourner. It showed a large dog mournfully resting his chin on the draped coffin of a deceased shepherd, his master. The sudden analogy between that painting and the tableau below sent a shaft of pain to my heart. I could not stand to see more, but as I prepared to rise, the mourning hulk suddenly moved. The shaggy head raised up, the throat arched, the mouth opened, and from it rose a cry of such utter anguish, such complete despair, that my hands flew instinctively to my ears to shut it out. But I could not shut it out. Again and again it came — a cry of longing — the longing of a tame bear for its gentle keeper.

I ran then. Even as I had once fled over a sun-choked meadow, now I flew over a moon-silvered one. This time, too, I was chased by horror, but this time the horror was of my own making and I knew I would never be able to outrun it.

They found Harry Winters the next morning in his cage — dead. His heart had given out, they said.

It was after my grandfather and I went downstate that I began to have the nightmares, though. Perhaps I cried out during them, because one morning at breakfast Grandfather remarked quietly, “I hope you don’t feel guilty about reporting Miriam Winters, son. It had to be done.”

I nodded my head. “Yes, I know...”

My lack of conviction must have shown, for my grandfather became emphatic. “It’s time we laid this ghost away,” he said. “You and I are going to the state mental hospital to see Miriam Winters.”

Although I went reluctantly, the visit turned out to be surprisingly pleasant. Miriam was delighted to have company and chatted cheerfully. She had heard that the Bear was dead, which was sad, but then, she added philosophically, he was pretty old. She knew that if he became sick again she would have to put him to sleep permanently anyway.

My grandfather looked at me pointedly at this revelation. Surely I needed no more proof that we had done the right thing in reporting the Winters affair. From his standpoint the visit was a success, but in a way it backfired, for Miriam was a kindly, warmhearted woman. She said I made her think of her son Bobby, and she hoped I’d come to see her again. To my own amazement I found myself promising I would.

And I did, many times. Was it my way of assuaging the faint guilt I still felt over disrupting the Winters couple’s strangely compatible life together? I don’t know, but I do know that in chatting with her I gradually learned the full story of the events leading to Harry Winters’ imprisonment.

I went to my grandfather. “She shouldn’t be in a mental institution,” I complained. “She’s not really insane, except of course about the ‘Bear,’ and he probably caused that insanity, beating her and all...”

My grandfather stared at me and sighed. “That ghost is still not laid, hmmm?” He thought a moment. “The county home in Wilton Falls is a well-run place. I’ll see what I can do.”

Miriam was transferred to the county home three weeks later, and I felt more at peace than I had for a long time. I still went to see her, but less frequently, as it was a longer run up to Wilton Falls. Then I went away to college — later began working — got married — moved farther away. Visits became replaced by letters, letters by a Christmas card, and now...

I looked down at the letter in my hand. Now there would not even be any need for that. Miriam Winters had paid her debt to society, and presumably society was satisfied. I now knew that, for my part, could I but relive that long-ago summer day, this time I would stare into the almost-blind eyes of Harry Winters and go quietly on my way.

“I haven’t seen Lucinda Skaggs since a week ago Tuesday,” Lottie Estes mentioned to a friend in the teachers’ lounge. The fourth period bell precluded further analysis. Although it was of no botanical significance, the next morning it was discussed at the garden club meeting. It took several hours to reach the Emporium Hardware Store, but then the pace picked up and by mid-afternoon it was one of the topics at Suds of Fun Launderette next to the supermarket, in the supermarket proper, and even at the Dairee Dee-Lishus (although the teenagers moved on to more intriguing topics, such as blankets alongside Boone Creek and which minors had been caught in possession of what illegal substances).

Thus the tidbit — not a rumor, mind you — crept up the road, moving as slowly and clumsily as a three-legged dog on a frozen pond, until it reached Ruby Bee’s Bar & Grill. This is hardly worthy of mention (nor was the fact that Lottie had not seen Lucinda Skaggs since a week ago Tuesday, but for some reason it was being mentioned a lot), since Ruby Bee’s Bar & Grill was the ultimate depository of all gossip, trivial or boggling or outright scandalous, within the city limits of Maggody, Arkansas (pop. 755). Despite occasional attempted coups, it was acknowledged by almost everybody that the proprietress, Ruby Bee Hanks, was the guardian of the grapevine.

“So?” Estelle Oppers responded when she was presented with the tidbit. She took a pretzel from the basket on the bar, studied it for excessive salt, and popped it into her mouth.

“So I don’t know,” said Ruby Bee. “I was just repeating it, for pity’s sake.”

“Has Lucinda Skaggs disappeared, or has Lottie lost her bifocals?”

“All I know is that Lucinda hasn’t been seen in nearly two weeks now.” In retaliation for the skeptical reception, Ruby Bee pretended to polish the metal napkin holder while surreptitiously inching the pretzels out of Estelle’s reach. “Lottie said you can set your watch by Lucinda’s comings and goings. She’s real big on ‘early to bed, early to rise,’ and Lottie says not one morning goes by that Lucinda doesn’t snap on the kitchen light at six sharp, put out the garbage at six fifteen, and—”

Estelle recaptured the pretzels. “I’m not interested in Lucinda Skaggs’s schedule, and I’m a mite surprised Lottie and certain other people, present company included, find it so fascinating. If you’re so dadburned worried about Lucinda — and I don’t know why you should be, what with her being so holier-than-thou and more than willing to cast the first stone — why don’t you call her and ask her if she’s had a touch of the stomach flu?”

“I might just do that,” Ruby Bee muttered, wishing she’d thought of it herself but not about to admit it. “When I get around to it, anyway.”

She went into the kitchen and stayed there for a good five minutes, rattling pots and pans and banging cabinet doors so Estelle would know she was way too busy to fool with calling folks on the telephone to inquire about their health. When she returned, the stool at the end of the bar was unoccupied, which was what she’d been hoping for, so she hunted up the telephone number and dialed it.

“Buster,” she began real nicely, “this is Ruby Bee Hanks over at the bar and grill. I was wondering if I might speak to Lucinda about a recipe?”

Estelle pranced out of the ladies’ room and slid onto the bar stool. She waited with a smirky look on her face until Ruby Bee hung up the receiver. “Glad you found time in your busy schedule to call over at the Skaggses’ house. What’d she say?”

“I didn’t talk to her. Buster says she’s gone to visit her sister up in Hiana.” She hesitated, frowning. “I seem to recollect Lucinda telling me that her sister was doing so poorly they had no choice but to put her in a nursing home in Springfield.”

“Maybe she’s back home now.”

Ruby Bee tapped her temple with her forefinger. “It was a case of her being able to hide her own Easter eggs, if you know what I mean. Lucinda was real upset about it, but there wasn’t any way her sister could take care of herself. ‘God helps those who help themselves,’ Lucinda said to me awhile back at the supermarket, over in the produce section, ‘but all my sister’s helping herself to is costume jewelry at the five and dime when she thinks nobody’s watching.’ Why would Buster lie about it?”

“He’s most likely confused,” Estelle said, yawning so hard her beehive hairdo almost wobbled, but not quite. “She could have gone to visit her sister in the nursing home, or she had to see to some family business in Hiana, or—”

“I don’t think so,” said Ruby Bee. She picked up the damp dishrag and began to wipe the counter, drawing glittery swaths that caught the pastel light from the neon signs on the wall behind her.

Flagg leaned against the crowbar until the hasp broke and the lock dropped to the pine-needled ground. He waited, listening, but the only sounds were the faint rippling of the mountain stream a hundred yards to the west, and the distant call of an owl in the surrounding woods. It was almost four A.M.

After a long moment, Flagg kicked the lock away, put the crowbar against the wall, and edged the door open. The light from the three-quarter moon illuminated nothing more than vague shadows in the black interior. Once he had stepped inside and pulled the door shut behind him, he took a small pen-flash from the pocket of his deer hunter’s jacket and clicked it on.

He was in the rear storage room of Barney’s Oasis, a roadside tavern set into a conifer grove which was ringed by tourist cabins. It was a box-shaped, clapboard building with a slant-shingled roof and a falsely rustic facade. Flagg had seen dozens just like it in the past two weeks, and he had begun to wonder if they were all put out from some master mold.

He moved deeper into the storage room, playing the flash. Along the near wall were cases of liquor and beer and quinine water, and along the far wall cartons of peanuts, potato chips, pretzels, and assorted other light snacks. He checked the liquor cases, opening one or two at random, and then went to a bank of shelves near the entrance to the bar proper. Soap, disinfectant, cloth towels — there was no sign of what he was looking for. He opened the door and stepped into the bar.

The barnlike room was bathed in the eerie, reddish-tinged shine of the neon beer signs in the long front window. Flagg glanced curiously at the scattered wooden tables with their matching chairs, and at the glitter-decorated musicians’ dais. Then he turned and went behind the long polished bar on his left.

The planking squeaked beneath his canvas shoes as he moved slowly along the back-bar. When he reached the well where the house bourbon was located he picked up the bottle of Old Pilgrim from which he had been served just before the two A.M. closing. He removed the pour spout and sniffed briefly at the neck. Then, for reaffirmation, he tilted the bottle to his lips and allowed a small amount of the liquor to wet his tongue. It was the same: sour, yeasty, very young — not at all of the high quality for which the brand was widely renowned.

Flagg examined the bottle carefully. The glass had a few small flaws, but it was generally a skillful replica of the genuine Old Pilgrim decanter. Only an expert such as Flagg could have told the difference. The label had been well made, from good engraving plates, but the manufacturer’s code was incorrect and the paper was of a cheaper quality than the high rag content of the real ones; too, the green of the ink had a slight yellowish cast that should not have been present. The federal tax stamp had a set of perforations that revealed it to be an obvious forgery.

He replaced the bottle. Now, at least, he had something definite to go on. If he could only locate—

The overhead lights suddenly blazed on.

Flagg whirled, crouching, his hand flashing inside the deer hunter’s jacket. But he let it freeze there when he saw the tall blonde girl standing in the storage room doorway. She was dressed in a pair of bluejeans and a plaid jacket, and she had a small, light deer rifle cradled in her hands. The muzzle was pointed at his belly.

She said, “Oh, so it’s you,” as if she were very disappointed. “You’re the last person I would have figured for a night prowler.”

Flagg relaxed, straightening up. The girl worked at Barney’s Oasis as a waitress, and he had been making small talk with her only a couple of hours ago. Her name was Terry Kenyon. “I thought you’d be long gone home by this time,” he said.

“I live in one of the cabins out there,” she told him coldly. “I couldn’t sleep, so I decided to take a walk. And I saw you fooling around at the rear door.”

“So you went home and got your rifle,” Flagg said. “Well, all right, you can put it down now.”

“The hell I can.”

He took a couple of short, exploratory steps forward. “Take it easy,” he said. “This isn’t what it looks like.”

“No?”

“No. I can explain.”

“You can do your explaining to the sheriff.”

Flag laughed. “That’s pretty funny.”

Her soft red mouth tightened. “I’m glad you think so.”

“You’re not going to call the sheriff.”

“And why not?”

“Because you don’t want him nosing around here,” Flagg said. “Not with this place pushing moon.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Moonshine. Bootleg liquor.”

“You’re crazy,” Terry said incredulously. “That kind of thing went out with Prohibition.”

“No,” Flagg said. “Illicit liquor traffic is heavier than ever, all across the country. It’s a multimillion dollar industry.”

“Well, I don’t—”

Flagg took two quick shuffling steps forward and jerked the rifle out of her hands. She made a small cry, her eyes widening. He backed off, holding the weapon crooked in his right arm.

She was frightened now. “What are you going to do?”

“That depends on you.”

“Meaning what?”

“I wasn’t kidding you about that moon,” Flagg said. “The Old Pilgrim that Barney uses for a house bourbon is pure shine.”

She brushed silklike strands of blonde hair back from her forehead. “I just can’t believe it.”

“You didn’t have any idea that’s what was going on?”

“No,” she said. “No, I didn’t.”

Flagg studied her for a long moment. He would have given odds that she was telling the truth. He decided to take a chance. “Look, Terry,” he said quietly, “I’m going to level with you. I’m probably putting my neck in a sling doing it, but I’m at a dead end otherwise.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m a Treasury agent,” he said, watching her face for a reaction.

Her eyebrows knitted, but that was all. No, she wasn’t in on it, he was certain now. He continued, “With the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax Unit for Northern California. Based in San Francisco. Somebody is manufacturing and distributing large amounts of contraband liquor in these mountains. It’s my job to find out who.”

She looked at him with a different expression, as if she were very glad he wasn’t a night prowler after all. “Why are you telling me all this?” she asked finally. “I told you, I don’t know anything about it.”

“You might be able to help me.”

“How?”

“By answering a few questions.”

“Well... all right.”

“How long have you worked for Barney?”

“About eight months.”

“Do you know where he gets his liquor? From which distributor?”

“From Kardin Wholesale, I think. In Eureka.”

“Just from there?”

“Yes, that’s the only one I know of.”

“Who else makes regular deliveries here?”

“Well, there’s the snack food company,” Terry said. “And the soft drink people. And Tru-Test Petroleum. That’s about all.”

Flagg said, “Tru-Test Petroleum?”

“Yes.”

“What’s that?”

“A fuel oil company.”

“How often do they deliver?”

“About once a week.”

“Drums, or what?”

“No, cases,” Terry said reflectively. “You know, it always did strike me as a little odd that Barney would use so many cases of oil every week...”

“Where does he store these cases?”

“There’s a small boiler room off the storage room.”

“Show me, please,” Flagg said.

They went into the storage room, with Flagg clicking off the overhead lights as they left the bar. The boiler room door was hidden behind some of the crates; he had missed it in the darkness earlier. It was locked, but he worked on the latch with his penknife and got it open. Inside, he broke open one of two dozen stacked cases marked FUEL OIL–INFLAMMABLE.

The case was filled with bottles of Old Pilgrim.

Flagg looked at Terry. “Where do I find this Tru-Test Petroleum?”

She was a little breathless. “In Emmetville,” she said. “That’s a small logging town about five miles to the west. Tru-Test is on the outskirts, on Hathaway Road.”

“Are the grounds fenced in?”

“Yes. They have guards at the main gate, and I don’t think you can get in without some kind of pass.”

Flagg nodded. “The Big Tree River runs parallel to Hathaway Road, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, it does.”

Flagg considered. “Who owns Tru-Test?”

“Riley Morgan.”

“What does this Morgan look like?”

“He’s a big redhaired man with a lot of freckles across the bridge of his nose,” she answered. “About forty or forty-five. He comes in here once in a while.”

“To have a drink or to see Barney?”

“Both. They usually go into Barney’s office.”

Flagg said, “Okay,” and smiled at her. “I’m going to trust you to keep quiet about all this. Don’t make a liar out of my intuition.”

“You don’t have to worry,” Terry said. “When it comes to the federal government, I’m everybody’s little angel.”

“Good,” Flagg said. “What’s your cabin number? In case I need you again?”

“Fifteen.”

Flagg broke open the rifle and emptied it and put the cartridges in his pocket. Then he handed the weapon back to Terry. “I’ll be in touch,” he said.

When she had gone, he relocked the boiler room door. There was no way he could cover up the broken hasp on the storage room entrance, but when Barney didn’t find anything missing in the morning, he would probably put it down to vandals.

Flagg moved off through the darkness toward where he had left his camper.

The sun was a brilliant red disc on the eastern horizon when Flagg appeared at the edge of the Big Tree River early next morning. He wore an old army jacket and rubber wading boots, and carried a tackle box and a glass trout rod. He puffed contentedly on a briar pipe.

He set the tackle box down on the spongy bank, opened it, removed a fly reel, and attached it to the rod. From the half dozen or so steelhead trout flies hooked to his jacket, he selected a Klamath Nymph and busied himself tying it on the nylon line. When he had finished, he adjusted the old and battered hat he wore, tested his boots in the rushing water for leakage, and then stepped into the narrow stream.

He glanced at the opposite bank from time to time, in a seemingly uninterested way. A dirt trail led up to Hathaway Road there, and less than fifty yards beyond the road was the fenced compound of Tru-Test Petroleum.

It was a large concern. The main entrance was some seventy-five yards to the south on Hathaway Road, and there was a sentry box with a uniformed guard. The gates opened electronically, from controls inside the box. Flagg could not see much of what went on inside the compound.

He spent three hours fishing in the Big Tree River, working his way upstream slowly until he had drawn opposite the main entrance. He caught four trout, and threw them all back. During that time, several dark green delivery trucks with the company name emblazoned on the doors and sides arrived and departed at regular intervals. One large diesel tanker came just before nine, and left forty minutes later. A new limousine driven by a redhaired man entered the Tru-Test grounds at nine twenty. There was no other traffic.

At eleven o’clock, Flagg packed up his fishing gear and left the stream.

Shortly before three that afternoon — twenty minutes after another of the large diesel tankers had arrived at Tru-Test, and half an hour after the redhaired man had driven out in his new limousine — a white panel truck with the words RIGHT WAY PLUMBING, INC. plastic-stenciled on the sides stopped before the locked entrance gates.

The uniformed guard came out of the sentry box and looked inside. “Yes?”

“Here to fix the john in the warehouse,” Flagg said. He wore a pair of faded blue overalls and a baseball cap. He was still puffing on his briar pipe.

The guard frowned. “Mr. Morgan didn’t mention anything about a plumber coming in.”

“Well, he called the shop less than an hour ago.”

“What’s the matter with the john?”

“He didn’t give me any details,” Flagg said. “Check with him, if you want.”

“He’s not here right now.”

“When’ll he be back?”

“Not until tomorrow.”

“Look,” Flagg said, “it don’t matter to me one way or the other if I do the job. There’s an automatic service charge just for me to come out here.”

The guard chewed at his lower lip indecisively. “I don’t know,” he said. “How long will it take?”

“Now, how would I know that if I ain’t seen the problem yet? That Mr. Morgan seemed to think I ought to get out here right away, but if you don’t think so, I’ll go off back home. Like I said, there’s a service charge whether I do the job or not—”

“All right,” the guard said. “Do you know where the main water house is?”

Flagg shrugged. “I’ve never been here before.”

“Follow the white lines until you come to a big corrugated iron building with a loading dock along one side. Go on around to Door 5 and ask for Lou. He’s in charge there.”

“Okay,” Flagg said.

The guard opened the gates from inside the sentry box, and Flagg drove the panel onto the Tru-Test grounds. He followed the white lines as directed, and a couple of minutes later he stopped in front of Door 5 in the long, narrow warehouse. He had seen the corrugated iron roof from the river, and accurately guessed the building’s purpose. There were three of the dark green delivery trucks pulled up to the loading platform in front of other numbered doors, and a good deal of activity on the dock itself. Pallets of boxes with markings identical to those he had seen in the rear storage room of Barney’s Oasis were being stacked at intervals by two forklifts, and freight handlers were hurrying back and forth with dollies between the pallets and the trucks.

Flagg got out of the panel, opened the rear doors, and took out a large tool kit. Then he went up several wooden steps and through Door 5. A short, fat man with thinning hair was writing on a clipboard. Flagg stepped up to him and asked, “Where do I find Lou?”

“I’m Lou,” the man answered, appraising him with cold eyes.

“Here to fix the john,” Flagg said.

“The john? What’s the matter with it?”

“Who knows? I got this call from Mr. Morgan to come out find fix it, that’s all.”

Lou continued to study him. Flagg puffed uninterestedly on the briar pipe. Finally Lou said, “Okay, then. Come on, I’ll show you where it is.”

Flagg followed him along the cement floor of the warehouse, past more full pallets stacked three high. At the rear wall, between the stacks, there was a door marked NO ADMITTANCE. Loud, vibrant sounds of machinery in operation filtered through the door. On one side was another door marked restroom, and Lou opened that one. They went in.

“Here it is,” Lou said. “It looks all right to me.”

“You can’t tell by looking.”

“How long will you be?”

“What am I?” Flagg asked. “Psychic?”

“Okay, okay.”

Flagg opened the toolbox and pretended to rummage around inside. After a moment, Lou went out and closed the door behind him. Flagg straightened and stood at the door, listening, for a full minute. Then he opened the door and peered out. Lou had disappeared among the stacks of pallets.

Flagg closed the door again and locked it. There was a window in the rear wall, and he went to it and brushed some dust from the glass and looked out. He could see across to where the fuel pumps were located. The diesel tanker that had arrived earlier was parked there, and three men were standing around it. One end of a huge black petroleum hose was hooked to a bottom outlet on the first of the tanker’s two reservoirs; the other end disappeared into a large, square metal plate set into the concrete yard.

Underground tanks, Flagg thought, and then: Well, I’ll be damned! He had just realized that with that hose hooked to the bottom outlet on the reservoir, they couldn’t possibly be filling it; they were emptying it. Strange. The tanker was one of Tru-Test’s, not a delivery vehicle from a manufacturer. Why would they be emptying fuel oil from one of their own trucks back into the underground tanks? Unless...

Unless it wasn’t fuel oil, at all. Unless it was shine.

Flagg smiled a little and then frowned. Of course, that was it. They were storing the bootleg in the underground tanks. But it made his job that much more difficult. They brought the bootleg in the tankers from the point where it was being made, and he had no idea where that was. He had hoped they had the actual still operation here at Tru-Test. That would have made things one hell of a lot simpler.

He listened to the machinery sounds coming through the wall and thought about the door marked no admittance. With the moon being stored here, and distributed from here, they were obviously bottling it here, too. He knew what he would find on the other side of that door: a long three-sided roller belt, with stainless steel machinery along it which would fill, cap, label, and stamp the bottles of “Old Pilgrim,” with a direct pipeline to the storage tanks outside. But he didn’t need to get a look inside there, now.

Patiently, Flagg allowed fifteen minutes to pass by his wristwatch and then he closed up the toolbox and unlocked the door and stepped into the warehouse. He found his way to Door 5. Lou was writing on the clipboard again. “All fixed?” he asked as Flagg approached.

“Yeah.”

“What was the trouble?”

Flagg made up something.

Lou laughed. “I’m glad I don’t have your job.”

“Sometimes I wish I didn’t either,” Flagg said sourly. “Well, hang in there.”

“You too.”

He went down the steps and put the tool kit in the rear of the panel. He drove back to the front gate, and the same guard came out of the sentry box. “That was quick.”

“Sure,” Flagg answered. “That’s our motto.”

The guard opened the gates and Flagg drove out and turned south on Hathaway Road. He parked the rented panel in the parking lot behind a supermarket in Emmetville a quarter mile away. In the rear, he changed out of the coveralls and the baseball cap, back into his fishing clothes. Then he retrieved the camper and drove back to a spot on Hathaway Road where he could watch the main gates of Tru-Test through a pair of binoculars.

Half an hour later, he saw the diesel tanker come out through the gates. It turned south and passed him. Flagg waited until it got a good distance down the road, then started the camper and swung out after it.

The tanker turned west onto a county highway just before Emmetville. The highway looped around to the north, bypassing the town, and then swung east, climbing into the mountains. Flagg followed at a discreet distance. They had gone some fifteen miles when the tanker turned off onto another county road, this one in relatively poor repair. A mile into there, it turned again, this time onto a packed earth road flanked with signs reading PRIVATE PROPERTY-TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED.

Flagg passed by, looking up the private road. A couple of hundred yards along he could see two men with rifles. A third man was swinging a heavy wooden gate open to allow the tanker admittance.

Flagg followed the county road for another mile, turned around, and came back again. The tanker had disappeared, and the gate was closed. The men were still there.

He drove directly to Barney’s Oasis.

Cabin 15 had green shutters and an old, rusty-framed swing in one corner of its narrow porch. Flagg knocked on the door. After a moment it opened and Terry Kenyon looked out. She was wearing the short miniskirt and tight white blouse that composed her waitress uniform.

“Are you alone?” he asked.

She nodded, standing aside, and he went in. The interior was furnished spartanly, but it was clean and had a comfortable feminine touch. Flagg barely glanced at it. He put his hands on her shoulders. “Listen, how well do you know this area?”

She didn’t draw back from his touch. “I grew up in Emmetville,” she answered. “What is it, Flagg? Did you find out something?”

“Maybe,” he said, and told her where he had followed the tanker. “Do you know where that private road leads?”

“To an old abandoned mine. There are a lot of them around here, from the old gold rush days, I suppose.”

“Anything else in the area?”

“Just woodland.”

“What about this mine?”

“Well, for a while it was turned into a gravel pit. Some special kind used in making concrete. But even that was abandoned, about ten years ago. I remember that a lot of gravel was taken out of the base of the hill, so that the pit almost reached the main mine shaft.”

“It’s still abandoned, as far as you know?”

“I heard that somebody had bought the property and was going to reactivate the pit,” Terry said. “But if they’ve begun yet, I wouldn’t know about it.”

“Okay,” Flagg said. “Now, is there any way in there besides that private road?”

“The road itself only goes as far as the gravel pit. There’s a spur track which comes in from the other side and reaches all the way up to the mine tower. I think it goes inside the hill through an auxiliary tunnel there.”

“Foot trails?”

“None that you could follow for very long.” She paused. “Do you think that’s where the moonshine is being made?”

Flagg shrugged. “I’m not sure,” he said. “How do I find that spur you mentioned?”

“Follow the county road past the private entrance. About five miles farther along, the main railroad track crosses it. Walk back on the tracks to the second switch. Not the first, but the second.”

“Right.”

“You’re not going up there alone, are you?” Terry asked. There was concern in her voice.

Flagg grinned. “Don’t worry about me,” he said. He moved to the door. “Thanks.”

“Will I see you again, Flagg?”

“Maybe,” he said. “Take care of yourself.” He slipped out and closed the door quietly behind him.

Flagg found the spur without difficulty.

The sun was setting, and there was less than an hour of daylight left. He moved quickly along the side of the track, keeping to the brush as much as possible, stopping occasionally to listen. He wore khakis now, which blended with the surrounding terrain better than black or dark beige clothing, and a new navy blue seaman’s knit cap pulled down to conceal his prematurely salt and pepper hair. He had a long-bladed hunting knife sheathed at his waist.

He thought about the shine operation as he went. Two weeks ago, after three days of abortive low flying over every inch of the county in a chartered plane, he had been forced to admit that the still was extremely well hidden. During his prolonged study of the wild, mountainous terrain, he had uncovered no signs of activity in isolated places, no telltale columns of smoke to point to the possible location of the cooker, no signs of pollution in the streams he subsequently checked. Nothing at all.

