Cry for the Strangers

1

Pete Shelling stared out at the sea, reading the swells like a map. Far off to the south the rest of the fleet was moving slowly toward the harbor, their running lights winking cheerfully in the night. Pete was tempted to alter his course and follow the fleet. He put the temptation down at once.

Following the fleet was not Shelling’s way; it never had been, and wouldn’t be now.

The wind freshened and Pete went aft to begin the back breaking task of hauling in his nets. Even with the power winch it was difficult work. He grimaced quietly, wishing he’d brought someone with him — he was getting too old to work alone, and the years were beginning to take their toll.

The nets began coming inexorably in, and he guided the thrashing fish into the hold, keeping the net neatly piled, ready to be reset. By the time he was finished, with the catch secure in the hold, Pete Shelling was alone on the sea.

The fleet was gone.

Once more he considered returning to harbor. He looked critically at the sea and remembered all the stories he’d heard about this part of the Pacific — about the sudden storms that plagued this stretch of the Washington coast, storms that seemed to come up out of nowhere, whipping the sea into a frenzy of wrath that could pick up a boat the size of Sea Spray and spin it across the surface like a top. But he had never seen such a storm — they seemed to be a thing of the past, probably an exaggeration, tales built into legend more by the active imaginations of generations of local fishermen than by the storms’ actual ferocity.

Pete Shelling’s eyes swept the horizon and he made his decision. He would reset the nets and take in one more catch before calling it a night. The tide would be at its fullest and he would have to fight the beginning ebb on his way back into the harbor, but that was all right. Pete Shelling was used to fighting.

Not that he’d intended to fight, not at first. Years ago, when he’d first decided to put his roots down in Clark’s Harbor, he’d planned to take life easy, join the fishing community, and spend the rest of his years in affable companionship.

But it hadn’t worked out that way.

Clark’s Harbor hadn’t welcomed him, and he’d spent fifteen years feeling like a stranger. He’d become a fisherman, but not part of the fleet. The rumors of good fishing never came to him, nor did the easy banter over beers at the Harbor Inn. Instead, the fishermen of Clark’s Harbor merely tolerated Pete Shelling, and he learned to live with it. But it had hardened him, made him as obstinate as they. Now, when the fleet went in, he stayed, waiting for the last catch, the catch that would prove to them that no matter what they thought of him, he was better than they were.

He moved the boat north now and began slowly letting the nets out again, bringing the trawler around in a sweeping are so that the current would carry the richest harvest into the submerged mesh. Then, when the nets were fully out, he dropped anchor and lit his pipe. One, maybe two pipefuls, and he would start the last haul of the night. The last and the longest.

He was knocking the dottle out of his pipe, about to check the position of the nets, when he realized something was wrong. The wind, which had been blowing steadily, suddenly shifted, gusting against the boat. The face of the water was different. The swell had been running steadily shoreward; now, it turned choppy, and grew in front of Shelling’s eyes.

Fete moved aft, intent on hauling in the nets. He threw a switch and the winch began humming steadily. The nets snaked slowly in. He worked quickly, gathering in the net, guiding the thrashing fish into the hold.

The swell increased and the wind began tearing at his slicker. He increased the speed of the winch and stopped worrying about stowing the net: there would be plenty of time in the morning to straighten it out. The important thing now was to get the catch in and head for the harbor before the full force of the storm broke over him. Pete Shelling worked furiously, hauling on the net, kicking at the fish, racing the elements.

Moments later, the storm broke with a flash of lightning and a clap of thunder. For a brief second the wild coastline was silhouetted in white light.

Disaster struck as the roar of the thunder died away. The humming of the winch stopped and the nets suddenly reversed themselves, pouring back into the sea. Pete Shelling cursed loudly, realized the danger, and tried to leap aside.

But it was too late. A coil of net seemed to leap up at him, wrap itself around his foot, and twist. The fisherman was thrown violently from his feet and felt himself being pulled overboard. He grabbed at the gunwhale, held on for a split second, then was torn loose by the weight of the sea tugging mightily at the net. Before he could scream the cold water closed over his head.

Time seemed to slow down for him, and he resisted the panic building in him, struggling against the almost overpowering urge to thrash toward the surface. Instead, he forced himself still deeper, straining to reach the entangled foot. He opened his eyes, then closed them again immediately — there was nothing to see in the blackness. He felt the loop around his ankle and, with a terrible twist and thrust, managed to work it free. Now he began fighting his way upward.

He felt the net tangling his arms imprisoning him. He kicked harder, and suddenly his head broke the surface. He gasped desperately, sucking the icy air deep into his lungs, and sank back into the sea, the net pulling at him, his kicks barely holding up against its weight.

He tried to untangle his arms from the grasping cords, but soon had to give it up and use his arms to force his way once more to the surface. This time, as he broke free of the water, he opened his eyes and saw his boat. The net was still feeding swiftly over the side, the winch spinning free.

Shelling sank once more below the surface. The net was all around him now and he no longer had room to kick. He thrashed his arms, but with his legs bound and useless in the grip of the heavy mesh, his struggles did no good.

Pete Shelling knew he was going to die.

Fear rose up in his gorge. He forced it back. Slowly, methodically, he began letting air out of his bursting lungs. He felt himself losing his buoyancy, and for an instant his fear left him. As soon as he breathed air in, the buoyancy would return. Then he remembered that there was no air to breathe. Only water.

He steeled himself to suck the sea into his lungs, and was mildly surprised to find that he couldn’t do it. His muscles steadfastly refused to obey the messages he sent them. His throat closed. He began to feel himself dying.

When at last he relaxed and the sea found its way in, Pete Shelling changed his mind. He wouldn’t die. He would fight back. The sea would not defeat him.

He thrashed again, thrashed wildly against the entangling nets, his weakening arms struggling against the bonds.

Then suddenly, almost miraculously, he broke the surface. But it was too late. His eyes searched wildly for help, but there was no one. He tried to scream, but was too choked with salt water for any sound to emerge. He sank back below the surface.

As Pete Shelling died, he tried to analyze the strange vision that was his last glimpse of the world. A boat. There seemed to be a boat. Not his own Sea Spray, but a smaller one. And a face. A dark face, almost like an Indian. But it couldn’t have been, of course. He was alone on the sea, alone in a storm that had blown up from nowhere. He was dying alone. There was nothing — only the last desperate hope of a drowning man.

The sea drowned the hope, and the man.

When sunrise came, hours later, Sea Spray floated peacefully on a calm sea, her nets spread around her like the tired skirts of an exhausted woman who has stayed too late and danced too long.

Pete Shelling had long since disappeared. The Sea Spray, alone in the ocean, seemed to mourn him.

2

Brad Randall glanced at his watch and saw that his stomach and the instrument on his wrist were, as usual, perfectly synchronized.

“Lunchtime?” his wife asked, reading his mind.

“I can go another half hour, but then I’ll get grouchy,” Brad said. “Any place around here look promising?”

Elaine reached for the map that lay neatly folded on the dashboard. “Unfortunately, they don’t put anything on road maps except the names of the towns,” she said dryly. “No evaluations.” She glanced at the map briefly, then looked out the window. “God, Brad, it’s so beautiful out here.”

They were driving south on Route 101 along the west coast of the Olympic Peninsula. For the last hour, ever since they had passed Crescent Lake, the road had wound through lush green forests, choked with underbrush so dense that Elaine had several times wondered aloud how anyone could have cut through it to build the highway. Then the forest had given way to beach, and just as they had arrived at the coast the cloud cover had broken. To their right the Pacific Ocean lay sparkling in the late morning sun, a stiff breeze frosting it with whitecaps. To the left the dense forest rose steeply to the towering heights of the Olympic Range, standing as a proud barrier between the ocean to the west and Puget Sound to the east.

“Let’s stop,” Elaine said suddenly. “Please? Just for a few minutes?”

Brad paused, considering, then looked once more at his watch. “Okay, but remember: just a few minutes. And remember that there is no more room in the trunk for driftwood.”

He veered the car off the road and came to a stop, then turned his full attention to the beach. It was, indeed, beautiful. Between the road and the sand the ever-present tangle of driftwood formed a silvery barrier that promised hidden treasures for the persistent beachcomber. And Elaine Randall was persistent. Before Brad had even made his way around the car she was clambering over the driftwood, poking here and there, picking up pieces of flotsam, evaluating them against the memory of things she had already collected, then discarding them in the hope of finding something better in the next nook. Brad watched with amusement; During their two weeks on the peninsula Elaine had filled and emptied the trunk of their car at least three times — throwing away yesterday’s “perfect” piece of driftwood in favor of today’s, which would in turn be discarded tomorrow.

He began making his way toward her, knowing from experience that his help would be required to haul her finds back to the car. He was only a few yards from her when Elaine gave a whoop of victory.

“I found one!” she cried. “I finally found one!” She held a sparkling blue object aloft and Brad knew immediately that it was one of the Japanese fishing floats she had sworn to find before going home.

“Great,” he called. “Now can we have lunch?”

If she heard him she gave no sign — she was totally engrossed in examining the float, as if looking for the flaw that ought to be there; to find a perfect one was almost too much good luck. But it was perfect. Elaine looked happily up at her husband as he settled next to her on the log.

“It’s not even chipped,” she said softly. She held it up to the light and watched the dancing refraction of the sun through the blue glass. “It’s an omen,” she declared.

“An omen?”

She grinned impishly. “Of course. It means we’re going to find the right place today.”

“We’d better,” Brad said gloomily. “If we don’t, we’re in trouble. There aren’t many more places left to look.”

Elaine stood up decisively. “Come on,” she said. “Back to the car with you. I’m going to look at the map, and I’ll bet the first place I pick will be exactly what we’ve been looking for.”

In the car Elaine carefully packed the sparkling blue globe in her purse, then picked up the map.

“Clark’s Harbor,” she announced.

“Clark’s Harbor?” Brad repeated. “Where is it?”

“About twenty miles south.”

Brad shrugged. “It’ll do for lunch.” He started the engine, put the car in gear, then pressed the accelerator. Beside him, Elaine settled confidently in her seat.

“You seem awfully sure,” Brad said. “And you’re thinking about more than a place for lunch.”

“I am.”

“Mind telling me why?”

“I told you — the float is an omen. Besides, it sounds right. ‘I’m in Clark’s Harbor writing a book.’ It sounds very professional. And of course you’re going to write a very professional book.”

“I wonder,” Brad mused with a sudden sense of misgiving. “Am I making a big mistake? I mean, taking a whole year off just to write a book that might not even sell—”

“Of course it will sell,” Elaine declared. “Millions of people will gobble it up.”

“A book on bio-rhythms?”

“All right,” she said, unconcerned. “So it’ll only be hundreds of thousands.”

“Tens of tens, more likely,” Brad said darkly.

Elaine laughed and patted his knee. “Even if it doesn’t sell at all, who cares? We can afford the year off, and I can’t imagine a better place to spend the time than out here. So even if the book is only an excuse to spend a few months at the beach — which it isn’t, of course—” she added quickly, “it’s still worth it.”

“And what about my patients?”

“What about them?” Elaine said airily. “Their neuroses will keep, with Bill Carpenter looking out for them. He may not be the psychiatrist you are, but he’s not going to kill your patients.”

Brad lapsed into silence. Elaine was right. It was a comfortable silence, the kind of silence that comes only between people who love and understand each other, a silence born, not from lack of anything to say, but rather from a lack of necessity to say anything at all.

They had been combing the peninsula for two weeks, looking for the right town in which to spend the year Brad estimated it would take him to complete his book. But there had been something wrong with every town they had seen — too commercial or too shabby, too self-consciously quaint or too self-satisfied. Today, Brad knew, they would either find the right town or give up the search, for if they continued on, they would be into the unrelieved dullness of Aberdeen and Hoquiam, having made a complete circuit of the peninsula. Maybe Elaine’s right, Brad thought. Maybe Clark’s Harbor is the right place. He rolled the name of the town around in his mind. Clark’s Harbor. Clark’s Harbor. It had a nice lilt to it, like an old New England fishing village.

“It’s right up ahead,” Elaine said softly, breaking the silence.

Brad realized he hadn’t been paying much attention to the road, driving more by habit than by concentration. Now he saw they were in the outskirts of a town.

It didn’t seem to be a large town, which was fine, and it seemed to be well tended, which was even better. The houses were scattered along the road, frame houses, some neatly painted, others weathered to a silver patina by the sea wind. But even the older structures stood firmly upright, solidly built to withstand the elements.

They drove down a slight incline into the heart of Clark’s Harbor. It was little more than a village. There was a side street running perpendicular to the highway, and Brad made a right turn onto it. The incline steepened and they dropped quickly into the center of the village. The street ended at a wharf. Brad brought the car to a stop and he and Elaine looked curiously around.

“It looks like something out of New England,” Elaine said softly, echoing Brad’s thought. “I love it.”

And it did look like a picture-postcard New England town. The buildings that clustered along the waterfront were all of a type: neat clapboards, brightly painted, with manicured gardens flowering gaily in the spring air. Set apart, grandly aloof from the rest, was an old Victorian building, its lawn and garden neatly bounded by a white picket fence. A hand-lettered sign proclaimed it the Harbor Inn.

There were several people on the streets, enough so the town seemed busy but not frantic. One or two glanced at the Randalls’ car, but with no particular interest. No one stopped to stare; no one gestured or commented. Brad frowned slightly, feeling a strange lack of curiosity in the people who had glanced at them so disinterestedly. Always sensitive to her husband, Elaine looked quickly at him, concern clouding her face.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Brad said. Then he grinned at her. “What do you say we get something to eat?”

Rebecca Palmer had noticed the strange car passing by as she was about to go into Blake’s Dry Goods, but she was preoccupied with other things. Right now she was more concerned with her shopping than with who might have arrived in Clark’s Harbor. The dark green Volvo had seemed somehow familiar, though. Wishful thinking; she pushed it out of her mind.

She pulled a cart from the row that stood waiting just inside the front door and began wheeling it slowly through the aisles, stopping to look at a display of china that struck her as being in particularly bad taste, even for dime-store dinnerware. Shaking her head sadly at the garish pink and blue pansies that paraded helplessly around the perimeter of the plates, she moved on, picking up an item here and there and depositing it in the basket of the cart.

The crash came as she was pausing in front of a rack of inexpensive dresses. She whirled around and saw George Blake hurrying toward the china display. Satisfied that the accident had had nothing to do with her, Rebecca turned back to the rack and continued her search for a dress that would set off her almost ethereal prettiness. Rebecca had a fragile look to her, and it was difficult for her to find clothing that didn’t overwhelm her. She was about to give up her search when she heard Mr. Blake behind her.

“You’re going to have to pay for that stuff.” His voice was gruff, as if he was expecting to be contradicted. Rebecca turned and looked shyly at him.

“I beg your pardon?”

“The china,” Blake said accusingly. “You’re going to have to pay for the things you broke.”

“But I didn’t have anything to do with that,” Rebecca explained. “I was standing right here, looking at the dresses.”

“I saw you looking at the china,” Blake said evenly.

Rebecca frowned unhappily. “But that was five or ten minutes ago. And I didn’t even touch it.”

Blake’s face darkened, and Rebecca almost recoiled from the man’s unconcealed hostility.

“Don’t lie to me, Mrs. Palmer. You must have knocked the stack over. There isn’t anybody here but you and me.”

Rebecca glanced quickly around and saw that. he was right Except for her and the proprietor, the store was empty.

“But I didn’t have anything to do with it,” she insisted helplessly. “I told you, I wasn’t anywhere near that table.”

Blake just stared at her.

“Don’t know why you want to say something like that,” he said finally. “Ever since you and your family got here, we’ve all known there was something funny about you. Now I guess I know what it is — you’re a liar.”

“I am not!” Rebecca flared. “If I’d done it, I’d admit it, and pay for the damage. But I didn’t do anything.”

“All right,” Blake replied. “I’ll take your word for it. But if you don’t mind, I’ll just put all that stuff in your basket back on the shelves.”

“You’ll do what?”

“I don’t want you shopping here anymore,” Blake said. “I suppose you have a right to be in Clark’s Harbor, but that doesn’t mean I have to sell to you. From now on take your business somewhere else.”

Rebecca Palmer bit her lip and forced herself not to burst into tears. What is it, she asked herself. What is it about this town? But she knew there was no point in asking Blake, less point in arguing with him.

Silently, Rebecca left the dry goods store, wondering how she would explain the incident to her husband and how he would react to it. Not well, she was sure. Glen Palmer controlled his artist’s temperament well, but sometimes he blew. This, she was sure, would make him blow.

“There’s a café,” Elaine Randall said, pointing. The restaurant was on the second floor of a two-story building, above a tavern. The Randalls had to pass through the tavern to go upstairs, and Brad glanced around when his eyes had adjusted to the gloom. The bar was nearly empty — only a couple of old men sitting at a scarred oak table, a checkerboard and a pitcher of beer between them. He grinned his approval to Elaine and followed her upstairs.

The café, in contrast to the bar, was nearly full. There was one empty table by the window, and the Randalls headed for it. Brad scanned the menu, deciding on a crab salad without really considering the options, then put the menu aside in favor of his favorite hobby: people watching.

A few minutes later a waitress appeared and took their order. When she was done, Elaine placed the menu back in its holder behind the napkins and folded her hands.

“Well?”

“Well, what?”

“Tell me who’s here.”

“Not much to tell, really,” Brad said. “It looks to me like mostly fishermen—”

“Very astute of you,” Elaine broke in, “considering there’s a wharf right outside the window.”

“Also some housewives and shopkeepers,” Brad continued, ignoring the gibe. “And one person I can’t figure out.”

“Where?” Elaine asked, glancing around. “Never mind — it has to be that man sitting by himself over there. I see what you mean.”

“Really? What do I mean?”

“He’s different from the rest of them,” Elaine said. “He looks like he doesn’t quite fit in, and knows it.”

Brad nodded and glanced once more at the man they were talking about. It was his clothes, Brad decided, and something about his face. Like a number of the men they’d seen, this one wore jeans and a faded work shirt, but somehow he wore them differently. It was the fit of them. They fit too well. And the face. What was it about the face? Then it hit Brad: the man had recently shaved off a beard, leaving a pallor where the lower part of his face had been protected from the sun. And something else hit Brad: a sense of recognition. He was almost sure he knew the man.

Before he could ask Elaine about it their food arrived and the Randalls began eating, though every now and then Brad’s glance moved curiously to the man whose clothes fit and who had just cut off his beard. The man kept his eyes on his plate and ate steadily, not rushing, but wasting no time. Once he signaled for more coffee. The waitress poured it willingly but didn’t stop to chat for a few seconds as she did with everyone else in the café. When the man finished his meal, he dug into his pocket, dropped some money on the table, and started to leave. But as he moved toward the stairs his eyes suddenly met Brad’s, and he stopped short. A grin lit his face and he moved quickly across the room, his hand extended in greeting.

“Dr. Randall? Is it really you?”

Brad recognized him then and stood up. “Glen Palmer! For Christ’s sake! I’ve been sitting here all along, sure I recognized you, but I couldn’t place you.”

“It’s the beard,” Glen Palmer answered. “I shaved it off when we moved out here.”

“Sit down. This is my wife, Elaine. Honey, this is Glen Palmer, the father of Robby Palmer.”

Elaine’s brow furrowed with puzzlement, then cleared as she extended a hand in greeting. “Of course,” she said, smiling. “How is he? Brad tells me there was some kind of miracle.”

“That’s the only word to describe it,” Palmer agreed as he sat down. Brad looked at him expectantly, wanting to bombard Palmer with questions but reluctant to embarrass the man.

Robby Palmer, Glen’s nine-year-old son, had been under Brad Randall’s care for nearly three years, a victim of hyperkinesis. It had been a particularly severe case. The first time he had seen the child, Robby was six years old, and unable to sit still for more than a second or two, talking constantly, compulsively, his hands and feet always moving, sometimes only nervously, but more often destructively. Brad had quickly learned to remove all breakable things from his office when Robby Palmer was coming. A small boy with an angel’s face and a “devil” within. There was something inside him, some malfunction in his nervous system, that kept him moving, relentlessly, exhaustingly, sometimes frighteningly. The child had been subject to sudden fits of senseless rage, and it had been during these fits that his violence would surface, his small hands darting out to seize the closest objects — any objects — and hurl them at the nearest window, wall, or person. Brad had a memory, one he would not soon forget, of two pieces of Steuben crystal, his two favorites, bought when he could ill afford them, that had been smashed irreparably one afternoon by a mildly upset Robby Palmer, who had then stared at the splinters of glass, puzzled, as if he wondered what had happened to them. There had been no evidence of remorse in the child, no fear of punishment. Only a second’s detached coldness, as if the shattered figurines had nothing to do with himself, before the compulsive nervous motion took hold again.

One day, a few months ago, Robby Palmer had stopped coming to see Brad Randall, and Brad had never understood why. When he had tried to talk to the Palmers about it they had only said there was a miracle and left it at that. Silently, Brad Randall wondered if Clark’s Harbor had anything to do with that miracle. Now Glen told him.

“You won’t believe it,” he was saying. “The change in Robby is absolutely incredible. Ever since we brought him out here. He’s calm, Dr. Randall. He’s still active, but it isn’t like it used to be. Now he’s like other children.”

“But what caused it?” Brad asked.

Glen Palmer shrugged. “I haven’t any idea. We came out here on a camping trip and stopped just north of town, at a place called Sod Beach. And Robby calmed down. Just like that,” he said, snapping his fingers. “And he stayed calm as long as we were on the beach. So we moved out here.”

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Brad mused.

“Maybe not,” Palmer agreed. “But we don’t question it. Whatever demons were in him, they’re gone now. Gone forever.”

Brad’s fingers drummed softly on the table top as he turned Glen’s statement over in his mind, trying to figure out what could have cured Robby’s disorder. It had been a problem case too long, and Brad was always skeptical of “miracles.” “I wonder if I could see him?” he asked.

“Why not?” Glen agreed amiably. “He always liked you.”

“Tell that to my receptionist,” Brad chuckled. The receptionist had lived in terror of Robby’s visits to the office, and often made up reasons not to be there when the child arrived.

Glen glanced up at the clock on the wall. “Tell you what,” he said, “why don’t you come out to our place this evening or tomorrow morning? Are you staying in town?”

“I guess we might as well,” Elaine said uncertainly, knowing Brad would want to. “Is there a decent place?”

“The Harbor Inn, down on the waterfront,” Glen said. “It’s the only place.” He stood up. “Look, I’ve got a lot to do this afternoon. See you later, okay?”

“Sure,” Brad said. Before he could say anything else Glen Palmer hurried away from their table and disappeared through the door.

“That was sudden,” Elaine commented.

“It was, wasn’t it?” Brad agreed. Then he noticed that as soon as Palmer left a buzz of conversation had started among the remaining patrons of the café.

“Well,” a woman at the next table said a bit too loudly to her lunch partner. “At least he’s shaved off that awful beard.”

“Not that it matters,” the other woman replied. “He still doesn’t fit in around here.”

“You’d think he’d get the message,” the first woman said. “Everybody else like them has caught on right away and left us in peace.”

“My Joe offered to buy that building of theirs just yesterday,” the second woman said. “And do you know what Glen Palmer told him? He told him it wasn’t for sale. Joe told him he’d better sell while he could, before he ruined it completely, but Palmer told him he wasn’t ruining it — he was remodeling it.”

“Into an art gallery,” the first woman sniffed. “What makes him think he can make a living with an art gallery in Clark’s Harbor? And that wife of his — makes pottery that looks like mud pies and thinks people will actually buy it!”

The conversation continued to buzz around them. From the few words Brad could catch, he knew they were all talking about the same person — Glen Palmer. Everyone, apparently, talked about him. No one had talked to him.

“Maybe I was wrong,” Brad heard Elaine say. She also was listening to the comments from the other tables.

“ ‘New England,’ you said.” Brad gave her a wry smile. “Sounds to me like you were right on target. These people don’t seem to like strangers any more than villagers do anywhere else.”

“It’s kind of scary, isn’t it?” Elaine asked.

Brad shrugged. “I don’t know. I think it’s more or less to be expected. We’ll probably get the same treatment no matter where we go. But it’s just a matter of time. People have to get used to you, particularly in places like this. I’ll bet a lot of people in this town rarely see someone they don’t know. When they do they get suspicious.”

Elaine fell silent and continued eating her lunch. The psychiatrist in Brad was enjoying himself, finding the hostile attitudes of the locals “interesting,” and she wasn’t sure she approved. But, she quickly reminded herself, you knew when you married him that he was a psychiatrist; you have nothing to complain about. She concentrated on looking out the window and did her best to ignore the chatter going on around her.

It wasn’t until they were finishing their coffee that Brad spoke again.

“I think we should look around.”

“I’m not so sure …” Elaine began.

