Night Songs

ONE

Another warm day, too warm for October, an August day misplaced in the middle of autumn. The rainstorm was gone, sweeping out to the Atlantic and up toward New York. What was left was the sun that turned the shallows turquoise, brightened the pines' green, shifted red leaves to vermilion and brown leaves to tan. The sea scent was strong, the breeze a welcome cooling, and Thursday a memory buried in a back closet.

It should have been perfect.

It should have been a quiet time of remembering, perhaps regretting, and looking forward to winter and the peace that it brings, forgetting for the moment that spring will start it all again.

But there'd been too many dreams spawned after midnight, too many arguments over a sun-bright breakfast, too many doors slammed and engines raced-and an unnerving feeling that an island four miles long and two miles wide was suddenly an island that had grown much too small.

The school on Haven's End was less than twenty years old and took care of the island's children until they were ready for high school across the bay in Flocks. The building was unimposing by any mainland standards: a single-story brick and gray-glass building raised on a high concrete foundation to keep the rooms from flooding when the occasional hurricane shrieked up the coast. Double doors at the entrance, high taxus and laurels to camouflage the concrete, and massive full pines at each of the front corners. The only sign it might be an official structure was the flagpole by the steps-tall, white, with a gleaming brass ball at the top gripped in the brass claws of a spread-wing eagle. Ocean Street ended almost at its front steps, as if the school were a monument facing a pitted tarmac mall, and behind were the woods that thickened toward the cliffs.

The morning blue, the noon sun, were slowly fading behind a haze.

At precisely two-thirty Colin was positioned in the entrance foyer, smiling and nodding as the children swarmed past him toward two days of freedom. Their shouts were infectious, their laughter a potion, and he rolled his shoulders with impatience to get on with the weekend while his left hand drummed a march on the flat of his thigh. Like his students, he felt that today was too beautiful to be spent inside. Heresy, he knew; a teacher's dedication supposedly knew no weather. But after the previous night's funeral he thought it a miracle the storm hadn't lingered to drench the town in stereotypical gloom. As it was, he'd had a difficult time of it from the moment he'd arrived. The kids and his colleagues seemed touched with electricity, a curious sort of tension that made them jump when spoken to, kept their eyes on the windows, had their attention wandering throughout their lessons-the kind of intangible crackling that preceded thunder.

He suspected the mood was caused by the Screamer. In the lounge, a colleague, Rose Adams, had detailed the effects of such a blow in '74. It had swept in before dawn, tides five and six feet above normal, streets flooded, windows shattered, more than a dozen automobiles pushed down Bridge Road straight into the bay. Luckily there'd been a warning, and most of the islanders had taken off for the mainland. Of those who'd remained, one had drowned on his lawn, another had been dashed to death against a wall by the wind and a fallen tree.

"Of course I'm not leaving," she said when he asked. "Do you think I'd miss one just because of a little wind?"

A throat cleared behind him, and he turned as he moved aside, the smile almost fading when he saw three students waiting, a girl and two boys.

"Excuse me, Mr. Ross," Denise Adams said politely as she brushed past him through the door.

"Have a good weekend," he said to the curly-haired brunette. "See you Monday."

She paused on the middle of five marble steps and looked back over her shoulder. "Aren't you going to the party tomorrow?"

He shrugged.

"Carter can vote, you know. You ought to talk to him. You always say every vote counts in any election." Then she smiled broadly. "I was eighteen last week. I can vote too."

Several comments came instantly to mind, all of them salacious and unbefitting his position; he grinned anyway, for the hell of it, to show her what he was thinking. Her large eyes widened, and her lower lip pulled between her teeth as she waved somewhat doubtfully and took the remaining steps at a deliberately slow march, her blue plaid shirt tight across her slender back, her jeans-encased hips swinging sharply side to side. The two boys with her ignored him completely. But he smiled at them as well, thinking the effort wouldn't kill him, though he decided not to ask why they weren't bringing home their books.

The smaller of the two, Denise's brother, Frankie, slapped her arm when they reached the sidewalk. She slapped him back, hard, before he could twist away, and muttered something Colin didn't hear as the door hissed closed. He sneered and ducked another blow, ran to the street and tight roped the center line. The second boy shot an arm around her waist and drew her close, leaned toward her ear and whispered with a leer. She slapped him too, but not nearly as hard as she had hit her brother. Then he looked back over his shoulder and gave a cold smile to Colin.

Colin nodded as if the smile were genuine.

"Sweet, isn't he," a deep voice said behind him. He didn't turn. He watched Carter Naughton walk with Denise up the street, his fisted right hand now buried in her hip pocket.

"He'll do."

"No, he won't," said Bill Efron. "None of them will. They come here three times a week for your tutoring, and I'll bet you your salary they still won't graduate high school in June. I tell you, Colin, there are times when I suspect they're not even human."

Colin laughed quietly. The principal had been fighting with Naughton and his friends for as long as they'd been alive, or so it seemed. Cart was nineteen, tall and muscular, his thick black hair greased to a gleaming and combed in a ducktail reminiscent of the fifties. Frankie, three years younger, tried desperately for imitation, but his curled brown hair wouldn't straighten, he was too skinny for a fitted T-shirt, and Colin didn't believe he really had the heart. Peg had agreed, which is why she kept him on as her stockboy and clerk-a chance for salvation, she'd said when he asked her.

Denise, on the other hand, was what he could only describe as saucy, and sassy, and much too old for her age. She also didn't need the extra work; her high school grades were quite adequate for passing. Though she denied it, he knew the only reason she came was because Carter commanded.

Efron sighed loudly, a frequent martyr to his profession, and pushed aside his tan cashmire jacket to tuck his thumbs around his alligator belt. He was white-haired and balding, his face a pink balloon slowly leaking air. His pale eyes were narrowed in a perpetual squint, a refusal to wear glasses when he was outside his office.

"Wouldn't give you two cents for the lot of them," the principal said bitterly. "Damned state insists we have to train 'em, though. Don't know why Flocks doesn't do it; they've got the teachers and facilities. It's that fool at the high school, of course. Carter has him scared out of his wits. But as long as the kid insists on staying in, there's nothing the guy can do." He shook his head in empathetic resignation. "If the draft were still in, that jerk would be in khaki."

Colin listened without comment. In the first place, he really didn't mind the tutoring he'd volunteered for; he thought it a challenge, rather liked the extra money, and once in a while even Cart gave him hope there might be progress. But Efron was leading up to something else besides grousing. After all this time he knew the signs-the man was corralling his courage for something unpleasant he hadn't the finesse to open squarely. The last time it was a mild scolding for showing Gauguin nudes in the classroom; the time before that it was smoking in the schoolyard; and the time before that it was to announce to the faculty there'd be no raise in the fall.

"I, uh, don't see you out shaking hands," Efron said at last, with a jocular tone so false it nearly creaked. His pink face turned pinker. "I suppose you're saving it for the big party at the Run tomorrow night."

Colin trapped an ill-timed comment by wiping his mouth. "I'm not all that political, Bill, though I have to admit it'd be awfully tempting to make a speech. Maybe I will, just to see what Bob says." He laughed with a shake of his head. "Probably toss me out on my ear." He paused. "Are you going to be there?"

"Probably. If the wife is feeling better."

Colin barely managed to withhold a chuckle, arranging his expression artfully into a display of concern. Efron's wife was notorious for her illnesses, primarily contracted from the soap operas she watched; what the heroines suffered she felt bound to share, as long as it didn't seem that the suffering was fatal. Efron indulged her, and ignored the snide comments, and the rest of the island generally played the game-when there was nothing left to talk about, Mrs. Efron's latest provided an easy topic.

"Well, I hope she's well enough. It should be quite a bash."

Efron nodded thoughtfully, slipped a hand into his jacket pocket. "You won't be giving any speeches, then."

"I made the one last month at the town meeting, which proved to me I should stick to my canvases. Anyway, I figure people can ask me if they want to know more."

"And do they?"

He nodded. "Once in a while. You know how it is." A pause. "Here in school?"

He turned slowly and leaned as casually as he could against the door frame, trying to decide if the man was kidding or not. The look on the principal's face said he wasn't, and Colin almost lost his temper. "Bill, I'm surprised. You know me better than that. Here, I teach. I don't campaign. Anybody asks me, I tell them to wait until later."

Efron smiled in weak apology. "I know that, Colin. I just want to be sure you understand."

"It's been over a month. Why haven't you said anything before?"

The principal shrugged his wide, sagging shoulders. "Didn't see the need for it."

"And now?"

The question echoed off the empty foyer's beige-tiled walls, and Efron backed to a wall display case behind whose glass face were ranged a few polished trophies and dark-framed citations. He stared at them as if they were whispering in his ear.

"This isn't a big school, Colin, not like they have in Flocks or the city. But it does have a reputation. And a damned good one, I might add. There are more than a dozen kids here from the mainland whose parents are willing to pay extra to have them learn from us. Our students on the average do better in high school and in college than anyone else in the county." He traced a finger across the glass, as if he were trying to write a message. "I don't want people saying there's any undue influence here."

"You don't have to worry about that, Bill," he said, hoping his annoyance didn't show in his tone. "At least I don't hand out pamphlets to my students to take home to their parents." And the moment he said it he wished he'd kept his mouth shut.

Efron half-turned, frowning. "What's that supposed to mean?'

It was too late to retreat, but he didn't want to argue. A gesture, then, to deflect the tension. "Come on, Bill, don't play games, okay? It's a beautiful day and I don't want it spoiled for something silly like this."

"Are you saying Cameron uses his business to garner votes?"

Colin sighed mild disgust and walked toward the intersection of the foyer and the building's single hallway.

"Colin."

He stopped.

The hallway was deserted.

The voice behind him was solemn.

"Bob Cameron has a restaurant, and what he does there is his affair. It's private, and his customers don't have to read his material if they don't want to. On the other hand, this is a public school. We have a trust here, aside from a legal obligation. A word to the wise-don't abuse it."