He had begun the tavern-by-tavern search then, drinking Old Pilgrim in each one, asking carefully veiled questions in the hopes of uncovering information about discounts and deals. Until he came to Barney’s Oasis, he had drawn a total blank. It was obvious that Riley Morgan was distributing most of the moon out of the county, and perhaps out of the state.

But Morgan had been selling shine to Barney, and that was his big mistake. It had given Flagg the lead he needed. He now knew almost everything he needed to know: that the fuel oil company stored and bottled and distributed the bootleg, and that it was being manufactured in the old abandoned mine. At least, he was almost positive that was where the still was located; logic told him that the tankers would drive through the gravel pit and inside the main shaft of the mine to load from the vats. Too, Terry had said the spur tracks led inside an auxiliary tunnel; that would undoubtedly connect with the main shaft, as would other passages. These would serve as the still’s ventilation system, explaining why he had seen nothing from the air. Nevertheless, he had to make absolutely certain; that was his job.

He rounded a slight curve in the tracks, moving silently and staying in the protective cover of a high growth of juniper. Suddenly, through the thicket, he saw a man dressed in a pair of Levi’s and an old plaid work shirt. The man was sitting on a high, flat-topped rock next to the tracks, his back to Flagg, throwing pebbles at a rotted log on the other side. A rifle rested beside him, propped against the rock.

Flagg backed off a few steps and made a wide circle around the guard, climbing over rocky ground. He could see the mine tower now, a crumbling wooden structure outlined against the sunset sky in gloomy emphasis.

Several minutes later, he stood hidden behind a large boulder at the entrance to the auxiliary tunnel. The timbers of the tower were ridden with termites and worms and dry rot, and the structure looked near collapse. The iron elevator wheel tilted where a support had fallen away. Debris cluttered the weed-choked ground. Off on one side was a crude stone fireplace and chimney, all that remained of a mine office.

Flagg left his concealment and approached the black mouth of the tunnel cautiously. When he was certain there was no one about, he swept aside vinelike weeds and slipped inside. The blackness was absolute, and he groped his way along one of the cold, damp walls until he had penetrated some fifty feet. Then he took the pen-glass from his pocket, shielded it in his handkerchief, and switched it on.

In its faint light, he could see that the tunnel was nearly a cave-in, with mounds of earth and shale and fallen timbers choking the passage. He moved forward carefully.

Five minutes passed. A collapsed section of the tunnel forced Flagg to crawl part of the way on his hands and knees. But as soon as he was able to stand again, he reached a dead end; the tunnel was completely blocked. At first, he thought it was another, final cave-in, but then he realized that the obstruction had been manmade. This must be where the tunnel connected with the main shaft.

He worked the dim flash along the wall of dirt and rock. Near the top, he found a small opening which appeared to pass through to the other side. He dug carefully at the opening, enlarging it, working as silently as possible. Finally, he was able to see through clearly. He stared down a long incline at a widened grotto in the main shaft of the old mine.

The still was there.

The boiler and distillation column jutted upward, disappearing into the rock, probably to another tunnel. Steam rose lightly in the murky, floodlit cavern. He could see five large vats clustered at one end, with piping to carry the mash to the column. Even as near as he was, he could not smell much of the fermentation process; the vats were well covered. An underground stream no doubt supplied the water and carried off the waste, which would be well filtered by the time it reached the ground level. There were half a dozen men around a control panel full of gauges and valves, and another group near one of the vats. Flagg, watching, gave grudging admiration to the builder. This still was a thoroughly professional job.

He continued to peer down into the grotto for another full minute. Then he headed back. He had seen enough. Now that he knew the exact location of the still, his job was almost finished.

He made his way to the tunnel opening, made sure the area was still free of guards, and then moved out. It was dusk now, and the long shadows of gathering darkness afforded him a good deal of protective cover. He followed the spur tracks to the main rail line, and then to where he had left his camper, without incident.

He drove back to Barney’s Oasis and went into the public telephone booth at one end of the parking lot. He dialed a number from memory. On the fourth ring, a man’s voice answered. “Alcohol and Tobacco Unit, Northern California. Adamson.”

Flagg gave it to him fast, talking through interruptions until Adamson was listening intently. He outlined the entire shine operation, and then went back and detailed it, missing nothing. When he had finished, he asked, “Have you got it all? Clear?”

“I’ve got it,” Adamson said. “But listen, who is this? Who’s calling?”

Flagg smiled. “You don’t know me,” he said. “I’m just a concerned citizen. A teetotaler.”

He rang off and stepped out of the booth. Churlak would be pleased, he thought. Churlak was a progressive, a member of the new breed, a big business executive. These damned independents deserve to get busted, he had told Flagg. They never learn. There’s just no way they can buck the Organization and make out, no way at all. But why waste time and manpower and invite undue publicity by putting them out of business ourselves? Why not let the feds do it — legally?

And so Flagg, the troubleshooter, had gone to work.

He put another dime in the slot and dialed Churlak’s private number in San Francisco. While it was ringing, he thought about Terry Kenyon. He hoped he wouldn’t have to report to Churlak in person until sometime tomorrow.

He stood waiting in the doorway of the cabin and he seemed even to welcome us.

His eyes went over both Harry and me and he smiled. “Neat dark suits, conservative ties, black shoes. I expected as much.”

“Would your name be James C. Wheeler?” I asked.

He nodded and still smiled.

Harry held up the wallet. “Did you lose this?”

“No,” Wheeler said. “I did not lose the wallet. I intentionally left it beside the body.”

Harry and I looked at each other.

“But come in,” Wheeler invited.

We followed him inside. The cabin was clean and equipped only with basic furniture.

Wheeler reached for the coffee pot and removed the lid. “When did you find the body?”

“About noon,” I said.

He spooned fresh coffee into the basket. “By the way, just out of curiosity, what was her name?”

“Carol Wisniewski,” Harry said.

Wheeler shrugged. “Even the name means nothing at all to me.”

I picked up the rifle lying on the cot and pulled back the bolt. A spent cartridge popped out onto the floor. “So you wanted to be caught?”

“Of course,” Wheeler said. He put the pot on the small stove and turned on the bottled gas. “I am now forty years old, and I have lived, by choice, in this cabin for almost my entire adult life.” He blew out the match. “Do you think it has been a dull life?”

Harry shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. Maybe you hunt and fish.”

Wheeler shook his head. “No. I do not hunt, and I do not fish. I indulge in the greatest adventure of all. I think.”

He reached for his pipe and pouch. “I was just past twenty-one when my father died. He left me a small inheritance. Anyone else might have run through the money within a year or so, but I chose to come here. It has always been my natural predisposition to avoid the world. By living simply, I made the money last for almost twenty years. But now there is nothing left — nothing at all.”

“What has that got to do with killing the girl?” I asked.

“Patience,” Wheeler said. “And so I was faced with the prospect of having to go to work in order to live.” He smiled broadly. “Oh, it is not work itself that appalls me. It is the expenditure of time that the operation involves; time stolen from me and my thoughts. And one has only one lifetime, you know.”

“Sure,” Harry said. “She was fourteen years old.”

Wheeler shrugged. “So finally I came up with the solution to my problem, the only solution. I would go to prison. There I would be fed and clothed, but above all, I would be given the freedom of time for speculative thought.”

Harry had been examining the rifle. “You think they won’t make you work in jail?”

Wheeler smiled. “I have taken the time to investigate thoroughly your enlightened prison system. I will simply refuse to work. I know that no force or intimidation will be used against me. I will be placed in solitary.”

“And you figure that a philosopher can do his thinking on bread and water?” I asked.

Wheeler lit his pipe. “As I said, I took the trouble to investigate. Solitary in this state means just that and nothing more. The meals served are identical to those given the other prisoners, and one is even allowed reading material.” He smiled contentedly. “I think that I shall be supremely happy.”

Harry put down the rifle. “You wanted to go to prison, so you shot somebody to get there? Just like that?”

He frowned. “No. Not just like that. I planned and researched before I acted, and then this morning I went down the path that winds to the lake and waited. I shot the first person to come by. It happened to be this Carol Wisniewski. But it could have been anyone.”

There was silence and his eyes went over us. “Do you think I am insane?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

He glared. “No, I am not insane. On the contrary, I have reached the ultimate in sanity, and that is to realize that nothing is really important except one’s own wishes, one’s own desires, one’s own life.”

“So the life of Carol Wisniewski meant absolutely nothing to you?” I asked.

“Nothing,” Wheeler said. “Nothing at all.” He laughed sharply. “I see that you have no use for me. Perhaps you are thinking that, if nothing else, it could be arranged that I ‘accidentally’ fall down a number of times before I reach the police station environment?”

Harry and I said nothing.

Wheeler pulled a folded piece of paper from a book on the table. “This is a copy of an affidavit from my doctor. It certifies that I am in the best of health and, specifically, that I do not suffer from any bruises, contusions, or broken bones. Would you care to examine it?”

Neither Harry nor I touched the paper.

His eyes went over the objects in the room. “There is really nothing material here that I will miss. In fact, I am rather looking forward to the new leisure required for pure thought. You might say that I am actually engaged in distilling human existence to the length of one book; perhaps even one essay; one sentence.”

“Or one scream?” I asked.

He seemed irritated. “We will not wait for the coffee. You may take me to your police station now.”

My cousin, Harry Wisniewski, pulled the knife out of his pocket.

And I smiled. “Who the hell said we were cops?”

It’s been said that no one is a hundred percent good or bad, that everyone is a combination of both. That must mean that “mean” is not necessarily bad, because Good Old Mom, otherwise known as Felicia Hooks, was just plain mean. One hundred percent mean. A mean woman. Phoebe suspected that by the time she was a few hours old her mother had already decided she didn’t like her very much. Why else would she name her Phoebe, for Pete’s sake?

Felicia didn’t like Phoebe, yet she clung to her like a burr in a spaniel’s ear. Phoebe was her only child, and her husband had disappeared long ago. Good Old Mom seemed to feel like she should get some return for having put up (so to speak) with her daughter all the years she was growing up. Phoebe felt like she should get the Purple Heart for surviving into her thirty-second year.

“Mom’s not a fragile old woman,” Phoebe told her psychologist one bright afternoon in October as they sat in his cosy little office. “Never had a sick day in her life, and she’s even kind of a young looking sixty-six.

“She was with a traveling carnival for years before she got married and had me. Never remarried after my father hit the road, though — probably because she’s got the personality of a rattlesnake. That’s probably why it took her over thirty years to land a husband in the first place.”

The psychologist cocked an eyebrow at her.

“Comparing Mom to a rattlesnake may not be fair to the rattlesnake,” Phoebe continued. “She’s kept me single, too. What man in his right mind would want me when the package includes a mother-in-law like Felicia Hooks?”

“Would it have to be a package deal?” Brock Weaver asked as he scribbled a hasty note in his notebook. He was a long, lean man of thirty-seven with an incongruous halo of golden curls.

“I can’t get away from her.”

“Why not?”

“I’ve tried, believe me. She always comes along and moves in on me. Next time I’m not going to leave a forwarding address or anything. I’m just going to make a clean break once and for all.”

“You’re planning to move away?”

“As far as I can, as soon as I can afford it.”

“Maybe it would be better to stay and try to resolve your problems with your mother.”

“Impossible. You wouldn’t say that if you knew Good Old Mom.”

“It’s not so unusual for a young woman not to hit it off so well with her mother. Then, as the years go by, she finds herself identifying more with her.”

“Heaven forbid.”

“Mother-daughter relationships often improve with age.”

“You don’t know my mother.”

“Do you think I should? Perhaps some joint counseling—”

Phoebe flopped back in her chair and rolled her eyes. “Oh, wow!”

“Why do you say that, Phoebe?”

“My mother thinks you guys are all quacks. She’d never come within a mile of you.

“She doesn’t even know I come here.”

“Maybe it’s time you told her. Maybe she should know how distressed you are about your relationship with her.”

“She knows how distressed I am. Believe me, she knows, and she loves it.”

Brock put the notebook down on the table next to his chair. He folded long, thin hands on one knee and regarded her with baby blue eyes. He wore blue-jeans and a blue sweater and the longest sneakers Phoebe had ever seen on human feet. “So often,” he said kindly, “people suffer needlessly because they don’t communicate. They assume the other person knows how they feel when really they haven’t an inkling.”

Phoebe’s brown gaze fell before Brock’s steady blue one. Looking down at her hands, she traced invisible circles on the knees of her own jeans. “It’s not possible to communicate with my mother,” she muttered uneasily. “You just don’t understand.”

“You do it every day,” he said. “Every time you speak to her — that’s communication. All you need to do now is find the right kind of communication. I think I’m going to give you an assignment this week, Phoebe. You don’t have to mention me, but every day until we meet again I want you to tell your mother about at least one thing she does that distresses you. And then you must ask her what you do that distresses her.”

“And then if I’m the one who’s still alive next Wednesday, I’ll keep our appointment.”

Brock laughed and patted her knee. “It won’t be as bad as all that. You may even be pleasantly surprised.”

“Sure,” Phoebe said.

“You haven’t taken any of the crab Louis,” Cal scolded her husband as they walked from the buffet. Choosing a picnic table beneath a copse of trees, she asked, “Have you tried it? It’s delicious, Plato.”

It was a stunning summer Sunday, a cool crisp midwestern rarity. Either divine providence or the fickle hand of fate was blocking Erie humidity from the Appalachian foothills. Plato wouldn’t let his wife’s appeal for a healthier diet spoil his breezy mood.

“All that mayonnaise!” he chided her with a self-righteous tsk! “I wouldn’t think of it.”

Cal frowned at her plate as she sat down. Dwarfed by a pair of radishes, the tiny smear of crab was barely visible — hardly enough cholesterol to clog the arteries of a mouse. Some carrot slices and a light salad completed her meal. “Maybe you’re right. I’ll eat the crab last.” She brightened. “You’re doing so well with your Healthy Heart diet. I feel guilty sometimes...”

Plato glanced at his wife’s wispy figure and meager serving and felt his own twinges of guilt. Hidden under a flimsy Caesar salad disguise lurked a cut of prime rib thick enough to choke a horse. Under the table, a steak knife sliced through his pants pocket.

“Ahh, the Doctors Marley!” A beefy hand slapped Plato’s back.

“Rufus!” Cal bounced from her seat across the table and gave the intruder a warm hug. “The party is wonderful. Fantastic food. I was just telling—”

Her husband tried to rise, but his knife threatened vital organs.

“No, don’t get up.” Rufus Thorndyke squeezed Plato’s shoulder reassuringly. Back at the buffet tent, he had witnessed Plato’s cattle-rustling behavior with raised eyebrows. “That diet of yours must have left you pretty weak.”

“It’s a sacrifice at first,” Plato acknowledged with a brave smile. “But after a while, you hardly notice the difference.”

Rufus grinned back. Tipping the scales at three hundred pounds, he was something of a stranger to dietary sacrifices. But on his mooselike frame, the extra weight looked natural.

Tailoring, Plato told himself.

“Cal, I’ve got Brownie all saddled up and ready to ride.” His light green eyes chuckled at Plato. “Sanchez is ready, too, if you want to accompany your wife. He’s a gentle horse. Really.”

Plato suppressed a groan. Old Sanchez, the Venezuelan hell-horse. Rufus had rescued the ancient Thoroughbred from some Caracas glue factory. “Sure. Can’t wait.”

Thorndyke glanced up the hill. Near the buffet canopy a hand waved, accompanied by a voice carried high and thin on the breeze.

“There’s Jan. She was driving the lobster down from the airport.” Turning, Rufus waddled up the hill to greet his lovely young wife.

“What’s he talking about?” Plato asked when Thorndyke was out of earshot. In his confusion, he wondered if he had heard correctly. “Jan’s on a lobster drive? Is that what the horses are for?”

Cal just rolled her eyes.

He snapped his fingers. “I’ve got it! We all know there’s something fishy about how Rufus got his money. Maybe ‘The Lobster’ is a mob kingpin. Works out of Maine — Bangor, Rockport. Commands with a claw, traffics in tail.”

“Plato!” She glanced around, made sure no one had heard her husband’s lunatic ramblings. “The lobster’s for us, silly. Rufus had a hundred of them flown in fresh from Nova Scotia. It’s amazing. Each year the hospital staff appreciation dinner gets bigger and better.”

“And each year Andrew Cleeford gets closer to retirement.”

“This has nothing to do with hospital politics. Rufus is already on the board of directors.”

“Think about it, Cal. The chairmanship. You think that’s not the apple of his eye? The culmination of his career? He’s no spring chicken, you know.”

Cal squinted at her husband from beneath lowered eyebrows. They weren’t really as bushy as she thought. To Plato, they didn’t mar her prettiness at all. Except when she squinted. “Sometimes you can be so... cynical!”

She was right. Plato knew he was being hard on the guy. After all, before the dinner, Thorndyke had publicly donated ten thousand dollars to the hospital’s drug rehabilitation center. Some DEA official had lectured about the drug menace, focusing on a Mexican product called “sleeper” that was hooking a lot of local kids. And Rufus’s seed money bore fruit through impromptu donations from his wealthy friends.

So Plato kept his mouth shut as he followed Cal around the Thorndyke grounds, chatting amiably with dozens of doctors, nurses, and other hospital staffers.

“Plato and Cal Marley,” he heard repeatedly, “an obstetrician and a pathologist. Plato brings them in, and Cal wheels them out.”

Ho, ho, ho.

Worse yet were the inevitable questions. “What made your wife want to become a pathologist?”

“She eats people,” Plato finally replied to Mrs. Cleeford.

The wife of the venerable board chairman patted his hand and nodded sagely. “We all need people, son. She just has to find another outlet — church, social organizations. I’m a member of the Buffalo League Women’s Auxiliary.”

Cal dragged him to the stables before he could comment. A few miles of old Sanchez’ bone-jarring canter brought him back down to earth. He’d never be sarcastic or cynical ever again. He’d eat salads and pine nuts and herbs and sunflower seeds and grass. If only someone would help him off the horse.

“Wasn’t that a glorious ride?” Cal asked, holding Sanchez’ bridle.

Cautiously, Plato lifted one leg from a stirrup. His backbone had been pulverized, ground to a fine powder, then mixed into a heavy concrete. He toppled to the ground.

Shuffling along the path through the woods, Cal stopped suddenly, squeezing his hand. Beads of sweat broke out on her pale forehead. “I don’t feel so good.”

“You don’t look so good, either.” Plato pulled her arm across his shoulder. “Come on. Maybe you should lie down inside.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

She hobbled beside him for a while, then stopped and winced. “God! It’s my stomach, Plato. I’ve never hurt this bad before.”

The hairs on the back of his neck came to attention. A tiny voice in his head spoke: “Acute appendicitis. Perhaps accompanied by peritonitis. In situations like these, time is of the essence.”

He swung a surprised Cal into his arms, thankful for once that she ate chipmunk food. They bounced down the path until he jolted to a halt.

“Plato, dear, you’re sweet,” she gasped. “But I don’t feel that bad. Just put me down, okay?”

He nodded dumbly, slipped her back onto her feet. She turned and gaped at the clearing. Up the hill, the huge form of Rufus Thorndyke blunted the horizon. Several guests were lying down as well — sprawled on the grass or picnic tables or lawn chairs. A few walking wounded rushed from person to person, checking pulses and palpating abdomens. An ambulance keened from the driveway.

The couple’s eyes met.

“Food poisoning,” they whispered in unison. “The crab Louis.”

Plato’s aversion to seafood had been vindicated.

The doors marked intensive CARE UNIT — AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL only sighed open like the gate-stones of a crypt. After helping the crab victims into their respective ambulances, Plato had tucked Cal into bed at home. She would page him if she felt worse.

He hobbled into the hospital sanctuary just as the doors closed, nearly dismembering him with their ponderous weight. He paused to catch his breath, still stiff from the afternoon’s glorious ride. While his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he heard the soft, thrusting rhythm of ventilators, the muted mechanical bleeps of monitors, and the low sigh of cool, dry air from invisible outlets.

Intensive care, Plato thought. Where lives are saved or lost and doctors are schooled in cynicism.

“Excuse me, sir, can I please see—” The voice was as harsh and sharp as a splinter beneath a fingernail. A penlight stabbed

Plato’s eyes while a hand frisked his coat for an I.D. badge.

“Oh, it’s you. Marley.” Mrs. Leeman, head nurse of the ICU. Tough, experienced, and brutally competent, her only fault was a bit of night blindness. “Come right in.”

“I came to see Mr. Thorndyke.”

She led him past a row of glass-walled rooms to the nursing station. Deftly, she spun a gleaming carousel of stainless steel and blue vinyl binders. “You were at his party last night?”

“Yeah. But I don’t like crab.” Plato retrieved Thorndyke’s chart and flipped through it. There was nothing unusual about it; he’d half expected a special red binder, stars and stenciled warning labels: “Authorized Personnel Only — Government Clearance GP-10 or Higher!”

Mrs. Leeman showed him to Thorndyke’s cubicle, directly across from the nursing station. The huge man was almost invisible beneath a web of machines, tubes, wires, and cables. Overhead, CRT’s traced the frantic heart rhythm, lowering blood pressure, and measured sighs of mechanical respiration. But one look at the flabby, waxen face told far more than numbers on a screen.

“I don’t believe we’ve met before. Doctor—?”

In the murky shadows, Plato hadn’t noticed the room’s other occupant. Gage, the gastroenterologist. White hair manicured to perfection, navy sports jacket, freshly pressed gray pants, and a sharply knotted tie. Looking at him, you’d never guess it was two A.M.

Plato looked down at his rumpled, coffee-stained lab coat and tennis shoes. Tailoring, he told himself again.

“Plato Marley,” he replied, awkwardly shaking hands across the bed. Glancing down at Thorndyke’s pale form, he wondered: Is someone awake in there, listening, aware?

He hoped not.

“I was at the party last night,” he continued. “I wondered how Mr. Thorndyke was doing. After I got home, I did some thinking. Some of his symptoms seemed a bit unusual. I’d like to talk to you about it.”

“Yes, yes, of course.” Gage nodded his head and led the way to a door marked PHYSICIANS’ CONFERENCE ROOM. “You look familiar—”

“I did my residency here several years ago, then did an infertility fellowship in Chicago,” he replied, taking a seat at the table. Blazing fluorescent light bounced painfully from white walls, pearl file cabinets, beige carpeting. Some obscure kidney function calculation was scribbled on the whiteboard. In the corner, a skeleton wearing a top hat browsed through a faded copy of the Wall Street Journal.

“Marley, Marley,” Gage whispered to himself, as though he were turning through a dictionary. “Seems I’ve heard that name before.”

“My wife’s a doctor as well,” Plato said. “One of the hospital pathologists. She’s in forensics. Tecumseh County coroner.”

Gage’s eyebrows blossomed in surprise. “Do they really need a forensic pathologist in TC? How long since there’s been a murder there?”

“A people murder?” Plato shrugged. “Not since Cal took office. But she had a hit and run on a Holstein just last week. We’ve got the body down at the lab. Well, part of it, anyway.”

“Seneca General isn’t exactly a center of academic medicine, either,” the digestive specialist agreed. “But we provide pretty good care here. And this is a good area to raise a family.”

His smile dissolved suddenly. “I don’t know if you’re aware, but Jan Thorndyke is my daughter.” Gage grimaced, raised his voice. “That makes Rufus my son-in-law, though at his age, it’s hard to think of him that way. We were in college together, back east...”

The door burst open suddenly, and a stocky figure in white blew into the room.

“Thanks for calling me, Dr. Gage! Sorry I’m late.” The intern pulled a ragged mop of hair back from her forehead. Panting, she explained, “I got a dump admission from Urology. It took two hours. I got here as soon as I could.”

Gage chuckled and pulled out a chair. “That’s quite all right. Have a seat. Linda Zamiella, I’d like to present Dr. Plato Marley. He’s an infertility specialist, but he was at the Thorndyke party last night and thought we might need his help.”

They shook hands. Zamiella’s white laboratory coat was spotless. The only flaw in her appearance was a menagerie of dogeared journal articles spilling from her pockets.

“I was explaining that some of Mr. Thorndyke’s symptoms seemed unusual for food poisoning,” Plato told her, ignoring Gage’s sarcastic introduction. “It’s hard to put a finger on it, but his case seemed different. Excruciating abdominal pain, far worse than the other victims. Pain on swallowing. Later, as you know, he became delirious.”

“There’ve been some cardiogram changes as well,” Linda added, tugging a tattered heart monitor tracing from her pocket. She handed it to Gage. “I think Dr. Marley’s right. I saw a lot of the other victims last night. Most of them have already gone home. The few who were hospitalized are doing well. Except Mr. Thorndyke.”

“And Felicia Martinez, Thorndyke’s maid. She’s even worse.” Gage frowned, then glanced at Plato. “Linda hopes to become a specialist in digestive diseases, like me. What’s your impression, Dr. Zamiella?”

Linda paused for a moment, eyes unfocused. She recited as if from a formula, “Mr. Thorndyke is a sixty-year-old male in otherwise good health who presents with sudden onset of abdominal pain and dysphagia, eventually lapsing into delirium. Signs of shock have been accompanied by an abnormal heart rhythm, but peritoneal signs are absent. My impression is that Mr. Thorndyke’s symptoms cannot be explained solely by spoiled food.”

“What can account for them?” Gage challenged.

Linda shrugged and knuckled her forehead. “What about some kind of non-bacterial poisoning, like mercury?” She dredged her capacious pockets again. Like hamsters pouching food, interns often tuck entire reference libraries into their coats. “I just read an article last month in the Archives. Abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, and shock are common symptoms.”

Gage chewed a fingernail. “But where would Mr. Thorndyke have received such a dose of mercury? Even hatters don’t see much of it these days.”

“It’s common in some insecticides. And, well...”

“Besides, Linda, how are our patient’s kidney functions?”

She squirmed. “Umm, well—”

The old physician touched her arm gently. “It’s a good thought, but it doesn’t seem likely. At his age, those nonspecific changes could mean just about anything. Excessive stress. An underlying medical condition.”

He snapped the chart shut like a judge rapping a gavel, then delivered his verdict. “I think our diagnosis is very simple. Food poisoning, a la the crab Louis. Just like all the other patients.”

“Has he been worked up for an infection?” Plato asked, feeling like an intern again. Even though Seneca General was a community hospital, Gage had a national reputation.