Brad tried to reassure her. “Honey, any small town is going to be the same, and if we’re going to live in a place like this for a year, we’re going to have to tolerate some hostility and suspicion at first. It goes with the territory: if you want to be in a small town, you have to put up with small town attitudes.”

He paid the check and they left the café. Downstairs, in the tavern, Brad saw that the checker game seemed not to have progressed at all. One of the old men stared intently at the board, the other out the window. If either of them noticed the Randalls neither gave a sign.

“Let’s look around the wharf,” Brad suggested, as they came out into the sunlight.

Most of the slips were empty, but five or six fishing boats were still tied up, with men working on them, repairing nets, tinkering with engines, inspecting equipment. They walked the length of the wharf, pausing to inspect each boat as they passed it. No one spoke to them, and once, when Brad offered a tentative “hello,” there was no response.

“They don’t talk much, do they?” Elaine observed as they neared the end of the pier.

“Odd, isn’t it?” Brad replied. “Apparently the image of the happy fisherman hasn’t reached Clark’s Harbor yet.” He glanced around as if unsure what to do next. “Shall we go for a ride?”

Before Elaine could answer him there was a blast of a siren and a police car pulled up to the wharf. From the driver’s side a barrel-chested man of about sixty emerged, then circled the car to open the door for a heavyset woman. She got out of the car, one hand clutching the police officer’s arm, the other holding onto a crumpled handkerchief.

All activity on the wharf came to a halt as the men on the boats stared at the new arrivals.

“Something wrong, Chief?” a voice called.

“Something’s always wrong when Harney Whalen comes to the wharf,” another voice shouted.

Police Chief Harney Whalen didn’t acknowledge the second voice, but chose instead to answer the first.

“Don’t know,” he called out. “Miriam Shelling here can’t seem to find Pete. Any of you guys seen him?”

There were negative murmurings among the fishermen, and they began leaving their boats to gather around the chief. Miriam Shelling still clung to Whalen and dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief.

“He went out last night,” she said, looking from one of the men to another, then another, her eyes never resting for long on any single face. “He said he’d be back about four o’clock this morning, but he never came in.”

One of the fishermen nodded in agreement. “Yeah, he was right behind me when I went out last night, but he didn’t come back in when I did. He’s probably found a school and wants to get all he can.”

Miriam Shelling shook her head. “He wouldn’t do that,” she insisted. “He’d know I’d be worried. He’d at least have called me on the radio.”

The men exchanged glances among themselves. Harney Whalen looked uncomfortable, as if he was wondering what to do next, when the silence was broken by the blast of an air horn. Everyone turned toward the harbor, where a small launch was speeding toward the wharf. Miriam Shelling’s fingers tightened on the police chief’s arm.

The launch pulled up into one of the empty slips and a line was tossed out, caught, and tied to a cleat. A man leaped from the small boat, his face pale. He looked quickly around, his eyes coming to rest on Harney Whalen.

“Are you a policeman?”

“I’m the chief,” Whalen said. “Something the matter?”

The man nodded. “I found a boat drifting out there. When I hailed it there wasn’t any response, so I went aboard. The boat was deserted.”

“Where is it?” Whalen asked.

“It’s anchored about a mile north, maybe three hundred yards out,” the man said. “It’s called the Sea Spray.”

“That’s Pete’s boat,” Miriam Shelling cried. The man stared at her for a moment, then pulled Whalen a few feet away. When he spoke again his voice dropped low.

“Its nets were out,” he said softly. “I decided to pull them in. And they weren’t empty.”

Whalen glanced quickly at Miriam, then back to the stranger.

“A body?”

The man nodded. “I brought it back with me.”

Whalen moved to the launch and stepped down into it. The fishermen crowded around as Whalen pulled back the tarpaulin that lay bundled in the stern. Pete Shelling’s vacant eyes stared up at them.

Ten yards away the Randalls watched as the fishermen reacted to the death. They stared mutely down into the boat, then one by one began drifting away, as if somehow embarrassed to be in the presence of death. They passed Miriam Shelling silently, offering her neither a word nor a gesture of comfort. When they were gone and only Harney Whalen and the owner of the launch remained, Miriam finally stepped forward and peered down at her husband. She froze for a moment, then wailed his name and threw herself into Harney Whalen’s arms. He held her for a moment, then spoke quietly to the man who had brought Pete Shelling home. Finally he led Miriam Shelling from the wharf, helped her back into the police car, and drove her away.

“My God,” Elaine breathed softly. “How awful.”

Brad nodded, his eyes still fixed on the wharf. Elaine grasped his arm.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said. “Please?”

Brad seemed not to hear her. “Did you notice?” he asked. “It was almost as if nothing had happened. They didn’t speak to her, they didn’t speak to each other, they didn’t ask any questions, they didn’t even seem surprised. It was almost as if they were expecting it.”

“What?” Elaine asked blankly.

“The fishermen. They didn’t react to that man’s death at all. It was almost as if they were expecting it, or it didn’t have anything to do with them — or something. But what happened to him could happen to any of them.”

Elaine looked carefully at her husband. She knew what was coming. She tried to head it off.

“Let’s leave, Brad,” she said. “Please? I don’t like Clark’s Harbor.” But it was too late, and she knew it.

“It’s fascinating,” Brad went on. “Those men didn’t react like normal people at all. Not at all.” He took Elaine’s hand and squeezed it.

“Come on,” he said, “let’s find that inn.”

“We’re staying?” Elaine asked.

“Of course.” Brad grinned. “What else?”

Elaine felt a twist of fear deep in her stomach and forced it away, telling herself it was unreasonable. But deep inside, the fear remained, unreasonable or not.

Far out on the horizon, a storm was gathering.

3

The Harbor Inn, its Victorian façade painted a fresh white with sky-blue trim, perched almost defiantly in the center of a neatly tended lawn. It gazed suspiciously out over the water, as if it expected the sea to snatch it away at any second. From a room on the second floor Elaine Randall stared at the sea in unconscious imitation of the inn. She listened to the wind whistle under the eaves of the old building and marveled that the fishing boats, secured against the growing storm, rode so easily in the choppy water of the bay. As rain began to splash against the window she turned to her husband.

“I suppose it will do for one night,” she said doubtfully, glancing around the room. Brad grinned at her.

“You love it and you know you love it,” he chuckled. “If it hadn’t been for that drowning, you’d be happy as a clam.”

Elaine sat down heavily in the slipcovered wing chair that filled one corner of the small room and tried to analyze her feelings. She knew Brad was right: if they hadn’t been on the wharf when that man’s body had been brought in, she would now be raving about the room, raving about the town, and excitedly planning to spend a year here. But the fisherman’s death had drained her enthusiasm, and now she looked bleakly at the antique furnishings of the equally antique inn and found herself unable to muster any positive thoughts at all.

“It’s run-down,” she said sourly.

“It isn’t at all,” Brad countered. “All things considered, it’s remarkably well kept up.”

“If you like this sort of thing.”

“Which you do,” Brad said emphatically. “Look at that washstand. Not a chip in the marble anywhere, and if that oak isn’t hand rubbed, I’ll eat it for dinner.”

Elaine examined the washstand closely and had to admit that Brad was right — it was a genuine antique and it was flawless. Forcing her negative feelings aside, she made herself look at the room once again. She had to concede that it was charming. There was no trace of standard hotel furnishings, nothing to indicate it was anything but the cozy bedroom of a private home. The double bed sported what was obviously a handmade quilt, and all the furniture was good sturdy oak. Not fancy, but warm and functional.

“All right,” Elaine gave in. “It is nice, and it’s exactly the sort of thing I love. I just wish it weren’t in Clark’s Harbor.”

“But if it weren’t in Clark’s Harbor it wouldn’t exist, would it?” Brad reasoned.

“You’re not going to trap me into that old argument. Besides, you know perfectly well what I’m talking about. You’re just trying to be ornery.”

“Me?” Brad said with exaggerated innocence. “Would I do a thing like that?”

“Yes, you would,” Elaine replied, trying to keep her voice severe. “But I won’t fall for it. If I did, in another minute you’d have me all turned around and I’d be begging you to let us stay here at least for a few days. But I don’t want to stay. I want to go back to Seattle, and I want to go in the morning.”

“Yes, ma’am,” her husband said, clicking his heels and saluting. He smiled at his wife and wondered how serious she was — and how much arguing he was going to have to do to convince her to stay in Clark’s Harbor for a while. He decided to approach the problem obliquely. He began untying his shoes.

“I’ve been thinking about Robby Palmer,” he said neutrally.

Elaine caught on immediately. “The book,” she said. “You’ve decided to write your book about him, haven’t you?”

“I don’t know,” Brad countered. “I’d like to find out what happened to him, though. The kind of disorder he has doesn’t just clear up as Glen said it did. It just doesn’t happen.”

“But if it did?” Elaine asked.

“Then it’s worth knowing about. My God, if there’s something out here, something about the area, that affects children like Robby, and helps them, then the world should know about it.”

“What would you call the book? Paradise Found?”

“Well, a book about Robby Palmer might have a wider appeal than a book about bio-rhythms,” Brad said defensively.

“Why don’t you write about both?” Elaine offered. “Get both audiences?” She began laughing at her own joke, but stopped when she saw the look on Brad’s face. “Did I say something?” she asked warily.

“I don’t know,” Brad said. He kicked his shoes off, then tossed bis socks after them. He stretched out on the bed and opened his arms invitingly. Elaine moved from the chair to the bed and snuggled close to him. His arms pressed her against his chest; one hand stroked the back of her neck softly. The patter of rain against the window became a steady drumming. And he knew he was about to win: they would not be going home in the morning.

“Do you really hate it here all that much?” he asked after a moment.

Elaine wriggled sensuously and nuzzled Brad’s neck, then once more tried to sort out her feelings.

“I suppose it was mostly that body,” she said finally, shuddering slightly at the memory. “I keep telling myself that the same thing could happen anywhere — I mean, fishermen drown all the time, don’t they? — but I keep seeing that face, all blue and bloated, and I’m afraid that I’ll always associate that memory with Clark’s Harbor.” She paused and felt Brad stir. “You want to stay here, don’t you?”

“Well, it’s certainly the prettiest place we’ve seen so far, and it seems perfect for what we want. It’s isolated and it’s small and there isn’t much chance that we’ll get so caught up in the social whirl that I won’t get any writing done.”

“Social whirl, indeed,” Elaine chuckled. “I’ll bet that boils down to an ice-cream social at the church once a month. But I don’t know, Brad. I keep telling myself to forget about that man, but even when I do, there’s something about this place. Something that just doesn’t seem right. I suppose it’s partly the way Glen Palmer was treated in the café this afternoon.”

“We’ve already been through that,” Brad pointed out.

“I know and I agree with you. There’s bound to be some of that sort of thing anywhere we go. But I just have a bad feeling about the whole place. Maybe it’s this storm.” As if on cue, a flash of lightning illuminated the room and the drumming of the rain was momentarily drowned out by a crash of thunder. Elaine, who usually liked storms, winced.

“Or maybe it’s your woman’s intuition?”

“If you want to call it that.”

“Well, I like it here,” Brad said decisively. “I think the whole place is fascinating. The people intrigue me. I suppose they interest me professionally. They seem sort of detached, if you know what I mean, as if they live together but they don’t really care about each other. It’s an interesting phenomenon, almost a contradiction in terms. A small, close-knit village, probably inbred as hell, yet no one seems to have any emotional involvement with anyone else. At least not on the surface. They probably cover a lot.”

“Maybe it’s just that nobody liked the poor man who drowned,” Elaine suggested.

“Maybe so,” Brad agreed. “But I think it’s something else, something deeper.” He broke off and the two of them nestled together on the bed listening to the storm. Outside, the wind was building, and the inn was beginning to creak softly.

“I even love the weather,” Brad said softly. “It makes me want to make love.”

Elaine pulled away from her husband and stood up. A moment later her skirt dropped to the floor, followed by her blouse. She stood naked in front of Brad and arched her back, her breasts jutting forward. She smiled softly down at him.

“One nice thing about a storm,” she whispered, “is that you can never hear what’s going on in the next room.”

Then she slipped into bed.

Two miles out of Clark’s Harbor, at the north end of a crescent of sand that was called Sod Beach, a single soft light glowed in the darkness from inside a tiny cabin. Too weak to illuminate even the corners of the room, it barely penetrated the dense black woods that nearly surrounded the structure. Rebecca Palmer, peering at the dishes she was washing in the dimness of the lantern light, cursed quietly to herself — nearly whispering so that her words would not be audible. But her son’s ears were sharper than she thought.

“Daddy!” Robby Palmer cried out with all the puritanical fervor of his nine-and-a-half years, “Mommy said a bad word!”

Glen glanced up from the game he was playing with his daughter and regarded his son seriously. “Well, I suppose we’ll have to do something about that, won’t we?” he observed mildly. Robby bobbed his head in agreement, but before he could say anything more his little sister’s voice interrupted.

“Which one?” she demanded. “The one that means poop?”

Robby looked at her scornfully. “Not that one, Missy. Everyone says that one. She said the one that means screw.”

Missy turned to her father, her seven-year-old face alive with curiosity. “I don’t know that one. Which one is that?”

“Never mind,” Glen said gently, then turned his attention to his wife. “What’s wrong, honey?”

Rebecca bit her lip, stilling her sudden urge to cry. “Oh, nothing, I suppose. I just wish we had electricity out here. I can’t even see if these dishes are clean.”

“What’s to worry about?” Glen said lightly. “If you can’t tell if they’re clean, we certainly won’t be able to tell if they’re dirty, will we?” Then, sensing that his attempt at humor was a mistake, he got to his feet and moved closer to Rebecca. Robby took his sister by the hand and led her into the tiny room that served as their bedroom. With the children gone, Glen drew his wife into his arms and held her close.

“It’s rough, isn’t it?” he said. Her face pressed against his chest, Rebecca nodded. For a moment she thought she was going to lose control and let her tears flow, but she decided to curse instead.

“Fuck it all,” she said softly. “Fuck it all.” Then, feeling a little better, she pulled away from Glen and grinned uncertainly. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ll be fine — really I will. I seem to be able to handle the big things — it’s always some dumb little thing that sets me off, like kerosene lanterns that don’t give off as much light as a forty watt bulb. Not that we’d have any electricity tonight even if we had electricity,” she added as a flash of lightning illuminated the room and the immediate clap of thunder flushed the children from the bedroom. Missy climbed into her father’s arms, while Robby stood in the doorway, his arms clasped tightly around a wriggling black-and-white spaniel. Glen felt a surge of relief at the appearance of the children, the relief that comes when a moment of tension is suddenly broken. He knew the break was only temporary, that the pressures that were building in both of them would have to be defused. But he had no idea how.

The Palmers had been in Clark’s Harbor only five months, but the months had not been easy. At first Glen and Rebecca had told each other that the coldness they felt from the town was only natural, that things would warm up for them. But Clark’s Harbor remained cold, unwelcoming, and many times they had thought of leaving.

If it hadn’t been for Robby they probably would have left.

Robby had never been an easy child. From the time he was a year old, Glen and Rebecca had realized that he was “different.” But only in the last three years had they truly begun to understand that Robby was not just “different,” not just precocious as they had assumed. He was, in fact, ill, and the older he got, the worse his illness became. Slowly, insidiously, Robby’s hyperkinesis had begun destroying all of them. Glen found himself increasingly unable to work, unable to concentrate, unable to create. And nearly all Rebecca’s time was taken up by what she had come to think of as “tending” Robby. She could hardly call it raising him, not even call it supervising him. It was cleaning up after him, trying to anticipate him, struggling to stay ahead of him. Each year Rebecca had become more tired, more irritable, more desperate.

Only Missy had been unaffected.

Missy, two years younger than her brother, had always remained calm, had learned early to take care of herself, knowing somehow that her brother had special needs that she did not have.

Then they had come to Clark’s Harbor.

When Glen had first suggested that a vacation might help them all, Rebecca had resisted, certain it would be no vacation at all, but only more of the same — Robby constantly talking, constantly moving, poking at his sister, demanding things, becoming suddenly violent. But Glen had prevailed. They had left Seattle and driven out to the peninsula, camping on the beaches. Finally they had come to the crescent of beach just north of Clark’s Harbor and pitched their tent.

There, the miracle had happened.

Neither one of them had noticed it at first. It was Missy who brought it to their attention. “Something’s wrong with Robby,” she said one afternoon.

Rebecca dropped the pair of jeans she was scrubbing, and ran out to the beach. She saw Robby playing near the surf line, building a sand castle, patiently building up the walls and parapets, digging the moats, and constructing drainage systems against the incoming tide. Rebecca watched, stunned, for a minute, then called to Glen.

“Look,” she said when he appeared on the beach.

Glen looked. “So?” he asked. “What’s so special about a kid building a sand castle?”

“It’s Robby,” Rebecca said softly. “And he hasn’t torn it down.”

It was true. Something had dispelled Robby’s frenetic restlessness. He sat quietly in the sand building his castle. They waited for the moment when he would suddenly jump to his feet, kick the structure all over the beach, and begin screaming and crying, venting his frustrations on whatever — whoever — was closest. But it didn’t happen. He continued working on the castle until it was built to his satisfaction, then looked up and, seeing his parents, waved to them.

“Look what I built,” he called. Glen and Rebecca, with Missy trailing behind, solemnly inspected Robby’s work. At first they didn’t know what to make of it, so used were they to his habit of starting something, then wrecking it and moving immediately on to something else. And yet there it was, a maze of walls and moats, stretching almost fifteen feet along the beach.

“He’s been working on it all morning,” Missy said proudly.

“The tide will wash it all away,” Glen pointed out, more to soften the inevitable blow than to disparage the work.

“That’s okay,” Robby said. “I can build another one further up.” He took his sister by the hand and started down the beach, walking slowly so that his stride matched Missy’s shorter steps. Glen and Rebecca watched them go, wondering what had happened, and waited for the terror to surface again.

But it didn’t, not once in the five days they spent on the beach, which they found out was called Sod Beach. It didn’t appear until they left Sod Beach and started back to Seattle. It started in the car the morning after they began the trip south. Robby became his familiar nervous self, fidgeting, teasing his sister, needing constant stimulation, interested in nothing.

Back in Seattle they told Brad Randall what had happened on Sod Beach, but he had no explanation. A fluke, he said, a coincidence. But Glen and Rebecca couldn’t accept that. All they knew was that on Sod Beach their son had been a normal nine-year-old boy. And so, during one long night of talk, they decided to leave Seattle. They would take the few thousand dollars Rebecca had inherited from her grandmother and move to Clark’s Harbor. There they would open a small art gallery, and with a little luck they would be able to make a living.

But the luck hadn’t come. They had quickly discovered that Clark’s Harbor was not the least bit interested in them or their plans. They had succeeded in buying the cabin on Sod Beach and making a down payment on a building which they were in the process of converting into a gallery. But the conversion was slow. Materials Glen needed never seemed to be in stock; deliveries seemed to take forever. Twice Glen had hired local men to help him with the work, but he had quickly discovered that the locals, either through inexperience or malice, were more a hindrance than a help.

Robby, though, was flourishing. The hyperkinesis that had plagued him throughout his short life had vanished as soon as they moved into the cabin on Sod Beach and showed no signs of recurring. Glen glanced at his son. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor, playing quietly with his dog while Missy watched. If it hadn’t been for Robby, Glen and Rebecca would have left Clark’s Harbor. But for him they stayed.

“Did something happen today?” Glen suddenly asked Rebecca.

She nodded. “I wasn’t going to tell you about it, but I suppose I might as well. It was weird.”

She told him about the incident at Blake’s Dry Goods, while Glen listened to the strange story in silence. When she was finished, he shrugged.

“So we don’t shop at Blake’s anymore,” he said. “All things considered, I don’t suppose it’ll make much difference.”

“It’ll be a damned nuisance,” Rebecca snapped. Seeing Glen flinch, she was immediately sorry. “Well, I suppose worse things could have happened. And I suppose they will.”

Glen was about to reply when Robby suddenly came into the room. Sensing that the boy was about to ask a question about what had happened to his mother that day, and not wanting to have to explain, Glen decided to divert him.

“Guess who I saw today?”

Robby looked at him curiously. “Who?”

“Dr. Randall.”

“Who?” Robby asked blankly.

Rebecca’s response was more positive. “Dr. Randall? Why didn’t you tell me? Where was he? Is he still in town?”

“One at a time,” Glen protested. “He and his wife are on vacation and they happened to be at the café when I went in for lunch. They’re staying at the inn, and I told them to stop by tonight or tomorrow.”

“Company …” Rebecca breathed, then glanced quickly around the tiny room, wondering what the Randalls would think of it. Robby was still gazing at his father.

“Who’s Dr. Randall?” he asked again.

Behind him Missy’s voice piped up. “Oh, Robby, he was your doctor. Don’t you remember?”

“No.”

“You never remember anything,” Missy taunted him.

“You’ll remember him in the morning,” Glen said, putting a quick end to the budding argument. “I think it’s time you two were in bed.”

“It’s too early,” Robby objected automatically.

“You don’t know what time it is,” Rebecca said.

“Well, whatever time it is, it’s too early,” Robby insisted. “We always stay up later than this.”

“Not tonight, you don’t,” Glen said. “Come on, both of you.”

He picked his daughter up and took his son by the hand. A moment later they were all in the tiny bedroom the two children shared. Glen helped them into their pajamas, then tucked them into the bunk beds, Robby on top and Missy below. He had started to kiss them good-night when Missy spoke.

“Daddy, can we have a light on in here?”

“A light? Since when do you need a light?”

“Just for tonight,” Missy begged. “I don’t like the storm.”

“It’s only wind and thunder and lightning, darling. It won’t hurt you.”

“Then what about Snooker?” Robby put in. “Can’t he sleep with us tonight?”

Snooker, the small black-and-white spaniel, stood in the doorway, his tail wagging hopefully, his soulful brown eyes pleading. Glen almost gave in, then changed his mind.

“No,” he said firmly. “He can’t. You know very well that dogs belong outside, not inside.”

“But he’ll get all wet,” Missy argued.

“He’ll survive. He sleeps under the house anyway.”

Before the children could argue any more, Glen kissed them both and picked up the lantern. “See you both in the morning,” he said, then pulled the door closed behind him.

He put a protesting Snooker outside, then sat down next to Rebecca, slipping an arm around her.

“Don’t let it get to you,” he said softly. “By tomorrow old Blake will have forgotten all about his damned dishes.”

“Hmm? Oh, I wasn’t worried about that. It’s Robby.”

“Robby?”

“How could he have forgotten Dr. Randall?”

“Children do that.”

“But, my God, Glen, he spent two or three hours a week with Randall for almost three years.”

“Then he’s blocked it.” Glen shrugged. “What’s so mysterious about that?”

“I didn’t say it was mysterious,” Rebecca said. “It just seems … odd, I guess.”

They fell silent then and sat quietly in front of the fire, listening to the wind and the pounding of the surf.

“I do love it here,” Rebecca said after a while. “Even when I think I can’t make it through another day, all I have to do is listen to that surf and I know everything’s going to be all right.” She snuggled closer. “It is, isn’t it?”

“Of course it is,” Glen said. “It just takes a little time.”

A few moments later, as Glen and Rebecca were about to go to bed, a small voice summoned them to the bedroom. Missy sat bolt upright in the lower bunk while Robby peered dolefully down at her from the upper.

“I told her not to call you,” Robby said importantly.

“I heard something outside,” Missy declared, ignoring her brother.

“What did you hear, darling?” Rebecca asked gently.

“I’m not sure, but it was something.”

“Sort of a rustling sound?”

The little girl’s head bobbed eagerly.

“It was probably just a branch rubbing against the house,” Glen said reassuringly.

“Or old Snooker looking for something,” Robby added.

“It was something else,” Missy insisted. “Something’s out there.”

Glen went to the small window and pulled the makeshift drapery aside. Beyond the glass the darkness was almost palpable, but he made a great show of looking first in one direction, then another. At last he dropped the curtain back into place, and turned to his daughter, who was watching him anxiously from the bunk. “Nothing there.”

Missy looked unconvinced. “Can I sleep with you and Mommy tonight?”

“Oh, don’t be such a baby,” Robby said scornfully. Missy cowered under the quilt at her brother’s reproach. But Rebecca leaned over the tiny face, and kissed it gently.

“It’s all right, sweetheart,” she murmured. “There’s nothing outside, and Mommy and Daddy will be right in the next room. If you get frightened, you just call us and we’ll be right here.”

She straightened, winked at her son, and left the room. After kissing each of his children once more, Glen followed his wife.

“Are you asleep?” Robby whispered.

“No.” Missy’s voice seemed to echo in the darkness.

A flash of lightning lit the room, followed immediately by a thunderclap.

“I wish it would stop,” Missy complained.

“I like it,” Robby replied. “It makes me feel good.” There was a silence, then the little boy spoke again. “Let’s go outside and find Snooker.”

Missy crept out of bed and went to the window, straining to see in the blackness. “It’s raining. We’ll get soaked.”