He nodded without looking back, continued around the corner and headed for the faculty lounge. Once inside, with the door carefully closed behind him, he lashed out with a foot at the nearest chair, wincing when he connected with the aluminum tubing and a shock paralyzed his leg. Idiot, he thought as he hobbled to the back window and looked out at the schoolyard. Idiot-though he wasn't sure yet who deserved the label.

He put his palms on the sill and touched his forehead to the glass, staring at the swing sets, the seesaws, the benches and redwood tables. A man was out there- Denise and Frankie's father-stabbing listlessly at pieces of lunch paper and wrappings with a pole tipped with a nail, stuffing the catch into a canvas sack hanging from his shoulder. Colin watched him for five minutes without the man looking up.

Finally, after a long escaping sigh that fogged the pane, he had to admit that what he had heard wasn't much of a threat. In fact, 'threat' was definitely too strong a word since Efron never had been very effective with thunder. Yet the fact it had been tried made him wonder what, if anything, was next, and if there had been something else on the man's mind that hadn't been said. As he turned away from the custodian cleaning the yard, he wondered what Cameron had said to make Efron act.

He shook himself like a dog shedding rain, and decided he was overreacting to a perfectly reasonable suggestion. After all, it was Efron's job to keep his school and his teachers clean in more ways than one, and Colin was actually surprised it hadn't been brought up before. Surprised because Bill Efron was one of the casino's staunchest supporters, and if Colin won the election they'd be co-members on the Board.

Good lord, he thought with a start, wouldn't that be something else? A hell of a thing, since the Board also hired and fired all the teachers. He could see it all now: a smoke-filled room, a dramatic confrontation, Efron trying to dislodge Colin's tenure, and Colin passionately voting against him. He laughed aloud, once, and looked to the ceiling. It would have to be a first, unquestionably. What other teacher in the state had the power to save his own skin? Not only a first, it was ludicrous. Unreal.

He laughed again, this time to himself, and while laughing made his way back to his room for his jacket and briefcase. A check to be sure nothing was left behind, and he was out of the silent building before anyone could intercept him. He paused on the last step to allow his eyes to adjust to the sunlight, and turned right to follow the sidewalk past the school; a sharp left with the cracked pavement and he was heading toward Bridge Road. The block easily stretched twice as long as any he'd ever seen, so long in fact that each street was trisected by narrow concrete pathways lined with hurricane fencing and poplars for shade so pedestrians didn't have to walk all the way to the corner or the shops out on Neptune just to visit a friend.

A flock of gulls swept low overhead, slow-riding the currents like black-and-white kites, and he listened for a moment to their cries on the wind. It was the only sound he could hear, and his footsteps the only proof he wasn't caught in a dream. Nice, he thought as he did each day, very nice indeed.

Across the street there were high-mounted houses clustered under tall trees all the way to the corner, on his side the same until he reached Reverend Otter's fieldstone cottage, one of the few not raised for protection. Then the spired New England church with its vast rock garden on the side and a belfry ringed with a narrow widow's walk for sighting the fleet, the brown clapboard library that used to be someone's home (with an attending fat Doberman asleep and whimpering now in the sun), and finally he reached the corner and Cameron's Clipper Run.

Several cars passed him heading east. Folks on their way to Flocks for a Friday night outing, he guessed. He grinned and waved when one of them honked a horn, and an arm poked out a window to give him a wave back.

A group of kids playing ball in the street across the way.

Someone practicing on a tortured saxophone. Nice, he thought; I should live again and be so lucky.

A fluttering by the restaurant caught his attention, and he peered through the shade under raw-beamed eaves extending over the entrance. There was a white cloth banner tacked above the door, proclaiming the dancing and dinner that would be held tomorrow night, all in the name of a successful season's finish. As if, he thought in mild disgust, every season before this one had been a total disaster. But it was a good way to discover how many votes the man had, and how many he needed to pry away from Colin.

He swung his briefcase out to batter at the hedge, and wondered maliciously where Bob had found the nerve to interfere with his job, but he also remembered those so-called friends he could have met last night, the ones Garve had described to him on the beach at Gran's funeral.

Tomorrow, he thought, should be interesting indeed.

He checked the sky, took a deep breath to smell the ocean, and decided he should go home before dropping in on Peg. He'd been wrestling with the idea all day, and now he felt a chill.

It was time. Perhaps it was too late. When he awoke this morning and watched the dawn shadows slip off the ceiling, he'd realized that not calling her when he'd returned last night was more than breaking an understood promise; it was stalling.

And not done very adroitly at that.

As he reached the police station and turned onto Neptune, he mocked himself for his procrastination. Subtle as a sledgehammer. Ross, you dumb jerk. Thank God you didn't decide to try your hand working for the State Department; World World Three before you even unpack your bags.

"Hey, Mr. Ross."

He blinked and looked to his right, saw El Nichols standing in the station doorway. "Hey, El, how's it going?"

The younger man looked tired, and his uniform was faintly rumpled. "Could be better, could be worse. You know how it is. I think the Screamer's put ants in the town's pants today, though. I've been out on more calls…" He shook his head once to mark his exasperation. "Little old ladies seeing prowlers on their back porches, stuff like that. And in the middle of the day, yet."

"Little old ladies know no clock, El. A prowler's a prowler whether the sun's out or not."

The deputy laughed, a rich and smooth sound that effectively smothered the rest of his souring mood.

"So," Colin said, "you catch any?"

"You kidding?" Eliot slumped against the frame and leaned forward, lowering his voice as if conspiring, or guarding against the ire of his friends. "Hattie over at the library had me go up and down between every damned stack while that monster dog of hers barked his damned fool head off the whole time I was there. Then she made me listen to some theory she has about this Greek or Roman guy named Tantalus and why he did what he did. Jesus, who the hell cares? I never even heard of the jerk.

"Then, I had to go out to Tess Mayfair's boarding place. She say's someone's tramping through her garden killing the flowers. Well, hell, those flowers have been dead since the Fourth of July ten years ago come Sunday, but that don't make a difference to her. No sir. I have to go a hundred yards into the woods out back to prove there wasn't anyone there try in' to rape her."

Colin sighed his commiseration. "You have to admit, though," he said finally, "Tess isn't anyone you'd want to get angry."

"Tell me," Eliot said with a mock shudder. "Three hundred pounds and six feet if she's an inch. I lived there for a couple of years, y'know, but I got out soon as I could swing it. Jesus, I couldn't even bring a date to the living room!"

Colin lowered his head in sympathy.

"And the westerns," El said. "God, the westerns! Even when I did bring someone in, we couldn't do anything. She has six TV sets, and just before I left she got one of those videotape things. My lord in great blue heaven, cowboys shooting up every damned town in the West twenty hours a day, every one of them John for God's sake Wayne." He shook his head with a slight frown. "Do you know that she once took a vacation to Hollywood and spent the whole time sitting in front of some theater or other, just waiting to see him? Can you beat it? Two weeks just waiting to see John Wayne?"

"Big star."

"Dead star," El said, "and I don't think she knows it."

"That bad?"

"I think she lights candles to him every night. It was hell living there, man, believe it."

"Life's rough on the range, pal," Colin said taking a poke at Eliot's arm and receiving a friendly poke in return. He was about to move on when he saw a sudden and somber alteration in Nichols' expression. "You feeling all right, El?"

The man plucked at his shirtfront. "Yeah, I guess so." A deep breath, a loud exhalation. "Well, not really, actually. A little guilty, I think, because I missed the funeral last night. It was that… well, I got tied up, you might say."

"Oh."

"Everything go okay?"

Colin remembered the torch, the look on the girl's face, and it took him a moment before he finally nodded.

"Good. Good. I'd hate to think-" His eyes widened, and his right hand clasped hard over his heart. "Oh my God," he whispered loudly, "you'd better run to get Doc Montgomery, Ross. I think I just now died and ended up in heaven."

Colin almost laughed aloud. With his back to the avenue he was facing the police station's plate glass window; the venetian blinds were down and he could see the other side of the street reflected as clearly as if the glass were a mirror. There was a gray stucco cottage, and a tiny green lawn, and Annalee Covey standing on the stoop. She was in her nurse's whites, a sweater draped over her shoulders, and her dark blonde hair was dancing with the wind. He had to admit she was more than a little stunning.

"Down boy," he said. "Garve will have your heart out with his bare hands for drooling like that on duty."

Eliot curled a lip in well-practiced disgust. "You kiddin'? Garve? Hell, all he ever does is sit in his chair and wait for her to leave, to come home from the doc's office. It's like a religion or something with him. He looks, but that's it. If she ever winked at him, he'd shit in his pants. I keep telling him he oughta have more gumption, like my grandmother used to say, but I don't think he has any more sense than Frankie Adams."

Annalee hurried down to the sidewalk, turned to Colin's right, and when she was in front of the Anchor Inn she angled across the street with a hasty glance at her watch and a waggle-fingered wave to the two men before she vanished.

"A lovely woman," Colin said.

"I can't argue there, but I tell you, Mr. Ross, I don't think he has a prayer."

Colin raised a warning finger. "Mr. Nichols, you must never underestimate the power of a Native American."

"What the hell is that?"

"An Indian," he said solemnly. "Garve has a little Navaho blood in him, remember? They have power we poor whites don't."

"Shit. The only power he's got is to fire my ass if I don't get back to work."

"Point and hint taken," Colin said with a smile, and gave him a two-fingered salute before moving on.

Eliot grinned, returned the salute, and was in the office before Colin had a chance to say good-bye.

A wooded lot separated the police station from a long, low building with a red-tiled roof and white clapboard siding. On one end was a hardware store, on the other a five-and-dime; in the center was Fletcher's Drugs, one of the few local businesses that kept normal hours once the season was over. It was brightly lighted, its aisles wide and uncluttered, and was serviced by a short counter near the door and a longer one in back.