The old physician laughed. “There’s nothing he hasn’t been worked up for. It’s a race with only one loser. Every specialist in the hospital’s afraid he’ll screw up. Poor Thorndyke’s going to die from loss of blood with all these tests we’re doing.”

Mrs. Leeman cracked the door open. “Dr. Gage?”

The two conferred for a moment in low whispers. As the nurse closed the door again, Gage sank into a chair, put his head in his hands.

Linda’s wide forehead wrinkled with concern. “What is it, Dr. Gage?”

“Apparently, the cardiologist also wondered about the strange heart rhythm.” Gage’s pale eyes were focused somewhere beyond the far wall. “He ordered a toxin study on Mr. Thorndyke and Felicia Martinez.”

On the table, his bony hands clutched the air. “Both of them are suffering from massive arsenic toxicity.”

Over the public address system came a woman’s carefully measured voice. “Code Blue, Intensive Care Unit. Code Blue, Intensive Care Unit.”

They scrambled from the room.

“Thorndyke was flat-line when we got there, and he never came back,” Plato told Cal later that morning. “We tried everything. There wasn’t even fibrillation. He was long gone.”

Even though she didn’t know Thorndyke very well, Cal was visibly shaken. She was camped out in an old pair of sweats on the living room sofa; the color in her face matched the vanilla pillowslip.

A pharmacopoeia of stomach remedies was scattered on the coffee table. Propping herself gingerly on an elbow, she closed her eyes and pointed randomly at the drugs. Opening them again, she chose a bottle of pink fluid, swigged a few gulps, then sank back with a groan.

“Why don’t you go to someone about that?” Plato asked. He hated seeing sick people. Just watching her made him queasy.

“I’m doing fine,” Cal sighed. Her bright brown eyes had faded to a shade somewhere between dirt and old asphalt. Beneath them, her cheeks were dark hollows. Frizzled brown hair crackled when she moved.

“If that’s what you call fine, I’d hate to be one of your patients.”

“That’s the beauty of pathology,” she said, with a grin that was more like a grimace. “None of my patients whines about my ‘setting a poor example.’ Besides, staph food poisoning is self-limited, as long as dehydration is controlled. I’m maintaining my fluids.”

“Yeah. With Pepto-Bismol and Mylanta. Bismuth and aluminum and magnesium. You’re going to rust.”

“Lucky dog. Just because you don’t like seafood.” Cal sobered suddenly. “What about the maid — what was her name?”

“Felicia Martinez,” he answered. “She did all right, at first. For a while, we almost thought she was going to make it.”

He shivered, remembering.

“What’s wrong?”

“The last time we shocked her. Right before we lost her for good.” Plato frowned, trying to picture it. “I’ve never seen it happen before. Her eyes — they opened up, and she was awake. Wide awake. Just for a second or two.”

He shoved a few bottles aside and sat on the coffee table. “She grabbed the arm of the poor intern doing CPR. Grabbed her coat. Looked right into her eyes and started mumbling something. Over and over again.”

“What was it?” Color had suddenly returned to Cal’s face. “Did you hear it? What did she say?”

“Well, it was pretty hard to make out. Something like ‘Chant’ or ‘Chan-ger.’ ”

“She spoke with an accent. Chan...” Cal gasped. “How about ‘Jan’?”

Her husband nodded. “You’re not the first to think of that. There were eight people in that room. Half of them are convinced Felicia was saying ‘Jan.’ I’m not so sure.”

She shook her head. “I can’t see it. To kill her husband that way. Jan just isn’t that kind of person. Is she?”

“Who knows?” he replied. “But it provides a very simple solution. Jan Thorndyke was a pharmacist at the hospital before she met Rufus.”

Cal nodded her head, sank back in the sofa. “But maybe the solution’s a little too simple.”

They were quiet for a while, and Cal’s eyes drifted closed. Watching her in the stillness, Plato heard the soft ticks of the grandfather clock by the fireplace, the gentle hiss of a summer shower on the courtyard outside the open french doors.

A slamming car door interrupted his thoughts. He walked to the front window. A blue and white police cruiser with gold county sheriff’s stars was parked in the drive. Up the walk slumped a redhaired, gray-bearded dwarf in a rumpled mackintosh he wore summer or winter, rain or shine.

Ian Donal Cameron. “Don” when they wanted to irritate him. “Ian” when they didn’t.

Plato opened the door before he could knock.

“Marley, my lad!” Cameron’s teeth gleamed in a tobacco-stained grin.

“Come on in.”

The sheriff doffed his hat inside the doorway, shrugged his coat onto a chair, and scavenged his pockets for a pipe. Lighting it, he glanced at his friend.

“Put on a bit of weight, haven’t you?” he snickered, tapping Plato’s paunch with the back of his hand. The smoke circled his head like fog over a low hill, almost obscuring the bald spot. A frostline of white roots surrounded the peak.

Plato chuckled appreciatively. Ian was a friend of the family, and Plato owed him a favor. Otherwise, the sheriff’s own proportions were easy marks for a witty riposte.

But when Plato was growing up in Seneca, his father and Ian had been partners on the force. Years later, when Plato was a local obstetrician and Cameron was Tecumseh County sheriff, the coroner had died in office. Although Plato wasn’t qualified, he’d temporarily filled the post at Ian’s request. It wasn’t difficult — he signed death certificates and forwarded the tough cases to experts in Seneca.

Cal had been one of those experts. A year later, she and Plato were married. Ian was best man. And that November, she was elected TC’s coroner.

Ian frequently recalled his matchmaking role.

“And how are the two lovebirds today? No, no, I forget. This isn’t a social call.” Long sideburns wagged ferociously as he puffed on his pipe. Walking down the foyer, he peered into the living room. Cal had dragged the blanket over her head. Whispering, Ian observed, “She doesn’t look so well.”

“I know. She’s all right, though.”

“Good.” The old sheriff squared his shoulders, marched across the room, and took Plato’s chair. “Good morning to you, Cal.”

No reply. She was probably asleep. Plato sat on the couch at her feet.

“I’ve come for an official reason today,” the sheriff began, a hint of pride in his voice. He sat forward, eyes glowing brightly. “The Tecumseh County sheriff’s office is handling the investigation of the Thorndyke case. I’d like the coroner’s report as soon as possible.”

From under the blankets came a groan that could have been the furniture settling. Ian frowned.

“Of course, if the county coroner is ill, the assistant county coroner will aid in the investigation,” he conceded.

This was going too fast for Plato. “Assistant? I didn’t know Cal had an assistant.”

“That’s the beauty of it, laddie!” The sheriff stabbed his pipestem at his friend. “You’re the assistant. Don’t you remember? You’ve been part of the office ever since Dr. Eddings passed on.”

“Wait a minute. That was years ago.”

“Of course, if you refuse, I can work with Cal alone on the case. It wouldn’t be like working with a man, but she might be able to help out here and there.”

Plato was still confused. “But I haven’t signed any papers or worked for the coroner’s office in years.” He gasped as Cal’s foot jarred his kidney. Trust a pathologist to locate just the right spot.

“Of course not,” Cameron replied. “You didn’t have to. Cal and I automatically renewed your employment agreement. You’ve been the TC coroner’s assistant for five years now. Didn’t Cal tell you?”

Plato ground his elbow into the soft spot behind her ankle, where the nerve passed through. There was another groan from beneath the pillow.

“Does she always sleep like that?” asked Ian.

“She’s in a lot of pain,” Plato replied sympathetically.

The sheriff shook his head and clucked.

“It’s tough for women these days,” he confided with a wink. He grinned down at Cal’s blanket. “They put so much pressure on themselves to make it in a man’s world. Especially here in the States. I don’t understand it, but it’s probably good for them to try.”

“Teach them a lesson, you mean.”

“Exactly!” Ian beamed in agreement. “They don’t realize how good they had it.”

“In the home.”

“Right!”

Beneath the blanket, Cal’s toe was probing, moving up the spine, hunting for the kidney again. Plato changed tacks. “So how can I help?”

Ian’s forehead wrinkled thoughtfully. “Well, this is hardly a typical case of murder.”

“How do you mean?”

He leaned back, crossing his stubby legs. Mud covered the soles of his boots. “I’m sure the spoiled food wasn’t just coincidence. I’ve talked with a few of the doctors at the hospital — because it seemed odd. That they didn’t pick up the arsenic until it was too late. The murderer hoped old Thorndyke’s death would seem like severe food poisoning.”

Plato had been there. It had almost worked.

“So we have to look for someone with that kind of medical expertise.” Ian squinted through the flare of another match. “That’s why I want you or Cal involved. You’ve heard the old saying, ‘Send a thief to catch a thief.’ ”

Plato thought he knew what was coming next.

“I want to start with Thorn-dyke’s son, Homer,” Ian said, flipping through a pocket notebook.

“What about Thorndyke’s wife?” Plato asked, startled.

“Jan?” he mused absently. “Oh, yes, that business with the maid. Mrs. Thorndyke’s in the hospital — she’s not going anywhere.”

“So what’s so special about Homer?”

Cameron slapped his notebook shut, waddled to the door. “I checked up on him. He’s a microbiologist at the medical school. I’m driving up there now.”

He slipped on his coat and turned. “Coming?”

“Gee, Ian, I’d really like to, but—” Plato thought of his office appointments. Sure, the schedule wasn’t that full. Sandy, his partner, could cover.

Still...

“Could you get along without me today? Maybe Wednesday I can find some time. Or this weekend.”

The sheriff stood there for a moment, puffed furiously on his pipe. A smoky thunderhead rose from the bowl. “There’s something else I didn’t want to bring up, laddie...”

He took a deep breath, gestured at the four walls. “Look around this room. Here you have the entire staff of the Tecumseh County sheriff’s office. I have no deputies per se. Technically, as coroner, Cal is a deputy and can even act as sheriff in my absence.”

Cameron sighed. “Maybe someday our commissioners will hire me a deputy. But until now, you two are all I’ve got. There were dozens of people at that party...”

Plato wasn’t buying it. Rufus’s home was outside incorporated city limits. So it was in Ian’s jurisdiction. But the county sheriff could always turn the case over to the state police.

Unfortunately, Ian would never give up. The case would never be solved. They’d lose the next election and be driven from town in disgrace. All three would end up working in some two-bit Jersey doc-in-a-box. Ian would be night security and part-time maintenance. Cleaning toilets and scraping gum from floors.

Clearly, Plato was needed.

“In a minute,” he replied generously. “Just let me get changed.”

He dashed up the stairs, grabbed a clean shirt and tie, ran a comb across his receding hairline, and zipped down to the door. On the way, he caught a glimpse of Cal. She was awake, folding her blanket.

“What are you doing?” Plato asked. “You’re supposed to be sick.”

She flashed a wan smile. “I’ve got an autopsy to do.”

Beardmore Medical College was named after Dr. Elias Beardmore, whose political skills far outpaced his medical abilities. Good land was scarce even during the Depression, so the school was built on the scenic banks of the Tecumseh River. Property there was cheap because every two or three springs the river escaped the banks to claim the valley flat-lands.

Administration occupied the third floor, while computers and research facilities claimed the second. The first floor was mostly classrooms and sump pumps. No one had been in the basement for years.

Homer Thorndyke’s door was open, but a bank of files blocked most of the office from view. The hiss of a ventilator was accompanied by a sliding noise, then a thump. The sweet smell of ether made Plato slightly nauseated.

Cameron knocked hesitantly. “Dr. Thorndyke?”

“Yes?”

Slip-thump.

“Come on back here, please. I’m rather busy at the moment.”

Around the corner, Homer Thorndyke sat in his wheelchair, fiddling with something like a paper cutter. Or a tiny guillotine. A rush of disgusting animal lab memories swept over Plato. The sheriff stepped around the corner before his partner could warn him. On the counter beside the sink, eight rat bodies formed a neat line. Eight tiny heads were stacked in a gruesome pyramid nearby. A ninth subject slumbered beneath the blade.

Slip-thump. This time, the blade failed to make a clean slice. Instead, the animal squirmed sluggishly, like a sleepwalker with nightmares.

“Damn!” Thorndyke slapped the blade up and down again, driving it home. He tossed the severed parts into a waste can like a master chef who’d found a bad mushroom. “Cheap Japanese blades. A clean kill is essential to this experiment. I just sharpened them, too...”

Still ignoring his visitors, he packed the sixteen specimens into a plastic casserole and stuffed it in the freezer. Gloves and goggles were tossed away, and he slid his wheelchair over to the sink.

While Thorndyke washed his hands, Plato glanced at the sheriff. He was down in a chair, eyes glazed, skin grayer than fish scales.

Surely, Plato thought, Ian has seen worse during his long career. “Are you all right?”

His voice was a thin squeak, and his Scotsman’s brogue thickened. “I hate rats. I keena why, but they make me sick as a dog.”

Thorndyke finally glanced at them. Dressed in a white coat, with pale skin and chalky hair, he resembled one of his subjects. A thin mustache drooped over his upper lip.

“The county sheriff.” He smiled mockingly. “How good of you to come. Has the Animal Protection Fellowship requested another tour of the dog lab?”

“No, Dr. Thorndyke. This is about something completely different.” Cameron bobbed to his feet like an underinflated balloon. But his voice was steadier. “It’s about your father.”

“My father?” Thorndyke shrugged. “Then I wouldn’t say it’s very different at all. We’re all animals, sheriff. Some more than others.”

“Then it wouldn’t surprise you to learn that your father was murdered.” The sheriff watched Thorndyke through narrowed eyes.

The reaction was disappointing. Another shrug. “No. I assure you, surprise would be my last reaction. I was at the party myself, you know. And I heard from the hospital. Are you planning to indict the caterer?”

From the boredom in his voice, his level tone, the researcher might have been discussing the Gram stain with a pair of high school students.

“Hardly.” The sheriff retrieved his pipe, gestured at the refrigerator with it. “Your father was poisoned, just like one of your friends there. He didn’t die from spoiled mayonnaise. We think the food was intentionally contaminated, in order to cover the real poisoning.”

Homer whistled appreciatively. “Brilliant! Author, author!”

“You mentioned that you were at the party—” Cameron said. He struck a match and dipped it to his pipe bowl.

“Yes, I was. Along with about seventy-five others. Have you questioned them?” His smile faded. “Oh. By the way, I wouldn’t light that if I were you. Unless you want to blow us all to kingdom come.”

The match was quickly extinguished. “I’ve checked on most of them already. But no one else has a very good motive, I’m afraid.”

“Unfortunately for you, I don’t have one, either. It’s very unlikely that I’m mentioned in my father’s will. But we keep up appearances.”

Plato opened his mouth at last. “The two of you weren’t close?”

Thorndyke’s eyebrows raised imperiously. “And who are you?”

“Dr. Plato Marley,” Ian answered. “Representing the coroner’s office in this case.”

Thorndyke harrumphed and turned to his bench. Red spray patterns marred the white linoleum surface. With a damp rag, he scrubbed vigorously while he talked. “Close? Never. But there was no animosity between us. In fact, there was nothing at all between us.”

He looked up, met Plato’s gaze with pale pink irises. “If you’re asking if I killed my father, the answer is no.”

With both hands, he lifted a thigh and shifted it in the canvas seat. “I wish I had. Arsenic would be an excellent technique. Painful, too. The trouble is, I don’t have enough feeling left to have killed him. Gentlemen, good day.”

Cameron stopped with one hand on the door. “The wife, of course, is the obvious suspect.”

After a long pause, the researcher replied. There was warmth and bitterness in his tone. “Jan? I don’t think she’s capable. Besides, she and my father were very... close.”

“There are rumors about your father and the Martinez woman. She died last night as well, you know.”

“Yes, I heard.” For the first time, there was a tinge of regret in his voice. “Such a shame. So you think that perhaps Jan poisoned them both? Out of jealousy? Ridiculous!”

“How long was Miss Martinez with your father?” the sheriff asked. They stepped back inside the office.

“Five years or so. Since just after Mother died.” He considered. “Perhaps there was something between them at first. But when Jan came along, everything changed. More likely, Felicia killed my father out of jealousy.”

“Clumsy of her to kill herself as well.” Cameron sucked absently on the unlit pipe. “How about work? Your father’s company was very successful. Might he have made some enemies along the way?”

“Mardyke Pharmaceuticals? Successful?” The microbiologist snorted. “At selling health foods and vitamins, maybe. But they’ll never make it in the big league. With the lousy researchers they have, it’s a miracle they’ve survived this long. But somehow they’re already showing quite a profit. Martin Callahan must be one sly businessman.”

“Callahan?” The notebook came out again.

“That man could squeeze carrot juice from a stone. He was in health foods when he conned Father into investing.” Thorndyke sighed wistfully, picturing grant dollars and pharmaceutical research sponsorships. “Two years ago, they tried coming out with a new drug. Synthetic painkiller/anti-anxiety combination. Called Hypnocose. But it was a little too successful.”

“Too successful?” Plato asked. This was a new concept for him.

Thorndyke nodded. “People liked it a little too much. Know what I mean? The FDA squashed it. Let me tell you, the market’s tight for new products right now. The FDA approval process is amazingly tortuous, especially for drugs like Hypnocose.”

He glanced down at his watch. “Two thirty! I’m already half an hour late.”

As they backed out the door, Cameron apologized. “Sorry to have taken so much time, doctor.”

“Not at all. If you have any more questions...”

Plato stopped Ian in the hallway. “Wait. I want to look for something.”

After navigating the maze of corridors from several decades of building additions, they stopped. The bulletin board read:

Hot Off the Press! Our Latest Research

A number of articles were tacked to the board, including a paper by Homer Thorndyke, Ph.D. The work was titled, “Response of Staphylococcal Pneumonia to Gamma Globulin in the Splenectomized Rat.”

“What’s it mean?” The sheriff frowned.

“Seems our friend is playing with the same bacteria that ruined Thorndyke’s party.”

Back at the hospital, Jan Thorndyke had a visitor. “I’m sorry, but Dr. Gage is seeing her, and he’s asked for privacy,” the charge nurse told Plato and Ian. She had a harried look. The shift was nearly over.

They took seats in the visitors’ lounge. Near the window, a gray-haired man snoozed in a recliner. His shoes lay beside the chair, and a pink toe poked through one of his white socks. A fat man with a face like melted rubber sifted through the ancient magazines in the rack. Oprah Winfrey barked from a television hanging on the wall.

“What do you think about young Thorndyke?” Ian asked softly. “Rather interesting — his mention of arsenic.”

Rubber-face scowled at them, then took his seat.

“Possibly,” Plato conceded. “On the other hand, he may have guessed when you pointed to the rats.”

“Oh. Rat poison.” Ian grinned sheepishly. “Stupid of me, wasn’t it?”

“Not really. He might have figured it out anyway. He seems to be very intelligent.”

The sheriff sat back, scratched his nose thoughtfully. “Belligerent bastard, though. He sure did get friendly all of a sudden, didn’t he?”

“Yeah. When you asked him about Jan. Do you think he suspects her?”

Ian shrugged. “I do know one thing. He doesn’t want us suspecting her.”

They sat watching the screen until a commercial came on.

“You have to wonder what makes a son hate his father so,” Ian mused. “It isn’t natural.”

“Neither is murder.”

“I might do a little research into that lad’s past.” Out came the black notebook again.

An angry shriek came from Jan Thorndyke’s room, accompanied by a throaty growl. It sounded like a bobcat arguing with a bear. A nurse rushed to the room, listened, then returned to her desk.

Plato recalled the only time Homer had volunteered information. “What about the business partner? What did you find out about that?”

“Dead end. The man was in San Diego on Sunday.” Cameron scratched a bedraggled sideburn. “And the killer had to be at the party, right?”

“How else could he give the arsenic at just the right time — when everyone else was getting sick from spoiled food?” Plato frowned. “Of course, it could be a wild coincidence. How about some random killer lacing store-bought medications?”

“We thought of that, checked all his medicines when we checked the dishes. So far, everything’s negative.”

The charge nurse appeared in the doorway. “Mrs. Thorndyke will see you now.”

There was no answer to their knock. “Mrs. Thorndyke?”

“Yes?”

“It’s Sheriff Cameron and Dr. Marley. May we ask you a few questions?”

There was a pause, then a quavery answer. “Come in.”

It was hard to find a chair. Scarce pinpoints of light trickled through the Venetian blinds to throw a pattern of dots across the sheets. Jan Thorndyke looked even more fragile in the thin hospital gown than she had at the party. Wispy blonde hair hung in disarray about her angular face. She fiddled nervously with the plastic line running between the IV bag and her arm.

Tissues were flung in a pile on the nightstand beside a vase of red roses. Her eyes were puffy and glistening.

“You are aware that your husband’s death wasn’t accidental.”

“My doctor told me about it — about the arsenic,” Jan replied quietly. “Who would want to kill Rufus?”

“That’s what we’re here to ask you, Mrs. Thorndyke.” Ian glanced at the nightstand. “Nice flowers.”

“Hmm? Oh, those.” She looked away quickly, tipped her head back. “My father just brought them to me.”

“First off, I want to say how sorry we all are — about your husband’s death.” The sheriff took a seat beside Jan’s bed, placed his hand over hers. For a moment, Plato forgot she was Ian’s primary suspect. “Did your husband mention any problems here at the hospital? Or at his company? Unhappy employees, people who were harassing him?”

“No. There was nothing like that.” The sun was setting, and the dots on her bed were disappearing, one by one. “Rufus was very well-liked, both here and at Mardyke.”

“Money problems?”

“None. He was doing very well.” She brushed a stray wisp of hair from her forehead. “The company was close to releasing its newest drug. Rufus was very excited.”

“Was he?”

“Oh, yes. In fact, Martin Callahan had us over on Saturday for dinner and a swim. To celebrate.” Jan smiled briefly. “Rufus failed at medical school, you know. He tells — told — everyone about that. Still, he was trying to make a contribution. To medicine.”

“Speaking of medicine,” Plato interrupted, “did your husband get along very well with his son?”

“He tried. Believe me, he tried.” She sighed. “He’s made more contributions to the school than you can imagine. And he was always calling Homer, asking him to social functions, being interested. And always getting the cold shoulder.”

“What caused the falling-out in the first place?”

“I don’t know. I asked Rufus about it once.” The widow shivered. “I got the impression it was something he’d rather not talk about. Other than that, we didn’t have any secrets.”

“A good marriage, then,” Ian concluded.

“Yes,” she agreed emphatically. “Two years now, and it still felt like our honeymoon. We used to joke about it. How it would last forever...”

“You have our sympathy, ma’am.” The sheriff patted her hand. “Your father — he’s probably a great source of comfort—”

Jan smiled patronizingly, like a True Believer. “He never understood. About Rufus and me. My father and Rufus were great friends. Until we fell in love. Daddy was furious. Jealous, I think. I tried to ignore it.”

Jan stopped. Fiddling with the tape on her arm, she looked at them. Tears welled up and threatened to spill.

“Three nights ago — the Friday before the party — Daddy came to visit. He implied...” She bit her lip, took a deep breath. “He implied that Rufus was having an affair. I was very upset. Rufus came home late, called Daddy, and told him he wasn’t welcome in our house any more. So of course he wasn’t at the party.”

She twisted the IV line back and forth between her thumb and forefinger. “Today I thought he’d come to apologize. But it was just more of the same.”

“This must be very difficult for you,” Ian said.

Jan nodded and blinked quickly, but failed to catch an escaping tear.

The door swung open, and the charge nurse poked her head inside. “I’m sorry, but visiting hours are over. I’ll have to ask you gentlemen to leave.”

“If you want a good crab Louis, don’t skimp on the mayonnaise,” Mrs. Reiss preached. “These days, so many people are concerned with lowering fats that they use too little. And the green pepper can be overpowering.”

“It certainly can,” Cal agreed.

“What’s that?” Mrs. Reiss fiddled with her hearing aid until feedback squealed from her ear.

“I said, it certainly can,” Cal shouted.

She was looking much better. Plato was amazed at what a couple of good autopsies could do.

It promised to be a long interview, though. He had been up all night with a rough delivery that led to a Caesarean section. His brain was an expanding glacier inside his fragile head. The shouting match would crack his skull like an egg.

Plato glanced out the window of Mrs. Reiss’s kitchen. Tuesday morning had dawned bright and clear. At the back of the yard, a whitewashed fence marked the edge of the cliff high above the Tecumseh River. Just inside it, a perfectly tended garden glittered with dew. Beans, tomatoes, and romaine lettuce stood in tight ranks, as though waiting for dress inspection. Even the violets and daffodils fringing the yard were meticulously arranged.

The caterer’s kitchen was equally precise. Two ovens, wide oak counters, and stainless steel sinks glistened under bright fluorescent lights. A menagerie of pots and pans with burnished copper bottoms hung from a rack over the window. Beside the deep freeze gleamed a collection of knives that surely rivaled Galen’s.

“Is there any way that the mayonnaise you used Sunday could have been spoiled?” Plato cringed, waiting for her reply.

“I understand, Dr. Marley, that you have to ask that question. Still, I tolerate it only to preserve the good name of Reiss’s Nice Foods. It’s a scandal for my business.” She pressed a plump hand to her chest and sighed. “You can’t imagine how embarrassed I was Sunday night when people started getting ill. I hope you catch the scoundrel who’s responsible.”

From the tone of her voice, she seemed to feel that apprehending a murderer was purely incidental.

“Still, we all make mistakes,” Cal said. “Sometimes the unavoidable happens — power failures, for instance. What about last Thursday? Wasn’t there a thunderstorm then?”

“Oh, my dear! Of course I couldn’t make the mayonnaise on Thursday! You know that.”

Cal gazed at her blankly.

“Under those conditions, the mayonnaise simply won’t bind.” Mrs. Reiss’s pencil-thin brows formed a V on her forehead. “But then maybe you’ve never tried making mayonnaise during a thunderstorm.”

“I’ve been lucky that way, I guess,” Cal admitted, casting a warning glance at her husband. She hadn’t made mayonnaise during snow, heat, or gloom of night, either.

“Ordinarily, I make fresh mayonnaise on Thursdays because Francella brings the eggs straight from the hens that day.” She touched Cal’s arm. “I’ve found that the freshest eggs make the smoothest mayonnaise. In fact, when Francella delivers them, they’re often still warm and there’s no need to bring them to room temperature.”

“So you made the mayonnaise on Friday,” Plato concluded.