“We can put on our slickers.”

“I don’t think Snooker’s out there,” Missy said doubtfully.

“Yes he is. Daddy says he sleeps under the house.”

Robby climbed down from the top bunk and crouched next to his sister. “It’ll be fun,” he said. “It’ll be an adventure.”

“I don’t like adventures.”

“Fraidy cat.”

“I’m not either!”

“Then come outside with me.” Robby was pulling on his clothes. After watching him for a few seconds, Missy, too, began dressing.

“What if Mommy and Daddy hear us?” she asked as Robby opened the window.

“They won’t,” Robby replied with the assurance of his nine-and-one-half years. He began climbing over the sill. A moment later the children were outside, huddled against the cabin wall, trying to shelter themselves from the rain and wind.

“Snooker?” Robby called softly. “Come here, Snooker.”

They waited, expecting the spaniel to come bounding out of the darkness, wagging his tail and lapping their faces.

He didn’t come.

The two children looked at each other, unsure what to do next. Robby made the decision.

“We’d better go find him.”

“It’s too dark,” Missy complained.

“No it isn’t. Come on.” Robby started through the trees toward the beach. Hesitantly, Missy followed him.

As soon as he was clear of the woods, the force of the wind and rain hit Robby full in the face, filling him with a strange sense of exhilaration. He began running through the storm, listening to the roaring surf, calling out into the night. Behind him, her small feet pounding the packed sand, Missy ran as hard as she could to keep up with her brother. Though she could barely see him, she could follow the sound of his voice as he called out for the recalcitrant dog.

“Snooker! Snooooooker!!”

Suddenly Robby stopped running and Missy caught up with him. “Did you find him?”

“Shh!”

Missy lapsed into silence, and stared at her brother. “What’s wrong?” she whispered.

“Listen!”

She listened as hard as she could, but at first all she heard was the wind and the surf. Then there was something else.

A crackling sound, like twigs breaking.

“Someone’s here,” she whispered.

A dark figure, indistinct in the blackness, moved out of the woods and began coming across the beach toward them.

“Daddy?” Missy piped in a tiny voice, then fell silent as she realized that it was not her father. She moved closer to Robby, taking his hand in hers and squeezing it tight. “What’ll we do?”

“I don’t know,” Robby whispered. He was frightened, but he was determined not to let his sister know it. “Who’s there?” he said in his bravest voice.

The shadowy figure stopped moving toward them, then a voice, old and unsteady, came across the sand.

“Who’s that yourself, standing out in the rain?”

“Robby Palmer,” Robby said automatically.

“Well, don’t just stand there! Come over here where I can see you.”

Robby, pulling Missy with him, started toward the man, his fear vanishing. “Who are you?”

“Mac Riley.” The old man was in front of them now, his leathery features more distinct. “What are you doing out here?”

“Looking for our dog,” Robby replied. “He’s supposed to sleep under the house, but he isn’t there.”

“Well, if he’s smart he isn’t on the beach either,” Riley said. “This isn’t a good beach to be on. Not on a night like this.”

“Then why are you here?” Missy asked.

“Just keeping an eye on things,” Riley said mysteriously. The rain suddenly stopped and Riley looked up toward the sky. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said softly. “They must be working overtime tonight.”

“Who?”

Riley reached out and rumpled Robby’s wet hair.

“The ghosts. This beach is full of them.”

The two children drew closer together and glanced around warily.

“There’s no such thing as ghosts,” Missy said.

“Spirits, then,” Riley corrected himself. “And don’t say there’s no such thing. Just because you haven’t seen something, don’t believe it doesn’t exist.”

“Have you ever seen them?” Robby asked.

“Many times,” Riley said. “And always on nights like this, when the tide’s high, and the wind’s blowing. That’s when they come out here and do what they have to do.”

“What do they do?” Robby demanded.

The old man gazed at the two children, then lifted his eyes and stared out at the angry sea.

“They kill,” he said softly. “They kill the unwary stranger.”

Robby and Missy looked at each other, spoke no words, but simultaneously bolted and began racing for home, the wind clutching at them, the surf pounding in their ears.

Mac Riley, standing still on the beach, watched them until they disappeared into the night, then turned and started back into the woods.

Behind him, on the beach, something moved.

Something indistinct, something almost formless in the blackness.

4

Elaine Randall woke early the following morning, momentarily disoriented. She lay quietly in bed next to her husband, staring at the ceiling, waiting for the confusion to pass. The blast of an airhorn jolted her into reality and she remembered where she was. Next to her Brad stirred in his sleep, turned over, and resumed his light snoring. Elaine, fully awake now, left the bed and went to the window.

The storm had passed on to the east and in the sparkling clear morning light Clark’s Harbor seemed to beckon to her. She watched a small trawler chug slowly away from the wharf, then, remembering the storm of the previous night, decided to do some early morning beachcombing. She dressed quickly, resisting her impulse to wake Brad, and slipped from the room. As she passed the desk the same little man who had checked them in the afternoon before smiled brightly at her and bobbed his head in greeting. Elaine returned the smile, then walked briskly through the front door into the fresh salt air. She shivered, and drew her sweater more closely around her.

The street was deserted. Elaine hurried across it, then walked along the sea wall to the pier. For a moment she was tempted to explore the wharf, but the memory of the dead fisherman flooded back to her and she chose instead to clamber down the short flight of stairs that would put her on the beach. It wasn’t until she had walked a hundred yards along the sand that she realized she was in the wrong place for beachcombing: the harbor was too well protected for much to have washed up. She strode purposefully toward the north point of the bay, enjoying the soft lapping sound of the water and the increasing warmth of the morning sun. Above her a cloudless sky matched the blue of the ocean, and the breeze barely frosted the surface of the water with foam.

She rounded the point and found herself on a rocky beach mounded with driftwood. She picked her way slowly over the uneven ground, stopping now and then to poke at a likely looking chunk of wood, each time half-expecting to find one of the incredibly blue glass balls. Each time she was disappointed — but only briefly: the search was half the fun.

Forty minutes later she came to another point. Beyond it, to the north, the rocky landscape changed radically. Warmed by her discovery, Elaine stood looking out over a magnificent unspoiled beach. It was a long, wide crescent of sand, broken in two places by creeks wandering across the beach on their way to the sea. At the far end of the crescent, almost hidden in the woods, she could barely distinguish a tiny cabin tucked neatly away among the trees. Much closer, and in stark contrast to the distant cabin, a ramshackle old house stood on the sand, its wood siding silvered by the wind and salt. It had the lonely empty look of abandonment, and Elaine had an urge to explore. Only her city dweller’s sense of impropriety kept her from acting on her curiosity. She made a mental note to tell Brad about the old house. His sense of what was proper, and what was not, allowed him to do things she would never do. Perhaps if she hinted broadly enough he would insist on coming back to do a little snooping.

She began walking along the beach, poking into the mounds of kelp that had been washed up by the tide. Every now and then she stooped, picked up a rock or a shell, examined it, then dropped it back to the sand. Finally she gave up the search of the surf line, and made her way to the omnipresent mound of driftwood that lay above the high tide line, forming a barrier between the beach and the woods beyond. She clambered carefully over the logs, her eyes darting from nook to cranny, hoping to discover hidden treasure, but finding instead only rusted beer cans, old tires, and pieces of fishnet.

When she was halfway up the beach she sat down on a log to watch the sea. The morning surf had a soft look to it and she was able to count seven separate ranks of breakers, testifying to the gentle slope that extended from the beach far out toward the horizon. She watched the surf for a long time, listened to its rhythmic throbbing, and realized that her trepidation of the night before had all but vanished. The silent serenity of the deserted beach enveloped her, and she found herself fantasizing about what it would be like to live here, spending her days wandering the beach while Brad wrote. She began to picture herself trying her hand at watercolors, then laughed out loud at her sudden desire to take up painting seascapes. The sound of the breakers swallowed up her solitary laughter. That pleased her too. She could talk to herself for hours on end out here and never have to worry about being overheard. She experimented with it for a couple of minutes, then lapsed back into silence and continued her lazy examination of the beach.

At first she wasn’t sure she was seeing anything at all, but the more she stared, the more certain she was that there was something buried in the sand. It was no more than a slight rise in the flatness of the beach that she dismissed as a natural contour caused by the surf. But the more she stared at it, the more conscious she became that except for that single spot the beach was pancake flat. She found a stick and began walking toward the slight hump in the sand.

It was about midway between the driftwood barrier and the surf line, and as she approached it, it almost disappeared. Had the sun been any higher, the bright light would have effectively flattened the bulge — a small mound two or three feet across — and she never would have seen it. She stared down at it for a moment, hesitating, then jabbed at it with her stick.

The stick went easily into the sand for an inch or two, then stopped. She pushed, and the stick sunk in a little deeper, then sprang back when she released the pressure. Whatever it was, it wasn’t hard.

She began scraping the sand away, first with the stick, then with her hands. Her fingers touched something. Something soft, like fur. A seal, she told herself, I’ve found a dead seal. She picked up the stick again, and began digging in earnest.

It wasn’t until the tail emerged that Elaine knew what she had found. A dog, not a seal. Her first impulse was to leave it alone. If it had been a seal, she probably would have. Her curiosity would have been satisfied and she would have been content to leave it where it lay, for nature to take its course. But a dog was something else. A dog was someone’s pet. Somewhere, someone was going to miss this animal. Perhaps, she told herself, it isn’t quite dead. She continued digging.

Minutes later the corpse was exposed. Elaine stared down at it, afraid she was going to be sick. It looked so pitiful, lying limply in the sand, its coat matted with slime. She knew immediately that it had been dead for several hours, but still she felt impelled to make sure. With the stick, she prodded at the dead animal. The body moved, but the head did not. She prodded at the head, then, and it moved around at an unnatural angle. With a shudder Elaine realized that its neck was broken. She dropped the stick and glanced wildly around, looking for help. The beach was still deserted. She looked back to the dog, and wished she hadn’t. Its eyes were open, and the dead eyes stared up at her as if pleading for her to do something. But all she could do was rebury it. Using the stick, she did the job as quickly as she could. Then she began running blindly back down the beach, hoping that the image of the dead creature would leave her as she left the place where she had found it.

Brad was standing at the desk chatting with the manager when Elaine burst through the door of the Harbor Inn. His smile disappeared when he saw his wife’s strained look. He followed her up the stairs to their room.

“What happened?” he asked. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I found something on the beach,” Elaine said tightly. “I think I’m going to be sick.” She sat heavily on the bed and her hands moved instinctively to her stomach, as if trying to stop the heaving there. Looking at her ashen face, Brad felt his own stomach tighten. He sat down beside her, slipping his arm around her.

“What was it?” he asked softly.

“A dog,” Elaine said, choking. “A poor little dog. It was buried in the sand.”

Brad’s brow knotted in puzzlement. “Buried? What do you mean?”

Elaine leaped to her feet and stared furiously down at her husband. “Buried! I mean it was dead and it was buried! Its neck was broken and whoever did it buried the poor thing in the sand! Brad, let’s get out of here. I hate this place. I want to go home.”

Brad took her hand and pulled her back down on the bed beside him. “Now calm down,” he said, “and tell me what happened. And don’t dramatize it. Just tell me what you found.”

Elaine breathed deeply, composing herself, then told him what had happened. When she was finished, Brad shrugged. “That doesn’t sound so horrible,” he commented.

“Well, it was horrible. You weren’t there. You didn’t see it.”

“No, I wasn’t,” Brad said reasonably. “But how can you be so sure that someone killed it, then buried it in the sand?”

“What else could have happened?” Elaine demanded.

“There was a storm last night, right?”

Elaine nodded mutely.

“Well, didn’t it occur to you that the dog could have been playing on the beach and been hit by a chunk of driftwood? That could certainly break its neck. And then the surf does the rest, burying it in the sand. It seems to me that if someone maliciously killed a dog the beach is the last place he would have buried it. The surf could easily have exposed it. If you’re going to bury a dog you bury it where it will stay buried, don’t you?”

Suddenly Elaine felt foolish. She smiled sheepishly at Brad. “Why did you marry me?” she asked. “Don’t you get sick of me overreacting to everything?”

“Not really. It makes a nice balance, since I tend to underreact.” He smiled mischievously. “Maybe that’s what makes me a good shrink. I hear the most incredible tales from my patients and never react to them at all. Want to hear some?”

“I certainly don’t,” Elaine said, blushing deeply. “Didn’t you ever hear about the confidentiality between doctors and patients?”

“That’s for courts, not for wives,” Brad said easily. “Come on, let’s go get some breakfast.”

A few minutes later, as they passed through the lobby, the manager asked them if they’d be checking out that morning. Elaine started to tell him that they would, but Brad squeezed her hand.

“We’ll be here a few more days,” he said. He avoided Elaine’s eyes as she stared at him accusingly. “I want to take a look at Robby Palmer,” he muttered. But Elaine was sure it was more than that.

An hour later, after she had eaten, Elaine began to feel better. The sun still shone brightly and Clark’s Harbor, basking in the brilliance, once more seemed as charming as it had when they had discovered it the day before. The images of the dead fisherman and the broken corpse of the dog faded from her mind, and Elaine began to wonder if it might not be fun to spend a year here. After all, she told herself, fishermen do drown, but they don’t drown every day. It was just a coincidence.

Rebecca Palmer parked the battered minibus in front of the building her husband was remodeling and hurried inside. For a second she thought the place was deserted, but then a pounding from the back room told her that Glen was there, and working. She called out to him.

“I’m back here.” His voice suggested that he wasn’t going to come out, so she moved quickly around the half-finished display case, and stepped into an alcove that would eventually be an office.

“This son-of-a-bitch doesn’t want to fit,” Glen said with a grin. He struck the offending shelf once more, then tossed the hammer aside.

“If you’d measure before you cut, it might help,” Rebecca pointed out. She picked up the hammer, knocked the shelf loose, measured first the board, and then the space it was supposed to fit in, then the board once more. She set the board on a pair of sawhorses, picked up a skillsaw, and neatly removed an eighth of an inch from one end of the plank. Seconds later it sat securely and steadily in place. Glen gazed at his wife admiringly.

“I didn’t know you could do that.”

“You never asked. Maybe from now on you should take care of the house and I’ll do the remodeling.”

“That would give Clark’s Harbor something to talk about, wouldn’t it? Want some coffee?” Without waiting for a reply, Glen poured them each a cup, then winked at Rebecca. “Perked with genuine electricity,” he teased. “By the way, your latest batch of pottery came out without a single crack. One of these days, with a little luck, I’ll get this place in shape to start selling some of it.”

“You’d better. I have a whole new batch in the van. Give me a hand with it, will you?”

They transferred the unfired pottery to the shelves around the kiln, then put the finished pieces from the night before carefully aside.

“Now all I have to do is collect Snooker and I can get back home to work,” Rebecca said when they were done.

“Snooker?”

“Didn’t you bring him in with you this morning?” Rebecca asked.

“I didn’t see him at all this morning,” Glen replied.

“That’s funny. When he didn’t show up for his breakfast I assumed you’d brought him with you.”

“Did you try calling him?”

“Of course. Not that it ever does any good. Well, I suppose he’ll show up when he’s good and ready. But I hope he’s ready by this afternoon or the kids are going to be upset. I told them you had him.” Rebecca shrugged. “It was either that or let them search the beach instead of going to school.”

“Searching the beach might have been more educational,” Glen said.

“Oh, come on, the school isn’t that bad. Maybe it isn’t as good as the one in Seattle, but at least both kids can go to the same school.”

“And get hassled by the same kids.”

Rebecca looked exasperated, and Glen was immediately sorry he had started in on the school. “I guess I’m the one who’s paranoid today, huh?”

Rebecca smiled, relieved that there wasn’t going to be an argument. “I wonder what will happen if Clark’s Harbor ever gets to both of us on the same day?”

“We’ll get over it,” Glen said. “After all, it may be rough here, but it’s not as rough as it was when Robby was sick. Whatever this place deals out to us, it’s worth it, just to see Robby turning into a normal boy.”

“It is, isn’t it?” Rebecca smiled. “And it’s beautiful here on days like today. I’m not sorry we came, Glen, really I’m not. And things are going to be fine as soon as this place is finished and open for business. But the first five hundred in profits goes to put electricity into the cabin, right?”

“Right. That should take about five years, the way I figure it.”

Before Rebecca could respond, they heard the door of the gallery open and close, then a voice called out tentatively.

“Hello?”

Rebecca and Glen exchanged a look as they moved to the front room. Visitors to the gallery were rare. This one was totally unexpected.

Miriam Shelling stood just inside the front door, her hands behind her, clutching at the knob. Her hair hung limply around her face and there was a wildness in her eyes that almost frightened Rebecca.

“Mrs. Shelling,” she said quickly. “How nice to see you. I’m so sorry about—”

Before she could complete the sentence, Miriam Shelling interrupted her.

“I came to warn you,” she said harshly. “They’re going to get you, just like they got Pete. It may take them awhile, but in the end they’ll get you. You mark my words!” She glanced rapidly from Rebecca to Glen and back again. Then she lifted one arm and pointed a finger at them.

“Mark my words!” she repeated. A moment later she was gone.

“Jesus,” Glen breathed. “What was that all about?”

Rebecca’s eyes were still on the doorway where the distraught woman had stood. It was a few seconds before she answered.

“And we think we have it bad,” she said at last. “We should count our blessings, Glen. We don’t have any electricity and we feel a bit lonely, but we have each other. Mrs. Shelling doesn’t have anything now.”

“She looked a little crazy,” Glen said.

“Why wouldn’t she?” Rebecca flared. “What’s the poor woman going to do with her husband gone?”

Glen chose not to answer the question. “What do you suppose she meant—‘they got him’? Does she think someone killed Pete? And they’ll get us too? She must be crazy.”

“She’s probably just upset,” Rebecca said with compassion. “People say funny things when something like that happens to them. And it must have been horrible for her, being right there on the wharf when they brought him in.”

“But why would she come here?” Glen wondered. “Why would she come and tell us something like that?”

“Who knows?” Rebecca shrugged. But she wished she did know.

Miriam Shelling walked purposefully along the sidewalk, muttering to herself, seeing nothing. The few people who saw her coming stepped aside, but it would have been difficult to tell if it was out of fear or respect for her grief. She didn’t pause until she reached the tiny town hall that housed the police department. She marched up the steps and into the building, coming to a halt only when she was in front of Harney Whalen’s desk.

“What are you going to do?” she demanded.

Harney Whalen stood up and stepped around the desk, holding out a hand to Miriam. She ignored it and stood rooted to the floor.

“Miriam,” Whalen said. He saw the wildness in her eyes. He glanced quickly around, but he was alone with the upset woman. “Let me get you a chair,” he offered.

She seemed not to hear him. “What are you going to do?” she demanded once more.

Whalen decided the best course was to act as if everything was all right. He retreated behind his desk again and sat down. Then he looked up at Miriam Shelling. “I’m not sure what you mean,” he said quietly.

“Pete. I mean Pete. What are you going to do about finding the people who killed him?”

A memory stirred in Harney Whalen and a tiny shiver crept up his spine, settling in the back of his neck. There had been another woman, long ago, who had said these same words. Who killed him? Then, a few days later … He forced the memory away.

“No one killed Pete, Miriam,” he said firmly. “It was an accident. He fell overboard and got caught in his nets.”

“He was killed.”

Harney shook his head sorrowfully, partly for the woman in front of him, and partly for the difficulty she was going to cause him. “There isn’t any evidence of that, Miriam. I went over his boat myself yesterday afternoon. Chip Connor and I spent almost two hours on the Sea Spray. If there had been anything there we would have found it.”

“What about the man who brought him in?”

“He’s a lawyer from Aberdeen. Last night, when Pete drowned, he was home in bed. Believe me, we checked that out first thing.”

When Miriam showed no signs of moving, Harney decided to try to explain what must have happened to her husband.

“Miriam, you’ve lived here for fifteen years,” he began. “You know what it’s like out there. Fishermen drown all the time. We’ve been damned lucky more of ours haven’t been lost, but our boys tend to be careful. All of them but Pete grew up here, and they know better than to go out alone. The storms come up fast and they’re mean. Pete knew that too. He should never have gone out by himself. It was an accident, Miriam, and that’s all there is to it.”

“That’s all you have to say?” Miriam said dully. “You’re not going to do anything?”

“I don’t know what else I can do, Miriam. Pete was by himself out there and nobody saw what happened.”

“Somebody saw it,” Miriam said quietly. “Somebody was out there when it happened.”

“Who?” Whalen inquired mildly.

“It’s your job to find out.”

“I’ve done what I can, Miriam. I’ve talked to everybody in the fleet and they all say the same thing. They went out together and they came back together. All of them except Pete. He stayed out alone when the fleet came in. The storm was already brewing and he should have come in with the rest of them. But he didn’t. That’s all there is to it. It’s over.”

“It’s not over,” Miriam said, her voice rising dangerously. “I know it’s not over.” For a moment Harney Whalen was afraid she was going to go to pieces. But she merely turned and left his office. He watched her go. He was still watching when his deputy, Chip Connor, came in.

“What was that all about?” Chip asked.

“I’m not sure,” Harney replied. “Miriam seems to think what happened to Pete wasn’t an accident.”

Chip frowned. “What does she expect us to do?”

“Search me.” Whalen shrugged. “We did everything we could yesterday.” Then he scratched his head. “Say, Chip, when I was down on the wharf yesterday there were a couple of strangers down there. Looked like city people.”

“So?”

“So I don’t know,” Whalen said testily. “But do me a favor, will you? Go over to the inn and ask Merle if they’re still here, and if they are, how long they’re planning to stay.”

Chip looked puzzled. “What business is it of ours?”

Harney Whalen glared at his deputy. “Someone died here, Chip, and there’s strangers in town. Don’t you think we ought to find out why they’re here?”

Chip Connor started to argue with his chief, but one glance at Whalen’s expression changed his mind. When Harn Whalen set his jaw like that, there was no arguing.

Feeling somewhat foolish, he set off to talk to the proprietor of the Harbor Inn.

5

“Morning, Merle.”

He recognized Chip Connor’s voice immediately, but Merle Glind still jumped slightly, nearly knocking his thick-lensed glasses from their precarious perch on his tiny nose. One hand flew up to smooth what was left of his hair, and he tried to cover his embarrassment at his own nervousness with a broad smile. The effect, unfortunately, was ruined by his inability to complete the smile. His lips twitched spasmodically for a second, and Chip waited patiently for the odd little man to compose himself.

“Is something wrong?” Merle asked. His rabbity eyes flicked around the hotel lobby as if he expected to find a crime being committed under his very nose.

“Nothing like that,” Chip said easily, wishing he could put Merle at his ease. But as long as Chip could remember, Merle Glind had remained unchanged, fussing around the inn day and night, inspecting each seldom-used room as if it were the Presidential suite of a major hotel, going over and over the receipts as if hoping to find evidence of embezzlement, and constantly poking his head into the door of the bar — his major source of income — to count the customers. When Chip was a boy, Merle had always been glad to see him, but ever since he had become Harn Whalen’s deputy three years ago, Merle had begun to show signs of acute nervousness whenever Chip appeared at the Harbor Inn. Chip supposed it was simply a natural wariness of the police, amplified by Merle’s natural nervousness and not modified in the least by the fact the innkeeper had known Chip Connor since the day he was born.

“Well, there’s nothing going on here,” Merle hastened to assure him. “Nothing at all. Nothing ever goes on here. Sometimes I wonder why I even keep the place open. Gives me something to do, I suppose. Thirty-five years I’ve had this place, and I’ll have it till I die.” He glanced around the spotless lobby with unconcealed pride and Chip felt called upon to make a reassuring comment.

“Place looks nice,” he said. “Who polishes the spittoons?”

“I do,” Merle said promptly, holding up a can of Brasso he mysteriously produced from somewhere behind the counter. “Can’t trust anybody else — they’d scratch the brass. Nothing as bad for a hotel’s reputation as scratched brass. That and dirty linen. And I don’t mind saying that in thirty-five years I’ve never yet rented a room with dirty linen. Old, maybe, but not dirty,” he finished with a weak attempt at humor. Chip laughed appreciatively.

“What’s the occupancy?”

“Twenty percent,” Merle responded proudly. Then, honesty prodding him, he added, “One room occupied, four empty.”

“Who’s the customer?” Chip said casually.

“Harney want to know?” Merle’s eyes narrowed immediately.

“You know Harn,” Chip replied. “Keeps an eye on everything. But this time he has a reason. Something about Pete Shelling.”

Merle clucked sympathetically, then realized the import of what Chip had just said.

“Harney doesn’t think—” he began, then broke off, not wanting even to voice the awful thought. Visions of the hotel’s ruined reputation danced in his head.

“Harney doesn’t think anything,” Chip said, reading the little man’s mind. “It’s just that Miriam Shelling was in this morning claiming that Pete was murdered. Harney’s just doing his job, checking out everything.”