Peg was there, and she waved when he came in. He smiled and moved toward her, a loud greeting at his lips swallowed when he heard giggling and a slap off to his left. Immediately, he veered over, toward a display case of costume jewelry. As he rounded a rack of greeting cards for Halloween, he almost collided with Denise, who was dancing away from Cart Naughton's grasping hand. Without a pause, he said, "There's no one up front, you'll have to pay for that in back," and pointed to the ring box in the boy's his pocket.

"Yeah," Naughton said, "I was gonna." A careful touch to his hair and he swaggered away, Colin slowly following with Denise at his side.

At the register, Peg was ringing up the sale and dropping the box into a white paper bag. She smiled at Cart, at Denise and asked if she'd seen her brother.

"I don't know where he is," she said without interest. "Maybe he tried to walk on water and drowned." Then she giggled, took Cart's arm, and they left hip to hip.

Colin leaned against the counter and watched them, saw them laughing hysterically as they passed by the window, nearly colliding with a woman pushing a shopping cart filled with groceries. "A lovely couple. The salt of the earth."

"She's a bitch," Peg said, "and he's a prick. Rumor has it his father never wanted him and isn't above letting him know it. On the other hand, there's also a rumor that he wasn't born at all, that he was found in a cave by Tess Mayfair, who thought he was the reincarnation of John Wayne. I, myself, of course, do not listen to such nonsense because I am a professional dedicated to alleviating all human misery with two aspirins and a condom."

He laughed and turned to face her, and was taken as always by the sparks in her auburn hair, by the smooth lines of her face, by the green-gray of her wide eyes so much like his own. A frilled white blouse and a simple black skirt, with a thin gold chain looped close about her neck. He felt himself blushing like ten kinds of a fool, his anger at Cameron now completely out of mind.

"You want something, teach?" she asked with a mock frown. "You want me to answer that?"

"Not now," she said.

He tried to ignore the suggestive tone, and looked around the store as if searching for something. She did that to him, knew it, and loved it-innuendo and leering, former provinces of the male. It had taken him a while to get used to it, longer still to understand she was only partly jesting.

"The party," she said, slamming the register drawer shut.

"Huh?"

She leaned her elbows on the counter, and rapped her knuckles on his head. "Earth to Colin Ross. Hello in there, are you still with me? I said party. Maybe you've heard about it? Robert Cameron? Free booze and food? He's the opposition, in case you've forgotten."

"Believe me, I haven't forgotten."

"Then will you take me?" And suddenly she smiled slyly. "To the party, I mean."

"I didn't think you meant anything else," he protested.

"Sure, okay. But I want to know now, because if we're going, I have to get a sitter for Matt."

He leaned close, and looked anxious. "Will you just die if you don't go? I mean, will you absolutely and positively wither from mortification at missing the social event of the year?"

"Like a magnolia in a blizzard."

"Well-"

"And I won't ever be able to show myself in town again. My god, Colin, I'd be another Hester Prynne."

"Since you put it that way, I suppose I'll have to."

She laughed and kissed quickly the tip of his nose. "He'll die! God, Colin, he'll have a class-A fit!"

"Yeah." And he nodded.

He had planned to use the occasion to sound out his strength, but having Peg there on his arm would jab yet another thorn in Cameron's tender side. A small one, but nagging, and there'd be no Androcles around to pull it out and make him grateful. Bob Cameron jealous and being forced to hold it in was something he definitely did not want to miss.

Petty, he supposed, but why the hell not.

Peg rapped him again on the forehead, to show him she knew exactly what he was thinking.

He exaggerated a pained expression and ducked away before she could hit him again. "Where's Muriel?" he said, looking around the store for signs of Peg's regular clerk.

She scowled. "Family trouble, she says. She won't be in for at least another hour.

"Ha. She probably found a hot pinochle game at the boarding house. If you want the truth, I think you pay her too much. She makes enough for both of us with those damned cards of hers."

"Muriel North," she said mock-primly, "is a pillar of the church, a fine and upstanding woman, and I have never heard a foul word spoken from her lips. I trust her implicitly."

"She's still a shark, Peg. I know. I lost fifty bucks to her my first week on the island. Never again. She respects me now because she knows I'm not stupid."

Then his attention wandered as he saw a flyer for a new flavor ice cream being touted by Naughton's Market. It made him think of the luncheonette, closed now and looking old. "Lilla," he said softly.

Peg frowned. "Lilla?"

"I just had a thought," he said, tapping the paper to show her the connection. "I wonder if she'd go tomorrow? I mean, I know it's only a couple days after the funeral, but with that storm coming I don't know if she should be alone. Besides, she's been hiding out there in that shack for so long, it would do her good to get out and see people again."

Peg's smile was small and loving. "Leave it to you to think of something no one else would. Tell you what, we'll-" She snapped her fingers suddenly. "Oh, hell, Col, would you do me a favor?"

"Ask."

She fussed meaninglessly with the register. "You're not going home to work or anything? I mean, you said you were taking some time off, but-"

"Nope. Hadn't planned on it."

She looked at him closely, at his eyes and the set of his mouth, to be sure he wasn't simply being polite. Then she ran a slow dusting finger over the top of the counter. "Well, look, I really could use your help for a while, honest. I've got an appointment in ten minutes and I don't dare leave the place empty. Frankie, the sweetheart, hasn't shown up yet."

"You mean you want me to run the store? Alone?"

Before he could move, she was already around the counter and shrugging into a green jacket he'd given her on her last birthday.

"Nothing to it," she said hurriedly. "You've worked the cash register before, and you know the prices. If someone brings in a prescription, tell them to come back in an hour. I should be back by then."

"But where-"

She kissed his cheek and lay a palm against his chest. "You're a darling, you know that, right?"

"I think I'm a sucker."

She agreed with a wink and headed for the door.

He watched her with a baffled smile, then remembered why he had come. "Hey, Peg," he called after her, "will you go for a drive with me later? When Muriel comes in?"

She nodded without turning, gave him a wave over her shoulder and was gone before he knew it. Reprieve, he thought with a guilty sigh of relief; the governor hasn't called, but the power's temporarily gone out.

He took off his jacket and shoved the briefcase behind the counter. Ten minutes of wandering around the store, picking up boxes and bottles and putting them back down, finger-dusting the shelves, rearranging a few books into their proper slots. A number of customers came in and bought the local paper, chatted about leaving before the Screamer hit, asked after Peg and left with amused smiles. He stood at the entrance and watched the trees push back at the breeze, looked to his right at the bench Gran had used.

He blinked: The old man was there, sitting and talking quietly with Matt while both of them whittled on dead branches found in the empty lot. A handful of other kids came by and stopped, and soon Gran was grinning, his thin arms waving about, his eyes wide with laughter, Matt quietly proud he was the only one asked to join the old man on the bench.

Colin blinked again; the memory was gone.

Hands in his pockets, then he returned to the counter and was ready to read a magazine when Denise Adams walked in.

"Forget something?" he said brightly.

She examined the display of candies below the counter, looked at him without raising her head. "Cart thinks you're in love with me."

"He… I… my God, you can't be serious!"

He started to laugh, choked it off when he saw her hand move idly to the top button on her blouse; it was already undone, and she parted the material slightly while she picked up a chocolate bar and placed it by the register. "He's crazy," he said.

She cupped her palms around her cheeks and leaned her elbows on the counter. "I guess so."

"I know so, Denise," he said sternly.

Soft brunette curls drifted over her forehead, covered her hands, spiraled his gaze to the flat of her chest and the rise of her breasts. She's only eighteen, he reminded himself as he punched the register keys, had to correct himself twice before he got it right. The drawer snapped open and rapped his knuckles.

She stifled a laugh, and let one hand cover the chocolate.

"He thinks you look at me that way," she said so quietly he frowned until she repeated herself. "What way?"

She straightened and dug into her pocket, pulled out a dollar bill and held out her hand. He reached for it automatically, and stiffened when her fingers brushed across his skin.

"That way," she said. "You know. He thinks you want to paint me… " She shrugged slowly, "… without my clothes on."

He slid out the change, dropped a dime and fetched it with a curse, at the same time hunting for a way to get her out without screaming. When he stood she was eating the chocolate, nibbling at each section while she met his confusion with a smile.

"You corrected him, of course," he said, handing her the coins.

"Oh sure," she told him, looked pointedly at her chest to be sure he noticed she wasn't wearing a bra. "Oh sure."

"Good."

She didn't move; her smile made him uncomfortable as the candy disappeared, deliberately slowly. "I have work, Denise."

She licked a smudge of chocolate from the corner of her mouth. "Don't you?"

"Don't I what?"

"Don't you want to paint me so I can be in a museum?"

He recalled with a wince the look he'd given her when she'd left school, regretted it less than he suddenly thought he should. "Sure," he said. "As long as you wear a tent."

"Oh," she said, and he could have sworn her pursed lips were offering him a kiss.

"Denise, I said I have work."

"Okay." She pushed the last of the bar into her mouth, ran a slow finger around her lips and walked back up the aisle. At the door she paused, looked over her shoulder. "I think he wants to beat you up, Mr. Ross."

Before he could say anything she was out the door and gone. The urge to chase and strangle her propelled him around the counter until he stopped himself with a "Jesus!"

What in hell was going on, he wondered, wiping his brow with a palm. This place is going nuts. Efron, Cameron, now even the stupid kids. He snapped the candy wrapper from the floor and tossed it behind the counter, turned and stared at the entrance, daring her to return.

Who he saw was Carter Naughton, hands on his hips, a knowing expression on his face.

"Naughton, I want to talk to you!"

"Fuck you, teacher," Carter said. "I'll see you later."

A single step was enough to send the boy running, another before he was able to stop himself from panting, unclench his fists and wish for Peg to return. He had no idea what idiotic scheme the kids had in mind, but he didn't like the feeling that hinted he just might be helpless.