“No. Friday was the University Club luncheon. I didn’t need mayonnaise for that, so I made it Saturday morning.” Mrs. Reiss thought for a moment. “Even if my refrigerator was off a few degrees, mayonnaise doesn’t spoil that quickly. And it certainly didn’t smell bad.”

“Staph food poisoning can be very subtle,” Cal explained. “Especially with such a flavorful food as crab Louis.”

“My, my, my. This is certainly complicated.”

“Is there any way someone could have tampered with it Saturday? Did you leave the house at all?”

“No, I didn’t,” she assured them. “I’m certain of it.”

“You had visitors?” Cal asked.

Plato was shocked. Stern, broad shouldered, competent, and practical though she was, Mrs. Reiss actually blushed.

“Well, I...” For once, she was at a loss for words. She wrung her hands feverishly across the broad expanse of apron covering her middle. Finally she took a deep breath and explained. “He started calling on me when I took sick.”

“Who did?”

“Dr. Gage. It’s my stomach, you see. It’s so sensitive. Well, he was just wonderful — no other doctor made house calls any more. So I invited him over one Saturday, and it got to be a regular thing. Every Saturday afternoon for two years now.”

The portly cook sighed wistfully.

“You won’t tell anyone, will you?” she begged. “It’s been our secret for a long, long time. Not even Leonard knows.”

“Leonard?” Cal asked.

“My son. You’ve probably read his articles in the Herald Press. He’s the medical editor,” she boasted.

“Yes, now I remember,” Cal said. “He interviewed me once about Seneca General’s pathology department. Strange that he hasn’t asked us about the case yet.”

“The life of a newspaperman,” Leonard’s mother chuckled. “He was very upset when I called to tell him what had happened. He’s been away this weekend, down at the capital. Looking at substances. Wait. Is that what he said? That’s awfully strange.”

“I imagine there are quite a few substances down there in the capital,” Plato agreed.

“I think it’s all a fable. He’s got a girl down there. I’m sure of it.”

“How about Sunday?” Cal asked. “Did anyone help you with the catering?”

“Just the maid — Felicia. She always helps when I cater at the Thorndykes’. Such a tragedy. Of course, she wasn’t involved.”

“Not likely,” Plato admitted.

The caterer turned to Cal again. “Now that we’ve finished, dear, there’s a dish of mine that you must try on Plato. I call it Sauce Simpliste because it’s so easy to make. Wonderful with beef dishes. I’ve got the recipe written down here somewhere.”

She led them to her living room and riffled through a drawer in the television stand. “Here it is, here it is. I want to submit it to the Grande Cuisine Home Cooking Show. Have you seen it?”

“I’m afraid not,” Cal confessed.

“Then I have to lend you one of my tapes.” On the shelf above the TV squatted a new VCR. Mrs. Reiss patted it proudly. “My Leonard bought it for me. We have the same kinds of VCR’s, stereos, and televisions. Even the same kind of cars. That way, Leonard can fix them when something goes wrong. He’s quite handy.”

Plato sighed. Years from now he and Cal would be discovered rooted to the floor, cobwebs swaddling their ankles and knees, Mrs. Reiss’s filibuster still in full swing.

Miraculously, the telephone rang, and they bolted for the door.

“Thank you for the tape. And the recipe,” Cal called.

“Certainly,” the caterer replied with a wave. “Come back again if you have any questions. Or just to talk...”

As they closed the door, Mrs. Reiss’s hearing aid gave a farewell squeal.

“This won’t take long,” Cal assured her husband. “Turn left here.”

Plato complied. “I don’t understand why we have to do this at all. What’s Ian up to? Why can’t he handle this?”

“He’s busy getting depositions from the guests,” she answered. “Callahan gave his statement at the courthouse this morning. But Ian wanted us to drop by the plant, just to get an impression.”

Mardyke Pharmaceuticals was a sprawling one-level brick and granite complex at the end of a mostly vacant industrial park. From its exterior, Mardyke’s prosperity was obvious. Perfectly manicured lawns, rolling hills, and shapely hedgerows were surrounded by a ten foot chain link fence topped with barbed wire. All around the grounds was the Mardyke trademark, an interlocking M and D.

The guard waved them in at the gate. As they drove the battered Nova down to the visitors’ lot, Plato lusted for a car with air conditioning. Black asphalt gathered the midday heat, focusing it on the underside of the car, where it passed through the seats to scorch their backs and legs.

At the main entrance, they were rescued by a wash of cool, dry air. The foyer had a polished slate floor and rough sandstone walls. Cal’s heels echoed in the darkness as the pair navigated the cave to a pink marble reception area.

“Drs. Plato and Calista Marley?” asked a platinum blonde receptionist. When they nodded, she rose. “This way, please.”

Plush pile carpeting replaced the slate, and tastefully neutral paintings under track lights lined the corridor. At the end of the hall, their guide opened a door. “Mr. Callahan will see you now.”

The chairman of Mardyke Pharmaceuticals stood with his back to the door. He pretended to admire the view through tinted windows that made the outside look cloudy, cool, and inviting.

When people want to make an entrance and can’t, they try the next best thing. Martin Callahan spun around gracefully.

“Ah, Dr. Marley. And Dr. Marley.” Circumnavigating his desk took him a while, so Plato and Cal met him halfway and shook hands. “A pleasure to meet you both. Have a seat.”

They sat in a pair of matching chairs covered in a surprisingly supple black leather. Callahan scrutinized them across the vast teak desk. Though their chairs were comfortable, his visitors had to tip their heads back to look up at him. A standing halogen lamp behind him cast a halo over his head, making it hard to read his eyes.

“Sheriff Cameron explained the purpose of our visit,” Cal began.

“Well, yes and no. The sheriff explained that you needed to talk to me concerning Rufus’s death. But I don’t see that I have much to add. I wasn’t even there at the time.” Though Callahan had a boyish face, Plato placed him in his mid-forties. Sleek black hair like an otter, and some of the mannerisms, too. His grave concern seemed artificial, like the spray that held his hair in place.

“You’ve already given your statement to Sheriff Cameron,” Cal explained. “But we wanted to talk to you in a less formal setting, perhaps get your impressions on a few things. We hope to learn a little more about Mr. Thorndyke from the people who knew him best.”

“Thank you. I’ll take that as a compliment. Rufus was a very good man, and I was proud to be associated with him.”

“How long had you known him?”

“Just three years. I met him at a health care conference down in San Diego, shortly before my old company folded. He had always been interested in health foods, holistic healing, that sort of thing.” Callahan chuckled. “We had some very interesting conversations. A couple of months after disaster struck my company, I gave him a call. He invited me up here to talk things over.”

He spread his hands to encompass the office, the building, the grounds. “Our partnership was quite successful. Of course, the market is much more open here. And Mardyke does much more than health foods now.”

“Strange,” Cal commented. “I never knew Rufus was into health foods.”

“Neither did most people. But he was a closet fanatic. It was our little secret.” He adjusted a gold cufflink. “People would frown upon a hospital board member who held those kinds of alternative health beliefs.”

Interestingly put. To Plato, it almost sounded like a religion.

“You weren’t at the party?” Cal asked.

“No, I wasn’t.” He sighed regretfully. “I was in California on business. I’d planned to come later in the evening, but the plane was delayed. Perhaps if I had been there...”

Plato could picture it. Rufus Thorndyke lying on the field like a corpulent Arthur while this holistic Merlin made passes over his face and stuffed his mouth with roots and berries.

“Was there any trouble with business? Disgruntled employees? Money problems?”

“Money was the least of our worries. For the third year in a row, the company’s revenues have continued to grow.” He shook his head sadly. “As for disgruntled employees, I’m afraid that’s very unlikely. Rufus was something of a silent partner. He almost never visited the plant. We’d meet informally, generally at my house. The day-to-day routine was left to me.”

“He and Jan visited you the day before the party—” Plato prompted.

“Yes.” Callahan frowned momentarily. “A celebration. Our research department has found a ‘loophole modification.’ With a subtle alteration, we can legally manufacture a certain very popular drug still under patent. It could be a big breakthrough.”

“And that was the last time you saw Rufus?”

He nodded. “We had a pool-side dinner. I’m something of a chef myself, though not of Mrs. Reiss’s caliber.”

“I see.” Cal smiled apologetically. “This may seem an offensive question, but what were the terms of the contract? Your answer is purely voluntary.”

“Oh, believe me, I have no trouble answering that,” Callahan replied. “There was no survivorship clause. Rufus’s shares reverted to his widow upon his death.”

That night, Plato was energizing Salisbury steak/broccoli/cheddarmac combination dinners when the telephone rang. He didn’t even hear it. Their microwave had crossed the Atlantic on the Mayflower. It had no light, the timer was broken, and the fan sounded like a jackhammer. Cal took the call in the other room.

“What’s up?” Plato asked when she returned to the table.

“It was Ian,” Cal replied. She removed the plastic lid from her dinner. The broccoli had apparently caught fire during reentry. It was smoking, and there was a charred hole in the dish. Frost still adorned most of the steak. She glanced at her husband. “We need a new micro-wave.”

“What did he want?” Plato replied. Through a freak accident, his dinner had come out perfect. “I can do yours again if you’d like.”

“I’d rather not.” Cal’s lip curled in disgust as she sawed the broccoli and melted plastic from the remainder of her meal. “Leonard Reiss was in an accident.”

“You’re kidding.” From her nonchalant tone, Plato honestly thought she was. But then, it was hard to tell with Cal. When she was really famished, very little could distract her. It was ten o’clock, and they had just finished their regular work at the hospital. “Is he all right?”

“Moderate concussion,” she mumbled through a mouthful of macaroni. “Hasn’t waked up yet. Wrecked his car coming down Sandy Ridge from his mother’s house after dinner. Sheriff was thinking it might be related.”

“Maybe he was just in a hurry to leave,” Plato said. “Any sign of tampering?”

“Plus-minus,” Cal replied. With the butt of her knife, she hammered her fork into the steak and gnawed it like a Popsicle. “The brake fluid was pretty low. Air in the lines. But the lines themselves were intact. Ian thinks someone might have messed with the master cylinder.”

“But why would they want to kill Leonard Reiss? His writing’s bad, but that’s true for most of the Herald Press.”

“Guess again.”

Crunching his broccoli, he considered for a moment, then snapped his fingers. “Of course! Mrs. Reiss drives exactly the same kind of car. She told us.”

“Bingo. The sheriff asked for a state cop to guard her. Seems she might be very important to this case.” Cal frowned at her steaksicle. “This is really awful.”

With a grunt of resignation, she slipped it into the micro-wave, holding the power button down for a minute or so. The meat emerged steaming, juicy, and appetizing.

The phone rang again, but Cal just placed it inside the refrigerator. It bleated faintly like a lost sheep. Plato rose to answer it.

“No!” Cal ordered. “Whatever it is, it can wait. If the hospital wants you, they’ll use your pager.”

While she wolfed the rest of her meal, Plato summarized the interviews with Homer and Jan Thorndyke.

“She seems to have sold you,” Cal noted.

He shrugged. “Maybe. She certainly has the motive — Rufus was worth a few million at last count. And who knows how much the Mardyke stock could bring? But she seemed too upset. It couldn’t be an act.”

“You may be an obstetrician, but you don’t know women,” Cal said. “When we put our minds to it, we can be the best actors in the world.”

“You weren’t there, Cal,” he reminded his wife. “You didn’t talk to her.”

They were at an impasse until the doorbell rang.

Ian again. Plato showed him into the kitchen, asked if he’d eaten.

“No.” He sat at the table, scrutinized Cal’s plate. “But I’ve been trying to trim up a bit.”

“What about you, Ian?” Cal asked. “Are you convinced Jan’s innocent, too?”

He threw his hands up in exasperation. “There are so many suspects in this case, I’m not buying anything yet. I’ve been hoping you might have a bone or two for me. Do you have those autopsy results?”

Cal nodded. “Unfortunately, it’s nothing you don’t already know. Death was due to arsenic in both cases. Analysis of the stomach contents was basically inconclusive — we’re pretty sure the arsenic came in food, rather than a beverage. There’s very little excoriation of the mouth or esophagus. No signs that force was used, no external entry wounds or needle punctures. We can say that the arsenic was taken orally. But that’s about it.”

“So much for modern science,” Ian complained. “I checked up on Callahan — though he doesn’t seem to have a motive. His alibi’s solid. He was in San Diego from Sunday morning until late Sunday evening. He was scheduled to arrive at five thirty, but his plane was delayed in St. Louis.”

“That fits what he told us,” Cal agreed.

“How’s Reiss doing?” Plato asked.

“About the same. Not awake yet. But they seem confident that he’ll pull out of it.”

Cal started. “Ian, is there any possibility that someone was after Leonard? What was he investigating down in the capital?”

“Pretty sharp of you to think of that. The thought had crossed my mind, too. I called his editor at the Herald Press.” The sheriff sighed, put his feet up on a chair. “Nothing doing, though. Something about substance abuse problems in Mexico. Pretty far from home. More likely, someone wanted to kill Mrs. Reiss and got the wrong car. They’re practically identical.”

He brightened. “I did find out something interesting, though. Remember what I said about Homer?”

They nodded.

“Well, I did some research of my own. Down at the library in Seneca.” Ian pulled his beard thoughtfully. “Seems young Homer does have a motive after all. He lost the use of his legs back when he was fifteen. In a water skiing accident on Lake Cantauck. And guess who was driving the boat?”

“Rufus Thorndyke,” Plato answered.

“Right. Worse, he was drunk as a skunk. There was a scandal, but he never was charged.”

“How awful,” Cal whispered softly.

“Do you think he did it?” Plato asked.

Ian shrugged. “Maybe. He’s a microbiologist. He was at the party all day. Plenty of means and opportunity. And all the motive in the world.”

“What about the attempt on Mrs. Reiss, though?” Cal asked. “I mean, in his wheelchair it might be hard to sneak up and drain that brake fluid.”

The sheriff shuddered. “I’ve seen him in action, lass. I wouldn’t put anything past him.”

The next morning, the telephone jangled Plato from a fitful sleep. Blearily, he rubbed the fog from his eyes and glanced at the clock. Nine thirty. He was late for morning rounds.

“Hello?” His voice was still fuzzy.

“Plato? Sorry to wake you, dear, but it’s time for work anyway.”

“Yes, Cal.”

“I talked Sandy Aaronson into seeing your patients this morning. I have a favor to ask.”

“What now?” Plato groaned, lying back and pulling the pillow over his head. This investigation was getting out of hand.

“Well, you remember our talk about Jan Thorndyke? I think you’re right. She didn’t kill Rufus.”

“Thank you,” he replied warily.

“But you see, Plato, she’s going home this morning.”

“That’s nice.”

There was a pause. “And she doesn’t feel safe. I don’t blame her. Somewhere out there, the person who killed her husband is walking around free. Someone already tried to kill Mrs. Reiss. Jan’s worried that they might come after her.”

“Mmph.”

“Plato? Could you come, please? She asked me to go to the house with her, to be sure it’s okay. I’d like you to come along.”

What could an obstetrician do against a murderer? Wave a pair of forceps at him? Threaten to suture his nose to his lips? But there was no use arguing. “Okay. Let me shower first.”

Before the Thorndyke house, a pale silver Cadillac waited in the swirling morning mist. Jan sighed, put her head in her hand. “Someone you know?” Plato asked.

“My father.”

From the back seat, Cal patted her shoulder. “If you’d like, Plato and I can—”

“No.” She turned to face them. “Please come in with me. I may have given you the wrong impression. Daddy isn’t such an ogre. It’s just that since Mother died, I’m the only family he’s got. He’s terribly lonely.”

Cal glanced at her husband. “Okay. At least we can help you get settled.”

Gage emerged from his car as they mounted the steps and rushed to help with Jan’s bag. “Good to see you again, Plato. And this is—”

“Calista Marley,” Cal answered, shaking his hand. “I’m Plato’s wife. I’m also a pathologist at the hospital.”

“Such an interesting name. And so appropriate.”

Cal blushed.

“In Greek, it means ‘beautiful,’ ” Plato explained, seeing Jan’s confusion.

She smiled and showed them to the study. “This was always my favorite room.”

Heavy oak shelves lined the walls. Two full-length windows looked east across the fog. Red leather chairs squatted in the corner, near an antique globe.

After they were seated, Jan asked, “Would you like some coffee or tea?”

“Nonsense,” Cal admonished, rising to her feet. “You just show me where things are; I’ll get them ready.”

“How is the investigation going?” asked Dr. Gage. He sat back and crossed his legs.

“I don’t really know much about it,” Plato lied. “Of course, you heard that Leonard Reiss was in an accident last night.”

Gage’s face darkened. “No, I hadn’t.”

“Mrs. Reiss is a patient of yours?”

“Yes. Yes, she is.”

Cal returned shortly with a silver tea set. While she was serving, the doorbell rang. A moment later, Martin Callahan appeared in the doorway beside Jan. Dressed in a suit of glossy black silk, he looked as sleek as ever.

“Good morning, everyone. I hope I’m not intruding.”

“Father, this is Martin Callahan,” Jan said. “My father, Nicholas Gage.”

“A pleasure,” Gage muttered, rising and shaking hands. It was clear that he was losing patience with his daughter’s visitors. “Jan, you’re tired. Perhaps we should all—”

“That’s okay, Father. Really.” She addressed the group. “Please stay for a while. I don’t want to be alone just yet.”

“Certainly. I wanted to offer my condolences, er, about Rufus.” For once, Callahan’s voice lacked its customary smoothness.

“Thank you, Martin.” Taking a seat across from her father, Jan grimaced. Sipping her tea, she complained, “Since I got home, my stomach’s been bothering me again.”

“All this activity.” Gage waggled a finger. “You should be in bed. Your system’s had a nasty shock.”

“I’ll be just fine.” Jan smiled, and her blonde hair glowed in the lamplight. She reached into her purse, pulled out a pill bottle. “Remember how Rufus always made me carry these stomach pills around? The ones you prescribed for him? Rufus would hunt through my purse for them whenever he felt sick. I don’t know why I didn’t take one at the party.”

It was like a slow-motion sequence. Before anyone could move, she unscrewed the lid and tipped a capsule into her hand. Cal caught her arm before she could raise it to her mouth.

“Wait!”

Jan looked at her, startled.

“Has Sheriff Cameron checked those pills?”

She shook her head dumbly.

Softly, Cal said, “I think he’d better.”

Like an obedient child, Jan glanced down at the pill in her hand and gave it to Cal. A dam of tears broke and flooded her cheeks.

Gage sat still as a statue. The blood had drained from his face.

“Daddy,” Jan murmured. It sounded like an accusation. Head lowered, her voice caught. “You hated Rufus. You hired a private investigator to follow him. But I didn’t believe you. I still don’t.”

She looked up at him for the first time. “Can’t you see? Sometimes you don’t want to believe. All that, I could forgive you. I could forget. But this—”

Her voice was perfectly calm, level, lifeless. Slowly, she rose from her chair and walked out of the room.

Gage was stunned. Cal sat staring at the pill in her hand. Callahan looked uncomfortable.

Plato walked to the telephone and dialed the sheriff’s office. Ian was out, but the dispatcher would radio his car and send him over.

He hung up. For the first time, all the pieces had fallen into place. Gage’s embarrassment at his son-in-law. The bitter confrontation, that Friday before the party.

It must have seemed ridiculously easy to the gastroenterologist. The symptoms of food poisoning and arsenic were remarkably similar. Perhaps one day, long ago, he had filed that away in his mind.

When his daughter didn’t want to see the truth about her husband, he removed her problem with cold, clinical precision. Like excising a cancer. A simple matter. Wait for the right moment, open her purse, and dust the pills with arsenic. It wouldn’t take much. When Rufus got sick at the party, he’d turn to the medicine Gage had prescribed. Unexpectedly, he’d offered his remedy to Felicia as well.

Gage’s friendship with Mrs. Reiss was a stroke of luck. Contaminating the mayonnaise was pathetically easy. Too bad he’d mixed up the cars, draining Leonard’s brake fluid instead.

But then Plato had a disturbing thought. He turned to his wife, who was examining the pills more closely. “Cal, you won’t find any arsenic on those.”

“Don’t say anything.” Her voice was hard with warning.

He ignored her. “Think about it. Gage had every chance to switch the pills Monday when he visited her. Or during the night, when she was asleep.”

Cal glanced at the old physician. He was motionless, a pale white ghost trapped in ice.

“Plato,” she said quietly, “Dr. Gage didn’t kill Rufus.”

Her husband crossed his arms, lifted his chin belligerently. “No? Then who did?”

Just then, Martin Callahan rose and headed for the door.

“Wait,” Cal cried.

Like a black leopard spotting an antelope, Callahan burst into a run. He was nearly to the hall when Plato stretched his leg across the threshold. The chairman of Mardyke Pharmaceuticals crashed into an ornate china cabinet. Astonishingly, he emerged from the wreckage and took off down the hall before Plato could stop him.

But as he opened the door to freedom, a voice met him. “Hold on a minute, laddie! What’s your hurry?”

A raincoated dwarf blocked the doorway. Surprised, Callahan paused for a moment, then tried to push past him. But the sheriff packed quite a bit of inertia. Before Plato could blink, a chubby paw flipped into the mackintosh and reappeared with a .38 caliber police special.

“Now, let’s all head back inside and have a little chat, shall we?”

Back in the study, Cal held a handful of capsules. On one side they were stamped with the letters “ginrt.” On the reverse they bore an interlocking M and D.

“Ginger root,” Cal said. She cracked one open. “Heavily laced with arsenic.”

The sheriff nodded his head at Callahan. “Maybe you’d better have a seat.”

Gage finally spoke. It took him a while to get his voicebox lubricated again. “She thought... she thought that I—”

He went after his daughter.

Callahan sat sullenly, scowling at the carpet.

“By the way, Cal,” Ian remarked, “Reiss woke up this morning. He’s still pretty foggy, but he said he was investigating some new street drug called sleeper. He’d met with Rufus about it last week.”

“Sleeper,” Cal whispered.

“Indeed,” the sheriff answered, but Plato waved him to silence.

He watched his wife’s face. She was sitting back in her chair, frowning, eyes closed. Her nose crinkled subtly like a rabbit sniffing alfalfa. It was her pose of intense concentration. The poisoned capsules still rested in her hand.

To Plato, it didn’t make any sense. Why would Callahan want to kill Rufus? What did sleeper have to do with it?

“Hypnocose.” Cal opened her eyes, gazed at Callahan. “One and the same. Oh, maybe there were a few of your special modifications so the drug couldn’t be traced. Synthetic narcotic plus an anti-anxiety drug. Both highly addictive.”

Ian pulled out his Miranda card and read it to the prisoner.

“Reiss was investigating sleeper,” Cal noted. “He probably suspected that Mardyke was the source.”

She turned to Plato. “Remember the DEA agent at the party? He thought sleeper was coming up from Mexico. Just the reverse. Callahan was probably sending it down there. He had connections in San Diego. Rufus probably wanted to talk to the DEA before Reiss blew the story.”

“Thorndyke would have asked his partner about it first,” Plato noted.

“Oh, yes,” Cal agreed bitterly. “After all, he was such a trusting person. Callahan probably reassured him, then moved to get rid of him. Easy enough for him, since Rufus’s addiction to health foods was their ‘little secret.’ ”

“I don’t have to listen to this,” Callahan exclaimed. When he rose from the chair again, Ian produced a pair of handcuffs.

“I don’t have to use these, Martin. But if you make me, I will.”

Callahan sat down again.

“There was no breakthrough at the plant, was there?” Cal asked rhetorically. “The celebration at your house was just an excuse. While Rufus and Jan were swimming, you switched the pills in her purse. I’m sure Rufus had told you how he hid the ginger root in Gage’s bottle. Another ‘little secret’ you shared. When he got sick the next day, he took one. And probably offered one to Felicia as well.

“Unfortunately for you, your plane was delayed. You probably planned to switch the pills back again during the confusion at the party. But you couldn’t.”

“Hold on, lassie.” Ian turned to Callahan, began searching his pockets. He pulled out a small plastic bag. Inside were several capsules identical in appearance to those Cal held. “Is this why you came today? And why you were leaving in such a hurry?”

Callahan ignored him. Like a patient martyr, he looked up at the ceiling, then out the window at the mist clearing in the valley.

“There’s only one thing I can’t figure out,” Cal concluded. “Martin Callahan wasn’t at the party. How did he contaminate the food?”

“I can answer that.” Jan Thorndyke’s voice was clear and confident. She stood just inside the room.

Gage was beside her, an arm over her shoulder.

“Salad spray?” Plato cried. “Never heard of it. Who’d want hair-spray on their salad, anyway?”

“Not hairspray,” Cal corrected him. “Salad freshener. All the good restaurants use it these days. Keeps the lettuce from wilting.”

“I still don’t get it.” Plato rummaged through the freezer. It had been another long day. But Callahan was safely in the county hotel, so it looked as if Plato was done with the case. “We need a vacation. Maybe a cruise. There’s good food on cruise ships, isn’t there?”

“Yeah. But you’d be too seasick to eat.” Cal sat before the portable electronic typewriter on the kitchen table. One finger at a time, she plinked out the final draft of her coroner’s report.

“Mmmph.” Her husband made a fist and hammered at the ice inside the freezer. With a satisfied grunt, he wrestled a plastic bag free. Inside, barely discernible through a coating of frost, were breaded chicken fillets. “Explain it to me again.”

“Well, the day before the party, when Jan and Rufus went over to Callahan’s, he’d made a salad.” Plink, plonk. “He’s quite a gourmet, you know. Anyway, he was raving about this salad freshener, and how it keeps the lettuce from wilting. Jan was interested, since their party was the next day. He gave her his bottle. Jan agreed that it might offend Mrs. Reiss, so she added it herself. Of course, it was full of live staph.”

“So why didn’t they get sick on Saturday?” Plato dumped the bag’s contents into a bowl and placed it inside the microwave. “For that matter, why didn’t I get sick? I had salad Sunday.”

“Yes, but staph needs something to grow on. Crab Louis is a sauce over a base of lettuce.” Plink-beep. “It grew in the mayonnaise of the crab Louis, but not in the ordinary salad.”

He opened the microwave, turned the bowl, then closed it again. “So how did Callahan know what crab Louis contained? And how could he be sure they were serving it?”