Relieved, Merle Glind pushed the register across the counter, turning it so that it faced Chip. It wasn’t anything unusual, he told himself. Whenever there were guests at the hotel either Chip or Harn stopped by to check them out. No reason to be nervous, no reason at all. Still, he felt anxious, and peered at Chip as the deputy examined the latest entry in the register.

“Randall,” Chip read the entry out loud, “Dr. and Mrs. Bradford, from Seattle.” He looked up at Merle. “Vacationing?”

“I don’t ask questions like that,” Merle said pompously, though Chip knew that he did. Then, lowering his voice: “I did notice they had quite a bit of luggage though, so I suppose they’re on some kind of trip.”

“Staying long?”

“A couple of days. He told me this morning.”

“Says he’s a doctor. I wonder what kind of doctor?”

“Well, I’m sure I don’t know,” Merle said. “But I suppose I could find out. Do you think it’s important?” he added eagerly.

“I doubt it,” Chip gave a short laugh. “But you know Harney. Doesn’t matter if it’s worth knowing or not, Harn wants to know it. Think you could find out a couple of things for me?”

“I can try, that’s all I can do.”

“Well, if you can find out what kind of doctor Randall is and why they chose Clark’s Harbor, let us know, okay?” He winked at Glind, pushed the register back across the counter, and left the inn.

Chip drove slowly through Clark’s Harbor, looking for nothing in particular, since nothing was likely to happen. Eventually he found himself approaching the tiny schoolhouse that had served the town for three generations.

He pulled the car to a stop and sat watching the children playing in the small yard next to the building. He recognized all of them and knew most of them very well. He, himself, had gone to school with their parents.

His eyes fell on two children who stood apart from the rest, a little boy and his younger sister. He knew who they were — the newcomers, the Palmer children. And he knew why they were standing apart — they had not yet been accepted by the rest of the children of Clark’s Harbor.

Chip wondered how long it would take before Robby and Missy Palmer would be part of the crowd. The rest of the year? Part of next year? Longer?

The children, he knew, were no different from their parents. If anything, they were worse.

If their parents didn’t like strangers the children would hate them.

If their parents made remarks about the Palmers, the children would taunt the Palmers’ children.

There was nothing Chip could do about it. Indeed, Chip didn’t even worry about it. He started the engine and drove away.

In the schoolyard Robby Palmer watched the police car disappear into the distance and wondered why it had stopped. He knew Missy, too, had been watching, but before he could make any comment, he heard his name being called.

“Robby! Little baby Robby!” The voice was taunting, hurting. Before Robby even turned around he knew who it was.

Jimmy Phipps. Jimmy was bigger than Robby, a year older, but Robby and he were in the same grade. Jimmy had made it clear from Robby’s first day at school that he thought the younger boy should be in a lower grade — and that he would make Robby’s life miserable. Now, when Robby turned, he saw Jimmy Phipps standing a few feet away, glowering at him.

“You want to fight?” Jimmy challenged him.

Robby shook his head, saying nothing.

“You’re chicken,” Jimmy said.

“He is not!” Missy snapped, leaping to her brother’s defense.

“Don’t say anything, Missy,” Robby told his sister. “Just act like he isn’t there.”

Jimmy Phipps reddened. “Your daddy’s a queer,” he shouted.

Robby wasn’t sure what the word meant but felt called upon to deny the charge.

“My daddy’s an artist!” he declared.

“And my dad says all artists are queers,” Jimmy replied. “My dad says your parents are commies and bums and you should go back where you came from.”

Robby glared at the bigger boy, his eyes blazing with anger. He knew he shouldn’t swing at him — his parents wouldn’t approve. But how else could he defend himself from Jimmy Phipps’s taunts? He took a step forward and saw three other boys line themselves up behind Jimmy.

“Get him, Jimmy,” Joe Taylor urged. “Rub his face in the dirt.”

“I don’t want to fight,” Robby said in a final effort to avoid a fracas.

“That’s ’cause you’re chicken!” Jimmy cried. His friends urging him on, he leaped on Robby, his fists pummeling the smaller boy.

Robby fought back and managed, somehow, to get on top of Jimmy, but then the other boys crowded in, grabbing Robby and holding him while Jimmy Phipps recovered himself.

“Let go of him!” Missy screamed. “You let go of my brother!”

She aimed a kick at one of the boys, but Robby stopped her, telling her to stay out of it. Then he jerked suddenly, struggled free, and threw a punch at Joe Taylor. Joe’s nose started to bleed immediately and he ran off toward the schoolhouse, howling in pain and clutching his injured face. The other boys looked on in surprise. Jimmy Phipps, about to leap on Robby again, stopped and stared, suddenly unsure of himself. Robby, though small, apparently packed a wallop.

“You leave me alone,” Robby said. “And you take back what you said.”

“All right,” Jimmy Phipps said. “You’re not chicken. But your daddy’s still a commie queer. My dad says so.”

Robby jumped on the bigger boy, but the fight was suddenly stopped when their teacher appeared, grabbing each of the boys by the shoulder and separating them by pure force.

“That will be enough,” she said. “What’s this all about?”

“It’s Robby’s fault, Miss Peters! He gave Joe Taylor a bloody nose and jumped on Jimmy Phipps!”

Miss Peters had been teaching at the Clark’s Harbor school for thirty years. She was sure there was more to the story than that, but she had learned long ago that getting the whole truth out of half a dozen ten-year-olds is harder than undoing the Gordian Knot. The most effective way to deal with a situation like this was to listen to no one at all.

“I don’t care what happened,” she said. “Robby, your clothes are filthy and it looks like you’re going to have a black eye. Go home for the rest of the day.” Jimmy Phipps grinned maliciously but Miss Peters put a quick end to his triumph.

“As for you, James, you can spend this afternoon cleaning the school, and the rest of you can help him!” She took Missy by the hand and started back inside.

Robby stood glowering at his tormentors for a moment, then started toward the schoolyard gate. Behind him, Jimmy Phipps couldn’t resist a parting shot.

“We’ll get you for this!” he shouted. “You’ll wish you never came to Clark’s Harbor!”

Robby Palmer, his eye beginning to swell, burst into tears and began running home.

Rebecca gave the pottery wheel a final kick, gently molded the clay between the fingers of her right hand and the palm of the left, then wiped the dampness from her hands while the wheel coasted to a stop. She surveyed her work with a critical eye. The rim of the vase should be a little thinner, perhaps a shade more fluted. Then, with a sigh, she decided to leave well enough alone. Heavy, chunky pottery was her style — the fact that it was easier for her to execute was a bonus — and why take a risk she didn’t have to take? She brushed a strand of long dark hair away from one eye, then carefully removed the nearly finished vase from the wheel.

She left the old tool shed that had been converted into a makeshift pottery and walked slowly toward the cabin to check on her bread dough. To her right the beach arched invitingly away to the south, white sands glistening, and for a moment she was tempted to go off beachcombing, looking for items that could eventually be sold in the gallery. But somehow it didn’t seem fair to abandon herself to the beach while Glen was cooped up in the gallery, struggling with two-by-fours that refused to bend themselves to his desires. Which was strange, she reflected, considering that he could do anything at all with wood-carving tools. In fact, Rebecca considered Glen to be a better wood sculptor than painter, but she would never tell him so. Yet when it came to a simple thing like measuring and cutting a shelf, he was a dead loss. She smiled to herself as she pictured the finished gallery, its shelves all slightly lopsided. No, she decided, Glen’s sense of artistry would make the gallery look right, no matter how ill-fitting everything might be.

With one last longing look at the beach, she made herself continue on into the cabin. She surveyed the bread dough dolefully. In fairness to Glen, there were things she wasn’t very good at either, bread making among them. The dough, which should have risen by now, sat stolidly where she had left it. It seemed, if anything, to have shrunk. She poked at it, hoping to set off some small, magical trigger inside, that would start it swelling up to what it should be. Instead, it resisted the pressure of her finger and looked as if it resented the intrusion. Rebecca contemplated alternate uses for the whitish mass, since it was obvious that it was never going to burst forth from the oven, a mouthwatering, golden-brown, prize-winning loaf. Finally, since she could think of nothing better, she simply dumped the mass of dough onto a cookie sheet, shoved it into the oven, and threw another piece of wood into the ancient stove, hoping for the best.

She was about to move on to another of her endless tasks when she heard Robby’s voice. She wasn’t sure it was his at first, but as it grew louder she had a sudden feeling of panic.

“Mommy, Mommy!” The child’s voice came through the woods. And again: “Mommy! Mommy!”

Dear God, Rebecca thought, it’s starting up again. He’s done something awful at school and they don’t want him back, and now what are we going to do? With a shock she realized how near the surface the old fears, the fears she had lived with for so many years, were. She thought she had buried them. Since they had come here Robby had been so well, she believed she’d put them aside forever. Now, as Robby’s cries drew closer, Rebecca struggled to control herself. She had never been good at dealing with her son’s violent outbursts. She could feel the terror rising inside her. Dear God! Why wasn’t Glen here? “Mommy!”

Rebecca dashed out of the cabin just in time to see Robby emerge from the woods. Fear clutching at her, she saw that his nose was bleeding and his clothes were a mess. Then he was upon her, his arms wrapped around her, his head buried in her stomach. He was crying.

“It’s all right,” she said. “It’s all right Mommy’s here, and everything’s going to be fine.” God, she prayed silently, please let everything be fine. Please …

Still sobbing, Robby let himself be led into the cabin. Rebecca braced herself for trouble as she began cleaning him up, but Robby sat quietly while she washed his face. Most of her fear left her: it wasn’t the hyperkinesis then. It was something else. But what? He should be at school, not home, bloody and crying.

“What happened, Robby?” she said when the bleeding had stopped and most of the smudges had been removed from his face.

“I had a fight,” Robby said sullenly.

“A fight?”

Robby nodded.

“What was it about?”

“You and Daddy.”

“Me and Daddy? What about us?”

“They were calling you names and saying we shouldn’t have come here.” He looked beseechingly at his mother. “Why didn’t we stay in Seattle?”

“You were sick there.”

“I was? I don’t remember.”

Rebecca smiled at her son and hugged him. “It’s just as well you don’t remember,” she said. “You weren’t very happy when you were sick, and neither were Daddy or Missy or I.”

Robby frowned. “But we’re not very happy here, are we?”

“We’re happier here than anyplace else,” Rebecca whispered. “And things will get better. Just don’t listen to them when they say things about you.”

“But they weren’t saying anything about me,” Robby said. “They were saying things about you and Daddy.”

“Well, it’s the same thing. Now I want you to promise me you won’t fight anymore.”

“But what if they beat up on me again?”

“If you won’t fight back they won’t do much to you. It won’t be any fun for them and they’ll leave you alone.”

“But they’ll think I’m chicken and they won’t play with me.”

Rebecca suddenly found herself wondering if she was getting old, for she had no answer for Robby’s statement. What he had said was true, but in her adulthood she had forgotten the level on which children think. She decided to drop the entire subject and let Glen deal with it when he got home.

“I don’t suppose there’s any point in my suggesting you go back to school this afternoon, is there?” she said.

“I won’t go,” Robby said flatly. He decided not to mention that he’d been sent home.

She surveyed the bruises on his face critically, then relented. “Do you feel up to helping me out or would you rather play on the beach?”

“I’d rather play on the beach,” came Robby’s prompt reply.

“Somehow I thought you would.” Rebecca grinned. “But here’s the rules.”

“Aw, Mom!”

“No, ‘aw, Moms,’ thank you very much. Either listen to the rules and obey them, or stay here and help me.” Robby’s expression told her he’d listen to the rules. “Stay within a hundred feet of the house. And just so you can’t claim you don’t know what a hundred feet is, see that big tree?” She pointed to an immense cedar that dominated the strip of forest beyond the beach. Robby nodded solemnly. “That’s a hundred feet away. Don’t go past that tree. Also, stay out of the driftwood. You could slip and break your leg.”

“Aw, Mom …” But the protest faded at Rebecca’s upraised finger. “And stay out of the water. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“And make sure you come if I call you.”

She stood in the doorway and watched her son scamper out onto the beach. Once more Rebecca marveled at the fact that she could let him play alone now without having to worry constantly about what he might be up to.

Happily, Rebecca returned to her chores.

* * *

Brad Randall parked in front of the inn, turned off the engine, then slapped his forehead as he remembered.

“Damn,” he said. “We forgot all about it!”

“All about what?” Elaine asked. They had spent the entire day poking around Clark’s Harbor and she couldn’t imagine what they might have missed.

“The Palmers. We said we’d drop in on them.”

“Well, it’s too late now,” Elaine replied, glancing at the sinking sun. “Besides, he was probably just being polite. I mean, it’s not as if they’re old friends. We hardly know them.”

“But I do want to see Robby again,” Brad said. “If there’s really been a miraculous cure, I want to see it for myself.”

“Maybe you can see him tomorrow,” Elaine suggested. “Right now I’m bushed.”

“I did sort of run you ragged, didn’t I?” Brad chuckled. “But what do you think? I mean, what do you really think?”

“I don’t know.” Elaine was pensive. “It’s beautiful, it really is, and if it hadn’t been for that poor man yesterday and that dog this morning, I’d be all for it. But I just don’t know.”

“It was coincidence, honey,” Brad argued. “The same thing could have happened anywhere.”

“But they happened here,” Elaine said stubbornly, “and I’m sorry, but I can’t get them out of my mind.” Then she relented a little. Clark’s Harbor was beautiful, and she knew Brad had fallen in love with it “Let’s sleep on it, shall we?”

They got out of the car and walked to the hotel gate. Elaine paused, staring up at the building. “I still say it’s on the wrong coast,” she said. “And not just the hotel. The whole town. It’s so neat and so tidy and so settled looking. Not like most of the towns on the peninsula that sort of fade in, sprawl, then fade out again. This place seems to have cut a niche for itself in the forest and huddled there. As though it knows its bounds and isn’t about to step over them.”

Brad smiled. “Maybe that’s what appeals to me,” he said, “I guess it strikes a chord in me somewhere. I like it.”

They strolled across the lawn arm-in-arm and went into the hotel. Behind his counter, Merle Glind bobbed his head at them.

“Have a nice day?”

“Fine,” Brad answered. “Pretty town you have here. Beautiful.”

“We like it,” Glind responded. There was a pause, and Brad started toward the stairs.

“You folks on vacation?” Merle suddenly asked.

Brad turned. “In a way. Actually we’re looking for someplace to live for a while.”

“We already got a doctor,” Merle said hastily. “Doc Phelps. Been here for years.”

“Well, I wouldn’t be any threat to him. I’m not that kind of doctor and I wasn’t planning to practice anyway. Frankly, I doubt there’d be much call for my kind of doctoring out here.”

“Well, if you’re not going to work, what are you going to do?” Merle Glind didn’t try to disguise the suspicion in his voice. As far as he was concerned anyone under seventy-five who didn’t do an honest day’s work was a shirker.

“I thought I’d try to write a book,” Brad said easily.

Merle’s frown deepened. “A book? What kind of a book?”

Brad started to explain but before he could get a word in Elaine had cut him off. “A technical book,” she said. “The kind nobody reads, except maybe a few other psychiatrists.”

If he’d known his wife any less well Brad would have been hurt. Instead, he gave her an admiring wink. Elaine had just rescued him from a long explanation of the subject of his book and the inevitable, endless questions about bio-rhythms. “It seemed to me this might be the perfect place to write it,” he said now. “Lots of peace and quiet.”

“I don’t know,” Merle said pensively. “Seems to me you’d be better off up in Pacific Beach or Moclips or one of those places. That’s where the artists hang out.”

“Right” Brad grinned. “And party and drink and do all the things they shouldn’t do if they want to get any work done. But Clark’s Harbor doesn’t look like that kind of town.”

“It’s not,” Glind said emphatically. “We’re working folk here and we mind our business, most of us. It’s a quiet town and we like to keep it that way.”

Elaine sighed to herself. With every word the odd little man spoke Brad’s resolve to move to Clark’s Harbor would strengthen. His next words proved her right.

“I’ve been looking around today. Not too many houses on the market, are there?”

“Nope,” Merle said. “Not a one, and not likely to be. Most of the houses here get passed on from one generation to the next. The Harbor isn’t like so many little towns. Our children stay right here, most of them.”

“What about renting? Are there any houses for rent?”

Merle appeared to think for a minute, and Brad wasn’t sure whether he was running his mind over the town or trying to decide how to evade the question.

Merle, for his part, decided to duck the issue entirely. “Only one that I know of belongs to the police chief, Harney Whalen. Don’t know if it’s for rent, though. You’d have to talk to Harn about that.”

“Does anybody live in it now?” Brad pressed.

“Not so far as I know. If he’s got people out there Ham hasn’t told me. But then, it wouldn’t be any of my business, would it?”

Realizing he was unlikely to get any information out of the old man, Brad dropped the subject. “Got any recommendations for dinner?” he asked. Merle smiled eagerly.

“Right through the door. Best food and drink in town. Drinks sixty cents a shot and the freshest seafood you can get. Cook gets it right off the boats every day.” When he saw Elaine peering into the empty dining room and bar, he added: “Won’t be anyone in there yet, of course, but just wait till later. Place’ll be packed. Absolutely packed.”

“Maybe we’d better make reservations,” Elaine wondered aloud.

“Oh, no need for that,” Merle said. “No need at all. I’ll make sure there’s a table for you. What time do you want to eat?”

“Seven? Seven thirty?”

Merle Glind wrote himself a hasty note and smiled up at the Randalls. “There you are. All taken care of, see? No need for reservations at all — just leave it to me.”

Two minutes later, in their room, Elaine threw herself onto the bed and burst into laughter. “I don’t believe it,” she cried. “He’s too perfect Do you know, Brad, I think he actually didn’t realize he was taking a reservation? It’s incredible!”

Brad lay down on the bed beside his wife and kissed her gently. “Now what do you think?” he asked.

“I think we have enough time before dinner,” Elaine replied. She began unbuttoning Brad’s shirt. …

Merle Glind sat nervously at his desk and his eyes kept flicking to the stairway as he dialed the phone. It rang twice, then was answered. Briefly, he filled Harney Whalen in on what he’d found out about the Randalls. When he was done there was a silence before the police chief spoke.

“So they’re planning to stay awhile, are they? Well, maybe they will, and then again, maybe they won’t Thanks Merle, you’ve been a big help.”

Merle Glind, feeling pleased with himself, put the receiver back on the cradle, then went into the dining room, where he put a small sign on one of the tables. “Reserved,” the sign said.

6

Harney Whalen glanced at the clock, drummed his fingers nervously on the worn oak surface of his desk, then rose and paced to the window, where he stood staring down the street, as if his stares could hurry the arrival of Chip Connor. His deputy was late, and that was unusual. Anything unusual worried Harn Whalen, and too many unusual things were happening in Clark’s Harbor the last couple of days. First Pete Shelling (nothing more than an unfortunate accident, of course), and now these Randall people, acting like they wanted to move to the Harbor. Now that was upsetting.

Harney moved away from the window and unconsciously flexed his still-solid body, patting his firm belly with the palm of his right hand. Then he reseated himself at his desk, pulled the meager file on Pete Shelling to a spot in front of him, and read it once more. He was still reading it, scowling, when Chip Connor finally appeared.

“Thought you’d decided to take the evening off,” Harney observed as he glanced at Chip.

“Just having a little dinner,” Chip replied mildly. “Anything doing?”

“Not really, except I had a call from Merle Glind a few minutes ago.” Chip’s brow arched curiously as he waited for the chief to continue. “Seems they think they’d like to settle down here for a while,” Harney said.

“They?”

“That guy Randall and his wife at the inn.”

Chip frowned. That spelled trouble. As long as he’d known Harn Whalen, which was all of his life, Harn had had an aversion to strangers, a distrust that sometimes seemed to go beyond the natural feelings of most of the Harborites. Chip supposed it was not really so strange. Harn knew everyone in town — he was related to half of them, including Chip — and his knowledge of them made his job much easier. He knew them all inside out — who were the troublemakers, who were the drunks, and what was the best way to handle everybody. But strangers were an unknown quantity, and Harn Whalen didn’t like unknown quantities. Strangers upset the balance of the town. For a while no one reacted the way he was supposed to react, and that made Harn Whalen’s life more difficult. And then there were the outsiders themselves to deal with. For Harn, that was the hardest part. Among his own people he was fine, but introduce him to a stranger and he’d clam right up. He’d watch them warily, from a distance, as if he half-expected them to do something to him. It had been that way with the Shellings for a long time after Pete and Miriam arrived in Clark’s Harbor. It had taken Harney nearly five years just to offer them a nod of greeting. Chip supposed he understood though. He felt much the same way himself. By the time he was as old as Harney, and as set in his ways, he’d probably have all the same reactions as the chief. But Harn was up to something now; that was for sure.

“What do they want here?” Chip said finally.

“Merle says the guy’s planning to write some kind of book and thinks this is a good place to do it.”

“Well,” Chip mused, “you’ve got to admit it’s quiet here.”

“And that’s the way I like it,” Harney said. “Won’t stay quiet, though, if the place fills up with city folk. They always bring their noise with them. Like Palmer and his wife.”

“They haven’t been much trouble,” Chip suggested.

“Pounding all day?” Whalen countered.

“Well, you can’t remodel a building without some pounding.”

Whalen grunted in reluctant assent. It was true, but that didn’t mean he had to like it. He decided to shift gears. “Don’t know what he thinks he’ll accomplish by opening an art gallery here,” he grumbled. “Nobody’s going to buy his junk.”

“Then he won’t be here long, will he?” Chip grinned. “I’d think you’d be down there every day helping out. After all, the sooner he gets the place open, the sooner he’ll go broke, right?”

Harney looked sourly at his deputy but couldn’t help smiling.

“You’re too sharp for me, Chip. Too sharp by a long shot. So tell me, what’ll we do about the Randalls? I’m just not sure I can stomach another set of strangers right now. They upset me. And don’t give me any lectures about how I can’t keep the town the same forever — maybe I can’t, but as long as I’m chief of police, I’ll damn well try.”

“What are they going to do about a place to live?”

“Merle told them to come and talk to me.”

“Then it’s easy,” Chip suggested. “Just tell them the old house isn’t for rent.”

“I told that to the Palmers but it didn’t stop them. They just talked old Mrs. Pruitt into selling them that crummy cabin at the other end of the beach. If she’d have talked to me first, I’d have bought the cabin myself, but she didn’t No, I think the best thing to do is just try to talk them out of the whole idea. If that doesn’t work, I’ll rent the old Baron place to them. A month on Sod Beach in that wreck ought to change their minds for them.”

“You’re a devious old man, Harn,” Chip said with a smile.

“Not devious at all,” Whalen said. “I just don’t like strangers. Now, why don’t you get to work on Pete Shelling? The file’s right here.”

“What’s to work on?”

“Search me.” Harney shrugged. “As far as I’m concerned it was just an accident, but I figure if Miriam Shelling should come walking in here again, it wouldn’t hurt at all to be ‘working on the case,’ if you know what I mean.”

Chip laughed out loud. “Now tell me you aren’t devious.”

“The old dog knows some old tricks, that’s all,” Harney said with a wink. A moment later he was gone and Chip Connor was alone in the tiny police station.

* * *

Glen Palmer watched the police chief drive past the gallery and started to wave, as he did every day. But suddenly he changed his mind and his hand dropped back to his side, the gesture uncompleted. What was the point? Whalen never returned the greeting, never even so much as glanced his way. Glen wasn’t sure if it was conscious rudeness or if the man was merely preoccupied, but he knew he resented it. The chief’s coldness seemed symbolic of the attitude of the whole town. Glen had come to believe that if he could only win the chief’s approval, his acceptance in Clark’s Harbor would begin. But so far he had been unable to make a single dent in Whalen’s shield of hostility. All in good time, he told himself for the hundredth time, all in good time.

That was also the attitude he was trying to take about the gallery itself, but it was more difficult every day. He glanced around at the front room. Tomorrow he would begin spending all his time on the display area. The office could wait, but the display area could not. If he could finish it in the next couple of weeks they could open for business by Memorial Day — and the hell with what the office looked like.

It would be a pretty gallery, Glen was sure. The rough-hewn plank paneling would show off his primitive painting style to its best advantage, and his sculptures, finely finished and glowing with their hand-rubbed patina, would provide a nice contrast. Reluctantly, he decided to swallow his pride and ask Rebecca to pitch in. With a wry chuckle he admitted to himself that her help would speed the work fivefold at least He should have done it weeks ago but his ego had prevented it. And now another afternoon was gone with not enough done. Time to call it a day. He put his tools away, locked up the building, and climbed into the ancient Chevy that served as the Palmers’ second car. It refused to start.