Frankie Adams sat hunched in a cardboard cave- empty cartons piled behind the drugstore, arranged into a private place where he could sit and smoke and think of ways he could get his sister away from Naughton so Carter would notice him for a change. It wasn't that he didn't know anything about women; those magazines Cart gave him told him all he had to know. And it wasn't that he was jealous, for God's sake, because Denise the Bitch was his sister, for God's sake. And she was ugly, for God's sake!

What it was, was that it just wasn't fair.

That's all there was to it-it just wasn't fair.

He did practically everything Cart told him, hardly ever wiseassed him, and he was still treated like shit. Was it his fault his mother wouldn't buy him the weights that would give him muscles? Was it his fault he was always broke because he had to turn over his paycheck every week to his old man? Allowance. Jesus H. Christ, he was sixteen years old and still getting an allowance. He drew on the cigarette from the pack he'd stolen from the store and let the smoke trail from his nostrils. He'd seen that in a movie, and he'd seen Cart do it once. He'd nearly choked to death before he'd mastered it, and now, who gave a damn?

He squirmed and hugged his shins, jammed his chin onto one knee. The ground beneath him was still damp from the rain, the cardboard walls sagging. Tonight, before he finished work, he'd have to crush them and stuff them in the dumpster. Of course, he might not have a job left by the time he finally showed up. But he couldn't go in there now. He'd seen Cart and his sister there, and later Mr. Ross had gone in. All those people, half of them thinking he was a sap and needed help, the other half thinking he was a sap and needing a swift kick in the ass.

It wasn't fair.

Nothing was fair.

Nobody was fair, except maybe Mrs. Fletcher. At least she let him have the keys, lock up and stuff like that, like he knew what he was doing. Once she'd let him fix the small generator in her backyard shed, the one she used when storms knocked out the electricity. He'd shown her how to store the kerosene, and she'd given him twenty dollars. Just like that. Twenty dollars.

His mother, for God's sake, still treated him like a baby even when she was sober. Frankie, darling, don't forget your coat, it's chilly today. Frankie, darling, you need more than a T-shirt, it's chilly today. Frankie, finish your supper. Frankie, finish your breakfast. Oh, Frankie, why do you have to wear your hair that way when all the other little boys have nice haircuts?

Little boys. Jesus… H… Christ.

He scowled and dug his heel into the ground.

And the old man. Hell, he's nothing more than a janitor in school, and any place else he can find someone dumb enough to give him a job. What a jackass. Jesus.

He held the cigarette to his palm to see how close he could get before he had to pull away. Cart could put it right on the skin. Cart could flip one around into his mouth and stick it back out still smoking, and not burn his tongue. Cart could walk into the supermarket and tell his old man to give him some money and tell his old lady to shut up, and all they did was yell and give him the money just to get him away. Frankie had tried that once. He'd walked into the house and told his old man to give him ten dollars, and when his mother had started to babytalk him and grill him and ask what he wanted the money for, he'd told her to shut up. His old man had beaten him half to death.

His mother had given him the money when his old man wasn't looking, but he was still beaten half to death and could barely walk for a week.

Cart had laughed. Cart was always laughing at him, and he was getting tired of it. Then Cart told him today to get lost. Just like that-get lost, shithead. Just like that.

But damn it, he wasn't a shithead. He knew that. He wasn't as smart as Denise the Bitch, maybe, but he wasn't a shithead. Cart knew that. Somehow, he had to make sure Cart knew that. God, if Cart didn't pay attention to him anymore, he wouldn't have any friends left, because Mrs. Fletcher didn't count.

He sighed, crushed the cigarette under his heel, crawled through the opening he'd made and stood with his back to the wall. There was no one around. The sun was setting fast. He was ready to get inside and tell Mrs. Fletcher why he was late, when he heard footsteps on the graveled path beside the building. He ducked quickly behind the dumpster and held his breath, looked up and saw Mrs. Fletcher hurrying toward Ocean, cutting between the church and the library. He frowned and wondered who was watching the store. A moan. Muriel, that's who. Who else? Muriel North, who once told him out of the corner of her mouth when she thought no one was listening that he ought to be taken out in one of the boats and dropped over the side. Chum, fish bait, that's what she called him; bloody bits of dead fish to attract the sharks. Chum. The old bat, with her fingers so yellow from smoking she looked like someone from a kung fu movie, for Christ's sake.

Hell, even his mother didn't talk to him like that, even when she was drinking all that crap and shittin' up her liver like he'd seen one time in school, like what happened when people drank too much and all. One of these days, the first day she stopped baby talking him, he was going to smash all the bottles she hid in her closet. Or maybe he'd do it anyway, for Christmas.

Merry Christmas, Ma, you're sober again.

Hell.

Well, there was no sense going in the store now because all he'd get would be grief and a half. Muriel North was a goddamned expert at handing out the grief, and that was something he didn't need right now.

And Cart was gone with Denise the Bitch, and he didn't dare go home because he was supposed to be at work, and…

He fell back in sudden panic with a choked-off curse, hitting the wall hard when a small gull squawked loudly and landed in the browning grass a few feet away. He stared at it a moment, rubbing his sore shoulder, watching it hunt boldly for edible garbage. It complained to itself as it found little more than a moldy orange rind, and Frankie was tempted to find a rock to put through its head to make people think the gull-killer was back. But before he could move, his eyes widened, his lips parted in a smile.

Gull. Bird. Tess Mayfair and her fancy birdbath in that garden behind the boarding house. Cart had tried a million times to steal it, and the old fart had nearly caught him. She was the only one on the island Cart was afraid of. Of course, he wasn't a coward. Anybody'd head the other way when she was running full tilt at you. God, she must weigh five hundred goddamn pounds.

But he wasn't afraid.

And if he could get that birdbath and bring it to Cart, by Jesus Cart'd listen to him then.

The creep. Who did he think he was, calling him a shithead?

He spat and sidled to the corner of the building, checked the street for traffic, and broke into an easy lope that took him behind the other stores, the theater, Naughton's Market. He was in the trees fifteen minutes later, running easily, dodging the low branches, once in a while taking a fallen log at a leap. He was grinning. And he didn't even care that the shadows seemed to follow.

TWO

The haze thickened, closing out the blue and softening the light to a faint shade of gold-gray. What leaves stubbornly remained on branches stirred restlessly, trembling; and those fallen to the gutter clustered close to the curb. The scent of last night's rain still clung to the air, but there was a stronger one now that made the growing slight breeze unpleasantly damp.

Peg held her jacket closed with one hand as she walked toward the setting sun, her free hand shading her eyes. Rather than go to the corner, she cut around the back of the drug store, hurrying to Ocean between the library and the church. A large Doberman chained to an iron stake near the sidewalk lunged at her, barking, snarling, and wagging its tail. She grinned and waved at it, and continued across the street, to the next, and the third, finally slowing on the pathway flanked with chainlink fencing. The house on her left belonged to the Adams, the one on her right to the librarian, Hattie Mills. Straight ahead was her own, and there was a man on the front walk waiting for her.

She moistened her lips nervously. Bob Cameron had called her only half an hour ago, asking if she would mind talking with him for a bit. When she asked why, he oddly declined to give her a reason except to say it had something to do with her late husband.

Then she told herself sternly to stop overreacting. It was probably nothing. It was the day, the Screamer. Almost every hour she had gone to the window to check the sky for thunderheads, the tingling along her arms the same sensation she experienced before a storm. Others felt it too, commenting as they paid their bills and left without delivering the usual ration of gossip.

It was the day, not Bob Cameron. It was probably some stupid way to get him her vote.

He waved as she approached, and she managed a polite smile. He was taller than she, burly and wide-mouthed, tanned so dark his wavy graying hair seemed almost as white as the suit he was wearing. She stepped around the hood of the car at the curb, had gone three steps beyond before she realized there was someone behind the wheel. She turned and frowned as Cameron touched her arm.

"Glad you could come, Peg." His voice was as smooth as the cologne he had on.

"I can't stay long," she told him. "Poor Colin is minding the store, and I don't want to go broke."

He smiled warmly and squeezed her elbow. "No problem. It won't take but a few minutes, I promise you."

Suddenly, she had a distressing feeling that he was v about to declare himself and had called her away to get her free of Colin. It was foolish, she knew, but she couldn't shake it loose once it had taken hold, couldn't for the life of her remember if she'd ever given him even the slightest hint she might be interested at all. Good lord, how could she? After what had happened to Jim, how could she?

She tilted her head to place his face between her eyes and the sun. "Well?"

"I'd rather we do it inside."

She shrugged and pulled her keys from her pocket, had the knob in her hand when she heard the car door slam. Cameron was right behind her and eased her over the threshold.

"Bob?"

Immediately behind them two men followed, and Cameron steered her directly back to the kitchen.

"Damn it, Bob!" But softly. An annoyed glance over her shoulder.

He sat at the round table unbidden, and as she blinked in a combination of undefined fear and annoyance, the others took seats and stared at her openly. Suddenly she was outraged, and an order to leave was hard at her lips when the man on her left-incredibly thin, blond, with a jaw that came to a nearly-perfect honed point-introduced himself as Michael Lombard. His hands were folded primly on the table, his back was straight.

"Mrs. Fletcher, I'm terribly sorry for the intrusion and this apparent mystery," he said with an apologetic smile. "And you shouldn't blame Bob here for all this rush. It's my fault, I'm afraid."

"Yes," she said, and waited. She avoided looking at the other one. She didn't like him. He was much heavier, ^his features flat from nose to cheeks, his striking blue shirt open two buttons down to expose a chest of dark hair and a jagged gray scar that reached up toward the hollow of his neck.

"Mrs. Fletcher, I work in Trenton," Lombard explained, "and it's my job for the governor to see that what the politicos call the undesirables are shown the first highway to the border." He smiled self-consciously. "That sounds like something out of a western, I know, but it's what I do."