“Silly,” she chided him. “He’s a gourmand. And in case you haven’t noticed, that dish is Mrs. Reiss’s specialty. She’s made it for the hospital appreciation dinner for years now.”

“No. I hadn’t noticed,” Plato pouted. “If you’ll recall, I didn’t have any. I just had salad.”

“Uh-huh.” Cal stretched her arm, patted her husband’s ample waistline. “Salad and prime rib — don’t act so shocked. It’s my job to notice things.”

“Well, fine, Sherlock. Just fine.” Plato couldn’t think of a better rejoinder until he recalled his own bit of deductive genius. “Going back over the case today, I figured something out. About Felicia.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, she must have realized that she and Rufus were the sickest. And she must have wondered about it.” Plato gave a satisfied smile. “See, she wasn’t saying ‘Jan’ at all when she died. She was saying ‘ginger.’ ”

“Good work,” Cal praised. “Well, aren’t you going to put that in your report?”

She hesitated, then pointed at one of the sheets. “It already is in. On page four.”

“Oh.”

“Cheer up, honey. At least you’re a better cook than I am.”

She was right. The chicken smelled wonderful. Plato pulled the bowl from the oven again. Inside, the breaded fillets floated in a bath of melted frost.

“Chicken soup,” he announced.

“Really? I’m famished!” She tore the last sheet from her typewriter, peered at the concoction. The breading had separated from most of the pieces, leaving a crusty scum on the surface of the water.

She squeezed his shoulder gently.

“We haven’t saved enough money for a vacation yet.” Cal smiled at her husband. “But I think we can afford a new microwave.”

Mama never liked me very much. Mostly, I suppose, because with my birth she became a mother, and she certainly didn’t care much about being a mother. Anyway, she never tried it again. Then, when I had the nerve to grow up and have a couple of kids of my own, making her a grandmother, she liked me even less.

Mama, you see, always thought of herself as a winsomely young and frolicsome lass, which Papa, who was almost twenty years older, enthusiastically fostered by calling her “Little Bit” and never allowing a whit of sadness or responsibility to come her way until he died this spring, and he certainly couldn’t help that.

“Oh, hell,” moaned Jeff when we got the news. “She’ll probably have to come here and live with us.”

I was too busy packing a bag and telling the kids, Steve, fourteen, and Carolyn, twelve, to take care of their father and Jeff to take care of the kids to think about the dire probability until I was out on the freeway. Then I thought about it during every one of those three hundred and fifty miles, all through the funeral, and afterward.

When I suggested the new living arrangement to Mama, she stood there, her pointy toes and very high heels solidly dug into her Persian rug in her plush living room, surrounded by her majolica and porcelains, and said in her little-girl treble that she would do very well right where she was, and I realized that now I’d have to worry about her long distance instead of close up.

“But, Mama, not all alone,” I cried.

She could get along great, Mama said, standing there in all her five foot, ninety-eight pounds of bleached blonde black-veiled glory, ticking off on her gloved fingers her pillars of strength: Mr. Merrick to send her monthly check, Joe Gomez to mow her lawn, and Mrs. Herter to flick a dustcloth over the house twice a week. She didn’t even want any help in selling the car, a venerable Cadillac she couldn’t drive; as a matter of fact, she didn’t think she’d sell it at all.

“Why not?” I screamed faintly, and she informed me, with great dignity, that she just might learn to drive it, so I screamed again.

“Now why don’t you run along, Margaret,” she directed me. “Run along to your husband and children...” This right after the funeral! I had spent only two nights and a day and a half at the side of my bereaved mother in mourning for my deceased father! What could I do? I ran along.

Before I ran very far, though, I stopped at the office of Mr. Merrick, who said with a banker’s smile that Mama was in fine shape financially, which was all that mattered to him. It was the same with Mrs. Herter, who considered any widow with a roof over her head a lucky widow indeed, and Joe Gomez promised to mow and fertilize weekly.

Even Jeff, when I arrived home shattered, wondered what all the flak was about. “Sounds to me as if the old girl is taking it very well,” he said in his ad man’s hearty we’ll run her up the flagpole and see if she flies voice.

So I, feeling this genetic responsibility for a wisp of sixty-one-year-old girlhood who still wore pointy stilt-heeled pumps and pointy padded bras, was the only one concerned. “She’s always had someone to take care of her,” I worried.

“It’s time, then, she took care of herself,” said Jeff.

“But she doesn’t know how,” I agonized.

Jeff laughed as he said, “She knows how to get what she wants.”

It turned out, I guess, that we were both right.

Since Mama was the I-won’t-call-you, you-call-me type, I called every week, and our shortwinded telephone conversations went about like this:

Me: “How are you, Mama?”

Mama: “Just fine, dear,” in her tinkling voice.

Me: “Is Mrs. Herter doing her job?”

Mama: “Yes, dear.”

Me: “Is Joe Gomez mowing the lawn?”

Mama: “Yes, dear,” succinct and uninformative until a couple of months after Papa’s death when she let drop a surprising bit of news: “I am learning to drive the car.”

“Mama!” I screamed. “Who is teaching you?”

“Why, a young man from the driving school,” she said.

I told Jeff, “She’s too old to learn to drive,” and he said he’d heard of women older than she who learned to drive, and I said I thought I ought to go down there and see what was going on, and he told me not to be a fool, that Mama was doing her thing and she not only wouldn’t like interference, she wouldn’t stand for it.

I figured he was right, knowing Mama, and knowing how she didn’t like me much anyway.

Our telephone exchanges became a bit more lively with the driving lessons, which she took daily. “How are you getting along?” I asked. “Oh, fine,” she said, and after a couple of months of this, I asked her if she wasn’t about ready to take her driver’s test.

Mama (airily): “There’s plenty of time for that. As long as I have someone to drive me around...”

“What did I tell you?” said Jeff triumphantly. “Your mother knows how to get what she wants, so she signed up for driving lessons and got herself a daily chauffeur.”

Actually, I was somewhat relieved that Mama was putting off the day she would drive alone, and my conversational questions regressed to: “Is Mrs. Herter doing her job?” and “Is Joe Gomez mowing the lawn?” both of which received the submissive if laconic replies of “Yes” for another month or so when Mama unaccountably answered, “I let them go, dear, the two of them.”

“Mama,” I screamed, “why?”

“Because I wanted to, Margaret,” she said.

When Mama changed her impersonal “dear” to the highly personal use of my given name, it meant she wanted me to shut my mouth because what I was using it for was none of my business. “Don’t you have anybody to clean the house and mow the lawn?” I screamed, and she said, with great dignity, “Yes, Margaret, I have.” Period.

“Maybe I’d better go on down there,” I told Jeff.

“What for?” he asked.

“Oh, to look over the cleaning woman and see who she’s got for a yard man.”

“For Pete’s sake,” he said, “let her live her own life.”

I mentioned casually to Mama, the next time I called, “I thought I might come down to see you,” and she said, “Why?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said, “just for a little visit.”

“I might be gone,” she said.

“Gone? Where?” I screamed.

Then she came back with a couple of non sequiturs and three or four feminine obliquities that indicated, mostly, an antipathy for guests and questions — me in particular, and mine.

“If you go anywhere,” I said, “on a trip or something, you’ll let me know, won’t you?”

“Of course, dear,” she answered.

I didn’t believe her. “She doesn’t want me,” I told Jeff.

“Has she ever?”

“She said something about traveling.”

“She’s got a right,” and the following week when I phoned and Mama did not answer, Jeff said, “Well, okay, maybe she’s off on one of those trips she was talking about.”

“She promised to tell me about it first.”

“You didn’t believe her, did you?”

“No,” I said. I also didn’t believe she’d take off on a trip without Papa to hold her hand and make all the arrangements and call her “Little Bit.” Not Mama without Papa.

“Why not?” said Jeff. “She fired the housekeeper and gardener without your father. She took driving lessons and grabbed herself a chauffeur without him...”

I felt a chill step down my spine.

I called again late that night and in the morning, and then I packed and was on my way.

“Aren’t you kind of jumping the gun?” asked Jeff. “Look, if you’re worried, phone one of the neighbors...” (One of the neighbors, hah!)

Mama’s house, pseudo-Spanish, built during that fancy time when they put a fat little towerlike appendage on one corner that always reminded me of an obscene tumor, perches on a hillside between tall, vine-covered walls. The lot extends from one street to the other, with neighbors on each side and above, but Mama never knew a single one of them, and that was one thing that worried me. She could fall flat on her stilt heels and die among her souvenirs without a soul to know.

In the New England village of Blue Hill, Maine, townspeople gather at the post office each morning to dispense and receive local news. It was here, on a Monday, that Professor Findlay Hamilton learned of the first puzzling incident.

“Did you hear about the strange lights at Lilac Cottage, professor?” Chief Merrill, the town’s only policeman, asked. Seeing Findlay’s bemused expression, he went on, “Yep. Friday evening, just after sundown. The lights started goin’ on ’n’ off, first in one room, then in another. Lots of people saw ’em. Funniest part is that John Hinkley, the retired navy feller, says some of it was in Morse code.”

Curious, Findlay suggested they retire next door to the Comer Cafe for a cup of coffee.

“Somebody’s idea of a joke, I guess,” Merrill continued, peering into the pastry case, “but not everyone’s laughin’. Some are sayin’ it’s Mary Waltham’s ghost come back to find her husband. You see, accordin’ to Hinkley, the code said, ‘Charles, where are you?’ ”

Findlay ordered a plain doughnut and coffee. “Chief, you’d better start at the beginning. I don’t even know where Lilac Cottage is.”

“It’s that big shingled place on High Street that’s almost swallowed up by lilac bushes. Been empty ever since Charles Waltham died eight years ago. His wife Mary disappeared one Friday night two years before that, and was never seen again. There was no sign of violence; no blood or nothin’. She was just gone. I wasn’t here then, but I looked up the police reports. It was real strange. I mean, at seventy-eight it’s not like she’d run off with someone. Anyway, after he died a niece in Florida, Edna Waltham, inherited the place and, bein’ sentimental, left it just as it was in case her aunt came back. Guess she finally gave up hope, though, ’cause about five years ago she had the power and phone shut off and quit takin’ care of the place.”

He paused for a bite of croissant. “I called her this mornin’, but no answer. I don’t guess there’s any harm in those lights, but I’d like to get hold of a key anyway.”

“Sounds like she turned the power back on,” Findlay observed. “Perhaps she plans to fix the place up and sell it.”

“The power company says not. That’s one of the interestin’ things. I went over there to have a look. The red tag’s still on the meter, and the dust and cobwebs look real undisturbed. What do you think of that?”

“I think the town is going to have a field day talking about this,” was Findlay’s only comment.

It did. Most residents found it pleasantly titillating, but some of the less sophisticated were openly nervous. On Tuesday, a deputation from this group called upon Chief Merrill to demand action. Although Merrill listened sympathetically, and assured them he was on top of things, he privately felt the matter could safely ride for another week. As far as he could see, there was no danger to persons or property; Lilac Cottage had remained dark since Friday and might very well stay that way. He did continue his efforts to contact the owner of Lilac Cottage, and finally learned that Edna Waltham was on a Caribbean cruise and wasn’t due home for ten days.

The following Friday evening Findlay went with the chief to see if the phenomenon would be repeated. A crowd of about two hundred people from Blue Hill and surrounding towns assembled in a vacant lot across from Lilac Cottage, alternately expectant and sheepish.

They didn’t have to wait long. The evening gloom had barely settled in when the dining room chandelier burst into a hundred lights. Expectant or not, everyone jumped, then broke into satisfied exclamations of fright. Just before the dining room went dark, a green lamp in an upstairs window began to flash on and off. Tonight several Morse code readers were present, and their voices could be heard in the darkness spelling out the words. The message was the same as before, “Charles, where are you?” For thirty minutes rooms lit up, and the green lamp repeated its code several times. Just as a few were becoming restive, screams erupted from the vicinity of the house. Real fear gripped some until two nearly hysterical youngsters, who had ventured to the windows for a better look, pounded into view. Gasping, they reported bodies floating in the living room. Several men started across to investigate but turned back when the house went suddenly dark. The crowd, subdued now, milled about for a while and finally dispersed.

Findlay and the chief were thoughtful as they walked down the hill. “I don’t believe in spirits,” Findlay declared, “especially ones that use Morse code, but that was pretty impressive for a house without electricity. Someone’s playing an elaborate joke; the question is, why?”

Merrill’s voice held a new note of determination. “That’s what I’d better find out. Last week folks were after me to explain it. Think what this week’s gonna be like.”

“There is an explanation,” Findlay said. He was, after all, an engineering professor. “I’ll put my mind to it. In the meantime, since you can’t get a key, you might consider getting a search warrant.”

Lilac Cottage, imprisoned by its namesake shrubbery, was one of three houses at the top of High Street. The next morning, looking up at its gabled roof, sagging shutters, and cobweb-draped windows, Findlay had to admit it was perfect for a haunting. Smears on the glass showed where the children had been, so he thrust himself through the stiff branches to the window, grateful he had no wife to complain about what he was doing to his clothes, and looked inside. Merrill was right. The dust of years lay heavy in the room. The floor was covered with it, thick and undisturbed. If there had been bodies in the room last night, they had indeed floated.

Perplexed, he searched the grounds for the alternate electrical source he was certain must be there. He was on the west side of the house, peering under a large rhododendron, when he heard a stealthy movement nearby. Whoever or whatever it was crept steadily toward him until he could hear its labored breathing. Then it stopped. Findlay figured his own breathing was equally loud, for he was having trouble getting enough oxygen. Nothing further happened for at least a minute until finally he couldn’t stand it any longer. Estimating the breather was less than two feet away, he collected himself, took aim on the sound, and swiftly parted two thick branches. A man stared out at him, his pale face almost obscured by a bushy black beard and unkempt hair.

“Who are you?” Findlay croaked.

“Who are you?” the man retorted.

Findlay could see the fellow wasn’t one to seize the initiative, so he introduced himself. “I’m Professor Hamilton,” he said, in a steadier voice. “The police chief asked me to look things over.”

“Oh. Uh...” the man stammered, not meeting Findlay’s eyes. “I’m George Stevens. I work for Mr. Daley next door.” He motioned behind him. “I heard you moving around and came to see what was going on.”

Findlay’s heartbeat resumed a more normal rhythm, but he felt foolish. For a man who didn’t believe in ghosts, he’d wasted an absurd amount of adrenaline.

When Stevens returned to his work, Findlay decided it was time he talked with the neighbors. The Episcopal vicar, John Witter, who lived on the east side of Lilac Cottage, welcomed him with a cup of well-brewed tea, but on the subject of the ghostly lights he was both disapproving and uncommunicative. He had known the Waltham family, however, and Findlay learned that their only child, a daughter, had been killed in an automobile accident with her husband some years before. A grandson, then about fifteen, had come to live at Lilac Cottage for a short while. The vicar didn’t know what had become of him.

Back in the village Findlay called at Jim Daley’s jewelry store. A sign on the dingy door advised shoppers to watch for the upcoming end-of-summer diamond sale. From the unprosperous appearance of the store, Findlay hoped the sale would be a success. Daley was working at his computer when Findlay entered but seemed willing to stop and talk. He laughed when Findlay described his meeting with Stevens, and commented that, despite his wild appearance, the man was a good worker. A graduate student at a small West Virginia college, Stevens had shown up on Daley’s doorstep in June looking for work in exchange for room and board. He was living in Daley’s attic, working on some new computer programs for his degree. This led to a discussion of computers which, although way over Findlay’s head, did start him on a new train of thought. When he left the store, he hurried home to place a call.

I wasted part of the morning trying to solve a logic puzzle. According to the problem, seven guys using seven brooms can sweep up seven tons of sand in seven hours. I was supposed to figure out how long it would take ten guys using ten brooms to sweep up ten tons of sand.

Right away I rejected the obvious. They wouldn’t have bothered to put the thing in the paper if the answer was ten hours. After kicking it around for awhile I lost interest, just like I used to lose interest in the sixth grade when trying, unsuccessfully, to solve problems involving Airplane A and Airplane B.

I tossed the paper aside just as the door opened, admitting a tall gangly number wearing a suit that had gone out of style with the big bands. He looked to be in his sixties, and from the scowl I figured he wasn’t selling insurance.

“I’m lookin’ for a Stubblefield.”

“Congratulations. You just found one.” He looked me over pretty closely for a minute, then lumbered over to the other chair.

“Name’s Luther Kessler.”

“What can I do for you, Mr. Kessler?”

He stared at me as if I were simple. “Why, you can get the animals that killed Earl.”

“Who’s Earl?”

“My brother. They killed him.”

“Who did?”

“Now how would I know that? If I knew who killed him, do you suppose I’d be settin’ here and jawin’ with you?” He slapped the desk with a calloused palm. “They killed him. Blew him up on his doorstep.”

I remembered then. It had been in the news a few weeks earlier. Earl Kessler had been bookkeeper for a local trucking outfit. He’d taken a vacation in Maine, rented a cabin on a lake, and the next morning had picked up a package that was left on the porch. The ensuing explosion had flattened the cabin and killed Kessler.

I said, “The police are working on it.” Kessler nodded vigorously.

“I know they are. But there’s nothing wrong with bringing in a freelance. Reckon a man like yourself might be able to find out things the police can’t.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Cops don’t appreciate having people blown up in their jurisdiction. They’ll be motivated.”

“Well, I’m damn well motivated myself. I come all the way up here because I want some justice done. And not next year, or the next life neither. Never did have any truck with that karma nonsense. I figure if there’s any justice in this world you got to see to it yourself. Now, you interested or not?”

I was. It had seemed odd at the time that an anonymous bookkeeper from Cape Cod, an older man of modest means at that, should be the object of such an attack. It still seemed odd.

“Your brother have any enemies?”

“None I know of.”

“Had he made any changes in his life recently, or done anything unusual?”

“I don’t believe he had, but then I didn’t see Earl much. I’ve been fanning out to Illinois since ’53, sort of lost touch.” He shot me a look. “You ever work on a farm?” I said I hadn’t. Kessler snorted.

“Figured not.”

I let it go. Kessler struck me as the kind of guy who believed nothing of value had transpired in America since 1945. Hell, he could be right, but I didn’t want to get into it.

“All right, Mr. Kessler.” I slid a pad and small pencil across the desk. “Write down where I can reach you.”

He paused in his scribbling. “Another thing. Maybe you’ve noticed what a mess the courts are in these days, all them killers and drug fiends walking away free on account of the liberals all the time hollering about their ‘rights.’ ” He jabbed the pencil at me. “You find the people blew Earl up, don’t waste the taxpayers’ time and money, if you know what I mean.”

I assured him that I understood, took his retainer, and saw him on his way.

The drive, almost obscured by flanking bridal wreath, lilacs, and forsythia, followed one boundary line of the property to a stone building that had once been a barn. Between that and the house was a boxwood hedge pruned to a height of six feet.

The house was built in the early 1830’s. It was a small, two story cottage of red brick with a slate roof and huge central chimney. Weathered green shutters framed the windows and recessed front door. Beyond the swell of pin oaks and pines sheltering the site lay Sugar Loaf Mountain. And beyond that, a hazy suggestion of the Catoctin range.

From the moment they first saw the house, Phyllis had a watchful feeling about it. As if she expected some major obstacle to prevent their buying it. But the price was incredibly within their means; Ben had no objection to driving thirty-five miles in to Washington; and the county school Kate would attend had a fine reputation.

One night shortly after they’d moved in, Phyllis and Ben were sitting on the steps of the back porch, watching Kate gather grass for a jarful of lightning bugs, her bangs damp with concentration. The sun had almost gone down, and there was a faint mist rising from the creek that crossed the back of their land. The air seemed to be layered with both warmth and coolness, pungent with sweet grass and pennyroyal.

“I’d feel a lot easier in my mind,” Phyllis said to Ben, “if we’d discover even one thing wrong about all this. People like us just don’t find one-hundred-twenty-five-year-old homes in perfect condition for twenty-three thousand.”

Ben folded the sports page and leaned back against her knees. “It’s pretty far out here, and most families wouldn’t consider a two bedroom house.” Then he added dryly, “Besides, I’ve never liked the way old houses smell. I noticed it about this one, too, right off.”

“I’ve told you a hundred times, it’s the boxwood. That’s what the smell is, not the house, darling. Anyway, you’ll have to get used to it. I have absolutely no intention of getting rid of that hedge. Mrs. Gastell said it’s as old as the house.”

Ben grinned as he turned and looked up at her. “Then would you at least trust me to spray it? There are spiderwebs all over the stuff.”

“You’d better check with that nurseryman first, just to be sure. What’s his name...” Phyllis pulled a letter from the pocket of her jamaicas and glanced through it. “Newton. He’s just this side of the bridge in Gaithersburg.”

“Who’s the letter from? The old lady?” Phyllis nodded. “What’d she have to say?”

“Oh, nothing much. Just that she’s getting settled, and she thinks she’ll like Florida. Every other word is about her granddaughter. I guess the real reason she wrote was to remind us to put in a new furnace filter this fall. A few other things like that.” Phyllis frowned. “There’s a part here at the end I couldn’t quite figure out.”

She handed Ben the letter.

He scanned the page and then handed it back. “What’s so mysterious about this? All old people take a proprietary air about everybody else’s kid. Personally, I don’t know why she’s so worried about the creek. It’s not more than a foot deep. There’s no danger of Kate’s getting drowned. And I haven’t seen any snakes down there — not up to now, I haven’t.”

“Well, it’s not only what she said in the letter. It’s the way she’s acted about Kate since she saw her. Almost as if she wouldn’t have sold the house to us if she’d known we had a child. But I’m sure I mentioned Kate to her the first time we came out with the agent.”

Ben lit a cigarette. “Maybe she thought Katie would tear up the place.”

“No, it wasn’t that. In fact, several times I told her how we’ve taken Kate to all kinds of museums and historic homes, and how she’s always been careful with valuable old things. But Mrs. Gastell hardly paid any attention at all to me. She kept saying Katie shouldn’t be allowed to wander all over the place by herself.”

Ben shrugged. “Mrs. Gastell’s seventy years old. People her age think we give our kids too much freedom. That’s all she meant.”

Their daughter had abandoned the lightning bugs and was now making hollyhock dolls, lining them chorus-fashion across the brick path to the grape arbor. Her shorts were grass-stained and the soles of her bare feet were already seasoned a greenish-rust. Ben reflected on her a moment and then he said, “I guess it will be hard on Katie, being alone so much now. It might be a good idea to get acquainted pretty soon with the people around here.”

Phyllis leaned her elbows on his shoulders. “That’s the trouble. Nobody on this road has children her age. But it’s only six weeks until school starts. And in the meantime, there’s plenty around here to keep her occupied. The two of us can start all kinds of projects. I can’t describe what a wonderful feeling it is, not to have people running in for coffee all day long or the phone ringing every ten minutes. Everybody knows this is a toll call, thank goodness. Maybe now I can start on the book.”

Ben stood up abruptly. “No, you don’t. Not after what you went through with that last story. Remember, you promised me you wouldn’t do a thing for the rest of the summer.”

She took his hand. “I didn’t mean anytime soon. I only meant now that we’ve moved. I promise not to write a word until we’re all settled and Kate’s in school.” She called to the child, “I’m going to start your bath now, so don’t be long.”

“In a minute,” Kate said automatically. “Daddy, come here. I made seven pink ones with white hats, and seven white ones with pink hats, and...”

Phyllis smiled and went into the kitchen. She turned on the brass lamp over the round pine table. The planked floor gleamed with a fresh coat of wax. It was a low ceilinged room, full of early morning sunshine and pine-shaded in the afternoon. Women years before her had stood at her window and cleaned berries, kneaded bread, stamped butter with a thistle-patterned mold. Perhaps the room had given them moments of completeness, as it gave her now when she poured milk into a brown earthenware pitcher and set it beside a bowl of tawny nasturtiums.

Then, as she was slightly bent over the table, one hand on the pitcher, Phyllis had the sensation that this room, the whole house, had an inexplicable fullness. That the very atmosphere had absorbed a century and a half of other lives. It reminded her of an incredible camera she had once read about — one that recorded, through heat radiations, images from the past, that were of course invisible to the naked eye. There was something about this house that seemed to retain, at times even emanate, certain... presences. And it was not a feeling that came from any conscious attempt to visualize previous occupants. Somehow this thought disturbed her.

She let go of the pitcher and went into the bathroom. The sound of water rushing from the faucet partially distracted her from whatever had bothered her and she dumped half a jar of bubble soap into the tub. Kate would love her extravagance.

Clay Felton, twenty, American student tourist, clad in leather sandals, khaki shorts, and a dusty, sweat-stained brown sport shirt, walked the narrow Oude Zijds Voorburgwal of Amsterdam in discouragement. He had hoped to find in the Zeedjik district a cheap pension for the night, but the tourist season was in full swing in Amsterdam, and anything he could afford — certainly no more than eight guilders, about two dollars and a quarter — was filled. For nearly three months, Clay had knocked around Europe on a very inadequate budget, traveling in third class coaches, cycling, staying in youth hostels, sometimes sleeping in the haystack of an agreeable farmer. Still, his money had not stretched quite far enough. He had less than ten dollars in his pocket, with three and a half days before his ship, Groot Vreeling, the last student ship of the season, sailed from Amsterdam for New York. Yet it had been a good trip. Next year it was graduation from college, and then probably the army for him. Clay was glad he had been able to spend a summer in Europe on what he had been able to scrape together.

Clay philosophically shrugged. Something would turn up. It always had. He was hungry, for he had not eaten since lunch, and then only coffee and two broodies, the small, open-faced sandwiches that are offered everywhere in Dutch cafes and food shops. He had decided to skip eating an evening meal to save money. By the most stringent economy, he would barely be able to hold out until his boat sailed for America.

Clay turned off the Oude Zijds Voorburgwal onto a dimly lighted side street. The narrow thoroughfare was dank with the dampness that comes late at night from Amsterdam’s canals, and evil-smelling. Prices ought to be cheaper here. Perhaps he could find an upstairs place where he could afford to get a room for the evening. Otherwise, it would be sitting up all night in the railroad station for him. His luggage was checked at the railway station so he could search for a room unencumbered. Clay shrugged his broad shoulders and ran a hand through pale blond hair. In spite of his natural optimism, he was discouraged. The prospect of spending a night in any of the dives he had seen, even though he had been turned down because they were full, was not something to anticipate. Anything he might find would be worse.