“Damn,” he said aloud. He twisted the key again and listened to the angry grinding of the starter. Three tries later he got out of the car and raised the hood to stare at the engine. But he knew even less about motors than he did about carpentry. He slammed the hood down again and, with the blind faith characteristic of people who know nothing about cars, got in and tried the starter once more. Again the grinding noise, but weaker this time. Glen decided to give it up before he ruined the battery as well.

He searched his mind. Pruitt’s gas station would be closed by now. He considered searching out Bill Pruitt and talking him into taking a look at the car. No good. Pruitt had never been particularly friendly, less so after his mother had sold the Palmers their cabin — no doubt against Bill’s advice. Glen was sure that even if the owner of the town’s sole service station could be persuaded to do something with the car, the bill would be padded because of the late hour. He’d leave the Chevy where it was and walk home. He could take care of it in the morning.

He walked along the road at first, thinking of trying his luck at hitchhiking, but soon put that idea aside: he was enjoying the walk and the exercise was relaxing, so he left the road and cut through the forest to the ocean, emerging from the woods at the south end of Sod Beach, near the old house he and Rebecca had originally tried to rent. Now he was glad Harney Whalen had refused to rent to him: though the house was larger than the Palmers’ cabin, it stood exposed on the beach, unprotected by the sheltering forest that nearly surrounded the tiny home he and his family occupied And it had that awful look of abandonment, a look he hadn’t recognized the first time he had seen the place. Then it had seemed picturesque; now he found it forbidding.

He skirted the house quickly and made his way down to the surf line, where the sand was packed hard and walking was easy. In the distance he was pleased to see the faint glow of the lantern in his window, just beginning to contrast with the fading light of the evening. Smoke curled from both chimneys of the cabin and he wondered what Rebecca was fixing for dinner.

He almost passed Miriam Shelling without seeing her, and probably would have if she hadn’t waved to him. At her movement he veered away from the lapping water to angle across the beach.

“Hello,” he said as he approached her, smiling tentatively.

Miriam stared at him for a long time, not speaking. Glen was about to turn away from her when she raised her hand again and made a vague gesture.

“You didn’t believe me, did you?”

It was an accusation. Glen hedged, studying her. “I’m not sure what you mean,” he said. The odd glaze was gone from her eyes; now she seemed to be nothing more than a tired middle-aged woman.

“Today,” she said, “when I came into your — what do you call it?”

“The gallery?”

Miriam nodded. “The gallery,” she repeated dully. “You should have believed me.”

Glen watched the woman carefully, trying to fathom what might be going on in her mind. She seemed much more in control of herself now than she had earlier. But you never knew with people like her.

“What are you doing out here?” he asked.

“Waiting.”

“Waiting? For me?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. I’m just waiting. Something’s going to happen, and I’m waiting for it.”

“But why here?” Glen pressed.

“I don’t know,” Miriam said slowly. “It just seemed like a good place to wait.” Suddenly her eyes were filled with anxiety as she looked up at Glen. “It’s all right, isn’t it? You don’t mind if I wait here?”

“No, of course I don’t mind. I don’t own the beach. But it will be getting cold soon.”

“A storm’s coming,” Miriam Shelling said softly. “A big one. Well, it doesn’t matter anymore. It can’t hurt Pete now.”

“But what about you?” Glen asked gently. He wondered if he ought to invite Mrs. Shelling home with him, then thought of the children. He didn’t want them hearing any of this ominous nonsense she kept muttering.

“I’ll go home soon,” she said. “I guess I can wait there just as well as here. You go on now — I’ll be all right.”

Glen started away but turned back when he heard Miriam Shelling calling to him.

“Young man? You be careful, you hear? It’s going to be a big storm.”

Glen smiled at her and waved “I’ll be all right,” he called. He walked on and didn’t look back again till he was near the cabin. When he did finally turn, Miriam Shelling was gone. Glen felt an odd sense of relief, as if a momentary threat had passed. He went into the cabin as the last of the sunlight faded from the beach.

“I didn’t hear you drive up,” Rebecca said as Glen came in.

“I didn’t drive — I walked.”

Rebecca felt a sinking sensation as the meager balance in their checking account flashed in front of her eyes. “What happened to the car?” she asked.

“I wish I knew. It wouldn’t start, and you know how I am with cars. I thought about walking over to see if I could find Bill Pruitt but he charges double after six.”

Rebecca was about to press him for details when the children came tumbling out of their tiny bedroom, Missy demanding to be picked up and Robby saying, “Look at me! Look at me!”

Glen swung his daughter off the floor, then looked at his son. He set Missy back down and knelt next to Robby.

“What happened to you?” He asked the question of Robby but his eyes went immediately to Rebecca.

“He was defending our honor,” Rebecca began, but Robby cut in.

“I had a fight,” he said in a rush. “Four guys ganged up on me and I got a black eye, but I won. Did you bring Snooker home?”

Glen glanced at Rebecca but she shrugged helplessly. “No, I didn’t,” he said. “He must be off on a hunting expedition.”

“He’s never stayed away all day,” Robby said accusingly.

“Well, he must be getting adventurous, just like his master,” Glen replied. “But he’ll be back, you’ll see. Just wait until morning.”

“He’s not coming back,” Missy said softly. She looked ready to cry. “He’s not ever coming back.”

“He is too,” Robby shot back.

“Of course he’s coming back, Missy,” Rebecca said. “Why wouldn’t he?”

“I don’t know,” Missy said, her eyes brimming with tears. “But he’s not coming back, and I miss him.” The tears overflowed and she fled to the bedroom, where she flung herself on her bunk. Rebecca looked helplessly at Glen, then went after her daughter. Robby stared at his father.

“He is coming back, isn’t he?” he asked plaintively.

“Of course he is, son; of course he is,” Glen said, But he suddenly had the sinking feeling that the dog was not going to return.

After dinner they put the children to bed, then Glen threw another log on the fire. Rebecca watched him but didn’t speak until he had finished poking at the blaze and sat down again.

“Glen, what’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. Little things, I guess. The car and the gallery and now Snooker. I think Missy’s right I don’t think he’s coming back.”

“Don’t be silly. What could have happened to him? Of course he’ll be back.”

“There’s something else too.”

Rebecca suddenly stiffened. Whatever he was about to say, it was going to be important She could tell by the look in his eyes.

“I saw Miriam Shelling tonight.”

Rebecca relaxed. “Did she come back to the gallery?”

“She was on the beach when I came home. Sitting on a piece of driftwood, staring out at the sea.”

“Lots of people do that,” Rebecca said. She rummaged through her sewing box, searching for a button. “I do that myself and so do you. It’s one of the joys of living out here.”

“She said she was waiting for something. It was weird.”

“Waiting for what?”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure she knew herself. But she said a big storm was coming and told me to be careful.”

“That makes sense,” Rebecca said. “Did she say anything else?”

“No.” There was a long pause, then: “Maybe we ought to give it up.”

Rebecca put down her sewing and stared at Glen. “Now you are sounding like I did yesterday. But you’ll get over it, just like I did.” Then she chuckled softly. “You know what? While you were busily getting yourself into a funk today, I was getting out of mine. I decided I really love this place. I love living near the water and the forest, I love the peace and quiet, and I love what’s happening to my children, especially Robby. So you might as well get yourself into a better frame of mind, my love, because I’ve decided that no matter what happens, I’m going to see things through right here. And so are you.”

Glen Palmer looked at his wife with loving eyes and thanked God for her strength. As long as I have her, he thought, I’ll be fine. As long as I have her.

And then a premonition struck him, and he knew that he wouldn’t always have Rebecca, wouldn’t have her nearly long enough. He rose from his chair, crossed the small room, and knelt by his wife. He put his arms around her and held her tightly and tried to keep from crying. Rebecca, unaware of the emotions that were surging through her husband, continued sewing.

Harney Whalen stretched, snapped the television set on, then wandered over to the window before he sat down to watch the nine o’clock movie. His house, the house he had been born in and had grown up in and would undoubtedly die in, sat on a knoll that commanded a beautiful view of Clark’s Harbor and the ocean beyond. He watched the lights of the town as they twinkled on around the bay, then looked up at the starless night sky. A layer of clouds had closed in and the feel of the air told him that another storm was brewing. Harney hated the storms and sometimes wondered why he stayed on the peninsula. But it was home, and even though he’d never appreciated the weather, he’d learned to live with it Still, he began his usual round of the house, checking that all the windows were tightly closed against whatever might be coming in from the sea.

His grandfather had built the house, and he’d built it well. It had stood against the Northeasters for more than a century, and its joints were as snug as ever, its foundation maintaining a perfect level. Only the roof ever demanded Harney’s attention, and that only rarely. He wandered from room to room, not really seeing the furnishings that filled them but feeling their comforting presence, and wondering idly what it would be like to be one of those people who spent their lives like gypsies, wandering from one residence to another, never really putting down roots anywhere. Well, it wasn’t for him. He liked knowing that his past was always around him. Even though he lived by himself in the house now, he wasn’t really alone — his family was all around him and he never felt lonesome here.

He made a sandwich, then opened a can of beer to wash it down with. By the time he returned to the living room, the movie had begun, and he sat down to munch his sandwich contentedly and enjoy the film.

Sometime during a barrage of commercials he felt the uneasiness begin, and he glanced around the room as if half-expecting someone to be there. He noticed then that the wind had come up and left his chair to go again to the window. It had begun raining and the water on the glass made the lights of Clark’s Harbor appear streaked and blurred. Harney Whalen shook his head and returned to his chair in front of the television set.

He tried to concentrate on the movie, but more and more he found himself listening to the wind as it grasped at the house. Each time he realized he didn’t know what was happening on the television screen, he snapped himself alert and forced his attention back to it.

The storm grew.

Just before the end of the movie Harney Whalen felt a nerve in his cheek begin to twitch and wondered if he was going to have one of what he called his “spells.” A moment later, as he was about to put the last bite of his sandwich into his mouth, his face suddenly contorted into an ugly grimace and his hands began twitching spasmodically. The scrap of sandwich fell to the floor beside his chair, and Harney Whalen stood up.

Robby and Missy lay awake in their bunks, listening to the rain splash against the window.

“You want to go look for him, don’t you?” Missy suddenly whispered in the darkness, a note almost of reproach coloring her voice.

“Who?” Robby asked.

“Snooker.”

“He’s out there, isn’t he?”

“Could we find him?”

“Sure,” Robby said with an assurance he didn’t feel.

“But what about the ghosts?”

“There isn’t any such thing.” Robby climbed down from the top bunk and sat on his sister’s bed. “You didn’t believe that old man, did you?”

Missy squirmed and avoided looking at her brother. “Why would he lie?”

“Grown-ups lie to children all the time, to make us do what they want us to.”

Missy looked fearfully at her brother. She wished he wouldn’t say things like that “Let’s go to sleep.”

Robby ignored her and started dressing. Missy watched him for a moment, then she, too, began pulling her clothes on, all the time wishing she were still in bed. But when Robby opened the window and crept out, Missy followed him.

As soon as they were on the beach Missy thought she saw something, but it was too dark to be sure. It was a shape, large and dark against the heaving ocean, that seemed to be moving near the surf line, dancing almost, but without a pattern. She clutched Robby’s hand.

“Look,” she whispered.

Robby peered into the darkness. “What is it? I don’t see anything.”

“Over there,” Missy hissed. “Right near the water.” She pushed up against Robby, squeezing his hand so hard it hurt.

“Let go,” Robby commanded, but the pressure remained.

“Let’s go into the woods,” Missy begged. “It’ll be safer there.”

Robby hesitated, then decided to go along with his sister; if Snooker was anywhere around, he was likely to be in the woods. They were creeping over the barrier of driftwood when Missy suddenly yanked on Robby’s arm.

“Something’s happening,” she whispered. “Let’s hide!”

Robby stiffened, then made himself look around, but there was nothing. Only the blackness of the night and the noise of the wind and surf, building on each other into a steady roar. Still, when Missy tugged on his arm again, he let himself be pulled down into the shelter of a log.

* * *

A few yards away Miriam Shelling stirred slightly, a strange sensation forcing itself into her consciousness. Her fingers were tingling and her hair seemed to stand on end, as if charged with static electricity. She stared blankly into the night, her confused mind trying to match the eerie feeling with the terrifying images she saw on the beach. Strangers, strangers with odd, dead-looking eyes, their faces frozen in silent agony, their arms raised, their hands reaching, clutching at something Miriam couldn’t see.

She rose and began walking across the beach, drawn to the eerie tableau by a force beyond her control.

Missy peered fearfully over the top of the log, her eyes wide and unblinking.

There were several shapes on the beach now, but they were all indistinct — all except one, which moved outward toward the ocean slowly, steadily. Missy wanted to call out into the darkness, to disturb the strange scene that seemed to be unfolding silently in the maelstrom of noise that filled the night. But she couldn’t find her voice, couldn’t bring herself to cry out Instead, transfixed, she watched as the strange forms, the forms that seemed to glow against the dark backdrop of sea and sky, circled slowly around the other shape, the distinct shape, the shape she knew was human.

They closed on the human figure, circling ever more tightly, until Missy could no longer tell one from another. When the single figure finally disappeared, Missy came to life, fear overwhelming her. She reached out to clutch Robby’s hand.

Robby was gone.

Panicked, Missy forced herself to look back out at the beach once more.

The beach was empty.

Where only a moment before the night had been filled with activity, with frightening shapes moving about in the dimness, now there were only blackness and scudding clouds.

Terrified, Missy ran for home.

When she got there Robby was in his bunk, sleeping peacefully.

On Sod Beach, the rising tide washed the sand from the corpse of the dog, and moments later a wave, whipped abnormally large by the wind, swept Snooker’s remains out to sea.

By then the children were both in bed, though Missy was not asleep, and Miriam Shelling had disappeared from the beach.

7

Merle Glind glanced nervously at Brad and Elaine Randall as they came down the stairs the next morning and busied himself with the previous day’s receipts. It was the fifth time he had checked them through. As soon as they passed his desk, his eyes left the ledgers and followed the Randalls out the front door.

“Did you get the feeling Mr. Glind wasn’t too pleased to see us?” Elaine asked Brad as they descended from the porch.

“Maybe he had a bad night,” Brad suggested.

“I don’t think he approves of us,” Elaine said, squeezing Brad’s arm. “And I suspect he won’t be the only one. I mean, after all, planning to spend a whole year just writing a book? It is scandalous.” She sighed dramatically, sucked in the fresh morning air, and looked around. “Shall we go to the café? I’m hungry.”

“I vote for the police station,” Brad replied. “If there really is a house for rent we might as well get started — from what Glind had to say yesterday it might take all day just to talk what’s his name into renting it to us.”

“His name is Whalen, darling, and if I were you I’d remember it. He looks like a real red-neck to me, a small town dictator, and you won’t win any points with him by not being able to remember his name.”

They walked along the waterfront, then turned up the hill on Harbor Road. A few minutes later they had found the tiny police station.

“You’d be the Randalls?” the police chief said without standing up. Brad and Elaine exchanged a quick glance, then advanced into the room. Harney Whalen looked as if he’d been expecting them.

“Brad Randall, and this is my wife, Elaine.” Brad was careful not to preface his name with his title. But it was soon apparent that there were few secrets in Clark’s Harbor.

“Dr. Randall, isn’t it?” Harney said mildly. “They tell me you’re a psychiatrist.” He neither invited the Randalls to sit down nor told them who “they” might be.

Brad immediately decided there was more to Whalen than a mere “small town dictator.” He dearly knew something about manipulating people and putting himself in a position of strength. Well, two could play that game. “You don’t mind if we sit down, do you?” he asked mildly, seating himself before Whalen had a chance to reply. Elaine, taking his cue, took a chair close to Brad.

Whalen surveyed them for a minute, feeling somehow slighted. He wasn’t sure exactly what had happened, but he suspected he had lost the upper hand. The feeling annoyed him. “What can I do for you folks this morning?” he asked, though he knew perfectly well why they were there.

“They told us you have a house for rent,” Brad said. He took a certain malicious pleasure in using the same vague “they” that the police chief had used on him, but Elaine shot him a look that told him to stop being cute and get on with it.

“That depends,” Whalen said. “I might, and I might not. I think maybe I’d like to talk to you a little bit first.”

“That’s why we’re here,” Brad said with a smile. “We like the town.”

“Can’t say I blame you,” Whalen replied. “I like Clark’s Harbor myself. I was born here. So were my parents. My grandparents helped found the Harbor, back when it was a lumbering town. Still a little lumbering going on, but the big company closed years ago. Now it’s mostly fishing. You fish?” Brad shook his head. “Too bad,” the chief went on. “If you don’t fish there isn’t much else to do. You live in Seattle?” he suddenly asked, shifting the subject abruptly.

“Seward Park,” Elaine answered. When the chief looked blank, she explained. “It’s on the lake, at the south end.”

“Sounds nice,” Whalen commented neutrally. Then, eyes narrowed: “Why do you want to leave?”

“We don’t, not permanently. I’ve been kicking around an idea for a book for quite a while, though, and in Seattle I just never seem to get to it You know how it is — if it’s not one thing it’s another. I finally decided that if I’m ever going to get the damned thing written, I’d have to get out of town for awhile.”

“Why Clark’s Harbor?” the chief probed. “Seems to me there’s a lot of better places for you than this. Pacific Beach or Moclips, or up to Port Townsend maybe.”

Elaine smiled at the chief cordially, but she was growing annoyed by all his questions. If he has a house to rent why doesn’t he just say so, she thought Why the cross-examination? It’s as though he doesn’t want us here, the same as Mr. Glind. Being unwanted was a new experience for Elaine. Suddenly she was determined — almost as determined as Brad — to settle in Clark’s Harbor and make these people accept her. Carefully keeping her annoyance concealed, she spoke warmly.

“But those are exactly the sorts of places we don’t want to be,” she said. “What we need is someplace quiet where Brad can concentrate. I don’t know about Pacific Beach, but Port Townsend has entirely too many people who spend all their time having parties and talking about the books they’re going to write. Brad wants to avoid all that and get the book written.”

“Well, you people seem to know what you want,” Harney said when she was finished. He smiled thinly. “Ever been on the peninsula during the winter?”

The Randalls shook their heads.

“It’s cold,” Whalen said simply. “Not a nice kind of cold like you get inland. It’s a damp cold and it cuts right through you. And it rains all the time — practically every day. Not much to do during the winter, either — you can walk on the beach, but not for very long. Too cold. There’s no golf course and no movies and only one television channel. And I might as well tell you, we Harborites aren’t very friendly. Always been that way, likely always will be. We stick close together — most of us are related one way or another — and we don’t take kindly to strangers. As far as we’re concerned, if you weren’t born here you’re a stranger.”

“Are you telling us not to come to Clark’s Harbor?” Elaine asked.

“Nope. Only telling you what the town’s like. You can make your own decision about whether you want to come. But I don’t want you coming to me six months down the road and saying I didn’t tell you this or I should have told you that. I believe in playing fair, and I believe people should know what they’re getting into.”

“Then you do have a house for rent?” Brad asked.

“If you can call it a house,” Harney said, shrugging his shoulders.

“Tell us about it.”

“It’s out on Sod Beach. Been empty for quite a while.” He smiled tightly at Elaine. “Ever cooked on a wood stove?”

She hadn’t, but wasn’t about to admit it to Whalen. “I can manage,” she said softly, and prayed that Brad wouldn’t laugh out loud. He didn’t.

“You’ll have to,” Whalen said flatly. “The place has no gas or electricity.”

“Running water?” Brad inquired.

“That it has, but only cold. Hot water you’d have to boil on the stove. As for heat, there’s a big fireplace in the living room and a smaller one in the master bedroom. Nothing in the upstairs, but it doesn’t get too bad since the stairs act like a chimney.”

“You don’t make it sound very inviting,” Elaine admitted. In her mind’s eye she pictured the old house she’d seen on the beach the day before, almost sure that was the one the police chief was describing. “How long has it been since anybody’s lived there?”

“Nearly a year,” Whalen replied. “As a matter of fact, most of their stuff’s still there.”

“Still there?” Brad repeated. “What do you mean?”

“They skipped out,” Whalen said. “They got behind on the rent and one day I went out to tell them to pay up or go elsewhere, but they’d already gone. Took their clothes and their car but left everything else and never came back. So there’s some furniture there. If you want the place I suppose you could use it. Don’t think you’ll want it though.”

“Really?” Elaine said, trying to keep the sarcasm out of her voice but not entirely succeeding. “Why? Is it haunted?”

“Some people think so. It’s the beach, I imagine.”

“What about the beach?”

“It didn’t used to be called Sod Beach. That just sort of came into being by accident. Used to be called the Sands of Death years ago. Then the maps shortened it to S.O.D., and that eventually got turned into Sod Beach.”

“The Sands of Death,” Brad said softly. “I’ll bet there’s a story about that.”

Whalen nodded. “It was the old Klickashaw name for the beach. Can’t remember what the Indian words were, if I ever knew. It don’t matter anyhow. What matters is why they called the beach the Sands of Death. The Klickashaws had a wonderful custom — makes a hell of a good story for scaring kids with. It seems they had a cult — they called themselves Storm Dancers — that used to use the beach for executions.”

“Executions?” Elaine echoed the word hollowly, not sure she really wanted to hear the tale.

“The story goes that the Klickashaws didn’t like strangers any more than we do now. But they dealt with them a little bit different than we do. We at least tolerate ’em if we don’t exactly make ’em welcome. The Indians didn’t.”

“You mean they took them out on the beach and killed them?” Brad asked.

“Not exactly. They took them out to the beach and let the sea kill them.”

“I’m not sure I understand,” Elaine said softly.

“They buried them in the sand,” Harney Whalen said. His voice had become almost toneless, as though he was repeating the tale by rote. “They’d wait till low tide, then put their victims in a pit, and cover them with sand until only their heads were left showing. Then they’d wait for the tide to come in.”

“My God,” Elaine breathed. She could picture it in her mind — the terrified victims waiting for death, watching the surfs relentless advance, feeling the salt water lap at them, then slowly begin to wash over them; she could almost hear them gasping for air during the increasingly short intervals between the waves, and finally, inexorably … She forced the horrifying image from her mind and shuddered. “It’s horrible,” she said.

But Brad didn’t appear to hear her. His eyes were fixed on the iron-haired police chief. “I don’t see what that has to do with people not staying in your house on the beach,” he said.

Whalen’s smile was grim. “The legend has it, those people are still buried in the sand out there and that their ghosts sometimes wander the beach at night To warn strangers about the beach,” he added, leaning back in his chair to stare at the ceiling for a while before he spoke again. “Don’t know if there’s any truth to it, but I do know nobody ever stays in that house for long.”

“Which might have something to do with the lack of amenities, right?” Brad said.

“Might,” Whalen agreed.

“When can we see the house?” Brad asked. There was little point in further discussion. They would look at the house; either it would be suitable or it wouldn’t.

“If you really want to look at it I suppose we could go out there right now. Frankly, I don’t think you’ll like it.”

“Why don’t you let us decide that?” Elaine said, forcing her voice to be cheerful. “We might like it a lot more than you think.”

Before Whalen could respond to this the telephone rang. He plucked the receiver up.

“Chief Whalen,” he said. Then he listened for a moment. Both Brad and Elaine were sure that his face turned slightly pale. “Oh, Jesus,” he said softly. “Where is she?” There was another silence, then Whalen spoke again. “Okay, I’ll get out there as fast as I can.” He dropped the phone back on the hook and stood up. “It’ll have to wait,” he said. “Something’s come up.”

“Something serious?” Brad asked.

Whalen frowned, started to say something, then seemed to change his mind. “Nothing that concerns you,” he said, almost curtly. Brad and Elaine got to their feet.

“Maybe later this afternoon—?” Brad began.

But Whalen was already on his way out the door. The Randalls followed him to his car. For a second Brad thought he had forgotten them, but as he started the motor Whalen suddenly stuck his head out the window. “Tell you what,” he said. “Meet me out at the house, about three. Merle Glind at the inn can tell you how to get there.” He gunned the engine, flipped the siren on, and took off with a resentful screech from the tires. The Randalls stood alone on the sidewalk, watching the car speed away.

“Well,” Brad said when Whalen was out of sight. “What do you think about that?”

“He burned me up,” Elaine said, glancing over her shoulder to make sure no one but Brad was close enough to hear. “My God, Brad, he acted like the whole town is some kind of private preserve. Like nobody has a right to live here unless his great-grandparents were born here.”

“Kind of got your hackles up, did it?” Brad grinned.

“Damn right it did. I’ll cook on that damned wood stove of his for the rest of my life if I have to, just to let him know he can’t always have things the way he wants them.”

“You might hate the house,” Brad cautioned her.

She smiled at him almost maliciously. “Do you want me to describe it to you, or would you rather be surprised?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The house. I’ve seen it. I’m sure it’s on the beach I was on yesterday, where I found the dead dog.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No, I’m not. I walked right by it. It has to be the one. It was the only house on the beach and it looked as though no one had lived in it for years.”

“What’s it like?”