She sensed what was coming and turned to the sink. A milk glass left over from breakfast lay near the drain. She picked it up and filled it with hot water. "Yes, so what does this have to do with me?"

"Your husband, Mrs. Fletcher. We have reason to believe the man or men who killed him are back in New Jersey. In fact-"

She cut him off with a harsh gesture without turning around, put the glass down, and began filling the kettle and sugar bowl while her mind found its gears. Jim was dead, and she had had all these years to bury the bitterness of both the impending divorce and the police's lack of success; all these years to put her life back on the track. Now, suddenly, like a tidal surge that flooded the beach without warning, this man from the capital was trying to bring it all back.

Amazed that her hands weren't trembling, she set the kettle on the stove, turned the burner on high, and kept her gaze on the flames curling up around the bottom. "Mr. Lombard," she said, her voice tight and direct. "I'm sorry if I seem callous or ungrateful, but I just don't care anymore."

There was a subtle shifting at the table. The second man coughed politely. "Mrs. Fletcher, we're only trying to warn you-"

"Against what?" she said sharply, spinning around so quickly that she caught Cameron's leering eye before it left the curve of her buttocks. "Against what?"

Lombard smiled-a professional smile, meaningless and quick. "Mrs. Fletcher, I understand how you must feel at this time, but you must also understand that we feel a certain-"

"Wait a minute," Cameron interrupted, one hand up and shaking. "Just a minute, please." He waited until she had reached for the squealing kettle, then rose quickly and helped her set the cups and saucers on the table. "Peg, these men are friends of mine, all right? They came here last night, and they want to be sure this guy, whoever it is, doesn't come back to Haven's End. I know you think it's impossible, and I know the police have been all over this place a hundred times, but you can't tell about these mob fellas, y'know? This guy, whoever he is, he might still have it in his head that Jim kept all his records here."

Peg gaped at him, and felt cold for the first time. "No," she said with a shake of her head. "No."

"Mrs. Fletcher," Lombard said quietly, soothingly, with a side glance to Cameron, "you know that and we know that, but he might not. And there's a good chance he'll try to contact you, perhaps try to lever you into revealing what he wants to know."

"But I don't know anything!" she said helplessly.

"Yes, yes," Cameron said, laying a hand on her shoulder and massaging it gently. She looked at him desperately, and he brought her to a chair. "I know, Peg, I know. It doesn't make any sense to ordinary people like you and me, but these gentlemen make their living at this. They know, Peg. They know how the criminal mind works."

She put her hands to her face and thought of Matt playing at the marina, Colin fumbling behind the counter, all the cartons of Jim's papers she had burned in the fireplace-thought of the not always peaceful years since the car had been reduced to black metal and black ash. And immediately the image of the automobile's destruction came to mind, she thought of Bob Cameron.

"Mrs. Fletcher, are you all right?" Solicitous, unctuous.

"Peg, can I get you anything?" Cameron, concerned.

Cameron. Would a man involved in her husband's violent death wait six full years before trying to discover if she were still hoarding incriminating evidence? Six years?

"Bob," she said, hands still covering her eyes, "I told you long ago I'd burned all Jim's things, what the police hadn't taken away. You know that." Her hands lowered and her eyes narrowed. She stared at Lombard and his companion. "Did he tell you that? Did he tell you I burned it all?"

"No," Lombard said after a long, annoyed silence.

Her gaze shifted to the second man, whose oversized hands were clasped as if in prayer. He shook his head.

"Who are you?" she asked softly. And without waiting for an answer she rose from her chair and backed to the sink. A glare to the doorway. "Bob, I don't want to talk to these gentlemen anymore. I'd appreciate your leaving."

Cameron didn't move for an interminable second. Then he heaved himself to his feet, the chair skidding away as he waited for the others to join him. "Peg, you're making a mistake here, believe me. A very big mistake. I… I don't want anything to happen that you'll regret later."

Her eyes widened in disbelief and her hands slapped on the table. "My God, are you threatening me, Robert Cameron, or just trying to scare me?"

He held up a fast palm. "Lord, no. I just want you to understand-"

"I understand nothing, and I've already asked you once to go. Now do it, please. I have a business to run and I've been away too long already."

Lombard shook his head once when Cameron, his face flushed, leaned forward to argue. Then he rose and nodded to her, reset the chair in its place and led the way out of the kitchen to the front door. After a brief hesitation he opened it, ushered Cameron through to the porch and turned to wait for his companion. Peg stayed in the hallway, watching, holding her breath, nearly bolting when the second man turned abruptly to face her.

"My name is Vincent," he said, looming above her and smiling so broadly she could see that his teeth were all black. "Theodore Vincent. You will remember it, please."

She couldn't help it-she nodded.

The door closed without a sound.

She stood a moment shivering in the hallway, trying to keep her legs from failing and her teeth from chattering, then she turned the bolt and peered through the glass pane in the-door. The car was gone; the street was empty. Her tongue pushed into her cheek, and she made a soft growling sound before heading for the study.

In one of the cabinets under the bookshelves was a small bottle of brandy her mother had given her for Christmas two years ago. It had been tapped only once, when Colin had come over for Matt's last birthday. She held the fat bottle in her hand now, a glass on the desk, and she took a deep inhalation of the sharp aroma before pouring herself a drink. A sip, then, and she waited until the fear had been replaced by a slow-burning rage.

Her house. Her womb. Her… she scowled and looked for another word. Then she emptied the glass in a swallow, brushed back the tears that flooded her eyes, and went for the phone. Matt; she had to check on Matt. Damn Mrs. Wooster for being in Philadelphia! What the hell's a housekeeper for if not to be here when she's needed. Three times she fumbled with Alex Fox's number, and when no one answered at the first ring she fell into her armchair and bit down on her lower lip.

She thought she tasted blood.

The second ring, the third, and Alex finally answered.

Yes, he told her, Matt was in the yard with his own kids. No, he hadn't seen anyone around all day what with his finishing a paint job in the workshop and securing boats against the storm they'd probably get by morning. And could Matt stay for dinner, he's such a good kid and Amy and Tommy would love it.

The urge to refuse politely was killed when she heard the distant joyous shrieks of children playing outside. Matt would be all right. If anyone on the island was suspicious of strangers, it was Alex Fox. As young as she, but with an old man's distrust of anyone he hadn't known for at least twenty years. Sadly, sometimes it seemed as if that included his wife.

The moment she rang off, she was back in her jacket and out the front door. An apprehensive glance at the empty street, and a puzzled one toward Bridge Road where a great deal of traffic seemed to be heading for the ferry, and she hurried back to the store, for the first time in her life not liking the way the houses rose above her, not liking the columns that held them up, not liking the twilight permanently snared between the pilings. She paused only once.

In the middle of Ocean Street something dark, something flickering, made her look down toward the school. It could have been a dog, a cat, even a low-darting bird. A shadow from the pines. Yet she could not shake the feeling that something or someone had been standing by the school, and when she had stopped it had fled.

Watching her. It was watching her.

The Doberman chained by the library started up its barking again, and again she greeted it with a smile and a wave, grateful this time for the distraction it provided. Friendly little beast, she thought sourly as she passed. It belonged to the librarian and usually lay on the grass, panting, watching, nudging the passing children for handouts and a scratching.

Today, however, it appeared to be reverting to the image of its breed-fierce, unpleasant, almost satanic. Though she tried, she couldn't remember the last time it had so much as even growled. If it didn't stop that noise, Hattie would be in trouble, if for no other reason than Reverend Otter was a stickler when it came to disturbances. He had once tried to have the school caution the students not to shout when they left for the day; his meditations were being disrupted, and God abhorred a poor sermon.

An image of the gangly minister standing on his porch and railing at the kids made her lips pull at the corners. She hadn't believed the story until she'd come to see Matt's teacher one day about his grades. And she hadn't made things better by laughing aloud.

Not exactly the reclusive widow, she thought as she reached the store and pushed inside. And if Colin gets his nerve up, a widow no longer.

He was at the back, leaning casually against the register and reading a magazine. She had to rap her knuckles twice on the counter to get his attention.

"I want you to assassinate Bob Cameron," she said when he looked up to smile.

Matt liked Amy and Tommy Fox. They were in the same grade, and they both hated his teacher as much as he did. Of course, Mrs. Adams wasn't all that bad, except that she limped and her husband was a janitor who always chased them from the playground as soon as school was over. But her breath smelled funny, and no one was surprised last Monday when they all walked in and found a substitute at the desk.

Amy said she was dying from a rare disease that struck only teachers, and you got it from rotten fish. Tommy said she carried a bottle of whiskey in her purse and drank from it at the water fountain in front of Mr. Ross' room.

But the best thing about them was they didn't make fun of the pictures he drew, and Tommy knew almost as much about James Bond as Matt did.

They were kneeling now at the end of the marina's last dock, dive-bombing tiny fish with gravel from the drive. Matt liked the way the stones seemed to curve as soon as they hit the water. Once in a while he would turn and pitch a stone lightly toward the half dozen gulls sailing above them waiting for the trawler.

Amy, whose face was round and heavily freckled, was a carrot-top with green eyes and a stub for a nose. She stuck the tip of her tongue between her lips and stared thoughtfully at the mound of pebbles shimmering under the water. "I think there's a Viking buried under there. He's come all the way across the ocean and he died in a battle with the pirates who used to live here."

Tommy, his sister's twin save for the lack of flesh on his bones, shook his head. "Nope, that's a place, a hole where they put missiles to kill the Russians."

"There aren't no missies under the water," she told him with disdain."

"Are too."

"Nope. There's a Viking down there," and she turned to Matt for collaboration.

"It's a fortress," he said, dropping another gravel bomb. "A guy's in there and he builds super lasers and things to shoot down planes when they fly over the island." He pointed to the shallows at the dock's other end. "He wants to get a whole lot of them along here, see, so no one can get here unless he says so."