Clay paused by the darkened door of a cheap rooming house. Abruptly, a hand suddenly grabbed his arm and pulled him inside. His first reaction was that he was being robbed, and he struggled free. Then he saw that the hand that had grabbed him belonged to a woman, a woman of the Zeedjik, dressed in a flimsy red kimono.

The woman hissed to him in English, “Do you want someone to see you? Come in. The police could be just around the corner.”

If Clay had been thinking clearly he would have resisted, but he was startled, and his native Tennessee courtesy did not permit him to strike a woman. Before he quite realized what was happening, she had pulled him inside but paid no attention to him until she had locked the door. The window shade was drawn.

Then her manner abruptly changed. She turned to inspect him critically. “Your disguise is good, Eric. Very good. You do look like a down-at-the-heels American student traveler.”

Clay fought back the involuntary smile that tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Well, I do my best to look authentic,” he said.

“You have done well. Klaas will be pleased. I shall tell him how good your disguise is. Wait, I will bring your package and your money.” Then the woman in the red kimono vanished into another room.

Dazed, Clay sat down on the edge of the bed. Slowly, his mind began to work. It occurred to him that he had accidentally blundered into a dangerous situation. It was obviously a case of mistaken identity, and the terror at being observed by the police puzzled him. The police do not bother the women of the Zeedjik — or their customers. No, this must be something much more than that. Clay was sorely tempted to get out but, before he could escape, the woman returned.

Involuntarily, Clay found his eyes drawn to the young woman’s face and body. She appeared to be about twenty-five, with a hard look, but different. She belonged to the underworld, but she was almost stunningly beautiful. Her air, the way she walked, spelled money, big money. She was redhaired, with finely-etched nose and chin, an elegant mouth, and unblemished skin. Clay found himself staring at her, open-mouthed.

The woman read his thoughts and flushed slightly. Unconsciously, she drew the folds of the wispy red kimono more tightly around her.

“It was too dangerous to give you the delivery at the hotel,” she said simply. “The hotel is being watched. I had to pretend to be a woman of the Zeedjik for this one night.”

Clay Felton nodded. “Good idea.”

“Here’s your money. Count it, please, so there will be no question of a mistake. The rest you will receive when the delivery is made in America.” She handed him a thick packet of Dutch currency.

Since she expected him to count the money, he did so. It amounted to five thousand Dutch guilders — about fourteen hundred dollars, American.

“Here’s what you are to deliver. Just put it in your baggage, but be very careful with it, please.”

To Clay’s astonishment, she handed him a pair of souvenir Dutch wooden shoes. He turned them toward the light. The wooden shoes were varnished, with decals of garlands of brightly-colored tulips, and a Dutch boy and girl holding hands. In English, each shoe carried the legend Amsterdam, Venice of the North. Both wooden shoes were filled with Dutch chocolates wrapped in gold foil. The shoes were tied together and covered with cellophane. Similar chocolate-filled wooden shoes were on sale at every souvenir shop in Amsterdam for about two dollars a pair. Clay wondered what this special pair contained — heroin or diamonds?

“Clever. Shouldn’t attract any attention at Customs.”

“They won’t. There is no risk for you.”

I’ll bet, Clay thought, but he said nothing.

“You’d better leave quickly. I’ll show you out the back way.”

Clay gazed speculatively at the scantily-clad woman. She was very attractive.

“Hurry!” she urged him. “Every minute you are here, there is danger. You could be killed.”

Clay did not reply. He thrust a hand into the pocket of his khaki shorts, drew out a package of cigarettes, and offered her one, which was nervously refused. Then he lit a cigarette for himself. He gazed at her speculatively.

“Pity. Such an exotic place, such a beautiful woman. One should take advantage of life’s opportunities, don’t you think?”

The attractive, redhaired woman flushed and drew the red kimono tighter around herself. However, to Clay, she did not seem especially displeased. It had been his experience that women are more apt to be displeased with the man who does not make a pass at them then with the one who does.

“Don’t be a fool, Eric. Your boat leaves in two hours.”

“I’ll make the boat in plenty of time.” He wondered which boat it was that left in two hours. He seized her by the waist.

“No! Please don’t! Klaas would kill you — and me — if he dreamed you laid a finger on me.” The girl’s eyes were blue and very wide open. She spoke with genuine terror, her voice rising to a squeal.

Clay wondered who Klaas was, but he smiled knowingly. “You can’t very well put up much of a fuss then, can you? And then there’s the police. You wouldn’t want to attract their attention, would you?”

Without waiting for her to answer, Clay drew her toward him, but she turned away. Perhaps she feared that every moment was dangerous and only wanted to get rid of him as quickly as possible. On the other hand, it might have been masculine vanity but he felt that she did not object nearly as much as she pretended. Her blue eyes were shining, and Clay imagined she was not at all displeased to think herself femininely irresistible. Nevertheless, she led him up a crumbling back stairway and let him out into the black, deserted street.

Clay turned toward the railroad station, but had gone only three blocks when he came upon a crowd of people clustered about the Zeedjik Canal. Searchlights from police boats stabbed fingers of white light through the black night. They were dragging the canal for something. Lost in the crowd, he waited. A few minutes later, the grappling hooks pulled the body of a man to the surface. Heavy weights were tied to a metal chain looped about the bare knees. Foul, oozing mud covered the face and eyes. A gasp of horror swept the crowd. The corpse’s throat had been hideously slashed so that the head was barely attached. Clay Felton noticed something else. The corpse had light blond hair, wore khaki shorts, leather sandals, and a sport shirt, and looked like an American college student.

His first impulse was to hide. It might be dangerous even to walk the few blocks to the railroad station. Instinctively, he headed into the darkness toward a bridge. In Europe, the poorest of the poor sleep under bridges — and they are seldom bothered. Running into the darkness, he found a deserted area, and then clambered under the supports of one of the innumerable bridges that dot Amsterdam.

Presently, for he had not eaten and was famished, he tore the cellophane from one of the wooden shoes filled with chocolates. Biting into the candy carefully, he cracked the chocolate off, and a sparkling, gleaming diamond was in his hand. In the two wooden shoes there were twenty-four diamonds.

Clay Felton sat hunched up in the musty dampness under the bridge and did the hardest thinking of his life. The idea of being a thief had never seriously occurred to him before. Now, however, he was in possession of a fortune. The gleaming diamonds, which he carefully placed in his money belt, made him feel like a walking branch of Tiffany’s. If he could get the diamonds safely into the United States, he would be rich. If he could not, he was dead. It was that simple. The murder of the man dragged out of the canal was proof that diamond smuggling was a deadly business. Not only the smuggling ring but also the police would be combing Amsterdam for the murderer.

Clay had no way to prove his innocence. No alibi. He did not know a soul in Amsterdam. No one could vouch for his whereabouts at the probable time of the murder.

What was worse, the smugglers could realize their mistake.

So it all boiled down to a place to hide.

Where could he hide? Hole up in a cheap hotel for three days? No. Cheap hotels would be the first place they would look. Gradually, the outline of a bold plan formed in Clay’s mind. Thinking hard, he went over it and over it and over it again in his mind. Then, bone-weary, he was gradually overcome by sleep. There was nothing he could do until morning anyway, and he needed the rest.

The noises of Amsterdam’s early morning traffic awakened him, but Clay did not venture out from his cranny underneath the bridge until swarms of people were on the street, hurrying to work. Then he felt it safe to melt into the rushing throng. His first step was to take a tram to the railway station. Then he bought a Dutch newspaper, glanced at it, saw that a picture of the murdered man was on the front page. He wanted to read the story but could not make out the language. Anyway, he was in a hurry, with more important things to do.

Clay reclaimed his baggage from the luggage room, went into the men’s room, washed quickly, and ran a comb through his disheveled hair. Then he went into a pay lavatory, took his wrinkled blue suit from the valise, and put it on. Wrapping his faded khaki shorts, sport shirt, and sandals in the Dutch newspaper, he waited until nobody was looking, then dumped the bundle into a trash container. Examining himself in the mirror, he was partially satisfied. Then he rechecked his luggage.

The next step was to find a barber. Explaining that he wanted a shave was easy, but trying to get the idea across to a Dutch barber that he wanted an unfamiliar crew haircut was harder. Somehow he managed. Next, Clay walked down the Damrak until he found an optical shop. The clerk spoke English, so it was not difficult to explain that he had lost his glasses and needed a pair to replace them for reading. No, he was sorry he did not remember the prescription. Clay glanced at some eye charts, and the clerk gave him a weak prescription that magnified objects only slightly. After selecting a dark, horn-rimmed frame for his glasses, Clay looked at himself in the mirror and was satisfied that a dramatic change had been made in his appearance. He paid for the glasses with one of the bills the redhaired girl had given him. There was much change. One thing he did not have to worry about now was money.

The next stop was a famous men’s clothing store on Dam Square where he selected a conservative outfit and emerged from the changing rooms wearing his new apparel. As an afterthought, he bought a hat to cover his light blond hair.

Clay hailed a cab and went next to the V.V.V., Amsterdam’s official tourist organization, where he requested a room at the Grand Hotel Krasnapolsky. His luck was good. The clerk was able to get him a reservation, so Clay went across the street to the railroad station, reclaimed his checked luggage, and was registered in the Krasnapolsky fifteen minutes later.

Next came a hot, soaking bath. Then he called room service and ordered breakfast: ham and eggs, toast, a jar of good Dutch jam, and a pot of black coffee. Stretched luxuriously on a soft, clean bed, Clay decided that if he might die, he was going to live first class while he could. After eating, he fell into an exhausted sleep.

Waking, he ventured into the lobby of the hotel, bought the Paris edition of a New York paper, then went into the dining room and ordered lunch. While waiting for his steak, Clay leafed through the pages of the newspaper. On page four he found what he was looking for:

AMERICAN SLAIN IN AMSTERDAM

The mysterious slaying of a young American, Eric Phelan, 23, has created a sensation in Amsterdam. An anonymous tip yesterday led police to drag an indicated section of the Zeedjik Canal. Phelan’s weighted body, the throat cut, with knife wounds apparently indicating torture before death, was recovered last night.

Rumors, on which the police refuse to comment, connected Phelan with diamond smuggling operations between the Netherlands and the United States. Last week U.S. Customs officials closely questioned Phelan about his activities, but there was no arrest for lack of evidence. Unofficially, Phelan’s death is believed to have been caused by a rival smuggling gang...

Since there are swarms of tourists in Amsterdam at all seasons of the year, Clay decided that his best disguise was to hide out in plain sight — taking on the protective coloration of the sightseeing tourist. He bought a guidebook and systematically pursued the tourist sights of the city: the magnificent Rijksmuseum, with its many Rembrandts, the Stedelijk Museum, which has hundreds of Van Gogh canvases, the Rembrandthuis, the home of Rembrandt, the tropical plant museum. For three days, Clay haunted museums and art galleries, and nobody paid the slightest attention to him.

The Groot Vreeling, upon which Clay Felton was to return to the United States from Amsterdam, has a reputation as a “student ship.” Those who have sailed it describe it as a kind of floating madhouse. It has few comforts. Commercial and well-heeled passengers seldom travel it. Its appeal is economy, the cheapest way to get between Europe and America. Most of its space is booked months in advance. The cabins are packed with seven hundred college students, three or four to a tiny cabin, though a few higher-priced staterooms often go begging. Clay considered getting a stateroom or changing his reservation to fly back, but decided to do nothing that might attract attention to himself, like canceling one reservation and trying to get another.

He checked out of the Grand Hotel Krasnapolsky and arrived at the pier by taxi. An enormous mob of students milled about, but he saw nothing suspicious. For a brief moment he was exultant. He had made it. Then, as he walked down the pier, his heart sank. Far down, the red-haired woman was standing beside the embarkation gangplank. Beside her stood an enormous fat man in a dark suit and two tall, muscular men who had gangster written all over them.

Clay was panicstricken. Had they found out about him? It was logical that they should check the ship, since the Groot Vreeling was the last student ship sailing for the season. The original scheme was to have a smuggler, disguised as a student, take the diamonds across. The diamonds had been given to someone who resembled a student. Perhaps they were checking students to see if any carried a pair of souvenir wooden shoes filled with chocolates.

Clay tipped a porter to have his baggage taken aboard. Then he turned and walked half a block to a souvenir shop.

“Do you speak English here?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have fifty of these?” He pointed to a pair of the wooden shoes filled with chocolates.

“Fifty, sir?” The souvenir man was astonished.

“Yes. I’m doing some public relations work for the New York office of the Groot Vreeling. If I buy fifty of these, can you have someone stand out front and give them away? But only give them to young men students who can show a ticket for this sailing of the Groot Vreeling. A separate gift will be given on board to the young ladies.” Clay pulled out several large bills.

“I’m sure it can be arranged, sir.”

“Very well. Give me a receipt for my office, please.” Clay thought that sounded businesslike. “And remember, say, ‘Compliments of the Groot Vreeling,’ each time you give one away. And give them only to young men students who can show you their tickets.”

“You can depend on it, sir.”

“This is an experiment. If it builds good will for the line, you may get other business in the future.”

Clay paid over three hundred seventy-five Dutch guilders, got his receipt, walked a few steps to an outdoor cafe and ordered coffee, then watched as the fifty sets of chocolate-filled wooden shoes were quickly dispensed.

He chuckled as he thought of the watching four going slightly crazy trying to check all those pairs of souvenir shoes. Then he got in line and calmly walked aboard. The redhaired woman, the fat man, the two mobsters did not give him more than a passing glance. Wearing a hat, bespectacled, well-dressed, he hardly resembled at all the poor student to whom the diamonds had been given.

Clay’s cabin was on C deck, deep in the bowels of the ship. It bore no relation to the luxury in which he had been living. Two other college-age students were already in the cramped space.

“Hi, I’m Tony McKenzie, Toledo, Ohio.” A handsome, dark-haired extrovert grinned at him.

“I’m Clay Felton, Nashville, Tennessee.”

“This is Howard Braden. He’s from Chicago.”

They shook hands all around.

Tony, it quickly developed, was a smooth operator with the girls. He looked Clay over appraisingly, decided he did not have two heads and was socially acceptable.

“How about going up to the bar for a beer?”

“Okay,” Clay agreed.

As they were walking up the passageway to the Main deck, Tony grew confidential. “Clay, I’ve been circulating around. Making contacts.”

“Oh?”

“The best the Groot Vreeling has to offer this trip are a couple of belles from Louisville. I’ve made a date for us to meet them in the bar.” Then he added, “Howard’s okay, but he’s not the type any pretty girl is going to flip over, and we’ve got to move in fast.”

Clay laughed, expecting that he had been made the goat to escort a dog while Tony latched onto the dear, but when he met Janet Neal and Anne Gardner he changed his mind. Janet, a dramatic brunette, and Tony had already begun what was to be a torrid shipboard romance. Anne Gardner was a vivacious honey blonde, and had green eyes. Somewhat to Clay’s surprise, she was also intelligent. Anne seemed embarrassed at falling into the blind date category, but he quickly found himself liking her very much.

Then he glanced up and received a terrifying shock. The redhaired woman from the Zeedjik, her fat, sinister companion, and the two darksuited musclemen were on board as passengers, probably in one of the expensive staterooms which the students couldn’t afford. They walked slowly through the bar, looking people over, glancing from side to side.

The days quickly fell into a pattern, with sunning, swimming, eating, dancing, drinking beer, and at night making whatever amorous arrangements the cramped, crowded quarters of the ship permitted.

Clay permitted Tony and Janet to throw him and Anne together. It would not do to be too much the lone wolf, to behave in any way suspiciously. He took Anne swimming and dancing, played shuffleboard with her, flirted with her, kissed her casually on the moonlit deck, flattered her in an offhand, absentminded way. What he was really thinking about — night and day — was the voluptuous redhead and her companions and, above all, how to stay out of their way.

They were thorough and methodical, those four, circulating, scrutinizing everybody, eliminating the possibilities. The red-haired woman was their bird dog. She had a disconcerting way of moving quietly into circles of people and listening to conversation, straining to recognize a certain voice she had heard in the Zeedjik.

Clay was evasive and managed to stay out of their way, but surreptitiously, he kept following the spectacular figure in tight green stretch pants. His wandering eyes did not escape Anne’s alert notice.

“Who’s the redhead?” Clay arched an eyebrow toward the girl he had unexpectedly met that fateful night in the Zeedjik. Anne knew everybody on board. She made it her business to know. She was that kind of girl.

“She’s French. Her name is Francoise Bourdon. You seem to find her quite fascinating.”

“Who’s the fat guy with her?”

“He’s her uncle,” Tony McKenzie broke in, with a meaningful smirk. “His name is De Jongh, and they say he’s loaded; in the diamond business.”

“Everybody who believes he’s really her uncle go stand in the corner on his pointed head.” Anne was jealous of Clay’s sudden interest in the Frenchwoman. “I suppose she’s pretty — if you like the hard type.”

Clay grinned. “I prefer honey blondes with green eyes myself.” Then he added, “Soft and cuddly.”

“You’re maddening, Clay.”

“Why?”

“You keep saying things like that to me — and then you never do anything about it.”

It took Francoise Bourdon and De Jongh exactly five days, fourteen hours, and thirty-five minutes to find him out. There was a bull session around the postage-stamp-sized swimming pool. Clay was flirting in an absentminded way with Anne Gardner, and they were all talking and laughing. He had not even noticed Francoise, in her sexy scarlet bikini, standing behind him, carefully listening.

Then he turned suddenly and, looking straight into Francoise’s blue eyes, realized at once that she recognized him.

After that, it was just a matter of time before Francoise skillfully maneuvered him alone. He was standing by the railing when she quietly moved beside him. “Hello, Mr. Felton.”

Startled, Clay turned to see the redhaired Francoise smiling pleasantly at him. “Remember me?”

Clay recovered as quickly as he could. “Of course — from the pool.”

The scarlet mouth continued smiling. “And also from the Zeedjik, Mr. Felton. You told me — what were your words? — that I was beautiful. How unflattering to be forgotten so soon.”

Clay was too startled to deny it. Besides, denials were obviously useless.

Francoise was gay and cheery about giving him the bad news. “There is little time to waste in idle conversation, chéri. I remember your voice quite well. I must compliment you. You have — how do you say it? — a bedroom voice.”

“What happens next, Francoise?”

“Ah, you have taken the trouble to learn my name! How gallant.”

“I remember you very well, of course.”

Clay saw a flicker of interest flash across her eyes. It would do no harm to flatter her a little. He was in a very tough spot.

Abruptly, Francoise’s manner changed to great seriousness. “What a charming boy! How sad that you must soon die, unless you are very clever and do exactly what Klaas asks you to do. You must realize that you are in grave danger. You have put us to a very great deal of trouble.” There was no hint of the former light mockery.

Speculatively, Francoise’s blue eyes gazed at him, almost with affection. “You are lucky, cheri, very lucky. More lucky than any man I have ever known.”

Clay shrugged. He didn’t feel lucky. “Why?”

She turned light and gay again. “First, because, quite by accident, you happen to remind me of a sweet boy I once loved. That was very long ago, before many things happened.” For the briefest of moments a shadow of unutterable sadness flickered over Francoise Bourdon’s face. “Because of that, I have interceded with Klaas on your behalf. Second, and more important, you are now in a position to be useful to Klaas. But do not push your luck too far. Klaas is in the bar. He wishes to speak with you. Agree to do exactly what he says if you wish to live.”

Francoise slipped her arm through his. They walked into the bar, smiling and chatting like old friends. Anne Gardner saw them and turned her face away.

Klaas De Jongh rose to greet him. They shook hands quite cordially. Clay saw the fat underworld figure eyeing him with interest. The two darksuited strongmen were also sitting at the table. De Jongh ordered a round of martinis, and then got right to the point.

“The diamonds, Mr. Felton. I want them back. Most ingenious of you to have murdered the late Mr. Eric Phelan and taken his place. But, of course, you can’t possibly get away with it. I have business associates in New York. I assure you, you won’t live a day after we reach port — unless you wish to come to an arrangement with me.”

Klaas De Jongh purred the words in a soft, barely audible whisper. The menace was the more terrifying for its matter-of-fact tone.

Clay shook his head. “I didn’t murder Phelan. That was somebody else.”

De Jongh mopped his fat face with a fine linen handkerchief, and smiled through yellowed teeth. “Perhaps so. I have business rivals.”

“I didn’t do it.”

Klaas raised a fat hand. “It’s immaterial — to everyone except poor Eric, of course. And to the police. What is important now is that I had a business arrangement with Eric. I should like to persuade you to carry it out.”

“What was the arrangement?”

“Ten thousand American dollars, Mr. Felton. Simply take the stones through Customs, then turn them over to me. You will receive ten thousand dollars in cash.”

Clay Felton felt flushed and his pulse pounded. “No. That’s not very generous, Mr. De Jongh. The diamonds must be worth half a million.”

De Jongh smiled. “Let’s not quibble over price, Mr. Felton. Make it twenty thousand.”

Clay took a deep breath, then gulped down the rest of his martini. “Mr. De Jongh, you’ve got yourself a deal.”

“Splendid.” The fat man beamed expansively. Clay imagined that he could have asked for more and gotten it.

“One thing, Mr. De Jongh. Let’s not do anything foolish like having me thrown overboard tonight, huh? The diamonds are hidden — and you still need me to get them through Customs for you — unless you want to do that little job yourself.”

De Jongh feigned shocked indignation. “Mr. Felton! I am a man of honor!”

“Sure.” Clay tried not to make his voice sound too dry. “Well, thanks for the drink. See you tomorrow at Customs.” Clay rose and walked out on deck. For a long time, he gazed at the blue, dancing waves, cut against the ship’s side by the white foam of the vessel’s wake.

It was all a stall to buy time, to live perhaps one more night. Whatever happened, his future looked grim. Clay did not for a moment believe that De Jongh would actually pay over twenty thousand dollars for smuggling in the diamonds. Really, it was as cheap for De Jongh to promise him twenty thousand dollars as ten thousand. Once past Customs, Clay could look forward to the same fate as Eric Phelan. An attempted theft of a half million dollars’ worth of gem diamonds would not be forgiven by an international smuggling ring as rich and well organized as De Jongh’s. Also, he knew too much for the gang to permit him to live.

What next? He pondered deeply as he watched the rolling blue Atlantic. His first impulse was to panic, to hide. He could skip dinner, stay away from his cabin, perhaps hide somewhere in the engine room, or in a lifeboat (he quickly discarded that idea), or some deserted part of the ship, then make a break for it early tomorrow morning.

The problem was that a ship is a cramped, jampacked floating city in which there aren’t any unused spaces. If he tried to sneak into the engine room he’d be as conspicuous as a two-headed calf to the crew, and to hide in some obvious place, like under the canvas of a lifeboat, would be to invite death. De Jongh and his men would be sure to be watching him. If he disappeared, or acted suspiciously, they would come looking. If they ever caught him alone, it would be easy enough for De Jongh’s strongarm boys to work him over quietly, get out of him where the diamonds were, take them, and then pitch him over the side in the dark of night.

The only safe thing, Clay decided, was to stay in the middle of crowds of people, away from possible lonely passageways or deserted decks. He walked back into the bar and was relieved to see that it was filled with people. Glancing around, he saw Tony McKenzie, Anne and Janet Neal, and a circle of other students surrounding them.

“Hi, may I join you?”

“Sure. Draw up a chair.”

Clay pulled up a chair beside Anne. The talk turned to the captain’s farewell party that night, then to the war in Vietnam, the draft, the Peace Corps, and modem art, the usual things. Anne was enthusiastic about the Peace Corps and planned to join it for two years after graduation from college. A friend of hers had signed up, been sent to Nigeria, and had had many adventures which Anne described as “fabulous.”

“Clay! You’re not half listening to me!” Anne smiled at him. “Your mind is a million miles away.”

“Sorry.”

“I’ve been talking too much.”

“No. I like to hear you talk. I was just thinking that a pretty girl like you would be wasted in Nigeria.”

She was pleased with the compliment, and he forced his mind to focus on the conversation. If his preoccupation was all that evident, that was bad. He had to act and appear as natural as possible.

Somebody suggested a swim in the pool, but the girls had had their hair fixed for the captain’s party and didn’t want to get it wet.

“Why don’t we have a shuffle-board tournament?” Anne asked.

It was agreed that everybody would put a dollar in the pot, with the winning team taking all. Clay was pleased with the suggestion. That would keep a crowd together for at least a couple of hours. Then it would be time to go down and dress for dinner. It would be a dirty trick to play on Tony, who would be anxious to get Janet into as many dark corners as possible tonight, but it was his intention to stick to them like glue.

Anne and he played well in shuffleboard and reached the semifinals. Then, as if struck by inspiration, he turned to her: “Tony and Janet are going to the Captain’s Ball tonight. Why don’t we go with them and double date?”

Anne smiled and said softly, “At last! I thought you’d never ask me.”

“I thought you knew I would.”

The decks were crowded with people taking the late afternoon sun, and Clay judged it was sage to invite Anne to go for a shipboard stroll with him. They passed De Jongh’s two dark-suited men. Involuntarily, Clay flinched. He was honestly scared to death, but tried not to show it.

“Clay, there’s something mysterious about you. What’s the matter?”

Startled, for he had almost forgotten Anne was with him, he turned and really looked at her for the first time. Her eyes were full of genuine concern for him. Touched, he suddenly took her in his arms and kissed her.

“You’re in trouble, Clay. Can I help you?”

“No.”

“You don’t have a wife stashed away someplace — or a girl you’re engaged to?”

The unexpected question struck Clay’s tortured nerves as hilariously funny. It was, of course, the first question a girl would want to know about a young man in whom she was interested, but the question touched off in him an uncontrollable impulse to laugh.

Anne bristled. “It’s not so funny, Clay. Tell me how I can help you.”

Again, Clay was touched. “I can’t, Anne. I’m in trouble, but not that kind.” Instantly, he regretted the slip, but he was amused by her obvious relief that his problem was not a wife or a fiancée.

“I’ll help you in any way I can. I won’t ask any questions.”

He should not have yielded, but he was near the breaking point. “If you really want to help...”

“I do.”

“Let’s go to the ship’s library then.” Clay led her to the library and writing room, saw that it was deserted, paused only long enough to get an envelope and several sheets of writing paper, and then led her to a bar half filled with people.

“You have a drink while I write a letter.”