“I think a realtor would describe it as ‘a picturesque beach charmer, perfect for the handyman, needs work, easy terms.’ ”

“Doesn’t sound too promising.”

“Mr. Whalen certainly didn’t lie to us, I’ll say that much.”

They walked back to the inn. They would have a leisurely lunch, then walk up the beach to meet Harney Whalen at the old house. But when they reached the hotel they found Merle Glind in a state of extreme excitement.

“Isn’t it terrible?” he asked them. When they looked totally blank, he plunged on. “Of course you haven’t heard. It wouldn’t mean anything to you anyway, would it?”

“What wouldn’t?” Brad asked. “What happened?”

It was as if a door had slammed shut The moment Brad asked the question, Merle Glind went rigid. His eyes narrowed and his mouth closed in a tight, thin-lipped line. Finally, he spoke. “It’s none of your business,” he said. “You take my advice, you go back where you belong.”

Then, unable to resist, he told them.

Rebecca Palmer finished cleaning up the mess from breakfast and took the pan of dirty water outside to empty it onto the tiny cedar tree she had planted near the pottery shed. She examined the fragile-looking plant carefully, pleased to see that the makeshift fence she had rigged up around it seemed to be working — the little cedar showed no new signs of having served as dessert for the neighborhood deer. She was about to go back into the cabin when she heard the first faint sounds of the siren. At first she wasn’t sure what it was, but as it grew louder she frowned a little. A fire truck? An ambulance? It was louder now, headed in her direction — but there was nothing out here except their own cabin. Deciding it must be Harney Whalen after a speeding car that hadn’t had the sense to slow down as it passed through the Clark’s Harbor speed zone, she went on into the cabin. But when the siren stopped abruptly a few seconds later and she thought she heard sounds of shouting, she went back outside.

There were voices coming from the woods now. She thought she could hear someone calling out, “Over this way,” but she wasn’t sure.

Rebecca took off her apron, tossed it onto a chair just inside the door, and strode out onto the beach. When she thought she was close to the place where the shouting had been going on, she picked her way carefully over the driftwood barrier and headed into the woods. A minute later she wished she’d followed the road.

The ground was nearly covered with ferns and salal, and everywhere she stepped there seemed to be an ancient, crumbling log buried in the undergrowth. She stopped after a while and strained her ears, trying to pick up the sounds of the voices that had drifted so plainly over the beach. Finally she called out.

“Hello? Is anybody out here?”

“Over here,” a voice came back. “Who’s that?”

“Rebecca Palmer.”

“Stay away,” the voice called. “Go back to the house and stay there. Someone will come over in a little while.”

Rebecca paused, debating what she should do. It didn’t take her long to make up her mind. She plunged onward toward the anonymous voice, annoyed at being told what to do on what she was almost sure was her own property.

After a few seconds she thought she could make out a flash of movement off to the left. Whatever was happening, it was definitely happening on the Palmers’ land.

“Who’s there?” she called.

“It’s me, Mrs. Palmer,” the voice came back, “Chief Whalen. Just go back home and I’ll send someone down as soon as I can.”

The hell I will, Rebecca thought If something’s going on, I have a right to know what it is. She’d be damned if Harney Whalen was going to tell her what to do. She pressed on through the tangle of undergrowth and suddenly broke through into a small clearing. Harney Whalen and Chip Connor and a man Rebecca didn’t recognize stood in the clearing, looking upward. Automatically, Rebecca’s eyes followed theirs. Suddenly she wished she had done what Whalen had told her to.

Rebecca began screaming.

“Oh, God,” Whalen muttered under his breath. Then, aloud, he said, “Take care of her, will you Chip? Get her out of here.” He pulled his eyes away from Rebecca, and looked once more up into the trees.…

8

Miriam Shelling’s body hung limply ten feet above the ground. Her eyes bulged grotesquely from her blackened face, and her tongue hung loosely from her mouth. The rancid smell of human excrement drifted on the breeze — Miriam had evacuated her bowels at the moment her neck had snapped.

A small group of people stared uncomprehendingly up at her, their stupor unbroken by Rebecca Palmer’s screams. At the order from the chief, Chip Connor separated himself from the group and went to Rebecca, leading her away by the same route as she had come.

“Oh, God,” Rebecca repeated over and over again. “What happened to her? What happened to her? Last night—” she broke off suddenly, but Chip prompted her.

“What about last night?” he asked. They emerged from the forest and Chip helped her over the pile of driftwood, then gently guided her toward the cabin.

“Nothing,” Rebecca said. For some reason she didn’t want to tell the deputy that her husband had seen, even talked with, Miriam Shelling on the beach the evening before. She remained silent as they walked.

“Will you be all right?” Chip asked when they were inside the cabin.

“I’ll be fine,” Rebecca replied weakly. “Well, not fine exactly, but you go ahead and do what you have to do. I’ll take care of myself.”

Chip looked at Rebecca carefully, wondering if what she had seen could have put her into a state of shock; then, realizing that he probably wouldn’t recognize shock if he saw it, he decided to go back to the clearing. When Doc Phelps arrived, Chip would have him come over and check on Mrs. Palmer. Patting her gently on the hand and assuring her that everything would be all right, Chip started back to the small clearing.

Rebecca watched him go, strangling back a sob. As soon as he disappeared from sight she wished she’d told him that she wasn’t all right. She shivered a little, and put on a sweater even though the day was bright and warm, then built up the banked fire until it blazed hotly.

She said she was waiting for something, Glen had said last night. She was sitting on a piece of driftwood, and she was waiting for something. Suddenly Rebecca had a vision of Miriam Shelling sitting quietly, watching the beach, waiting for Death to come and take her to her husband. But why the beach, Rebecca wondered. Why out here?

In the clearing, Harney Whalen was wondering the same thing. He was remembering the previous day, too, when Miriam Shelling had appeared in his office demanding that he do something. She had been upset — very upset. He searched his mind, trying to remember every detail of what she had said, trying to find something — anything — that should have warned him that she was about to do something drastic. But there was nothing. She had only been demanding that he find whoever had killed her husband. And then, a sudden hunch coming into his mind, he left the clearing and beat his way through the woods to the beach. He looked out across the expanse of sand, then glanced north and south, taking a quick bearing. His hunch was right — Miriam had chosen a spot almost directly onshore from the place Pete Shelling had gotten caught in his own nets. Wondering if it meant anything or was merely a coincidence, he retreated back to the clearing. Doctor Phelps was waiting for him.

“Why hasn’t she been taken down?” the old doctor demanded. He stared accusingly at Whalen over the rims of his glasses.

“I wanted to wait for you,” Whalen said, trying not to feel defensive. But the doctor, eighty-six years old and still going strong, had treated Harney Whalen when the police chief was a child and never let him forget that as far as he was concerned, Whalen was a child still.

“Well, it’s pretty obvious she’s dead, isn’t it?” Phelps said sourly. “Am I supposed to climb up there myself to see what happened?”

Whalen was about to begin climbing the tree himself when Chip Connor reappeared.

“Chip? Think you can get her down?”

Chip forced himself to stare up into the tree once more, though his stomach rebelled every time his eyes fell on Miriam’s face. He examined the branches carefully.

“No problem,” he said out loud. Privately he wondered how he was going to be able to lower the body to the ground without — he broke off the thought without completing it and started up the tree. The climb was easy — the branches almost formed a ladder. A minute later he was level with the branch from which Miriam hung. Though it was invisible from below, a neat coil of rope lay in the fork of the tree. Carefully, Chip examined the knot from which Miriam was suspended, though a glance had told him how to get her down. All that held Miriam to the tree was a double slip knot, the kind children make in a string when they first discover how to knit it into a rope. He picked up the coil of rope and dropped it down. Then he made his way back to the ground.

“Give me a hand, will you, Harn?” he asked. He took hold of the rope that now dangled from the tree and yanked on it He felt a double jerk as the knot gave way. Then, with the chief helping him, he gently lowered the corpse out of the tree.

Doctor Phelps examined her slowly, first cutting the rope away from Miriam Shelling’s neck, then going over the body carefully, adjusting his glasses every few seconds as they slid down his nose. Finally he stood up, shrugged, and shook his head sadly.

“Why do they do it?” he muttered, almost under his breath.

“Suicide.” Harney Whalen made the question a statement.

“Looks like it,” Phelps agreed. “But damned strange if you ask me.”

“Strange? What do you mean?”

“Not sure,” the doctor said. “Seems like I remember something like this before. A fisherman dying and his wife hanging herself a few days later. It’s these damned storms.”

Whalen looked at the old doctor and Phelps smiled self-consciously. “Didn’t know the weather affects people?” he said. Without waiting for a reply, he went on: “Well, it does. There’s winds some places — down south, and in Switzerland and a couple of other places. They make people do funny things.” He paused significantly. “And we’ve got these damned storms. Whip up out of nowhere, blow like hell, then they’re gone. Vanished. They don’t show up inland, they don’t show up north or south. Just here. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

“No,” Whalen said flatly. “It doesn’t What makes me wonder, is why she chose Glen Palmer’s property to kill herself on. If she did.”

“She did, Harn, she did,” Phelps assured him. “Can’t put this one on anybody. Not Palmer, not anybody.”

“Maybe not,” Whalen growled. “But I can try.”

The old doctor stared at Whalen in puzzlement, then started toward his car. There was nothing further he could do. Behind him he heard Whalen begin giving orders for photographs to be taken and the body removed. But he was sure Whalen was not thinking about the orders he was giving. He was thinking about something else. Phelps wished he knew what it was.

They had barely spoken during lunch. As he finished his coffee and poured the last of a bottle of wine into his glass, Brad decided to face the issue.

“It’s bothering you, isn’t it?” he asked abruptly, sure that Elaine would know what he was talking about.

“Shouldn’t it?” Elaine snapped. “We’ve been here two days and two people and a dog have died.”

“You don’t know how long the dog had been dead,” Brad said.

“Then let’s stick to the people.”

“All right How many people do you think die in Seattle every day? Or didn’t you know that Seattle has the second highest suicide rate on the coast?”

“I know,” Elaine said darkly, resenting her husband’s logic.

“Then I should think you’d be wanting to pick up and move out I’ll bet the rate here is considerably lower than it is in Seattle. And frankly, I’m not terribly surprised by what happened.”

Elaine looked sharply at Brad. “You aren’t?”

“Think what it must have been like for her. Her husband was a fisherman — probably no insurance, and certainly no retirement fund with widow’s benefits. He probably didn’t even have any Social Security. Now, what is there for a woman in her position? Welfare? Small town people are very prideful about things like that.”

“She could have sold the boat,” Elaine said doggedly. “My God, Brad, women are widowed every day, but they don’t kill themselves over it” She drained her wineglass, then set it down and sighed. “Oh, come on,” she said tiredly. “Doesn’t it all seem just a little strange to you?”

“Of course it does. But you have to be reasonable. It would have happened whether we’d been here or not. Two days earlier or two days later, and we never would have known about it You’re acting as though it’s some kind of — I don’t know — omen or something. And that’s nonsense.”

“Is it?” Elaine said softly. “Is it, really? I wish I could believe that, but there’s something about this place that gives me the willies.” She stood up suddenly. “Let’s get out of here. Maybe the sunshine will help.”

Brad paid the check and they made their way out of the café and down the stairs. In the tavern the same elderly men were playing checkers, as they had been the day before yesterday. Neither of them looked up at the Randalls.

“Let’s walk up the beach,” Elaine said. “Maybe by the time we get to the house Whalen will be there. If he isn’t, I suspect we can get in by ourselves — it didn’t look capable of being locked.”

They retraced the path Elaine had taken the previous morning, but to Elaine it all looked different now. The sun had warmed the afternoon air, and the crackle of the morning freshness had long since gone. As they made their way across the point that separated the harbor from the beaches, Brad inhaled the scent of salt water mixed with pine. “Not like Seattle,” he commented.

“There’s nothing wrong with the air in Seattle,” Elaine said defensively.

“I didn’t say there was,” Brad grinned at her. “All I said was that this isn’t like the air in Seattle, and it isn’t Is it?”

Elaine, sorry she’d snapped at him, took his hand. “No,” she said, “it isn’t, and I’m being a ninny again. I’ll stop it, I promise.” She felt Brad squeeze her hand and returned the slight pressure. Then she saw a flash of movement and pointed. “Brad, look!” she cried. “What is it?”

A small creature, about the size of a weasel, sat perfectly still, one foot on a rock, staring at them, its tiny nose twitching with curiosity.

“It’s an otter,” Brad said.

“A sea otter? This far north?”

“I don’t know. It’s some type of otter though. Look, there’s another!”

The Randalls sat down on a piece of driftwood, and the two small animals looked them over carefully. After what seemed to Elaine like an eternity, first one, then the other returned to its business of scraping at the pebbles on the beach, searching for food. As soon as the pair began its search, four smaller ones suddenly appeared as if they had received a message from their parents that all was well.

“Aren’t they darling!” Elaine exclaimed. At the sudden sound the four pups disappeared and the parents once again turned their attention to the two humans. Then they, too, disappeared.

“Moral:” Brad said, “never talk in the presence of otters.”

“But I couldn’t help it,” Elaine protested. “They’re wonderful. Do you suppose they live here?”

“They probably have a Winnebago parked on the road and just stopped for lunch,” Brad said dryly. Elaine swung at him playfully.

“Oh, stop it! Come on, let’s see if we can find them.”

Her vague feeling of unease — what she called the willies — was gone as she set off after the otters, picking her way carefully over the rocky beach. She knew it was no use, but she kept going, hoping for one more glimpse of the enchanting creatures before they disappeared into the forest. It was too late; the otters might as well have been plucked from the face of the earth. She stopped and waited for Brad.

“They’re gone,” she sighed.

“You’ll see them again,” Brad assured her. “If they’re not on this beach they’re probably on Sod Beach. It’s the next one, isn’t it?”

Elaine nodded and pointed. “Just beyond that point If you want we can cut through the woods.”

“Let’s stick to the beach,” Brad said. “That way I can get a view of the whole thing all at once.”

“Sort of a general overview?” Elaine asked, but she was smiling.

“If you want to put it that way,” Brad said with a grin.

They rounded the point and Brad stopped so suddenly Elaine almost bumped into him. “My God, it’s beautiful, isn’t it?” She came abreast of him and they stood together surveying the crescent that was Sod Beach. The sky was cloudless and the deep blue water and the intensely green forest were separated by a strip of sand that glistened in the brilliant sunlight, highlighted by the silvery stripe of driftwood sparkling next to the woods. The breakers, eight ranks of them, washed gently in, as if caressing the beach. Brad slipped his arm around Elaine’s shoulders and pulled her close to him. With his free arm, he pointed.

“And that, I take it, is the house?”

Elaine’s head moved almost imperceptibly in assent. For one brief moment she wished she could deny it, and instead say something that would take them forever away from Clark’s Harbor and this beautiful beach with its bizarre past. For an instant she thought she could see the victims of the Sands of Death buried to the neck, their pitiful wailings lost in the sea wind and the roar of the surf that would soon claim them as its own. Then the vision was gone. Only the weathered house remained on the beach and, far off at the opposite end, the tiny cabin.

“Well, we won’t have many neighbors, will we?” Brad said finally, and Elaine had a sinking sensation in her stomach. Brad had already made up his mind. She pulled free of his encircling arm and started moving up the beach.

“Come on,” she said. “We might as well see what it’s like.” Brad trotted silently after her, ignoring the negative tone in her voice.

They had walked once around the house when Harney Whalen arrived, appearing suddenly out of the woods.

“Didn’t think you folks were here yet,” he called to them. “There wasn’t any car out on the road.”

“We walked along the beach,” Brad replied, extending his hand to the approaching police chief. Whalen ignored the gesture, instead mounting the steps to the porch and fishing in his pocket for keys.

“It’s not in very good shape. I haven’t even had it cleaned since the last people … left.”

Brad and Elaine exchanged a look at his slight hesitation, but neither one of them commented on it.

“The place seems to be sound enough,” Brad remarked as Harney opened the front door.

“All the old houses are sound,” Whalen responded. “We knew how to build them back then.”

“How old is it?”

“Must be about fifty or sixty. If you want I suppose I could figure it out exactly. Don’t see any point in it, though.” His tone said clearly to Brad, Don’t bother me with foolish questions.

But Elaine plunged in. “Did your family build it?” she asked. Whalen looked at her sharply, then his face cleared.

“Might say we did; might say we didn’t. We sold the land the house is on and my grandfather helped build the house, then we bought it back when the Barons … left.” Again there was the slight hesitation, and again the Randalls exchanged a look. Brad wondered how much more there was to the story and why the chief didn’t want to tell them all of it Then he looked around and realized that Whalen hadn’t been kidding when he said the place hadn’t been cleaned.

If it hadn’t been for the layer of dust covering everything, Brad would have sworn the house was inhabited. Magazines and newspapers lay open on the chairs and floor, and the remains of a candle, burned to the bottom, sat bleakly on a table. There wasn’t much furniture — only a sofa and two chairs — and what there was had obviously been obtained secondhand.

“They left in a hurry, didn’t they?” Brad asked.

“Like I told you, skipped right out on me,” Whalen said. Then, before Brad could comment further, he began telling them about the house.

“That’s a double fireplace over there. The other side opens in the kitchen, and between the two of them the downstairs stays pretty warm. There’s a bedroom through that door that I suppose you’d want to use, unless you’ve got kids. If you do, I’d put them in there, just in case of fire. It’s a lot easier to get out of the first floor than the second.”

“We don’t have children,” Elaine said, and stuck her head in the bedroom. It was a large room, facing the beach, and one wall was partly brick. She heard Whalen behind her explaining.

“The brick’s part of the fireplace. The whole house is built around the fireplaces. You’d be surprised how much heat comes through those bricks, especially if you keep fires going in both rooms. Don’t know why they don’t build houses like that anymore — with all the talk about energy, you’d think they’d want to. But no, they build them with the fireplaces on an outside wall, and you can kiss the heat good-bye.

“If you go through there,” he went on, “there’s the bathroom — that opens into the kitchen as well. It’s not so convenient for guests, but for whoever’s living here it works just fine.”

Elaine followed his directions and found herself in a small and incredibly grimy bathroom. She went through it and into the kitchen, where she stared at the forbiddingly large and ungainly wood stove. It seemed to challenge her, and she glared at it, silently telling the stove that come what may, she would learn to make it behave. But she wasn’t too sure.

The kitchen was as filthy as the bathroom. The pots and pans used for the preparation of what had apparently been the last tenants’ final meal were still stacked unwashed in the sink. Elaine swallowed hard, wondering if she would be expected to clean up the mess in the event they rented the place, and pushed on into the dining room.

The table was set, and at each place there was the remains of a half-eaten meal. The food had long since decayed, but from the looks of things it was an abandoned dinner. In the center of the table an ancient glass kerosene lamp stood, and Elaine could see that it was empty: whoever had lived here must have gotten up in the middle of dinner and left without even putting the lamp out. The lamp — God knew how much later — had simply burned itself out.

She was about to ask Whalen what had happened — why his tenants had “skipped out” in the middle of dinner — when she became aware that Brad was already talking to the police chief.

“How much would you want if you were to sell the place?” he was asking. Elaine felt her stomach sink again, and was relieved to hear Whalen’s reply.

“It’s not for sale,” he said in a tone that left no room for argument “It was a mistake when my grandfather sold the land in the first place. I won’t repeat that mistake.”

“You’re going to pass it on to your children?”

“I never married,” Harney replied. “Got lots of family, though. Most of the town is related to me one way or another. I wouldn’t be surprised if my deputy wound up with this place — he’s some kind of nephew.”

“Well, let’s talk about a lease, then,” Brad said.

“Why don’t we look at the upstairs?” Elaine interrupted.

Whalen shrugged and pointed the way toward the staircase that separated the living room from the dining room. He stayed downstairs as Brad followed Elaine to the second floor.

As soon as they were alone Elaine turned to her husband. “My God, Brad, it’s a mess,” she began.

Brad laughed “Of course it’s a mess, and I’ll bet we can get it cheap. But picture it cleaned up. It’s sound as a dollar and the location is perfect Peace, quiet, and an unbeatable view. All it needs is a coat of paint on the inside and it’ll be wonderful.”

“But there’s no electricity,” Elaine protested.

“Well, you’ve always said you longed for the simple life,” Brad teased.

Elaine wasn’t amused “Not this simple,” she said, frowning. Then, at the look of deep disappointment on her husband’s face, she relented “Brad, it’ll be so much work, you won’t get anything done on your book for weeks!”

“I can think while I paint,” Brad said “It won’t be like Seattle, where I have to keep my mind on my work every minute. And chopping wood is good exercise. I could stand to lose a few pounds.” He patted his flat firm stomach with the confidence of a man who hadn’t gained an ounce in ten years.

“If I have to cook on that stove, you’ll lose more than a few pounds.”

“You can learn,” Brad said, and there was a pleading tone to his voice that Elaine had rarely heard in the twelve years of their marriage.

“You really want it, don’t you?” she asked quietly, looking deep into his eyes.

He nodded. “I love it,” he said. “I don’t know exactly why, but I have a feeling about it It’s as though the whole place is calling out to me. Elaine, if I’m going to be able to write that book at all, I’m going to do it here.”

She gave in, as she always did. If Brad wanted it that badly, she would learn to live with it “All right,” she said, smiling with a confidence she didn’t feel. “We might as well have a look around up here and see how bad it is.”

“You mean it?” Brad asked eagerly. And seeing the look on his face, Elaine realized that she did mean it Her smile turned genuine.

“Come on, Randall, let’s see how much work it’s going to take to make this place livable.”

Harney Whalen was not waiting for them downstairs.

They found him on the beach in front of the house, his eyes fixed on the horizon. When they followed his gaze Brad and Elaine saw nothing but the sea and the sky, meeting darkly in a low bank of fog that seemed to be hanging barely within their vision.

“Mr. Whalen?” Brad said softly. There was no response from the police chief. “Mr. Whalen?” Brad repeated, louder this time. Whalen swung slowly around to look at them, his hands clenched into fists, the knuckles white with apparent strain.

“Are you all right?” Elaine asked. Whalen nodded curtly.

“We want the house,” Brad said.

“No, you don’t And it doesn’t matter anyhow, ‘cause I won’t sell it.”

There was an intensity in his voice that Elaine found disturbing. But Brad ignored it. “We want to lease it,” he said.

Whalen seemed to turn the matter over in his mind, then slowly unclenched his fist and put a hand inside his jacket.

“This is the lease. Take it or leave it.”

Brad glanced at the lease, noting the rent — two hundred dollars a month — and ignoring most of the body of the agreement. It was a standard form, already filled out. Elaine handed him a pen and he quickly signed both copies, returning one to Whalen, keeping the other. Whalen took the signed lease disinterestedly, replaced it in his inner pocket, then suddenly pointed north. “See that cabin up there? Almost hidden in the trees? Those are your nearest neighbors. The Palmers.” He stared at the distant cabin for a long time, then turned back to the Randalls. “The Palmers are strangers here too,” he said darkly. Then he stalked off toward the woods.

Brad and Elaine watched him go, then started back south toward the Harbor and the inn.

“You know something?” Brad said after a long silence. “I’m not sure he even knows we leased the place. It was like he was in some kind of a trance.”

Elaine nodded thoughtfully. “That was the impression I got too. Well, it’s too late now. He signed it The place is ours.”

She turned back for a final look at the old house. For an instant she thought she saw something at the window — a face, but not really a face. More like a shadow.

She decided she was imagining things.

9

The dining room of the Harbor Inn was quiet that evening; Brad and Elaine Randall dined in isolation. The same small card sat on their table that had been there the previous evening, but there seemed to be no reason for its presence — only one other table was filled. The rest, set and waiting, remained deserted. A few people sat at the bar, but their conversation was minimal, and what there was, was whispered in low tones impossible to overhear.

“If you stretch your ear any further, you’ll fall off your chair,” Elaine finally said. Neither of them had spoken for minutes. It was as though the Randalls had almost unconsciously matched the silence that shrouded the room. Now her words seemed to bounce off the walls, and Elaine glanced around to see if anyone had overheard her. Apparently no one had — the other table of diners appeared to be engrossed in their steamed crab, the drinkers continued to stare morosely into their glasses.

“I can’t figure it out,” Brad said as he surveyed the quiet room. “I’d have expected the place to be full tonight, alive with people gossiping about — what was her name?”

“Miriam Shelling,” Elaine supplied.

“Mrs. Shelling, yes. But from what little I’ve been able to hear, no one seems the least bit interested in her or what happened to her.”

Just then Merle Glind bustled up to them, recommending the blueberry pie for dessert. Brad declined, but while Elaine struggled with herself, torn between her weight and her desires, he decided to pump the little hotel proprietor.

“Kind of quiet in here tonight, isn’t it?”

Glind’s head moved spasmodically and he took a quick inventory of the room, his expression testifying to a sudden fear that something must have gone wrong. When nothing looked amiss he turned back to Brad.