"That's silly, it's a Viking," she insisted, her face puffed and pouting.

"Can't be. Vikings are dead."

"I said he was buried there."

Tommy jabbed an elbow in her side. "The fish ate him last week."

"They can't. Vikings are too tough."

"How do you know that, smarty?" her brother demanded.

"I saw it on TV. They wear bearskins and metal shirts and horns on their head."

Matt giggled. Tommy sneered, grabbed a handful of the gravel and threw it in as hard as he could. The splash drove them all back from the edge, Amy scrambling to her feet and nearly pitching off the other side.

"I'm gonna tell Daddy," she said when her balance recovered.

"I'm gonna tell Daddy," Tommy echoed. "But if you tell Daddy and he tells Mommy," he shouted after her as she started to march toward shore, "we're not getting any ice cream tonight."

She hesitated, turned to retort and clamped a hand to her mouth.

Tommy looked to Matt who was studying the water, then looked up to the trees that grew close to the workshop. "Matt," he whispered suddenly. "Matt, look!"

Matt looked up, and saw Lilla coming toward them. The gulls began screaming.

She wore a long black dress splattered with dried mud and sand, with long ragged tears at the hem and across one shoulder. Her feet were bare. Her hair was tangled-like bristles, he thought-and laced with torn blades of grass, grayed by sand as if she'd rolled in it all night. Her eyes were hidden, but he felt her staring at him, saw her lips parted and her tongue running slowly over her teeth. One hand clutched at a stiff fold of the dress, the other lay flat against her stomach as she walked.

Amy instantly bolted for the house, her brother only a few yards behind her. Lilla ignored them.

Matt could barely move. He rose slowly, seeing she could easily cut him off before he reached the safety of the lawn. She made no move to intercept his friends, only glided across the lawn until she reached the end of the dock. He swallowed, and his right hand brushed nervously against his pants. One by one, the gravel stones fell from his grip, bounced off the wood and dropped soundlessly into the water.

The gulls whirled and shrieked.

One of them swooped down at her, banked, and its wing brushed hard through her hair. She ignored it.

Matt looked up at the agitated birds, pulling his lips between his teeth and trying not to breathe too loudly. He wished Amy and Tommy would find their father and bring him out here; he wished his mother had told him to come right home after school.

A second gull dove and managed to jab at her shoulder, parting the black fabric to expose a line of pale flesh and a thinner line of running red.

She ignored it.

And they kept screaming.

Matt swallowed again and managed a weak, "Hello, Lilla."

He could almost see the shudder that rippled up from her feet to the vague bulge of her chest, the shudder that made her sweep back the hair to show him her eyes. They were dark, and they were pleading, and he found himself moving toward her. He didn't want to go. But if he could wait until he was only a foot or two from her, he could leap from the dock into the shallows and scramble up to the grass. By that time, Mr. Fox would be outside and yelling and Lilla would go away.

He couldn't make the jump.

He stopped close enough for her to reach out and touch his head lightly. Her hand was cold, as if she'd just come from winter.

The gulls swirled.

The haze deepened to clouds that promised another storm.

"Little Matt," she said then, and he frowned because in spite of her looks she sounded perfectly normal. He didn't understand. He knew what people who looked like this should sound like-deep voices that had echoes, with thunder all around them and lightning outside the window. But she sounded just like the old Lilla who gave him ice cream and laughed, who put extra cheese in his sandwiches and extra catsup on his hamburgers.

"Colin," she said, urgently now.

He could feel the passing wind of a diving gull at his back.

She gripped his shoulders tightly and shook him. "Colin!"

He cried out softly and struggled, breaking one hand free and looking up to demand she leave him alone. What he saw made him shove at her chest in a sudden startled panic. She released him, and he backed away hastily.

Her eyes. They were white.

No color. Just white.

The back door slammed, and he heard Mr. Fox bellowing Lilla's name. She leaned down to him and said, "Colin!" turned and ran back into the trees.

Her feet were bare.

When he stepped off the dock, he could see the grass lightly stained with blood.

"Now what," said Garve Tabor, "would you like me to do, huh?"

The best answer Peg had was a helpless, weak, smiling shrug. Despite her anger, it hadn't been her idea to come here at all; Colin had insisted. As soon as she had finished her description of the meeting and he'd told her of his phone call, his eyes had gone dark. Wolf dark. His hands had become fists that pressed against the counter, and she could hear his heel tapping angrily on the floor. She wouldn't have minded so much if he had shouted or sworn, but he had done neither. He had only glared at his hands and taken several deep breaths as if preparing to scream. His control was unnerving. And when Muriel came in, he'd snatched up his coat and dragged Peg out the door.

"Well?" Garve said.

Peg only shrugged again.

The office was small. Two wooden desks side by side a few feet back from the entrance, a pair of ladder-back chairs she and Colin were using, gray metal file cabinets along the left-hand wall, a bulletin board on the right under which was a low table holding the dispatcher's radio unit. There was a single door in the rear wall leading to the three cells in back. A gun cabinet beside it, its glass front locked, the rifles and shotguns inside gleaming with new polish. Light came from four white-encased fluorescent tubes that ran half the width of the ceiling.

Tabor was behind his desk, leaning back, his hands clasped on his paunch. His tan shirt was open at the throat, his gun belt lying on the empty desk blotter.

Colin, who had shoved his chair against the wall by the bulletin board and stared blindly out the large front window, shook his head. Peg, directly in front of the chief, sighed.

"I don't know, Garve. It's-"

"Jesus," Colin said, "can't you run them out of town or something? My God, they actually threatened her!"

Tabor brushed at his forelock futilely and shook his head as if he were dealing with children. "I heard what you told me, Col, but if Peg is right, the threat-if there was one-"

"If..?"

"— was implied, and I'd be up to my butt in false arrest suits if I did anything now. It's a subjective thing, Col, Peg, and there's really nothing I can do."

"Talk to Cameron, then," she suggested.

"About what? His friends?" He waved her silent as he straightened and pushed a closed folder to one side on his blotter. Then he opened a side drawer and pulled out a handful of fountain pens, their caps long since missing. His chair swiveled around and he tossed one at the bulletin board. It stuck in the cork like an ungainly dart.

"I'll tell you something."

"Please," Colin said sourly, moving his chair aside when a second pen nearly^pinned his ear to the wall.

"You were talking to Mike Lombard and Theo Vincent, right? Sweet fellas, both of them. Lombard has oil for a smile, and Vincent looks like he eats nothing but sugar."

Peg shifted impatiently, but was too fascinated by his errant marksmanship to say anything in protest.

When the last fountain pen skewered a wanted poster yellowed with age, Garve snorted and faced her.

"Peg, they're nasty, the both of them. I know it. I talked with them back when Jim was killed. But I can't ride them out of town because in the first place, I'm not Gary Cooper, as I told Colin last night; and in the second, there's no law against visiting someone in her home and passing on information. You chose to make what they said a threat, but Lombard is an expensive lawyer who would have me beachcombing in a week if he wanted to. And I'll tell you the truth, I wouldn't want anything but a smoking gun for evidence before I faced Theo Vincent."

"Jesus," Colin muttered in disgust.

Peg, however, saw the man's point and knew he was correct. And perhaps she'd been right all along; perhaps it was the mood the day had gotten itself into. She sighed noncommittally and rose from the chair. Colin muttered under his breath and raised his eyebrows in a shrug.

"You feel it, too," she said suddenly, without knowing why. He nodded. "Yeah."

Garve looked astonished. "You talking about the weird that's come over this town?"

"Weird?" Peg said.

"That's what Annalee calls it."

"Annalee, huh?" Colin said, wide-eyed and innocent.

"Yes," Garve said. He reached for a pile of message slips and waved them briefly at the phone. "She says Doc's been working her tail off all afternoon. A million people coming in with complaints that don't exist, I got a million calls here from folks who've decided to go away for the weekend and would I keep an eye on the house. El's at the ferry now, as a matter of fact. The second fender-bender this afternoon. Lord, if they had water wings, they'd stick 'em on their bumpers and try to drive across, the jerks. Sterling's probably making a fortune." He glanced up at the round clock fixed over the door. "Four now. If this keeps up, we'll be the only ones left by sunset."

"The storm," Colin suggested. "You said there might be one of those Carolina somethings-"

"Screamers."

"Yeah. That could be it. And Gran, and… well, I guess a night on the town is just what they need."

"Sure," Garve grumbled as the telephone rang. He listened for a moment, looked heavenward for mercy, and muttered a few words Peg didn't hear. Then he dropped the receiver and spread his palms in the air. "I was waiting for it."

"What?" she asked.

"Reverend Otter. That goddamned Doberman's been keeping him from his beauty nap. Jesus, if I've told Hattie once, I've told her a hundred times to keep that fool animal inside. God!"

Peg laughed, more from abrupt relief than from thinking the situation comic; as long as these two had felt what Garve had called the 'weird,' then it really was possible she'd overreacted to Cameron's visit. She nodded then when Colin reminded her of the promise of a ride, glad for the chance to be alone with him for a time. When they reached the door the phone rang, and Tabor swore. When they reached the sidewalk, a mud-spattered jeep braked loudly at the curb. Alex Fox was driving and Matt was huddled in the seat beside him.

As soon as Peg saw the dazed look on her son's face, her throat went dry and her skin turned cold. She rushed to his side and gathered him silently into her arms, looking to Fox as he climbed from his seat.

"Lilla," the red-haired man said. "She come out of the woods and scared the kids half to death."

She stroked the boy's cold cheeks, his rigid shoulders, brushed his dark hair away from his eyes. "Darling, are you all right?"

"She didn't touch him, I don't think," Fox said, standing at the curb as Garve came from the office. "I chased her off," he said to the chief, "but Jesus, Garve, God knows what she might've done. Damn, she's crazy!"