Clay addressed the envelope to the Commissioner of Customs, Washington, D.C., and in the letter told the entire story. Then he sealed the letter and handed it to Anne.

“If anything happens tomorrow — you’ll know if it does — mail this right away in New York. Don’t read it. It would be dangerous for you to know what’s in it. If nothing happens, I’ll get the letter back from you, tear it up, and we’ll celebrate by painting the town. Okay?”

“But Clay—”

“You said no questions.”

“No questions.” Anne put the letter in her purse.

Then Clay suddenly looked around him. He had been so intent on what he was writing that he had forgotten about De Jongh and the two musclemen. They were watching and glaring daggers at him. Unquestionably, they had a good idea what was in that letter, and to whom it might be addressed.

“Anne, give me back the letter.”

Anne Gardner thoughtfully glanced at De Jongh and the two hoodlums, then said, “No, I won’t.”

“Anne — those men. They’ve got to see you give me back the letter. You’re in serious trouble unless you do. You have no idea how much trouble.”

“I can imagine, Clay. But I’m keeping the letter anyway. If anything happens, I’ll mail it tomorrow in New York. If nothing does, I’ll give it back to you.” Anne defiantly stared De Jongh full in the eye — until the fat man dropped his gaze — then said, “It’s a kind of insurance for you, isn’t it, Clay? If they think I may mail the letter if anything happens to you, it’s less likely that something will happen, isn’t it?”

“At the cost of making it more likely that something will happen to you. Give me back the letter.”

She would not return the letter and that was that, but people had now begun to stare. Clay grabbed Anne’s arm and led her quickly down to the swimming pool, where a group of sunbathers were clustered around. De Jongh and the two men followed.

It was the last day of the trip and several couples, dreading the ending of shipboard romances, were ardently kissing. Clay led Anne to a couple of vacant deck chairs, put his arms around her, and kissed her. Then he whispered in her ear.

“Anne, when the next group of people moves toward the front of the ship, I’m going to walk you to your cabin. Bolt the door and don’t let anybody in, not even your roommates. Make them bring the steward to get in. Tonight we’ve got to stay in crowds of people. We have to have people around us all the time. All the time. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“And, darling, I’m sorry, so sorry, that I’ve got you involved in this.”

“I’m not,” Anne said, and gave him a kiss that was full of promise.

That evening was a game of hunter and hunted. They dawdled through dinner, went early to the Captain’s Ball, and stayed late. All evening long, De Jongh and his hoodlums seemed right at their elbow. Clay could not read De Jongh’s mind, but it occurred to him that De Jongh must have just about made up his mind to commit murder and take his chances with Customs. He was a fool if he hadn’t, and De Jongh did not impress him as a fool.

Finally, the ship’s orchestra played the last note of music. The ball was over. Soon the crowd would be breaking up. What then? The moment Clay Felton had dreaded was approaching. Watching De Jongh from across the room, he fancied he saw a catlike look of anticipation on the fat man’s face.

Then Anne said unexpectedly in a lilting voice, “Surprise, everybody!” The gay banter hushed. Anne stood up. “Since this is the last night aboard ship, and a lot of us who have grown fond of each other might not see each other for long time...”

A chorus of groans greeted this dismal prospect.

“Some of us girls thought it would be silly to waste the last night sleeping, so we’ve arranged a deck party...”

Cheers.

“The stewards have set up a lot of chairs on the fantail. We thought we’d spend the last night watching the full moon...”

Wild cheers.

“We won’t go to bed at all. We’ll just stay on deck until we dock tomorrow...”

Pandemonium.

Anne and Clay led the parade back to the fantail. Perhaps two hundred deck chairs and robes were waiting.

Overwhelmed, Clay turned to Anne admiringly. “You’re a pretty clever girl.”

Anne smiled brightly. “Oh, you don’t know half of how clever I am, darling. I can cook and I can sew and do all the things that well brought up young ladies are supposed to be able to do.”

She led him to two deck chairs in the center. As they kissed, she whispered, “I don’t think those men would commit murder in front of two hundred witnesses, do you?”

“No. It isn’t likely.”

“Let’s forget all about them then, darling.”

The long night that Clay had dreaded turned out to be memorable — but in a way he had not expected. As Anne slyly pointed out to him, a good woman can smooth a man’s path in unexpected ways.

The Groot Vreeling docked at dawn. Plans had been made for Clay to be the first person off the ship. Perhaps he could get the jump on De Jongh and his men. He could get off the boat, pass Customs, disappear quickly, call Anne at her hotel later.

But after a night of romance, Clay found this was the bleak morning after. De Jongh and his men had anticipated him. They were waiting to disembark, too. He was trapped. In the struggling swirl of humanity getting off the boat, Clay found himself next to De Jongh and his musclemen all the way. They surrounded him. He handed in his landing card, showed his passport to Immigration, and displayed his yellow vaccination card to the Public Health Service man. Then Clay found himself at the head of the line for Customs inspection.

The Customs man, garbed in white shirt and dark tie, smiled pleasantly. “Welcome home. Have you got your luggage ready for inspection?”

Clay smiled weakly. Once past this line, he could be either rich — or dead. “No. I haven’t any luggage. I left it aboard ship.”

The Customs inspector’s smile faded to a puzzled frown. “Aren’t you going to bring your luggage into the United States? It must pass inspection if you are.”

“No.” Clay shook his head.

“Do you have anything to declare, then?”

“Nothing,” said Clay, “except a small bag full of diamonds.”

The Customs inspector stared at him as if he were a lunatic. Then Clay reached into his pocket, took out the bag, and poured the glittering stones into the astonished inspector’s hands.

“These aren’t mine. They’re the property of that gentleman,” Clay pointed to Klaas De Jongh standing in the next line, “over there.”

The inspector glanced at the glittering diamonds, then motioned excitedly to a policeman. “Hold that man!” He pointed to Klaas.

The fat man panicked and began to run. He didn’t even reach the end of the pier before he was caught, and Francoise and the two musclemen were subsequently arrested.

There were many questions. It was hours before they released Clay Felton. But there was one item of good news. He had not known that there is a reward for information leading to the arrest of smugglers and the confiscation of valuable property that one attempts to smuggle into the United States. Up to twenty-five percent of the market value of the contraband merchandise, to a maximum reward of fifty thousand dollars, was what the man said. At any rate, it ought to be a tidy sum.

Clay quickly ducked into a phone booth to call Anne. It was time to start planning that celebration.

I had been looking for wildflowers. Instead I found a bone — a human bone.

It was late August. The humid air clogged my sinuses and fogged my head. My blouse stuck to my back, and when my cocker spaniel pulled on the leash, the bursitis in my right shoulder gave me hell. But Honey was only two years old, a teenager in dog years, and she could go on for another five miles. I was forty-five, with a human’s two legs instead of a dog’s four, good for maybe a half mile more.

We reached the swamp. Birds squawked at Honey. Crickets sang. Honey stopped to do her business on the edge of the road. Two boys, about six and seven, played catch across the street. I waved to their mother, then turned away. That’s when I saw them.

About three yards in. Milk-white petals, butter-yellow insides, twice as large as the daisies in my rock garden. I wanted them. I could picture them in my Chinese vase on my dining room table. My mother-in-law was coming to dinner that night, looking down at me as usual for being an unpaid poet and a housewife. I would show Helen that homemaking could be an art form.

Honey finished and strained at the leash. I took a step onto the green edge. Water squished under my shoes. Muddy water. I hesitated, and Honey hesitated, too. Was I actually letting her in this special place after pulling her out of it for months? I thought of my white Reeboks. I thought of the bath Honey would need, the burrs in her curly hair. A car honked at the family across the street — someone from our subdivision, probably, because the road was less than a mile long. I looked at the perfect daisies again. I stepped forward.

I separated weeds and long grasses. Honey sniffed the ground. Bugs hovered over her head and her tail. I brushed some from my short hair. We reached the daisies and I bent down. Honey sprinted after a squirrel, jerking the leash. Off-balance, I fell. My hand pushed through wet grasses and wetter ground, and when I came up I had a bone in my hand.

I didn’t pick any daisies. On our trudge home, Honey kept jumping up, trying to snatch the bone from me. I wondered if I should take a bath before calling the police. But I didn’t.

“The conclusion is inescapable,” Albert Florian said. “Someone in this club has been murdering its members.”

Which one of you two — besides me — has been murdering members of this club? I wondered fretfully.

“When we organized in 1946, there were a round dozen of us,” Florian said. “For thirteen years we met annually on the twentieth day of October. But now we discover that within the space of one year nine of our members have met with fatal accidents.” He regarded Gerald Evans and me rather severely. “I believe we all agree that this looks a bit suspicious.”

Evans and I nodded.

We three were in one of the private dining rooms at Blutow’s on Sixth Street for our annual meeting. This year one of the restaurant’s smallest rooms proved adequate.

Florian ticked off the fatalities. “Carson, Abernathy, and Terwilliger met with automobile accidents.”

I had arranged two of those. Carson and Abernathy both had homes at the tops of hills with delightfully suitable winding and precipitous roads leading to their bases. A simple adjustment in the steering apparatus of their respective automobiles and they descended neatly and quickly from garage to eternity.

But who had disposed of Terwilliger? It was a puzzler indeed.

“Phelps fell or jumped from the roof of a ten story building.”

Do you realize how few — if any — windows of modem air-conditioned buildings are actually meant to be opened? I had to carry Phelps all the way to the roof before I could dispose of him. I suffered an excruciating backache for weeks.

“Schaller was electrocuted when his radio fell into his bathtub.”

Now that could have been an accident. However, I know that Schaller had no use for tubs. He was a shower man.

“Wentworth accidentally shot himself while cleaning his gun.” Florian shook his head slowly. “But we all know that he was deathly afraid of firearms and would never allow any of them in his home.”

My plans had called for him to fall off a cliff near his house. Really a beautiful view.

“Llewellyn walked into a train.”

Not my work.

“Naison was struck on the top of the head by a rivet as he took his constitutional past an apartment building under construction.” Florian showed teeth. “It was dusk and no work was at the moment in progress, but nevertheless the only conclusion the police could come to was that it was an accident.”

I wondered how that had been done. Did the murderer lurk high in the scaffolding, rivet poised between thumb and forefinger, waiting for the appropriate moment?

“And Dodsworth fell off the dock at his summer cottage and drowned.”

A direct crib from my plans, I thought indignantly. I too knew that Dodsworth couldn’t swim.

Florian pointed to the unopened magnum in a place of honor in the center of the table. “Now obviously our club members were not eliminated in order to gain possession of that bottle.”

Obviously not.

In 1946, all twelve of us were junior officers on the cruiser Spokane — united by our reserve status among the trade school boys and the prospect of impending discharge from active service.

It followed that we should gather together for a misty party of farewell before we scattered to various parts of the States. As the evening became wetter, our regrets at the possibility of our never seeing each other again became unendurable and the inevitable annual reunion was suggested.

The bourbon was excellent and the suggestion blossomed until we found ourselves in the throes of a Last Man Club.

The terms were the usual. The last survivor of our group would have the honor of drinking our duly dedicated bottle of champagne in lonely grandeur. Providing, of course, that his stomach had not so aged that the feat was impossible. And we chose a centrally located city as our meeting ground.

If we had left it at that, presumably most, if not all of us, would have been alive to attend our fourteenth meeting.

However, we realized that time has a tendency to alter one’s economic status, possibly for the worse, and so each one of us contributed five hundred dollars of our accrued pay toward a fund to be used to defray travel expenses for those of us who might need it.

A formal agreement was drafted which stipulated that besides the champagne, the last survivor would also inherit what remained of the fund.

If anything did remain.

And that specifically accounted for the present depleted state of our club.

At the suggestion of Terwilliger, an investment man who could not tolerate the sight of idle money, our six thousand dollars had been invested.

Terwilliger had chosen stocks in an insignificant little oil company.

The company is no longer insignificant and the shares were now worth almost a million dollars.

Florian regarded me for a moment. “I rather suspect that you’re the murderer, Henry. You’re the only Harvard man among us.”

“It’s remarkable that the police haven’t gotten suspicious,” Evans said.

Evans fancies himself an artist. I’ve seen some of his paintings, and while I am not a master of judgment in matters aesthetic, I do reflect that he is indeed fortunate that he does not have to pursue art for a living. He boasts of an inheritance.

“These ‘accidents,’ ” Florian said, “occurred in widely separated parts of this country. Evidently no one but us knows that there is a connecting link between them all.”

“Why don’t we call them to the attention of the authorities?” I suggested. Naturally I wasn’t serious. But I was interested in seeing which one of them would object.

“That could present some difficulties,” Florian said. “Suppose the heirs of the nine untimely deceased went to court, claiming that in the course of normal longevity they might eventually have gained possession of the million. It could lead to an anarchy of lawsuits.”

“Couldn’t we just call this whole thing quits?” Evans asked. “Dissolve the club and divide the fund three ways?”

Florian is a lawyer. He shook his head gloomily. “As a labor of love, I made the provisions of our club absolutely ironclad. In the event we dissolved the club, the fund would go to the Yale Alumni Society.”

I shuddered. That stipulation had been entered without my knowledge. “Then must we all wait to be murdered? A chilling prospect!”

“We’re safe nowhere,” Evans agreed.

Florian nodded. “Not even in our bathtubs.”

We smoked our cigars.

“Are we agreed that the motive for the murders is money?” Florian asked after awhile.

Evans and I nodded.

After several puffs of his cigar, Evans said, “I am an artist and therefore above money. Besides that, I have four hundred thousand, give or take a few dollars.”

“Ordinarily I would say that my assets are my own business,” Florian offered. “However, under the circumstances I am willing to admit to being worth close to a quarter of a million.”

“I have some five hundred thousand in shipping,” I said.

Actually my checking account showed less than a thousand. I did have a spot of family money three years ago, but I had invested heavily in Taliaferro Transit. I should have known better. The board of directors was solid Princeton.

A thought seemed to strike Florian. “By George, but we are safe from murder.”

I failed to see that.

Florian smiled. “Don’t you see, the murderer doesn’t dare strike again.”

“Why not?”

“Because if he murders once more, that will leave just two people in the club.”

“I admire your arithmetic,” I said. “However...”

Florian held up a hand. “Of the two survivors, one is the murderer and one isn’t.”

“Granted.”

“And in that case,” Florian continued, “the one who isn’t the murderer will immediately be forced to flee to the police. It is a naked matter of survival. He cannot sit about waiting to be murdered.”

Florian rubbed his hands. “The murderer will be convicted and executed and therefore the lone survivor will inherit the entire fund. Plus the champagne.”

“What about the anarchy of lawsuits?” Evans asked.

“I’m sure the survivor would risk them rather than his life,” Florian said. He beamed. “I think that bringing this out into the open has been salubrious. The murderer is stymied. He cannot act again.”

Evans nodded. “He murders at his peril.”

“We’ll go on attending these reunions year after year,” Florian said enthusiastically. “Who knows how long that will be.”

“Fifty years,” Evans said. “We all look healthy.”

“And perhaps the murderer will be the last to die,” I added somberly.

“There’s also this tragic possibility,” Florian said. “Why can’t the two of us that are innocent run to the police, revealing that the one remaining is the murderer? And so, to protect himself, the murderer may kill two instead of one. That’s something we’ve overlooked.”

We all agreed that we had.

We adjourned our meeting shortly after dinner.

I drove back to my hotel, walked upstairs to my room, and locked the door. I lit a cigar and proceeded to think.

Florian had been right. I would have to murder him and Evans, but that presented a difficulty.

Which one of them should I murder first?

If I disposed of my competing murderer, the survivor would immediately rush to the police. I certainly could not have that.

However, if I first got rid of the one of us who was pure as the snow, then my opposite number certainly could not go rushing to the police.

His accidents certainly could not bear the scrutiny of the police, either.

And that would leave just the two of us — cautious and wary — but I had every faith that I would triumph in the finals.

But which one of them was the murderer? Evans or Florian? Could I get them together and dispatch them as one? I did not see how.

Momentarily I thought of murdering from the viewpoint of availability. I knew where Florian would be tonight. He was the only one of us who made his home in this city. Evans undoubtedly was at a hotel, but I hadn’t the faintest idea which one.

But I rejected that course of action. There was a fifty-fifty chance that I might be killing the wrong man first. Not very good odds after all the work I’d done.

The motive for the decimation of our club was money, but how to discover which one of those two did not actually have any?

A sudden thought came to me. Perhaps there was a way. Not definitive, but I had to do something.

I consulted the yellow pages of the telephone book and winced when I discovered that there were some ninety-three hotels listed. I sighed, picked up the phone, and attacked the columns alphabetically, hoping fervently that Evans was not at the Zymmerman Arms.

Fortunately for my patience, I found that he was registered at the Fraidlie House. The clerk inquired whether I wanted his room rung, but I demurred. Knowing where he was was sufficient for my purposes.

I am not familiar with this city or the status of its hotels, so I left to investigate further.

The Fraidlie House proved to be not much more than a rat-trap in a dilapidated neighborhood. The chill of evening made it appear even worse. Why, it was hardly better than the miserable place where I was registered.

I smiled. At least that settled that. Evans was the other murderer. His story about having four hundred thousand dollars was pure fabrication. No man in his right mind, and with money, would stay in a place like that.

I was about to start my car again and return to my hotel when I saw Evans leaving the Fraidlie House.

He carried no luggage, so he couldn’t possibly be returning to Minneapolis. He had the collar of his topcoat turned up; his movements were quick, furtive. Was it possible, I wondered, that tonight he might...

He hailed a passing cab.

I started my car and followed at a discreet distance.

His taxi went down the avenue and turned onto the lake-front drive. About four miles south, the road turned slightly inland and we were in a district of fine homes — semi-estates, actually, each with four or five acres of land. This was the area in which Florian lived.

I smiled. It did look as though Evans were going to get rid of Florian tonight. I had no objections. It would save me work.

Evans’s taxi stopped directly in front of Florian’s home.

Really now! That wasn’t particularly intelligent.

Evans was paying the driver as I passed. I drove on a bit, frowning. I remembered some of the previous accidents Evans had arranged. Good heavens, I thought, he could bungle the whole thing — and at this stage we certainly did not want a police investigation of any sort.

I made a U-turn and drove back. I stopped a good five hundred feet beyond Florian’s place and then walked. The street was dimly lit and deserted.

I had been a guest at Florian’s home some years back and I remembered his house as a two story affair, spacious, and with the quarters for the servants — a butler, a chauffeur, a cook, and a maid, married couples — over the four car garage.

It was only ten in the evening, but the living quarters over the garage were dark, and the only light from the house came from Florian’s study.

I glanced about, determining again that I was unobserved, and then slipped into the grounds. I made my way toward the light.

The french doors were slightly ajar, and I peered inside the room.

Florian lay on the couch, his face flushed. He was snoring loudly. A portable gas heater burned near his feet, and beside him on the floor stood an almost empty whisky bottle and a glass.

And standing over him, clumsily gripping a fireplace poker, stood Evans. He closed his eyes, raised the poker, and gave every indication of being about to strike.

I stepped swiftly into the room. “Hold on!”

Evans stopped his swing in mid-air, opened his eyes, and blinked. “Is that you, Henry?”

“Yes, it’s me,” I whispered savagely. “And keep your voice down. Do you want to wake Florian? What in the world do you think you’re doing?”

Evans lowered the poker. “I was just about to bash Florian over the head.”

“Is that your idea of an accident?” I demanded sternly.

Evans shifted uncomfortably. “I thought it would look as though an intruder had murdered him. I was going to empty his wallet and all that sort of thing.”

“Do you want the police to investigate?”

He looked at the floor. “Well, no. But I’ve run out of ideas.”

I examined Florian and determined that he was indeed in a thorough alcoholic sleep, and not likely to be revived by anything short of an earthquake. I spoke in normal tones. “Right before you, Evans, you have the instrument for an ideal accident.”

He looked about helplessly. “I don’t see what you mean, Henry.”

“The gas heater,” I explained patiently. And far in the back my mind, the question arose as to what a gas heater was doing in a home of this sort. “We simply extinguish the flame of the heater. In a few hours Florian should be dead. The police will assume that Florian either forgot to light the heater or that it went out by itself.”

Evans looked at me with admiration. “You’re really much cleverer than I am, Henry. I’m not practical at all. Are you the other murderer?”

I was aghast. “Didn’t you know?”

He shook his head. “I just tossed a coin. I’ve always been pretty lucky.”

It was incredible. He could have ruined everything if he’d murdered me instead.

“Henry,” Evans asked, “how did you know that I was the other murderer?”

“Simple. I merely ferreted out the hotel at which you were staying. The Fraidlie House is a building in a complete state of disintegration. Therefore, it followed that you have no money for better accommodations. Circumstances forced you to choose that particular residence.”

Evans thought about that. “But I do have money. Four hundred thousand or so.”

I swallowed. “But that hotel...”

“It’s in the center of the art colony,” Evans said. “I wanted to be near the people I love.”

“But then what is your motive for killing?”

“Money, of course.”

“But you already have four hundred thousand.”

“It isn’t exactly for myself. I want to erect an arts building in Minneapolis. The Evans Art Center. That would require at least a million dollars, and I don’t have that much.”

I sighed and looked about the room. “Wipe your fingerprints from that poker and put it back. Also remove any other prints you may have left in the room.”

I watched him go about with a handkerchief. He raised quite a bit of dust as he wiped here and there.

When he was through, I extinguished the flame of the heater. The gas began to hiss into the room. “Let’s go,” I said.

Evans used his handkerchief to pick up the phone.

“What are you doing?” I demanded.

He seemed surprised at the tone of my voice. “I’m calling a taxi.”

I closed my eyes. He was pretty pathetic. “I’ll drive you,” I said.

On the lake drive, with Florian’s home a good two miles behind us, I felt more at ease. “How did you get Schaller to electrocute himself in his tub?”

“I visited him one night and we had a few drinks. I put something into one of his, and when he passed out, I undressed him and put him in his tub. I filled it, and then dropped in the radio.”

That was about the way I had figured it. “But you blundered when you shot Wentworth. If the police had discovered that he was afraid of firearms, you could have ruined everything.”

“I’m sorry,” he said contritely. “But I’m not too good at this sort of thing.”

“How did you manage to drop that rivet on Naison’s head? Surely you didn’t climb up on the scaffolding and...”

“No. I put a wallet on the sidewalk in front of the building being erected. When Naison came along, he bent down to pick it up. At that point I shot a rivet from a slingshot and hit him on the top of the head. To the police it looked as though the thing had fallen from the building.”

I had to admit that was ingenious. “And I suppose you altered the steering mechanism on Terwilliger’s car so that he would have his accident?”

Evans shook his head. “No. Didn’t you?”

I rubbed my jaw. “That could have been an authentic accident. I suppose you struck Llewellyn over the head and then put his body on those railroad tracks?”

Evans looked at me. “No.”

We were silent for a while, and then Evans said, “Of course you pushed Dodsworth off his dock?”

“No.”

We drove on for half a mile.

“Dodsworth was the last to go, besides Florian, I mean,” Evans said. “And so if you didn’t... and I didn’t...”

I remembered the dust Evans had raised when he was wiping his fingerprints off various surfaces. I spoke more or less to myself. “One does not have a dusty house when one has four servants.”

Evans nodded slowly. “If one still has four servants.”

I also remembered the dark servants’ quarters over the garage. And it had been only ten o’clock. And the gas heater — certainly out of place in an extremely opulent home.

After awhile, Evans voiced our mutual discovery. “So Florian got rid of Terwilliger, Llewellyn, and Dodsworth. Evidently he needed the fund, too.”

And what now? I thought.

Evans was thinking of that, too. “I suppose I’ll have to kill you,” he said. “I really regret that, Henry, but I do think that Minneapolis needs my art center.”

We were in the traffic of the avenue now. Yes, I thought I would have to kill Evans, unless...

It was ridiculous... but still... considering Evans’s mental equipment...

“Evans,” I said. “I don’t believe it’ll be necessary for each of us to try to kill the other.”

“Really?” he asked hopefully.

I nodded. “We can split the fund.”

“But that’s impossible. Florian said our charter terms were absolutely unbreakable.”

“There is another way. I will write a suicide note and leave it, along with my coat perhaps, on a conveniently high bridge. The police will assume that I jumped off, was drowned, and that my body floated out into the lake.”

Evans considered that. “And then when I inherit the fund, I split it with you?”

“Well, not exactly. You see, I will have to disappear. Leave the country, as a matter of fact. It would be inconvenient and dangerous to our plan for me to reappear for my share. I have a much better idea.”

Evans waited expectantly.

“You say that you have some four hundred thousand dollars. Why not convert that into cash, give it to me, and then I will disappear. You will inherit the entire fund.”

Evans looked vaguely dubious.

“I’m perfectly willing to settle for four hundred thousand,” I said. “Even though my honest share should be half a million. You may consider the extra hundred thousand my contribution to your art center.”

Evans beamed. “That’s awfully decent of you, Henry. I’ll name one of the galleries in your honor.”

“Small bills, please,” I said. “But remember that this is our little secret. Don’t tell your lawyers why you’re converting your assets to cash.”

“Of course not,” Evans said stiffly. “Do you think I’m a fool?”

It took Evans two months to make the conversion to cash. I accepted the money, arranged my suicide, and moved to Mexico.

Evans inherited the fund, but I’m afraid that he was in for a bit of a shock.

Really, it is criminal how little the government left poor Evans. Something in the neighborhood of two hundred thousand, I believe.

And I, of course, had four hundred thousand intact.

Dead men do not pay inheritance taxes.

I, me, little old Kelly John Kelly, was parked on a stool at the Terrapin Inn contemplating my future and drinking a cola. Whither, whence, thought I. Now, I pride myself on being a pretty good sculptor, or at least I’m in the process of becoming same, and I want to learn everything I can, including painting. I’d been studying at the art center and beating myself on the head because I didn’t know more. I’d just blown a sculpture that day and, as I’m a perfectionist and a fanatic (so was Michelangelo), I felt mighty low, mighty low indeed.

Anyhow, as I was sinking into my ratty old pea coat and my own self-abuse and misery, in walked this really impressive-looking beard, all gray and black, with a neat looking little old guy behind it. He was wrapped up in a nutty looking poncho, like he’d made it himself, and he had great big squeaky sandals on his dirty bare feet (and in this weather, too). Up here in Point Magiway, man, it gets really cold, so immediately I thought, wow, here’s a tough old character.