“About the same as usual,” he said nervously. “About the same as usual.”

“I’d have thought you’d have a good crowd tonight, all things considered,” Brad ventured carefully.

“All things considered?” the little man repeated. “All what things?”

“Well, it just seems to me that people would be wanting to talk tonight.”

“What about?” Glind asked blankly.

“Mrs. Shelling?” Brad suggested. “I mean, isn’t it a little unusual to have a woman commit suicide here?”

“Why, I don’t know,” Glind said vaguely, appearing to turn the matter over in his mind. “But now that you mention it, I suppose it is.” There was a long pause, then Glind spoke again. “Not that it’s any of our concern, of course.”

Elaine frowned slightly and gazed at the strange man. “I should think it would be everyone’s concern,” she said softly. “I always thought that in towns like this everyone looked after everyone else.”

“We do,” Glind replied. “But the Shellings weren’t really part of the town.”

“I thought they lived here.” Brad’s voice was flat, as if he were merely prompting a statement he knew was inevitable.

“Oh, they lived here, but they were newcomers. They didn’t really belong.”

“Newcomers? How long had they lived here?”

Glind shrugged as if it was of no consequence. “Fifteen, twenty years. Not long.” The Randalls gazed at each other across the table, silently exchanging a thought. How long does it take? How long, before you’re a part of Clark’s Harbor? Their unspoken exchange was broken by Merle Glind’s forced cheer.

“What about that pie? I guarantee it myself!”

Elaine jumped a little, as if she had been lost somewhere, and without thinking she accepted Glind’s offer. He scurried away. When they were alone Brad and Elaine smiled weakly at each other.

“Fifteen or twenty years,” Elaine said wryly. “Somehow I’d been thinking in terms of a couple of lonely months and then the Welcome Wagon suddenly appearing.”

“Look at it this way: what would you have in common with most of these people anyway? We’ve always been pretty self-sufficient—”

“Pretty self-sufficient is one thing,” Elaine interrupted. “Being pariahs is absolutely another.”

“I wouldn’t worry too much about it,” Brad reassured her as the pie arrived. “Somewhere in Clark’s Harbor there’s got to be someone who’ll welcome us. It’s just a matter of finding them.”

Elaine bit into the pie and was pleased to find that it met her expectations. Then a thought hit her. “The Palmers!” she exclaimed.

Brad understood at once. “Of course,” he said, smiling. Then he dropped his voice a little in a surprisingly good imitation of Harney Whalen’s morbid bass tones. “They’re strangers here, you know!”

Elaine laughed and eagerly finished her pie.

“It doesn’t concern us!” Glen Palmer said for the fourth time. He tried to smile, but the hollow, sunken look in his wife’s eyes frightened him.

“How can you say that?” Rebecca shot back. “She was found on our land, Glen.” When he didn’t respond she pressed harder. “That clearing is on our property, isn’t it?”

“Yes, I suppose it is,” Glen admitted reluctantly. “But it still doesn’t concern us.”

“What about the children? Suppose they’d been the ones to find her, Glen. Just suppose that on their way to school Robby and Missy had decided to cut through the woods and found her?”

She could see that her point was being lost on her husband and she searched desperately for a way to make him understand.

“You can’t imagine what it was like,” she went on limply. “You just can’t imagine it.” She was about to describe the grisly scene for him once more when she heard the children coming in.

“What what was like?” Robby demanded. Rebecca stretched her arms out to her son but Robby backed away and moved to his father’s side. His child’s mind knew something was wrong between his parents, and he was instinctively drawn to his father. “You mean Mrs. Shelling?” he guessed.

“How did you know about her?” Rebecca gasped.

Robby’s face broke into a grin. “Jimmy Phipps went home for lunch and his mother told him all about it. Did you really see her?”

For a split second Rebecca considered denying it But she and Glen had always been truthful with their children. Now, though it might cause her pain — indeed, it was sure to — she felt she had to discuss what had happened with Robby. “Yes,” she said slowly, “I did.”

Robby’s eyes widened. “Did she really crap her pants?” he demanded. Rebecca winced, but Glen had to suppress a grin.

“It’s something that happens to people when they die, dear,” Rebecca said gently.

“What did she look like? Jimmy Phipps said her face was all blue and her tongue was hanging out.”

Rebecca, remembering, had to fight to control a contracting stomach. “It doesn’t matter what she looked like, Robby,” she said almost desperately.

Robby’s mind worked at the problem, trying to decipher why the appearance of the body didn’t matter. It had certainly mattered to Jimmy Phipps. He turned to his father, as if the problem was one only a man could solve.

“What happened to her?” he asked gravely.

“She was very unhappy, Robby, and she just decided she didn’t want to live anymore. Can you understand that?”

Robby nodded gravely. “I feel like that sometimes, but then the storms come and I feel better.”

“Oh, Robby,” Rebecca cried. She knelt by her son and drew him closer to her. “You mustn’t ever feel that way. Not ever! Why, what would we do without you?”

A small frown knit Robby’s brow and he disentangled himself from his mother. “It hardly ever happens,” he said impatiently, “And anyway, it isn’t such a bad feeling. In a way it’s kind of exciting” Then, before his parents could pursue the subject any further, he posed another question. “Did Mrs. Shelling do a bad thing? I mean, if she didn’t want to live anymore, why should she have to?”

Rebecca and Glen exchanged a glance, and Glen knew it was going to be left up to him to answer his son’s question.

“It just isn’t the best thing to do,” he said carefully. “If you have a problem, it’s much better to try to find a way to solve it. Dying doesn’t do any good at all, for anyone.”

The answer seemed to satisfy the boy. He shrugged, then gazed up at his father. “Can I go look for Snooker?”

“No!” Rebecca snapped without thinking. Suddenly the idea of her son out on the beach, the beach on which Miriam Shelling had spent her last hours, terrified her. “It’s too late,” she said hurriedly, trying to take the sting out of her words as Robby recoiled. “You should both be in bed.”

“I’ll go out in a little while and have a look,” Glen promised his son. But for the first time since they had come in Missy spoke.

“You won’t find him,” she said. “He’s gone and we aren’t ever going to see him again.”

“You keep saying that,” Robby said. “But you don’t know.”

“I do too know,” Missy shot back, her voice rising.

Rebecca almost intervened, but suddenly a quarrel between her children seemed a welcome respite from the strain she had been feeling all day. “Why don’t you two take your fight into the bedroom?” she suggested.

The children stared at their mother, shocked into silence by her failure to try to mediate between them. A moment later, warming to their argument, they tumbled off to the tiny bedroom.

As soon as they were gone Rebecca turned to Glen, “And I don’t want you going out there either,” she said.

“I don’t see that there’s much choice now,” Glen said with a shrug. “I already promised Robby and I can’t realty back out of it. Besides, we’ve been walking on the beach at night for months. You know as well as I do that it’s perfectly safe.”

“That was before last night,” Rebecca said, shuddering. “It’s all different now.”

“It is not different, Rebecca,” Glen said, placing his hands on her shoulders and forcing her to look at him. “Miriam Shellings problems had nothing to do with us, and it has nothing to do with us that she killed herself out here.” He laughed, but there was no mirth in the sound. “Well, at least now we know what she was waiting for.” He began putting on his coat.

“Please?” Rebecca pleaded. “At least wait until I’ve calmed down.” Glen tossed his coat aside, sat down on the couch next to his wife, and drew her near him. In the bedroom, the argument subsided. For a while, the tiny cabin was quiet.

“Let’s go for a walk,” Brad suggested as he and Elaine stepped out of the dining room. “It’s gorgeous tonight — no storm and a full moon.” He grinned suggestively. “And we haven’t been romantic on a beach in years.”

Elaine started to protest but changed her mind before an expression of doubt even clouded her face. She had been silly enough for a while; it was time to start acting like an adult. “Best idea you’ve come up with since we got here,” she said with a wink. “I’ll go up and get our coats.”

A few minutes later they were on the beach, and as she watched the moonlight glisten on the water, Elaine was glad she’d put aside her trepidations. The steady rhythm of the surf, soft tonight in the stillness, soothed her. She took Brad’s hand.

“Let’s walk up to the house,” she said. “I’ll bet it’s beautiful in the moonlight.”

They walked slowly, enjoying the night-quiet. When they came to the rocky stretch just before Sod Beach, they moved with particular care, hoping for a glimpse of the otter family. But there was nothing except a sudden clattering sound from somewhere overhead. They looked up in time to see the silhouette of an owl as it left the branch of a tree, swooping low, then beating its way up to cruise over the beach.

“We won’t see the otters tonight,” Brad commented. “They’ll have packed the pups off somewhere.”

“He’s so big,” Elaine said as the owl disappeared. “His wingspan must be six feet.”

“Gives him lots of glide. That way his prey doesn’t have any warning before he dives.”

They rounded the point and Sod Beach suddenly lay before them, its vibrant colors flattened by the darkness to dramatic shades of black and white. The sand seemed to gleam with a fluorescence of its own in the silvered light, and the bank of driftwood lining the length of the beach glowed whitely. In the midst of the pale expanse of sand, the old house stood, dark-shadowed, aloof from the eerie moonlight that bathed its surroundings.

“It’s like a fantasy,” Elaine whispered. “I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.”

Brad said nothing but pulled his wife close to him. They stood for a long time, trying to comprehend the almost unearthly beauty of the place and listening to the soft music of the gentle surf. Finally they walked out onto the beach, leaving a double row of footprints neatly embedded in the otherwise unmarred smooth damp sand.

They circled the house, but widely, as if unwilling to come close enough to discover the flaws in the ancient structure. Neither of them suggested going in, certain that the tired remains of the last tenancy would pull them away from the magic of the night Instead, after completing their survey of their new home, they continued walking up the beach until, by mutual but unspoken consent, they settled themselves on the sand, leaning against one of the massive driftwood stumps.

“I take it all back,” Elaine said. “This place is paradise.”

Brad reached in his coat pocket and pulled a pipe and some tobacco from its depths. He stuffed the pipe, lit it, put the tobacco back in his pocket, and stared out to sea.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said. “I’m going to change the thrust of the book.”

Elaine stirred against him, then settled in closer. “What made you think of that?”

“Lots of things. This place. Robby Palmer.”

“Robby Palmer?” Elaine sat up, looking sharply at her husband. “That’s a hell of a change, from bio-rhythms to Robby Palmer!”

“Not necessarily. There’s something about this place, something that affects everybody here one way or another. Who knows? It might have something to do with bio-rhythms. And if I can find out, it would make a great book. Particularly if I can use Robby Palmer to tie it all together. Think of it: a place — this place — where something seems to screw people up. People like Miriam Shelling, and maybe Harney Whalen. But for Robby, who was already screwed up, whatever it is that’s here straightens him out.”

“How lucky for you that Robby just happens to live up the beach,” Elaine said sarcastically.

Brad ignored the gibe. “It could be a very valuable book,” he said. “In more ways than one.”

“You mean a best seller?”

“Not just a best seller. Something worthwhile too. And if I could make a lot of money from a book …” His voice trailed off and he left the thought hanging.

“Well, I still don’t like the idea, but do what you want.” Elaine’s arms slipped around Brad and she hugged him tightly. “You always do.”

“That doesn’t make me sound very nice,” Brad said softly.

Elaine smiled in the darkness, knowing Brad would feel the smile even if he didn’t see it. “I didn’t mean it that way. I just meant that in the end you usually do what you want to do. It’s usually the right thing to do and I don’t have any objections to it, but it’s still true.”

“You know what you are?”

“What?” Elaine asked.

“A hopelessly unliberated woman.”

“You found me out,” Elaine replied. “But don’t tell anybody about it — it’s not very fashionable.”

“Fashionable enough for me,” Brad whispered. His hand slid inside her coat and began caressing her breast “Everything about you is fashionable enough for me.” He nuzzled her, then whispered in her ear. “When was the last time we made love on a beach?”

“We never did,” Elaine whispered back. “But there’s a first time for everything.” Her fingers began fumbling with his belt, and she felt the hardness in his trousers. She wriggled in the sand, and pulled him over on top of her.…

“I think we ought to go look for him again,” Robby Palmer whispered to his sister.

“He isn’t out there,” Missy whispered back. “He’s gone and we’re never going to see him again.” She turned over in the lower bunk and buried her head in the pillow.

“He isn’t either,” Robby insisted. “He’s probably caught in a trap in the woods or something.” He slid down from the upper bunk and poked at Missy. “Are you asleep?”

“Stop that,” Missy complained, wriggling down under the covers. “I’ll call Mother.”

“If you do I won’t take you with me.”

Missy sat up and peered at her brother. “I won’t go out there again,” she whispered. Robby shrugged. “It’s too dark,” Missy said, glancing at the curtained window.

“It is not,” Robby countered. “The moon’s out and it’s shining on the water. Look.”

Reluctantly, Missy left her bed and peeked out the window. A deep shadow hung just outside the cabin, but through the trees she could see the silvery light playing on the water.

“We should stay in bed,” she decided.

“Well, you can stay in bed if you want,” Robby said, pulling his jeans on. “I’m going out to find Snooker.”

Missy crept back into bed and pulled the covers up under her chin. She watched with wide eyes as Robby finished dressing. Then he carefully opened the window and climbed out. As soon as he was gone Missy jumped out of bed and ran to the window. Her brother was nowhere in sight She wished he hadn’t gone out Not after last night. She stayed at the window for a minute, then made up her mind.

Rebecca looked up from her knitting as her daughter appeared in the doorway of the tiny bedroom.

“Can’t sleep, darling?” she asked.

“Robby’s gone,” Missy said. “He went out to look for Snooker. I told him not to, but he went anyway.”

Rebecca felt a stab of fear in her heart and turned to Glen. He was already on his feet, pulling his windbreaker on.

“When did he leave?”

“Just now,” Missy said, her eyes bright as she watched her father dash to the front door. “He’s all right, Daddy,” she called, but Glen was gone. Rebecca put her knitting aside and gathered Missy into her arms.

“Of course he is,” she said softly, “of course he is.” But inside, she wasn’t sure.

Robby dashed around the corner of the house and into the woods. As soon as he was gone his sister would tell on him. Girls were like that, he thought, wishing he had a brother instead of a sister. Then he forgot about Missy and concentrated on making his way through the woods. He followed the path that would lead him out to the main road but turned off to the right before he got to the highway. He knew this path would take him through the woods, but he wasn’t sure where it would come out. And it all looked different at night, even with the moonlight There were shadows everywhere — shadows that completely blotted out the path and made the trees seem bigger and more forbidding than they were in the daytime.

When he heard his father’s voice calling him a few minutes later, he almost went back, then changed his mind. Missy would laugh at him. He hurried along the path, trying to see, but stumbling every few steps as his toe caught on roots that lay hidden in the darkness. Then he came to a clearing and stopped.

Something inside him told him that this was the spot where Mrs. Shelling had hanged herself. He stared around, searching the trees, trying to determine which branch she might have used. A sudden sound startled him, then an enormous shadow swept across the clearing. A bird, Robby told himself. It’s just a bird. But he left the clearing and continued along the path. Behind him he thought he could hear his father’s footsteps, following him. He walked faster. Then he began running.

Brad and Elaine Randall lay in each other’s arms, enjoying the closeness they always felt after making love.

“That was nice,” Elaine murmured. “Am I wicked for thinking sex is always better outdoors?”

“Not wicked,” Brad replied. “Just sensuous.”

Elaine poked him and he poked her back. They began tickling each other, rolling in the sand and giggling, until Elaine suddenly stopped and lay still.

“Did you hear something?”

“Just the surf.”

“No, something else. A shout.”

Brad listened for a moment but could hear nothing but the crashing of the surf. Suddenly a shadow fell over them and Brad looked up. A cloud had covered the face of the moon and the night grew darker.

“I don’t hear anything,” he began, but Elaine cut him off.

“Shh.” She listened intently, then spoke again. “There’s something there,” she whispered. “I hear something in the woods.” She pulled her coat tight around her and stood up.

“Don’t be silly,” Brad said. “It’s nothing, just some animal.” But his eyes went to the forest, peering into its blackness. Then he heard it: the crackling of twigs. He got to his feet, pulling Elaine up next to him, an arm protectively around her shoulders. He heard a shout from far up the beach and the crackling sound again. Closer. It seemed to be in the woods directly in front of him.

“Who’s there?” he called.

Silence.

“Who is it?” Brad called again. The sounds began again, louder now, and heading right toward them. He moved Elaine behind him, so that whoever — whatever — was coming out of the woods would face him first.

The cloud that had covered the moon drifted on, and the beach was once more bathed in an eerie glow. Looking at him from the other side of the pile of driftwood was a small and very worried face.

“It’s all right,” Brad said softly. “Come on over here.”

Robby Palmer, his terror easing, began scrambling through the driftwood. Whoever these people were, he would be safer with them. He had not felt safe in the woods. Not safe at all.

10

Robby hesitated at the top of the mound of driftwood, suddenly unsure of himself. For a second he was tempted to take off, not back into the woods, but up the beach toward the soft glow that emanated from the window of the cabin. When Elaine suddenly stepped out from behind Brad, Robby made up his mind.

“I’m looking for my dog,” he said shyly.

“Isn’t it a little late for that?” Brad asked. “Most nine-year-olds are home in bed.”

Robby cocked his head inquisitively. “How did you know how old I am?”

“Now how could I forget something like that?” Brad said. Then his brow furrowed. “Don’t you recognize me?”

Robby shook his head.

“I’m Dr. Randall, from Seattle. You really don’t remember me?”

“Are you the doctor I went to when I was sick?”

“That’s right.”

“I don’t really remember being sick either.”

Before Brad could pursue the subject, Elaine went to Robby and knelt beside him.

“Do your parents know where you are?”

“I think so,” Robby replied. “I think I heard my father calling me a little while ago.”

“Did you answer him?”

Robby shook his head. “It might not have been my father,” he said. “It might have been somebody else.”

“Who?” Brad asked.

“I–I’m not sure,” Robby stammered.

“Well, I think we’d better get you home. I’ll bet your parents are worried sick about you.”

“But I have to find my dog.” Robby protested “He’s been gone two nights now and Daddy won’t go look for him.” Robby looked to be on the verge of tears and Elaine put her arms around him. She was suddenly sure that the dog she had found on the beach had been his. “There, there,” she soothed him. “Don’t you worry about anything. He’s probably wandered off somewhere, but he’ll come home.”

“Missy says he won’t,” Robby said flatly. “She wouldn’t help me look for Snooker either, because she says he’s gone.”

Before either of the Randalls could determine the meaning of this odd statement, they heard a call from the forest.

“Robby? Robby!”

“Over here!” Brad shouted “On the beach!”

A moment later Glen Palmer broke out of the forest at almost the same spot where Robby had appeared a few minutes earlier.

“Dr. Randall! What are you doing out here? You haven’t seen Robby around—” He broke off as he saw his son and climbed swiftly over onto the beach. “Robby! I’ve been looking for you!”

“I was trying to find Snooker,” Robby wailed. “You said you were going to look for him but you weren’t, so I—” He ran to his father and buried his face against him. Glen held him for a moment, looking helplessly at the Randalls, then disentangled himself from his son. He knelt down and met the boy’s tear-filled eyes.

“I was going to come out and look for him but your mother needed me,” he explained. “We were talking, and as soon as we finished, I’d have come out looking.”

Robby peered doubtfully at his father, wanting to believe him, and Glen shifted his own gaze to Brad Randall.

“You haven’t seen a dog out here, have you?” he asked doubtfully. Elaine’s eyes darted to the child, and she bit her lip.

“We’ve only been here a few minutes ourselves,” she said, evading the question entirely. She’d tell Palmer the bad news when the boy was out of hearing. “We wanted to see what the place looked like at night.”

Glen looked puzzled. “Sod Beach?”

“The house,” Elaine explained. “We rented the old house today.” She gestured in the direction of the dilapidated structure, but Glen’s puzzlement only seemed to deepen.

“Whalen rented it to you?” he asked. He shook his head. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

“He didn’t seem too eager but he gave in,” Brad said with a chuckle. The chuckle faded as he remembered the police chiefs odd behavior just before the lease was signed, but he didn’t mention it to Glen.

“He wouldn’t rent it to me at all,” Glen said almost bitterly. Then he brightened. “Say, why don’t you walk up the beach with me? Rebecca’s waiting for me — all upset about Robby — and I’d better get back. Besides, you promised to stop by yesterday and then you didn’t. Rebecca hasn’t said anything but I think she’s disappointed. Frankly, she doesn’t have many people to talk to out here.”

“Of course,” Elaine said immediately. “We should have stopped today but we’ve just been so busy. I mean, coming to a decision like the one we just made takes all your concentration. But it was rude of us, wasn’t it?” She took Glen’s arm and started up the beach, leaving Brad to walk with Robby. Brad, sensing immediately that his wife was going to tell Glen about the dog, kept Robby occupied. And while he kept the boy busy, he observed him.

The change in Robby was as dramatic as Glen had described it Not a trace remained of the frenetic, anguished child Brad Randall remembered so vividly. Instead, he found himself walking along the beach with a remarkably normal nine-year-old boy, a child who was obviously active, but not overactive; who talked easily, readily, but not with the frenzied pace he had constantly displayed only months before. As they walked Brad found his puzzlement at the change deepening, found himself wondering exactly what could have happened to Robby Palmer, or what might still be happening to him. The boy was almost too normal. Brad found it vaguely disturbing.…

When she was sure they were out of earshot of her husband and Glen Palmer’s son, Elaine suddenly turned to Glen. “Was your dog black-and-white, sort of a spaniel?”

“You’ve seen him?” Glen asked eagerly.

“I think so,” Elaine replied, her voice somber. “Yesterday morning I took a walk on the beach. I found a dead dog, buried in the sand. It was medium-sized, black with whitish patches.”

“That sounds like Snooker,” Glen said. “He was a mutt, but there was a lot of springer spaniel in him.” He paused for a moment, then: “You say he was buried in the sand?”

“Not very deep. The sea might have done it, I suppose, but I’m not sure. His neck was broken.”

Glen stopped and turned to face Elaine. “Broken? What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure,” Elaine said unhappily. “He didn’t seem to have any other injuries, but his neck was broken. Brad said he could have been hit by a piece of driftwood that was coming in on the surf the night before.…” She trailed off, thinking the story sounded hollow. As if he read her mind, Glen shook Ids head.

“Doesn’t sound very plausible, does it?”

“I didn’t think so,” Elaine said. “I suppose I should have told you before, but I didn’t want to, not in front of Robby.”

“Of course not,” Glen agreed. “I’ll wait a day or so — maybe try to find the kids a new puppy — then tell them. Or maybe I won’t tell them at all. I’ll just find them another dog and that’ll take their minds off Snooker.”

Robby and Brad caught up with them in the trees in front of the Palmers’ cabin, and as they approached, Glen called to his wife.

“Rebecca? Come on out here — we’ve got company!”

Rebecca appeared at the door and, seeing her son, immediately swept him into her arms. Robby wriggled, protesting that he was fine, and finally Rebecca let him go, straightened up, and looked with surprise at Brad and Elaine.

“You remember Dr. Randall, of course,” Glen said. “This is his wife, Elaine. I found them on the beach near the old Baron house. They’ve leased it and we’re going to be neighbors, so I brought them home for a glass of wine.”

“Come in,” Rebecca urged them. “It’s not nearly as big as the house you got, but there’s room for everyone.” She led Brad and Elaine into the small main room and pressed them to take the two chairs usually reserved for her and Glen. “Let me get Robby settled in bed. Glen, why don’t you open the wine?” She disappeared into the tiny bedroom, and while Glen poured four glasses of wine Elaine and Brad inspected the cabin, Brad curiously, and Elaine carefully. By the time Rebecca reappeared Elaine was ready.

“Can you really cook on that stove?” she asked, making the question almost a challenge.

Rebecca looked blank for a second, then burst into laughter.

“It isn’t nearly as difficult as it looks,” she said. “Come here and I’ll show you what happens.” She bent over the stove with Elaine, demonstrating how the various vents worked and how to control the fire so that the burners would operate at various levels of heat.

“The main trick is to keep the fire fairly small so that you can move it around and control it Otherwise the thing gets so hot you can’t even get close to it But if your husband is anything like mine,” she finished, “you won’t have any problem — there won’t ever be enough wood to build a really big fire.”

Elaine shook her head doubtfully. “I don’t know,” she said. “Something tells me we’re going to be eating out a lot.”

“We can’t,” Rebecca said. “And even if we could, we wouldn’t. Much as I hate to admit it, I’ve gotten to the point where I actually enjoy cooking on this thing. The worst part of living on the beach is bathing.”

“My God,” Elaine breathed, closing her eyes as if to shut out a hideous vision. “I hadn’t even thought about that!”

“You’ll learn to dream about it,” Rebecca laughed.

Elaine turned to her husband. “Did you hear that, Brad?”