Colin stood beside her. "Matt, you okay?"

The boy nodded quickly several times.

"Did she say anything?"

He nodded again.

Peg cupped his chin with a palm and turned his head toward her. "What, darlin'? What did she say?"

"Colin," the boy whispered. "I'm here, pal."

"No. She said 'Colin.' "

"Anything else?" Garve asked from over her shoulder. "No."

Peg eased him from the jeep, a protective arm hard around his shoulders. "I'm going to take him home," she said tightly. "Then I want to talk to Lilla."

"I'll go with you," Colin said.

"Don't bother," she told him, and led Matt around the corner as she whispered to him gently, telling him it was all right and nobody was hurt and Lilla still feels bad about Gran and something like that sometimes makes people do strange things.

Matt pulled away from her. Slowly, not abruptly. He shoved his hands into his pockets and stared at the sidewalk, the curb, the sidewalk again. A pebble got in his way, and he kicked it aside. She looked back only once, faltering when she saw Colin storming around the corner of the hedge, heading for the Run. But damn it, what did he expect her to think? Does Lilla ask for help from someone who's known her all her life? Does she ask for Peg, who had held her when her parents died, and fought with Gran to let her go to college, and was more than a friend, practically a surrogate mother? No, of course not. She frightens Peg's only son to death-God knows why she picked on him of all people-and then she asks for Colin. Colin Ross the artist. Colin Ross the man she's only known for five years. Not Peg. Colin.

A year ago she had seen them on the beach, sitting there, watching the waves, Lilla talking, Colin listening, Lilla suddenly turning to kiss him on the cheek for whatever response he'd given. He'd laughed. She'd kissed him again, was on her feet and running. Peg, as with the first time she'd seen them, hadn't the nerve to confront him for an explanation. It was, of course, all very innocent. Lilla was only a child (seventeen, Peg, and hardly a child), and everyone knew she had a crush on the artist.

But Colin never said a word, and Lilla never said a word, and of course there was nothing to it, and she'd felt cheap for her inadvertent spying, and now here it was again and… she blinked once, slowly, and almost exclaimed aloud: My God, Peg Fletcher, you're actually jealous. You're so frightened for Matt you've made yourself jealous.

Good God, a hell of a thing.

"Mom, what's for supper?"

"Crow, my darlin'," she said wryly. Good Lord, jealous; I haven't felt that in years.

He grimaced and stuck out his tongue. "That's rotten."

"Yes," she said, impulsively hugging him. "Tell me all about it."

She followed his gaze as he looked at the sky. The storm clouds-white slashed with black and reaching for the blue-had drained off all the haze. And over the mainland the slowly-sinking sun glided broad golden beams to the tops of the trees. It was so perfect it was unnatural, and she wasn't surprised when Matt told her, "I don't like this day, Mom. It doesn't feel right, y'know?"

"Yes," she said quietly, "I know exactly what you mean."

At their front door he looked fearfully over his shoulder.

"It's all right," she assured him. "Lilla's not there." He frowned, then nodded in silent contradiction. Peg closed the door behind them, and made sure it was locked.

Frankie crouched behind a wall of red-thorned shrubs and scratched at a pimple breaking on his cheek. He frowned. He stared at the back of the boarding house and wondered if Mayfair was working in the kitchen, or sitting in the front room, or sitting on the porch talking to herself. The house was brown and three stories high, bay windows and additions everywhere you looked. There were dim lights here and there, and dazzling reflections from the sun lowering to the treetops. There were no cars in the driveway, but that didn't mean a thing; Mayfair didn't drive. And he figured there wasn't a car big enough to hold her.

If she were in the kitchen, he was dead, simple as that.

The birdbath was halfway between him and the back porch, and nothing but dead grass and weeds to hide him if she saw him.

Maybe, he thought, it would be a good idea to wait for dark. But if he waited for dark, Cart and Denise would be holed up in one of the empty motels, going at it on one of the beds, taking a little dope, laughing at nothing and calling him a shithead.

No. He had to do it now. He had to take the chance that the concrete bowl would lift off the pedestal easily and wouldn't be all that heavy to carry. Hell, if he did it right, he could roll it like a hoop.

He stared until his eyes watered, thinking about Denise and Carter and his mother and his old man, and he turned around twice when he heard the squirrels bounding through the leaves in the shadows behind him. After the second time, he realized he was losing his nerve.

Damn, he thought, double damnation.

Slowly, listening to his knees pop, he rose and licked at his lips. A deep breath filled his lungs. A palm rubbed his stomach in slow circles.

Okay, Frankie, he thought, in and out like a fuckin' rocket.

He eased around the brush.

And a hand grabbed his shoulder.

THREE

Colin shoved through the Clipper Run's door almost at a run and stood panting in the narrow foyer while he tried to catch his breath. There was silence, and from where he stood he could see no one at all. He was glad; it would give him a moment to try to calm down.

The restaurant's interior was constructed on two levels. The upper, straight in from the scrolled oak door and the cubbyhole of the check room, stretched along the right side of the building. A long, dark mahogany bar curved from one end to the other- brass footrailing, padded black leather handrail, black leather stools with high backs for unsteady drinkers, a huge mirror edged in daily-polished silver behind the artfully-stacked bottles. It was separated from the dining area by three broad, carpeted steps and a waist-high railing of lemon-waxed, hand-smoothed teak.

He moved in cautiously and grabbed the back of a stool, leaned on it heavily and brushed a hand through his hair.

The dining room held two hundred people at irregularly placed, small round tables, each with captain's chairs, white linen, red-chimneyed candles and a slender white vase with blossoms in season. In the room's center was a grand piano Alex Fox's wife played when she wasn't waiting tables; no jukebox, no taped music.

From the exposed-beam ceiling hung netting and intricate shark's-tooth mobiles. On the walnut-paneled walls were original oils and water colors of MacKay's clipper ships, Fulton's steamboats, whalers, Cape Cod trawlers, and a three-master in full sail at sunset flying a bold skull and crossbones.

There were no windows. What lighting there was came from bracketed brass lanterns on the wall and on the squared rough posts that supported the ceiling. Only a few of the wicks were burning; the restaurant was dim, and filled with static shadows.

On the far side of the bar were three doors. The last two led into the kitchen, and he could sense slow movement in there, a preparation for the dinner hour nearly upon them. The first, with a blank brass plaque in the center, led to Cameron's office. Colin stared at it, taking deep breaths, clenching and opening his hands, pulling once in a while at the bottom of his jacket.

It hadn't taken him long for his temper to snap again-the look on Peg's face, the muttering of Fox and Tabor behind him as they speculated on Lilla's problem-his lungs had filled and his eyes had narrowed and he had stalked away from the station without saying a word. He saw Peg and Matt on the next block, but he didn't call out. There was nothing to say. Peg feared for Matt, and Lilla had a crush on him, and he was so dense he'd never suspected Peg might be a little jealous. It was dumb, but it was there, but if it hadn't been for Cameron and his cronies she never would have reacted to the situation that way.

He took a step across the thick red carpet, and stopped again.

It had finally struck him that the room was empty.

He looked at his watch: It was early Friday evening, just after five, but no one was here.

And that was all wrong.

By now there should have been a dozen people at the bar, and a scattering of families and couples down at the tables. There should have been visitors from the mainland, groups from the island, and Cameron watching it all from the maitre d's station. A sudden thought and he turned around, there was no one in the cloakroom. And when he turned back, Cameron was standing in his doorway.

"I kind of thought you'd show up sooner or later," the man said, not moving. A bright light from the office darkened his face.

"It was a lousy trick, Bob, sending those men to Peg like you did."

Cameron shook his head nervously. "It wasn't my idea, Colin." He moved into the room and pulled a cigarette from his jacket, lit it and threw the pack on the bar. "These men are big investors. They have to be sure everything's clear or they won't give Haven's End a good recommendation to their people."

"That's not what you told Peg." He walked forward slowly, unsure now what he was going to do. "She-"

"I know," Cameron said. "And what I said was true. They just happen to have other interests, that's all."

He nodded. "I see."

"No, I don't think-" He clamped his mouth shut and stared at the cigarette. There was a man in the doorway behind him. Colin squinted through the gloom and from Garve's and Peg's descriptions knew this must be the one called Theodore Vincent. But he looked bigger, and his teeth behind the pulled-back lips looked blacker than he'd imagined. Cameron started when Vincent mumbled something to him, stepped to intercept the man when he began moving around the bar. Vincent didn't look down; he moved Cameron aside with a casual brush of his hand.

"Now listen here," Cameron protested.

"He was," Mike Lombard said from the doorway.

Colin looked at the new man, at the extraordinary thinness, at the pointed jaw. Lombard nodded to him in greeting; Colin felt himself nodding back.

"Listen, Michael," Cameron began.

"Hush, Robert," the lawyer said.

Cameron hushed and looked away.

Vincent stood in front of Colin, looking down, not smiling now. "You're running against Mr. Cameron in the election," he said.

Colin backed up a step, the better to meet his gaze. He wasn't sure what was going on, what he'd said, but he could hear Cameron whispering harshly to Lombard. He glanced over, and saw the mainlander ignoring Cameron completely. Then a stiff finger jolted Colin's shoulder.

"I said, you're the man that's running against Mr. Cameron."

"Yes," he answered, frowning and clearing his throat.

"I heard of you, you know. You probably didn't think so, but I heard of you."

"That's… nice," he said.

"Cameron here told me you're famous or something. I said I knew that. I've seen your pictures. They're okay."

"I'm glad you like them," he said, wondering what in hell this was all about.

"I meet lots of famous people."

"Theodore," Lombard said, "Mr. Ross isn't interested in the celebrities you've known."

Vincent nodded without shifting his gaze from Colin's face. "You ever gamble, Ross?"

He shifted to one side. "Bob, what the hell is this?"

"I said, you ever gamble?"

"Bob!"