About this village, there are sure some great people who make it up like good rough and ready types, loggers and fishermen. The artists who can’t take it just disappear, and the really serious ones stay on and study at the art center. Only six teachers, but just fantastic, so this place is like the core of where it’s happening. Those teachers — oh, rats magoo, how can I say it, but they’re people who are just as fanatic as I am and that’s pretty far out. I’m not very articulate sometimes — I just know what I know. When I’m working with my hands, that’s a different matter. Then I don’t feel so sort of tongue-tied.

Anyhow, in walked this little man. He sat down beside me and of course we started talking, what with me being lonely and hating myself at the moment, and as it turned out we were both in the same racket, like art.

“My name is Wilfred Block,” said he, pulling his poncho around him and leaning over his coffee and sort of inhaling it.

“Hi,” I mumbled, hunching over my cola. Some character this! “I’m teaching, you know, my boy — up at the center. Do you know the center, lad?”

Well, did I know the center? Hell, yes. So we engaged in conversation and suddenly I felt greatness all around me, and my scuzzy beard embarrassed me because his was so good and old.

Pretty soon I was flipping out of my depression because this ancient guy could teach me about paint and like that, and so right there I enrolled in his painting class. Finally we were really buddy-buddy, like I was his son, and somehow the subject got around to a recent art theft in Southern California.

“Lad,” whispered Mr. Block as he sipped his coffee and pulled his shoulders up even higher, “one of the most magnificent paintings in the world was stolen. Did you know that, lad? Hey? Surely you’ve seen reproductions of Calagria’s work? No? What is this world coming to, tell me that, pray.”

I just sort of smiled and nodded and waited, knowing I’d get some information laid on me.

“My boy, the Venice Street Scene. The Venice Street Scene. Or, in this case you might call it the Venice Canal Scene...”

I thought to myself, Kelly John Kelly, this is a scene in itself, but I just kept my little mouth shut and waited.

“One of the most magnificent paintings on this planet, lad. Yes, stolen — by, if I remember correctly, Lawrence Weber Weeves. Fine artist, pity. At least all evidence points in his direction. I’ve seen the painting myself. Exquisite! You know, Calagria,” and here he started whispering, his eyes darting around, “was intelligent enough to use seasoned back-braced wood for his paintings. Each was covered with five coats of gesso, which if you don’t know, boy, is a blindingly white sort of chalk mixture.” Then his voice dropped even lower, almost like he was telling me some sort of crazy secret. “And with the patience of the Venetian craftsman that he was, he waited for each coat to become thoroughly dry, then rubbed it down with fine sand to give it a satin finish. IMPECCABLE! NOW, WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THAT?” His voice rose almost to a shout and the waitress looked at us funny. Then he shot his elbow into my ribs and I choked on my drink.

“Great, sir, great,” I squeaked. Man, I couldn’t wait to go to his class, like he was a wise little old elf with a secret. Ageless.

Well, the next week I started in with his painting class. Wizard! With his old beard and mustache and long salt-pepper hair and his poncho with the collar turned up, all you could see were his funny no-color eyes looking all secret and, well, weird. Old Mr. Block really had the knowledge, European training, the bit. Beautiful old guy. Anyhow, I started learning. He put up with the “new” techniques — oil and acrylics. All the time I thought oil was as old as God, but Mr. Block said no, that egg tempera was first, although he knew the rest of the jazz like he knew his beard.

Then, in his lectures, he’d get off on old Calagria and how that cat was the real master and not enough people knew about him and how his paintings hadn’t cracked or faded through the centuries and somehow Mr. Block would suddenly look like one of those Venetian princelings that he kept talking about in the classroom.

Finally, after about three weeks of study with this eerie guy, he drew me aside after class, out under the cypress trees, and said, pretty excitedly, I thought, “Kelly John, my boy, would you like to see—” then his voice dropped to a hiss “—would you like to see a copy I made of that Calagria that was stolen? Hey?” Then he sort of shot his eyes around like somebody might hear him and I thought, so what’s his problem? We were alone. Anyhow I answered, well, yes, sir, I would, and he invited me to his pad that night for a little meat, bread, and wine, as he put it.

Man, I felt like I was in Paris!

Unfortunately, my teaching job in Southern California afforded me less money than I had hoped for. Such a shame. Teachers in this country are pitifully underpaid, even such trained and experienced professors as I. My age was against me, I fear. I am approaching seventy-one, but am quite spry and healthy — I often liken myself to Picasso. I’m also a respected artist; not of the stature of that Spanish gentleman, but I have my fans and a few of my paintings are hung in museums about the country.

That day, that humiliating day when I was impoverished and worried about some of the more foolish students in that small but prestigious college where I had been teaching, I decided to drive my old automobile to a rather poor museum a little south of the small town in which I was teaching. I put on my homburg and carried my walking stick, remnants of a more prosperous time. I also donned my greatcoat, as it was chilly due to an almost impenetrable coastal fog.

In the museum (bad lighting, dust — shameful!) I dashed about, hands clasped behind me, peering at one picture after another. And then I saw it. How had I missed it before? It was hung in a dark corner, but there it was.

THERE WAS THE CALAGRIA! It was no larger than a sheet of typing paper, but as I squinted, the tiny figures came to life — women haggling about the price of fish; orange rinds floating in the canal; dandies swaggering; clothes blowing on lines strung from one building to another; tarts with bleached hair and scandalously low necklines strutting beside the water; gondolas being propelled by muscular gondoliers. The true Venice. The Venice then. I was there, back where I should have been. I was born in the wrong century.

I stood for a few moments. The painting was slightly tilted, which offended me, so, reverently, I touched it, merely to make it straight with its fellow paintings. Then, the noise! Buzzers and bells rang and guards came dashing from every which way and I was grabbed roughly and hustled off to the office of the fusty old curator.

“Thief, eh?”

“No — I insist, no — the picture was a bit out of line — I merely tried to straighten it—”

“And who, sir, are you?” he asked, raising his gray eyebrows.

“I, sir,” I announced as I straightened, “am Lawrence Weber Weeves, artist, teacher, and you have a painting of mine hanging somewhere in this embarrassing establishment. Now,” I said, brushing the sleeves of my capacious coat, “I would like the courtesy of an apology immediately.”

“Oh, my,” mumbled the distraught and harrumphing curator (I forget his name — it wasn’t worth my time and effort to remember it). “Mr. Weeves, please accept our apologies, sir. What can we do to make amends? Would you enjoy a glass of fine claret, which I, ahem, keep on hand for the pleasure of distinguished guests? My, my, I am so dreadfully sorry.”

“I’ll accept, sir, and gladly.”

As I sipped and chatted, my plan was there, as though the muse had whispered into my ear — a truly creative plan indeed.

“Yes, well, to make amends, you say. I would be delighted if you would allow me to peruse your extremely fine museum for two hours, buzzers off, and let me straighten paintings to my heart’s content.”

“Mr. Weeves, it will be a pleasure.”

We shook hands, toasted each other, and for a while I reveled in paintings, straightening one here, dusting one there. Then I bade farewell to the curator, and as an afterthought I said, “Sir, there is a small Bonnard I wish to observe again — I’ll just leave by the back entrance, and thank you, sir.”

I tipped my hat, went swiftly down the hall to the Calagria in the dim corner, removed it from the wall, and slipped it under my coat, and then I walked out, got into my car and disappeared into the fog. I drove directly to my bank, removed my small savings, and simply vanished, leaving my personal belongings and that college town forever.

Well, yours truly, little old Kelly John Kelly, went to Mr. Block’s pad. Too much! There was an old mandolin in the corner and prints and paintings were stuck all over the redwood walls and, believe it or not, there was a skull on a big desk with a candle burning in it. I later found out the old guy had lived in the mountains for a couple of months, digging for stuff, and he guessed the skull was Indian. On the scarred table in the middle of the kitchen was a huge loaf of French bread, with a stiletto, yet, lying beside it. It sure was a wicked looking knife; also a big hunk of salami and a jug of local wine, the kind that turns your teeth black. He wasn’t kidding when he said meat, bread, and wine. His eyes glowed and I was beginning to think he was some kind of nut, but then most artists are sort of, you know — odd — but Mr. Block was giving off really weird vibrations, like he was going to show me a corpse or something.

After we had eaten — man, it was good — and talked about painting, he suddenly yelled wildly, “AND HERE IT IS!” I almost heard trumpets and drums. He jumped up and threw some curtains apart at the end of the kitchen and here was this little bitty picture. Then he flipped on a little light and, man, I almost died. I crept up closer and closer and there it was, just like he said. Those Venice people were walking and talking and breathing and, well, it was just too much! But I knew something else, too. I’m no dummy. This was no copy, man, this was the real thing! Thousands of bucks’ worth of picture, right there in front of my little scared eyes. This was most definitely not Wilfred Block. This was Lawrence Weber Weeves, who had very neatly pulled the theft of the decade.

Oh my, oh mercy me, I thought to myself, what shall I do now? I just stood there and tried to gather my cool. There’s something about an original painting you can almost smell. Well, I thought, this old geezer is as nutty as a fruitcake. If I’d said anything right then, he probably would have bonked me on the head, so I turned around and kind of chattered, “You sure are a good painter, sir, and I sure would like to see the real one sometime, if they ever find it, that is...” Then I sort of dribbled out of words and blushed.

He was looking at me real funny by now and his wild little eyes got narrow and glittery. That old stiletto was still lying around, and I knew if he’d gone as far as he’d gone to get the picture, he’d go even farther and maybe stick that wicked knife into little chicken me.

“Now, lad,” he said real low, “it’s late and you’d best go.” Then he almost pushed me out the door. I made haste, indeed, and paddled my little boots home real fast. It was like he had to show it to someone before he blew a gasket and then he got sorry. You know how people are, just can’t keep a secret — like a teakettle with the lid on tight and then whoosh, off she blows. He gave me the willies and I was really dreading his class next day, like if I didn’t show up he’d positively know I knew. I was pretty upset, but I made it home and then had nightmares, like this cat with a knife was chasing me around Venice and everywhere I went there he was, and just before the knife went through my skinny neck I woke up, all sweating.

Alas, I do believe I have made a rather serious mistake, or a “boo-boo,” to quote Kelly John. I’m quite certain he knows the truth. It was difficult to “hide out” in order to change my identity, but I managed nicely and no one has suspected me, until now. That boy is entirely too perceptive, which of course could contribute to his being a fine artist one day, but unfortunately, that day will never come. It is most obvious that it has become necessary for me to dispose of him. The Calagria is my life, my wife, my child, sustenance and friend — the only great thing that has ever entered my somewhat barren existence.

You must have realized by now that I am Calagria — at least I’m his reincarnation. This knowledge has come upon me slowly, but now I am sure. (I keep this journal locked in my desk at the center, incidentally, in case robbers should enter my little house.) As I did the painting hundreds of years ago, why shouldn’t I have it? Let us simply say that I repossessed it. Sometimes I stare for hours at my painting, then something clicks and I’m there — there beside that canal. Occasionally I’m on the steps of the palazzo looking at my city with the piercing eyes of the artist. At other times I’m in a gondola sketching the bustling life about me. Always I’m dressed in slashed doublet, hose, and swirling cape. Often Leonardo and I discuss the Medici family — fine people, fine people. If there were only more patrons in the world like Lorenzo. Ah, yes, poor Kelly John. As we have wells here in Point Magiway (there is an unused one in the field in back of my house), it will be a simple matter for me to, shall we say, allow him to vanish. A pity, but there it is.

Little Kelly John, me, I went to class anyhow, in. spite of my teeny shrinky soul. I decided that everybody should see that picture, not just one wiggy little old man, so I tried to figure something out. I was too much of a marshmallow-heart to turn him in — he’d just die away — and he was a good artist and a great teacher, so I had what I guess you’d call a moral problem, or ethical, or something. I knew there was something loose in his brain; poor old guy, but dangerous.

Well, in class he started looking at me kind of spooky when he thought I wasn’t watching. I’m of a nervous type nature and under this mouselike exterior beats the heart of a mouse. Believe it or not, yesterday he showed up in class with his beard and mustache all trimmed kind of sharp and pointy, and wearing a cape that looked like he’d made it himself out of an old bedspread. Yet he didn’t look funny at all — he looked like Lucifer, but seemed to be younger or more determined; something like that.

Anyhow, there was a creepy change, and I could barely hold my paintbrush.

Standing at my easel slopping away, I heard him creep up behind me, and then he sort of breathed into my ear, “Kelly John, you’re doing fine. Wouldn’t you like to come over tonight and partake of some humble food? We’re not ready for egg tempera technique here in class, but I’ll be only too happy to show you, my boy. Hey, what?”

“Oh yes, sir, I guess so, sir, thank you, Mr. Block, sure, I’d like that fine,” I babbled.

My cool had definitely departed and I droobled some paint where it shouldn’t be and I heard him padding away, sort of chuckling under his breath. Yikes! What had I done?

After classes, while I made it back to my room, I wondered should I be honest and tell him I knew — like put it to him straight — or should I bluff it through or what? I damn near chewed my fingernails down to my wrists. He sure seemed pretty far gone to me, and I knew, I mean I knew, he was going to do something entirely illegal which might hurt me, like maybe I would cease to exist unless I thought something out and quick. I kept thinking of that stiletto looking too sharp and pointy, like old crazy’s beard. Mercy.

I finally decided I’d play all innocence, never turn my back on him, and maybe it would all go away. I’m pretty fast on my feet and he was an old man, but no telling what he’d do if something gave — like he might get extra adrenaline. If he did manage to do me in, it sure would be one heck of an artistic way to go, with a Venetian stiletto between my bony little shoulder blades. But I didn’t intend to die, even artistically. I mean, I’m just a young cat and I have a lot of living to do.

Yes, tonight is the night. I shall play it cool, to quote my young and entirely too perspicacious friend. I do feel the entire situation is unfortunate, but what am I to do? The stiletto, of course. I remember when I bought it in a Los Angeles antique store. How many intrigues had it seen? Had it belonged to one of the Borgias? Well, the time has come for it to come to life again. Has it been waiting for all these years to taste that precious thing, blood? I have already removed the cover from the well — those heavy cement lids are difficult to manage, but this is something that must be done and I find that my strength is now that of ten.

I, Calagria (I have become bold enough to use my true name), must now protect myself so that I may continue to offer the world my genius, for what is one lad compared to the deathless paintings which I shall produce? Life is short and art is long; a cliche; but so true, so true. The boy has great talent, yes, but then another will come along. Through the centuries great talents have always been with us, sung and unsung. It would be best for me to spare the poor child the intense pain of maturing in this violent world, where his sensitivity might be permanently damaged. In a way I’m doing him a favor. It is all so simple, really. We shall have our dinner, I will interest him in the process of egg tempera paint, and knowing the lad, he will become so involved with the new knowledge that it will be quite easy for me to, shall we say, send him to a happier place.

While gazing at my painting last night I was discussing with Lorenzo de’Medici the fine art of people disposal, as I prefer to call it.

“Diversion, diversion,” he said, smiling, as he fingered one of his priceless rings. Of course Lorenzo himself would never do such a thing, but he did have people working for him. We Venetians are clever, subtle people. I have prepared what might be termed a “last supper” for the boy. I do feel that the lad should spend his last night upon the earth happy and well fed. Only two more hours and he will be here. Everything is in readiness. The lasagne is waiting only to be popped into the oven and the wine is chilled. I am prepared.

Hoo, boy, Kelly John Kelly, I mumbled to myself as I combed what beard I have, here we go. It sounds sort of, well, melodramatic, and like it would be easier just to turn the poor guy in but, I repeat, I’m a fanatic about art and I just couldn’t hurt him. I was sincerely hoping that it could all be settled, like nice and peaceful. So off I went. One of the of-age students had bought me a half pint of vodka and I’d downed some of it — Dutch courage, my old grandmother used to say. I trundled along, sort of all drunked up under the spooky moon, and as the one sidewalk in this village sort of rolls up at eight o’clock I really never felt so alone in my life, like going to my doom.

I finally came to the little shack, looking dark and forbidding, in the middle of a weed patch, with dinky glimmers of light coming through the window — like a goblin house. Up I tippy-toed and knocked on the door, gulping oxygen all the while. Then I stuck my chin up and tried to relax. Man oh man oh manaroonian, I was scared, but still feeling the vodka, like the rough edges were sort of dulled.

The door slowly squeaked open and there he was, grinning through his beard, wearing, for Pete’s sake, this Venetian-type costume, like one in the Calagria picture.

“Ah, my boy, come in, come in. Delightful to see you, yes indeed.”

The food smelled great. He poured me a glass of wine — real good stuff this time, though I couldn’t help wondering about poison — but seeing as how he poured a glass for himself out of the same bottle and I didn’t see any funny stuff going on, I started to relax, and pretty soon my worries were sloughing off. It was warm and cosy and I thought, well, I’ve had a paranoid spell. Hell with it.

Then and there I decided, oh, let him keep the picture. Who am I to deprive this neat old artist of his precious picture? Who really cares about an old painting anyhow? Most dumb people don’t even take the time to look. So, what with everything, we were talking away over a fine dinner. He had opened the curtains that covered the painting and, man, after a while I felt like I was back in Venice eating and drinking and being merry and he was yabbering about that egg tempera technique and I was feeling like an idiot. Me and my fantasies. Maybe the picture was a copy. Who cares?

Then, after we’d burped for a while and he’d put the dishes in the tiny sink, he said, sort of grandly, “And now, lad, for the egg tempera process.”

He cleared the table of the rest of the stuff and brought out all the paint and the eggs and a hunk of wood with gesso on it. Then he started to tell me all about it and pretty soon I was all involved messing with the paint and leaning over the table with the kerosene lamp in the middle of it. He was kind of pussyfooting around in back of me while I got more and more into what I was doing.

Suddenly the hair on the back of my neck stood up. I glanced at the kerosene light and saw, so help me granny, his reflection. His lips were peeled back, and the glints from that stiletto were just too much. I jumped aside, pushing the table over, and everything fell off with a big crash and the old kerosene just went spoosh and everything was on fire. By now he was screaming — the flames had got to the Calagria — and suddenly he turned into a devil and I was running out the door and he was after me. With that and the old shack burning up like crazy, I thought goofily, oh, man, there goes the beautiful picture.

I headed out toward the open field and then I saw this open well, so I zigged a bit and zapped around it and there he was on the other side holding that knife and by now I didn’t know what I was doing. I was plain mad, so I thought, well, dammit, he tried to get me, so I’ll get him because he’s dangerous. I grabbed a stick lying on the ground and we had a duel right there, round and round that open well. Then he let fly with the stiletto. I ducked, and whiz, down came my stick on his skull and he went flat and hit his head on the side of the well. I knelt down and saw that poor old Lawrence Weber Weeves was as dead as could be. I started crying. Then I heard the volunteer firemen coming, so after scrabbling around in the weeds, I found the stiletto and tossed it in the well.

I sort of went into shock for a while. Finally I told everybody we were having dinner when the lamp got knocked over and we ran outside and he tripped over the well.

After that I kind of kept to myself. I think I cried for a month or two. Then one night I bought myself some French bread, salami, and wine, sat down at my table, and had a sort of memorial dinner for him.

A couple of weeks later I found a reproduction of the Calagria at the bookshop. I framed it and it’s on my wall. Man, I really get lost in that thing, like I was there! Sometimes I even feel like I’m one of the people in the picture — or maybe old Calagria himself. I’ve been working with egg tempera and I’m doing a copy of the Venice Street Scene, or the Venice Canal Scene, actually. It’s got everything — women haggling about the price of fish; orange rinds floating in the canal; dandies swaggering; clothes blowing on lines strung from one building to another; tarts with bleached hair and scandalously low necklines strutting beside the water; gondolas being propelled by muscular gondoliers. The true Venice. The Venice then. I sometimes get back there, back where I should have been in the first place. I was born in the wrong century.

The glare of neon lights pulsed through the grimy window like a psychedelic hangover, splashing color all over the steel, Formica, and linoleum interior. This was the dry cleaners: by day, a haunt for workers and the occasional customer. But, at night, after the people left and the lights went out, it was a different world. Then it was my world. The name’s Macintosh. I’m a trenchcoat.

It was raining hard the night the skirt came looking for me. I’d been lifting a few with Tommy the Tweed over at the spot-cleaning bar when she slid in like a bar of wet soap. In this neighborhood you see a lot of skirts but not like this one — long and slim, hot red with a deep slit that could unravel your seams. Unlike the rags you usually see around here, she had class. She smelled of money. One hundred percent silk — definitely not my type.

“Mr. Macintosh?” she asked in a voice that slid like satin off an ironing board.

“That’s me, sister,” I agreed. “What can I do for you?”

She shifted on her hanger, looking around. This wasn’t her kind of place, and I wasn’t exactly the kind of rag she was used to hobnobbing with, either.

“Mr. Macintosh...”

“Mac,” I told her. “Just call me Mac.”

This was plainly too informal for her. She straightened indignantly. “Mr. Macintosh, I am here only because I need your help. I am terribly worried about my sister Jackie. She’s a jacket, and she seems to be missing.”

I’d heard this kind of thing before. Usually it was nothing. Someone got filed under the wrong ticket, and the rest of the order pushed the panic button. I shrugged, shoving my sleeves deep into my pockets. “What’s your hanger, kid?”

“Hanger?” It took a few seconds. “Oh! My name is Sylvia. Sylvia Silksuit.” Her seams began to pucker. “You must find Jackie for me. I just know something has happened to her in this dreadful place!”

“Hey! Don’t get all drip-dry on me.” I handed her a hanky that was only a little dirty. “I know you ain’t a regular here. In fact, I can’t say I recall ever seeing you here before.”

“No,” she sniffed, pointedly ignoring the hanky. “I’m... that is, we’re tourists. Our customer brought us in this morning. We were supposed to check out by five. Jackie and I got separated at the counter. I got dry-cleaned and was supposed to meet her at the presser. Only, she never came.”

“Was there anyone else on your order?”

“No.” Her voice quavered, and I thought the waterworks were starting up again. I got the hanky out, just in case, but she managed to shut it off. “No, there were only Jackie and myself. We were a suit. Now I’m all alone.”

She sounded so lost I wanted to put my sleeve around her, but I knew she wouldn’t go for it. So I stuffed the hanky in my pocket and offered her a friendly grin. “Take it easy, kid. I’ll snoop around and see what washes up. I’ll get back to you.”

She slid away, and I turned to the crowd hanging around the spotting bar. The usual residents were there, along with some regulars, monthlies, and a few tourists from out of town. Who would know anything about some ritzy rag that got herself lost? In a dark corner a nylon sweater was draped all over a leather jacket, and across the room some old flannel shirts were needling a pair of new designer jeans. Two army jackets were arm-wrestling on the pressing board, too engrossed in the joy of trying to tear each other’s sleeves off to notice anyone. Harry Hibiscus, the resident playboy Hawaiian shirt, was guzzling starch with a flashy red Spandex dress. He was usually pretty stiff by this time. No use asking him. Then I spotted old Pete Plaidpants over on the rack. He was the oldest rag here.

Us residents had been here varying amounts of time, brought in and long since forgotten. In a few cases, the rag’s customer had met with some misfortune before getting back for the pickup. But most were like me: the customer just never forked over the dough to spring us. Whatever the reason, we were stuck here, and old Pete had been around as long as anyone could remember. He was sharp, was old Pete. He just might know something. I strolled on over.

“How you hangin’, Pete,” I asked, sliding onto the rack next to him.

“Hey, Mac,” he greeted me, crossing his legs to make more room. “How’s it with you?”

“Just the usual,” I replied. “Hunting up missing buttons, gettin’ the goods on a wandering rag, you know... By the way, Pete, you seen anything of a red silk jacket? A tourist. Size, oh, maybe nine, ten?”

His belt loops frowned as he thought. Finally, he said: “Yeah... yeah, I did see one like that earlier today. A real looker. Ritzy like. She was cosying up to Buddy Blueblazer over by the water heater. Why? What’s up?”

“She’s missing.” I scanned the room. “Blueblazer, huh?”

“That’s right. Looked like they were getting real chummy. A tourist, you say? Maybe she decided to quit her traveling and stay here. Did you check the boiler room?”

“Not yet, but I will. Thanks, Pete. I think I’ll go have a chat with Blueblazer.”

He flicked a pocket towards the sink. “I saw him and Millie headed that way a while ago.”

I wove through the rags and found Buddy snugged away with a pink angora sweater named Millie Mothbait. She was a cute little rag, but kind of shopworn... like she’d been blocked once too often. She slid her cuff off Buddy’s lapel as I came up.

I gave her a short nod and turned to Blueblazer. He came in about once a month, and I had never liked him. Maybe it was because he was too goodlooking, with his wide shoulder pads and trim, tapered seams. Or maybe it was the way he kept shining those brass buttons all the time. But he had something. The dames sure came unzipped over him.

“Macintosh?” he said, a thread of surprise in his soft drawl. “To what do I owe this honor? Buy you a drink? How about some perchlorethylene? New batch just came in today.”

“No drink, just information.” I asked him about Jackie. He got real tense, glancing sideways at Millie. At first he denied even seeing her, but when I told him Plaidpants had seen them together, he admitted that much.

Millie, who was known to be the jealous type, was fuming, but she didn’t seem very surprised. And that surprised me. I poked around a little more, but I already knew what I’d find. And, sure enough, by morning I had the case solved. All that was left was to tell Sylvia. As I made my way to where the “specials” hung, I tried to think of an easy way to break it to her. There was no easy way. I gave it to her straight.

“Sorry, kid. I found your sister in the bottom of the washing machine.”

“The...” She went limp, horrified. “The washing machine! But that can’t be! Jackie was... was...”

“I know,” I told her gently. “She was ‘Dry-clean Only.’ It wasn’t a pretty sight.”

It wasn’t until later that I told her sister had been helped into that machine, and about the small tuft of pink angora I found clutched in the button of her sleeve.

Millie finally came clean and admitted shoving Jackie into the laundry basket in a fit of jealousy. From then on, her life was washed up. The last I saw of Millie, she was being led away by a couple of burly uniforms with gold stars.

Sylvia’s customer was so steamed by what had happened to Jackie that she stormed out, leaving Sylvia to become a permanent resident. She’s settling in now, and getting over her loss.

And me? I’m finding silk might be my type after all.