“I heard.” Brad looked unconcerned. “And I know perfectly well that I’m capable of getting myself spotless in one small pan of hot water. And after I’ve bathed in it, I can shave in it.”

Elaine gaped at him. “You? You’re the one who loves to use up all the hot water with twenty-minute showers.”

“If it’s available, why not?” Brad countered. “But loving to do it and having to do it are two different things. Just give me a couple of quarts of hot water — I’ll be fine.”

“Good,” Elaine said sarcastically. “Then you can boil a gallon at a time and I’ll use what’s left.”

“Before we get too involved in the glories of primitive living,” Glen interrupted, “I have a question. How on earth did you get Harney Whalen to rent you the old Baron house? We tried, and he absolutely refused.”

“Maybe he didn’t want to rent to someone with children,” Elaine suggested.

“That old house?” Rebecca said. “I don’t mean to sound negative — God knows it’s a lot better than this — but still, it isn’t a place children can do much damage to.”

“It was something else,” Glen said. “I’m still not sure exactly what it was. I thought it had something to do with us personally at first, but then I changed my mind I figured he just didn’t want to rent the house at all, especially to strangers. I guess I was wrong.”

“I’m not so sure,” Brad said pensively. “He wasn’t eager to rent to us either. When he finally did he was acting strange, almost as though he was thinking about something else entirely.”

“That is strange,” Rebecca commented.

“This whole place is strange,” Brad offered. “I think I’ll write a book about it.”

“A book?” Glen looked at Brad critically, then shook his head. “Nope. You don’t look like a writer.”

“I’m not,” Brad said. “But I’ve been kicking around an idea for a book for a long time. Now seems like a good time to do it, and Sod Beach seems like a good place. So here we are.”

“Just like that?” Rebecca asked.

“Well, not quite,” Elaine replied. “We have to go back to Seattle and dose up our house. But I should think we’ll be moving out here in a couple of weeks.”

“Two weeks,” Rebecca said, almost under her breath. “I can make it that long.” She hadn’t intended to speak out loud, but everyone in the room heard her. Glen looked embarrassed, but Brad decided to probe.

“I’m not sure what that means,” he said with a tentative smile that he hoped would put Rebecca at her ease.

Rebecca flushed a deep red and tried to recover herself. “Nothing, really,” she began. Then she changed her mind. “Yes, I do mean something by it,” she said. “It’s damned lonely out here and sometimes I’m frightened. You have no idea how glad I am that you’re going to be living just down the beach. I know it may sound strange since I barely know you, but sometimes this place gets to me. Now I won’t be the only one.”

“The only one?” Elaine repeated Rebecca’s last words.

“The only stranger here,” Rebecca said. Then she looked from Brad to Elaine, her expression almost panicky. “You are strangers here, aren’t you? You don’t have relatives in Clark’s Harbor?”

“I see,” Elaine said, leaning back and relaxing. She smiled at Rebecca. “No, we don’t know a soul here except you, and we’re not related to anybody, and,” she added in a rush, “I know exactly what you’re talking about It’s not easy to be a stranger in Clark’s Harbor, is it?”

“It’s terrible,” Rebecca said softly. “Sometimes I’ve wanted to just pick up and leave.”

“Why haven’t you?” Elaine asked.

“Lots of reasons,” Rebecca said vaguely. “We’ve got most of our money tied up here — not that there’s very much of it. If we were to leave now we wouldn’t have anything left.”

“And, of course, there’s Robby,” Glen added quietly.

Rebecca looked almost embarrassed but Brad picked the subject of Robby up with apparent eagerness. “The change in him is almost unbelievable. In fact, if I hadn’t seen him myself, I wouldn’t have believed you. And you don’t have any idea what caused it?”

“Not the slightest.” Glen shrugged. “But we aren’t about to question it either. As long as Robby stays the way he is now, we’ll stay in Clark’s Harbor, come what may.”

“How bad has it been?” Elaine asked. “Or am I prying?”

“You’re not prying at all,” Rebecca said emphatically. “In fact, maybe it would be good for us to talk about it, just to hear what someone else thinks. Sometimes we think we’re paranoid about Clark’s Harbor. But frankly, I hate to subject you to it — it’s so depressing.” She picked up the bottle of wine and refilled everyone’s glass.

“Oh, come on,” Elaine said. “If nothing else at least it’ll let us know what we’re in for.”

Softly, almost as if she were ashamed, Rebecca explained how they had come to feel that the whole town was somehow united against them. “But there’s never anything you can put your finger on,” Glen finished. “Every time something goes wrong there’s always a reasonable explanation. Except that I always have the unreasonable feeling that if I weren’t a stranger here none of it would ever have gone wrong at all. And then, of course, there was this morning.”

“This morning?” Elaine thought a moment. “Oh, you mean Mrs. Shelling?”

Glen nodded and Rebecca’s face tightened.

“Did you know her?” Brad probed.

“Not really,” Glen said. “I ran into her last night on the beach. Apparently just before she did it.”

“Just before she did it?” Elaine echoed. “You don’t mean—?”

“It happened on our property,” Glen said. “Our land goes back into the woods to the road, then parallels the road for a hundred feet or so. Miriam Shelling hanged herself from one of our trees.”

“Oh, God,” Elaine said softly. “I’m so sorry. Rebecca — it must have been terrible for you.”

“I keep seeing her,” Rebecca whispered. “Every time I close my eyes I keep seeing her. And the kids — what if one of them had seen her?”

“But it wasn’t anything to do with you,” Brad said.

“Wasn’t it?” Rebecca’s face was bleak. “I keep wondering. We talked to Miriam yesterday. She came to the gallery and started ranting at us. We thought she was just upset—”

“Obviously she was,” Brad pointed out.

“She kept saying ‘they’ got her husband and ‘they’ were going to get us too. And then last night—” Rebecca broke off her sentence and fought to keep from bursting into tears. While she struggled to hold herself together, her husband spoke.

“So you can see, it hasn’t been easy.” He laughed self-consciously. “Some welcome we’re giving you, huh? Really makes you want to settle down here, doesn’t it?”

“Actually, yes, it does,” Brad said. The Palmers stared at him. “You mentioned paranoia, and I’m not sure you were so far off base. You two have been living in pretty much of a vacuum out here as far as I can tell. Odd things happen in vacuums. Things get blown all out of proportion. Things that would seem small in ordinary circumstances suddenly seem terribly important And the longer it goes on, the worse it all seems to get But the key word is ‘seems.’ How bad are things, really? Are you going to be able to open the gallery before you run out of money?”

“It looks like it, but I’m not sure how we’ve managed.”

“You want me to tell you? By working steadily along, dealing with whatever has happened. Actually, everything has gone pretty much according to plan, hasn’t it?”

“Well, I’d hoped to have the gallery open by now—”

“Hoped,” Brad pounced. “But what had you planned on?”

Glen grinned sheepishly. “Actually, if you get right down to it, I’m a little bit ahead of schedule. I allowed a lot of time for clumsiness.”

“So what’s really gotten to you is the attitude you’ve run into, or more accurately, what you think you’ve run into.”

“Oh, come on, Brad, be fair,” Elaine cried. “You know damned well what Clark’s Harbor is like for strangers. You can read it all over the place. And you heard as well as I did what those people were saying about Glen the first day we were in town.”

“They were talking?” Glen said, unable to keep the bitterness out of his voice. Elaine looked away, wishing she hadn’t spoken so quickly.

“Well, that’s something new,” he went on. “When I’m around that’s like everyone’s been struck dumb. What were they saying?”

“Oh, just the typical small town stuff about artists,” Elaine said, forcing a lightness she didn’t feel into her voice. But Rebecca would not let the subject drop.

“It must have been more than that,” she said gently. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have remembered it.”

“Well, the gist of the conversation — if you can call it that, since it was mostly just backbiting — was that no one in town seems to be glad you’re here,” Elaine told them. “But I’m glad you’re here,” she went on, “for the same reasons you’re glad we’re coming. Maybe we can take the curse off the place for each other.” Elaine caught herself and glanced from one face to the other. “Sorry about that I’m beginning to sound like Miriam Shelling, aren’t I?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Rebecca said. “Suddenly, with some people around and a couple of glasses of wine, I think I’m beginning to see some reason again. But an hour ago I wasn’t Is there any more wine in that bottle?”

Glen poured them each another round, then went out to find another log for the fireplace.

“I really am glad you’re going to be here,” Rebecca said while he was gone. “I had no idea how dependent I’d become on people till we moved up here and all of a sudden there wasn’t anyone to talk to. Sometimes I’ve thought I was going out of my mind, and I think Glen’s felt the same way. We’ve been holding on for so long now, telling each other it’s going to get better. But until tonight I didn’t believe it. Now I do.” She grinned suddenly. “I hope I don’t get to be a nuisance — I suspect I’ll be running up and down the beach every five minutes at first, just making sure you’re really there.”

“You’d better be,” Elaine replied. “If you’re not I’ll have to do all the running, just to find out how to survive without electricity.”

“Why don’t you talk to Whalen about putting some in?” Glen said, returning in time to hear the last “It shouldn’t cost much from where you are — the main line runs out almost as far as your house.”

“Not worth it,” Brad said. “And even if it were I doubt Whalen would go for it For some reason he seems to be rooted in the past. He made a big deal out of telling us the old Indian story about the Sands of Death.”

“That’s not so funny, considering what happened last night,” Elaine pointed out.

“Except that Mrs. Shelling killed herself,” Brad said. “No one else was involved, and she certainly wasn’t buried on the beach in the style of the story Whalen told us.”

No, but the dog was, Elaine thought suddenly. She said nothing, standing up instead: sending Brad a signal that it was time for them to leave.

A few minutes later they started the long walk back down the beach.

Glen and Rebecca watched them go until they were only shadows in the moonlight Then they closed the cabin door and put their arms around each other.

“Things are going to get better now, aren’t they?” Rebecca whispered.

“Yes, honey, I think they are,” Glen said softly. He didn’t tell Rebecca about the strange feeling he had gotten while he was out getting the log: the strange feeling of being watched….

11

“Well, that’s that,” Elaine said as she closed the last suitcase and snapped the latches into place. She began her final inspection of the room, pulling each of the drawers open, then moved on into the bathroom. “Damn,” Brad heard her say.

“The hair dryer?” he called.

“What else?” Elaine replied, returning to the room with the offending object in her hand. She stared glumly at the suitcase on the bed, mentally rearranging it so that the cumbersome dryer would fit “Maybe I’ll just throw it on the back seat,” she speculated. She tossed the hair dryer onto the bed and dropped heavily into one of the chairs, glancing around the room as if she expected some other item she had overlooked to appear suddenly from her new vantage point.

“You were right,” she said suddenly. “This is a nice room. In a way I hate to leave it.”

“We’ll be back.”

“Yes, but not here.” She sighed and got to her feet, reaching for the coat Brad was holding. “Do I need this today?” She looked doubtfully out the window; the sun was shining brightly and the harbor lay softly blue below her.

“It’s a bit snappy out,” Brad said. He picked up the dryer. “What about it? The back seat?”

Elaine scowled at him playfully and reopened the suitcase.

“As if you didn’t know.” She quickly reorganized the suitcase, mostly a matter of stuffing several of Brad’s shirts further into a corner, and crammed the dryer in. It was a struggle but the suitcase closed.

“How come the dryer always winds up ruining my clothes?”

“Yours are cheaper, and besides, you don’t care how you look,” Elaine teased. “Come on, let’s get it over with.”

Each of them picked up two suitcases and they left the room, its door standing open, to make their way down stairs. Merle Glind looked up when he saw them coming but didn’t offer to help them with the luggage.

“Checking out?” he inquired.

“No, actually we’re just moving our luggage around,” Brad replied, but the sarcasm was lost on the little innkeeper. He set the luggage down and tossed the key onto the desk. Glind picked it up and examined it carefully, then pulled their bill from a bin on his desk, matched the room number to the number on the bill, and began adding it up. Brad suppressed a smile as he noted that their bill had been the only one in the bin, and wondered what Glind would have done if the numbers had failed to match. He handed Glind a credit card, which was inspected minutely, then signed the voucher when it was presented to him. He wasn’t surprised when Glind carefully compared the signature on the voucher with the one on the back of the card. Finally Glind returned the plastic card and smiled brightly.

“Hear you folks rented the old Baron house,” he said.

“That’s right,” Brad said neutrally as he slipped his credit card back into his wallet.

“Not much of a house,” Merle remarked. “No electricity. I wouldn’t be surprised if the roof leaks.”

“Well, we’ll be living mostly on the first floor anyway, so I don’t expect a few leaks will bother us.”

Merle stared hard at Brad, then decided he was being kidded. He chuckled self-consciously. “I suppose you folks know what you’re doing,” he said, “but if I were you, I’d think twice, then think twice again before I moved out there.”

“You mean the legend?”

Glind shrugged. “Who knows? But Harney Whalen believes in the legend, and he’s part Indian.”

“The police chief?” Elaine asked unbelievingly. “He certainly doesn’t look it!”

“Take another look,” Merle replied. “If you know, it shows up right away. Anyway, he thinks there’s something to the legend. That’s why he doesn’t like to rent the house out there. Fact is, I’m surprised he rented it to you.”

“Well, he didn’t seem too eager,” Brad said.

“Don’t imagine he was. And if I were you I’d have let him discourage me. That’s a bad place out there — no mistaking it.”

Elaine suddenly felt angry, and her eyes narrowed.

“Exactly what do you mean?” she demanded.

Her tone seemed to frighten the nervous little man and he retreated a step back from the counter. “N-nothing, really,” he stammered. “It’s just the stories. You must have heard the stories.”

“We’ve heard them,” Brad said levelly, “and frankly, we don’t put any stock in them.”

Glind’s eyes suddenly clouded over and he almost glared at them. “Well, that’s up to you,” he said stiffly. “For your sake I hope you’re right” But his tone told them that his hope was faint Brad and Elaine picked up their suitcases and left the Harbor Inn.

“That really burns me up,” Elaine grumbled as they carefully fit the suitcases into the car. “It’s almost as though he was trying to scare us off.”

“That’s exactly what he was trying to do,” Brad said, slamming the trunk closed. He heard something crack inside and ignored it “But it won’t work, will it?” He smiled confidently at his wife, knowing her instinctive reaction to Glind’s tactics would be to prove the odd little man wrong.

“No, it won’t,” Elaine said defiantly as she got into the car. She waited until Brad was behind the wheel before she spoke again. “The way I feel now, I wish you’d been able to talk Whalen into selling the place to us!”

“That’s my girl!” Brad said happily, reaching over to pat her on the leg. Suddenly Elaine stared suspiciously at him, her eyes narrowing and a tiny smile playing around her mouth. “Did you put him up to that? Just to bring me around?”

“Absolutely not,” Brad said sincerely, staring straight ahead through the windshield. Then he turned and grinned at her. “But if I’d thought of it I would have!”

“Bastard!” Elaine said, laughing suddenly. Then: “Hey, let’s stop and see Glen Palmer before we leave, just to say good-bye.”

“I’d already planned on it,” Brad said easily. He turned the corner and headed up Harbor Road toward the main road. A few minutes later they pulled up in front of the gallery.

Brad and Elaine were standing in front of the gallery, trying to picture what it might look like when it was finished, when Rebecca Palmer appeared at the front door.

“I was hoping you two would show up,” she said happily. “That’s why I came in this morning. A little bird told me you might stop on your way back to Seattle. Come on in — I’ve got coffee going.”

She led them into the gallery. A moment later Glen appeared from the back room.

“Rebecca’s little bird was right, I see. Well, what do you think?” The Randalls looked around as Glen led them through the room, explaining what would eventually be where, trying to build a visual image for them with his words. He was only half-successful, but Brad and Elaine admired the work anyway. Glen looked just a little crestfallen.

“You can’t see it, can you?”

“Just because I can’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t there,” Elaine protested. “Let me see it again when it’s finished. Did you say there’s some coffee?”

“Some beer too,” Glen offered. “Come on back and see what I got this morning.”

In the back room, standing on its hind legs and whimpering plaintively, a tiny puppy peered at them from the confines of a small carton.

“Oh, he’s adorable!” Elaine cried, sweeping the puppy into her arms and cuddling it “Where did you find him?”

“I didn’t,” Glen said. “He found us. He was sitting out front this morning when we arrived.”

“But he can’t be more than eight weeks old,” Elaine protested. “What would a puppy that young be doing wandering around at night?”

“Search me,” Glen said. “I asked a couple of people about him this morning but no one seems to know where he might have come from. Bill Pruitt down at the gas station said sometimes people from Aberdeen or Hoquiam come up here and dump puppies instead of having them put to sleep. I figure if nobody comes looking for him today, he’s ours.”

Elaine carefully put the puppy back in its box. Immediately it began trying to scramble out again, its tiny tail wagging furiously.

“Was Snooker’s neck really broken?” Rebecca suddenly asked. Elaine looked at her sharply and bit her lip.

“Glen told you?”

Rebecca nodded mutely.

“Well, then there isn’t any use lying about it, is there?” She smiled weakly. “I’m sorry. When I found him I had no idea he was your dog.”

“What did you do with him?”

“I left him where he was,” Elaine said gently. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

“Well, there isn’t anything to be done now, is there?”

“There wasn’t anything to be done when I found him, Rebecca. He’d been dead for hours, I’m sure.”

“I know,” Rebecca replied. “But it just seems too coincidental, Snooker getting his neck broken and then Mrs. Shelling—” She let the sentence hang, then pulled herself together and tried to smile. “I’m sorry,” she said. “These things have just gotten to me. I’ll be so glad when you’re back, Elaine. All of a sudden I just don’t like the idea of being out at Sod Beach all by myself.”

“That’s nonsense,” Elaine said with a certainty she didn’t feel. “It’s a beautiful beach and you’ve been very happy there. It’s absolutely silly to let this get to you.”

“I know,” Rebecca said. “And if it were just one thing — even if the one thing was Miriam Shelling — I think I’d be all right But two things? It just seems spooky.”

“Another minute and you’re going to start sounding like Merle Glind,” Brad said.

“Merle?” Glen said the name sharply and Brad’s attention was drawn away from Rebecca. “What did he have to say?”

“Not much, really,” Brad answered. “Some nonsense about what a mistake we’re making moving out to the beach. Without really saying it, he managed to imply that there’s something to that legend of Whalen’s. Say, did you know that Whalen’s part Indian?”

“Not me,” Rebecca said. “But now that you mention it, I suppose he does have that look.”

Outside, a car pulled up and the group suddenly fell silent, waiting for the door to open. When it didn’t Rebecca got up and went to look out. “Well, speak of the devil,” she said. Frowning slightly, Glen joined his wife. Outside, Harney Whalen was standing next to the Randalls’ car, one foot on the bumper, writing in what appeared to be a citation book. “What the hell is he up to?” Glen muttered. He started for the front door but was stopped by Brad’s voice.

“I’ll take care of it, Glen. It’s my car he’s got his foot on.” He went to the door and stepped outside. “Good morning,” he said cheerfully. The police chief didn’t respond.

“Something wrong?” Brad asked. Whalen glanced up at him, then finished writing and tore a page from the book. He handed it to Brad.

“Parking ticket,” he said evenly, his eyes boring into Brad’s.

Brad grinned crookedly. “A parking ticket?” he repeated vacantly. “What are you talking about?”

“Car’s parked illegally,” Whalen stated. Brad glanced around, looking for a sign that would tell him he had broken the law. There was none.

“It isn’t posted,” he said.

“It’s not illegal to park here, Randall,” the chief said. “It’s the way you parked. Rear end of the car is over the pavement.”

Brad walked around the car. The edge of the pavement, indistinct in the dust, appeared to be no more than an inch or two under the side of the Volvo. Suddenly he knew what was going on. “I’m sorry,” he said easily. “Very careless of me. How much is this going to cost?”

“Ten dollars,” Whalen said. His face wore what appeared to be an insolent smile, as if he were waiting for Brad to protest the citation. Instead, Brad simply reached for his wallet, pulled out a ten-dollar bill, and handed it to the chief together with the citation.

“I assume I can pay you?” he asked politely.

“No problem,” the chief said, pocketing both the citation and the money.

“I’ll need a receipt for that,” Brad said.

The police chief glared at him for a second, then moved to his patrol car. He sat behind the wheel and scribbled a receipt, then returned to the spot where Brad waited for him.

“Be more careful next time,” he said, handing the receipt to Brad. He turned and started back to the black-and-white.

“Chief Whalen?” Brad called. The policeman turned and stared at him. “If you think you can scare me off with a phony parking ticket, you’re wrong,” Brad said quietly. “It’s going to take a lot more than that to keep me out of Clark’s Harbor.”

Harney Whalen pulled at his lower lip and seemed to turn something over in his mind. When he finally spoke his voice was just as quiet as Brad Randall’s had been.

“Dr. Randall, I don’t give phony tickets. Your car is parked illegally, so I cited it. If I wanted to keep you out of Clark’s Harbor, believe me, I could. I tried to tell you what things are like here. Now, you want to come out here or you want to stay away, that’s your business. But don’t come to me looking for trouble — you’re likely to get it. Do I make myself clear?”

Brad suddenly felt foolish. Perhaps he’d been mistaken and the ticket hadn’t been the harassment he’d assumed it was. And yet it had to be — the violation, if indeed it was a violation, was so trivial. He decided to drop the matter, at least for the moment.

“Perfectly clear,” he said. “If I was out of order I apologize.”

The chief nodded curtly and wordlessly, got into his car, and drove away. Brad watched him go, then went back into the Palmers’ gallery.

“What was that all about?” Elaine asked. “Was he giving us a ticket?”

“He gave us one and I paid it,” Brad said pensively.

“What for?” It was Rebecca, a look of concern on her face.

“Apparently I parked illegally. It seems the right rear corner of the car is an inch or two over the pavement.”

“And he cited you for that?” Glen was outraged. “That’s ridiculous!”

“I thought so too, but I didn’t push it. No sense getting off on the wrong foot.”

“Sometimes I don’t think there’s a right foot,” Glen said bitterly. There was a silence, and Rebecca moved to him and took his hand.

Elaine looked down at her watch. “It’s time to get going,” she said softly. “It’ll take us at least three hours to get home.”

Rebecca suddenly put her arms around Elaine and hugged her. “Don’t change your mind,” she whispered.

“Not a chance,” Elaine assured her. “This town’s got my dander up now.” She pulled away from Rebecca. “Give us a week, more or less, and we’ll be back. Okay?”

Rebecca nodded. “I feel silly,” she said. “But all of a sudden things seem like they’re going to be fine. Hurry back.”

“We will,” Brad said. “And I expect to find this place finished by then. If it’s not I’ll have to pitch in and do it myself.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” Glen promised him. He and Rebecca walked with the Randalls to their car, then watched them drive away.

“I hate to see them go,” Rebecca said. “What if they change their minds and don’t come back?”

“They’ll be back,” Glen told her. “Now come on in and forget about them for a while. There’s lots of work to be done and a puppy to be taken care of.”

Together, the Palmers went back into the gallery.

“What are you thinking about?” Brad asked as they drove away from the gallery.

“Nothing much,” Elaine said, not sure she wanted to share her thoughts with Brad. She was afraid she was being silly. She didn’t fool her husband.

“Worried again?” he guessed.

“I suppose so. Maybe we jumped in too fast. I mean, a house at the beach is one thing, but without electricity and in a town that doesn’t seem to want us?”

“It isn’t the whole town,” Brad pointed out “It’s only Harney Whalen and Merle Glind. There are also Glen and Rebecca, who want us very much.”

Elaine lapsed back into silence. Resolutely, she put her thoughts aside. But as they drove further and further away from Clark’s Harbor, the thoughts kept coming back: And they’re strangers, she thought Strangers, just like us. And just like the Shellings.

* * *

Harney Whalen waited until the Randalls’ car was completely out of sight before he pulled out from behind the billboard and headed back into town. As he made the turn onto Harbor Road he glanced at the Palmers’ gallery with annoyance and wished once more that they had taken him up on his offer to buy them out. Then, with the offending gallery behind him, he looked out over the town. His town. He had a proprietary feeling about Clark’s Harbor, a feeling he nurtured. Now it lay before him, peaceful and serene in the morning sun.

He pulled up in front of the tiny town hall and ambled into his office. Chip Connor was already there, enjoying a steaming cup of coffee. When Harney came in Chip immediately poured a cup for his boss.

“Well, they’re gone,” Harney said.

“Gone? Who?”

“The Randalls. Left just now.”

“But they’ll be back,” Chip pointed out.

“Maybe,” Harney drawled. “Maybe not.” He sat down and put his feet up on his desk. “Beautiful day, isn’t it, Chip?”

“For now,” the deputy commented. “But a storm’s coming. A big one.”

“I know,” Whalen replied. “I can feel it in my bones.”

Harney Whalen smiled and savored his cup of coffee and waited for the storm.