The finger again, and a sharp pain that made him grab for his shoulder. His frown deepened. It would have been nice, perhaps even poetic, if he could suddenly slam an iron fist into this huge man's jaw and watch him sail back against the wall, his eyes glazed and his teeth rattling. He would land on his feet, stagger drunkenly around a bit, then slink dejectedly into the office where he would collapse unconscious on the carpet, never once knowing the power that hit him.

It would have been nice; but Vincent was easily one hundred pounds heavier and live inches taller than he. Nice, but suicidal. And he hated the feeling of cowardice that chilled him.

"Theodore," said Lombard softly, "the man has a right to his own opinion, isn't that correct, Mr. Ross?"

"I would think so, but your friend obviously doesn't."

"I think," said Vincent, "I don't like the trouble you're causing."

"All right, Bob," he said, "I've had enough." He turned to leave, and a hand clamped on his upper arm and spun him around. His mouth opened, and his right hand listed, but he only had time to blink once before he felt a fist slam sharply into his stomach.

Instantly, he folded his arms over his belt and dropped to his knees. The air in his lungs was gone; when he inhaled, nothing happened. There were tears in his eyes, and a spreading ache in his chest. When he inhaled, nothing happened, and the noise he made trying to breathe frightened him to gasping. He swayed, he heard voices, and when he inhaled a third time, nothing happened.

A hand gestured feebly for help; his mouth opened wider; motes of black winked in and out of his blurring vision. He tried to focus on the pattern of the carpeting, and he couldn't. He tried to keep himself from toppling, but he fell slowly, heavily, onto his side, legs curled up, one arm beneath his head.

Then his breath returned abruptly, and he rolled to his knees again and tried not to retch.

A hand patted his back, another took hold of his shoulder. Someone was asking if he were all right, if he wanted water, but all he could do was move his lips and make gagging noises like a man near drowning.

He sagged.

One moment every muscle in his body had been drawn tight and was quivering, the next he had to snap out a hand to keep himself from falling. His head lowered, weighted and aching, and he swallowed bile convulsively.

"Col, for God's sake, say something!"

He opened his mouth, and choked.

"Goddamn, I'll get a doctor."

Colin lifted a hand to stop him. When his vision cleared, he rocked back onto his heels and tilted his head to stare at the ceiling while his hands gripped his waist. He drew in a breath, and another, and allowed Cameron to help him to his feet. When he could see without tears, Cameron's face was gray beneath the tan. They were alone; Lombard and Vincent had left them alone.

"Colin?"

The light from the office turned the air sickly yellow. "Colin, please."

"You're stupid," was all he could say before he shoved the man away and staggered to the door. He closed his eyes, one hand on the brass knob, breathed again, and was outside without Cameron responding.

It was almost sunset. The storm clouds were dark, and they left little room between them for twilight to prepare. The blue that remained was indigo and cobalt, yet there was nothing on the breeze that heralded rain.

The cooling air revived him. He moved stiffly to the sidewalk and winced when his belt buckle dug into his stomach. Instead of heading for Tabor, he walked straight to his home. He stumbled up to the door and almost sat on the threshold. Then he flung the door open, letting it slam against the wall.

"Stupid," he muttered, his mouth tasting like iron.

He closed the door behind him, didn't turn on a light.

In the bathroom he pulled his shirt from his trousers and stared at the bruise spreading over his abdomen. A fingertip brushed over it gingerly, and he drew in a hissing breath. He shook his head, chiding himself for not going to Garve and pressing charges against the man; then he chided himself for thinking the man would be arrested. Oh, Garve would bring him in, of course, and both Lombard and Cameron would deny that anything had happened. Then later, much later, shadows would move and he had no doubt at all the next message sent wouldn't stop at a single punch.

He changed his shirt, put on his boots and jeans, found his denim jacket and stood in the living room, hesitant, wondering.

The Screaming Woman on the table watched him, unmoving.

This is stupid, he thought then; this is really and truly and unquestionably stupid. He was stupid. He and his white horse had run into the real world without knowing what had happened. Haven's End, for all its insulation, wasn't a paradise found in some romantic's dream; it was a large plot of land that attracted interests more powerful than any fishing industry. He was only a teacher, and a part-time one at that, and someone who dared commit dreams to a canvas. What chance did he have then against men like Michael Lombard?

He crossed the room and dusted the carving absently.

In a way, he was very much like Gran, he thought. He didn't care for the comparison, though much of it rang true.

A shudder began in his shoulders and traveled to his neck, made his head palsied for several too-long seconds. Then he spun around and strode quickly outside, slid into his car and drove to Atlantic Terrace. He knocked on the door; twice more, and it opened.

When he was inside, both he and Peg began talking at once, laughing by the time he'd crossed the threshold, holding hands without thinking when they walked into the front room. Matt was sprawled on the window seat, and he was giggling when he saw them. Colin instantly tried to pull away, but Peg wouldn't let him.

Then he suggested the drive a third time, telling her he was worried about Lilla; after all, her real home was only two doors down and there was no reason at all why she should stay out at the shack, especially since Gran's place would probably flatten in the Screamer. Peg had agreed without hesitation, and Matt was already charging for his coat and telling them the Foxs' invitation to dinner was still good. He had the door open long before they got there, giving them a mock bow from the waist and winking at his mother.

"You okay?" Colin asked, bending over at the threshold to examine the boy's eyes.

"Sure." Matt shrugged.

"She scared you, huh?"

"She's weird!"

"No, she's just… unsettled, Matt. It isn't easy for someone like her to lose what's left of her family." He crouched, his hands draped over his knees. "Eighteen may seem awfully old to you, pal, but believe me, it isn't."

"Eighteen isn't old," Matt said. "Thirty is."

"Thank you," he said, frowning and throwing a mock punch at his arm. "And your mother thanks you, too."

"Colin!"

He exaggerated a wince, winked once, and stood. Five minutes later they dropped him off at the marina, Alex Fox waiting by the door with a reassuring wave.

"Are you sure you're all right?" he said as he steered the car onto Neptune and headed slowly south toward the cliffs. The road was narrow and slightly humped in its center, the broken yellow lines fading nearly to gray. Though it wasn't really cold, he had his jacket zipped up to his chin.

"I was spooked, that's all," Peg said. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail, exposing her ears and the side of her pale neck. Her coat was red, her shirt a vivid plaid, and she was slumped in her seat so her knees rested against the dash. She turned her head toward him and smiled. "Really. Seeing Matt like that just scared me to death."

"Well, if you're sure."

She looked at him, almost laughing. "Yes, Mother Ross, I'm sure. I've been on edge all day. For that matter, it hasn't been a very pleasant week, either."

They rode past the drug store, a pair of clothing stores, the luncheonette, all on the right. The bench where Gran did many of his carvings was deserted, and Colin shook his head.

"It doesn't look right, does it?" he asked.

Peg glanced at the bench, and the thin oak sapling struggling beside it. "No."

They passed the chalet-shaped bank, the movie theater Bill Efron's brother ran, and Syd Naughton's market, all on the right. There were several cars in the parking lot, and he was tempted to stop when he saw Syd pushing several shopping carts toward the door, at the same time arguing loudly and with violent, one-handed gesticulations with three men who trailed behind him. They were in workclothes, fishermen just off their boats.

"No catch," Peg said when she saw him looking. "Soon as I got home I got a call from Ed Raines' wife complaining. All day, and they didn't catch a single damned fish."

"Why'd she call you?"

She twisted a stray hair around her finger. "She owes for a prescription. A pleasant way to spread gossip and tell me she can't pay me this week." She stared until the market fell behind them, was replaced by a gas station, three houses, and the forest. "Matt thanks you."

"For what?"

"For taking me out. I was driving him crazy."

He grinned. "I was driving myself crazy." He slumped a little to ease the strain on his stomach, and saw Peg watching him with a concerned frown. "Exercising," he explained. "I lost my balance and fell into the kitchen table."

She looked straight ahead. "You're driving awfully slow."

"It's a lovely day."

"It was."

The clouds in twilight deepened the shadows on the road. He switched on the headlights. His stomach ached, and there was pressure in his chest that made him breathe through his mouth. He sniffed, rolled up his window and planted his elbow on the frame. He hummed, whistled a bit, sniffed a second time and was silent.

"What happened at Bob's?"

With his right hand on the steering wheel, and left raked into his hair, he shrugged. "We discussed his visit to you and his call to me."

She looked at him skeptically. "Discussed?"

"I met Lombard and Vincent, too."

Her mouth opened to say, "Oh, but nothing came out. She only looked out the window, at the trees and the underbrush and the midnight darkness beneath the boughs.

They drifted between the two motels, had gone only a hundred yards beyond when he pulled over to the side, turned off the ignition, and twisted around on the seat with one arm stretched across the back. Peg straightened, her hands in her lap.

"There was never anything between Lilla and me, Peg."

Her hands clasped, and she stared at them, nodding. "Really."

"I believe you. I told you it was the day, that damned storm coming."

He tried to see through her, into her, find the paths that led to whatever created her thoughts and emotions and the laugh that made him smile even when he was sleeping. He had been frightened in the restaurant, just before he was struck, but the fear he knew now was something considerably more.

"You know," he said, "once, when I was in Massachusetts, there was this old man who lived down the street. He ran an antique shop for the tourists and for the college students who needed furniture for their dorms. He'd charge one price for the students and twice as much for the others. He-"

She looked at him suddenly, one corner of her mouth pulling back in a smile. "Is this one of your stories, Col?"

"Huh?"

"One of your stories," she said. "Every time you want to say something you think is important, you have to start off with a story of some kind. And every time," she added with a disarming smile, "it doesn't have a thing to do with whatever you're saying."

He leaned away slightly. "I do that?"

She nodded.

"All the time?"

She nodded again.

"I'll be damned."

She laughed soundlessly and lay a palm to his cheek, pulled the hand away and covered his on the seat's back. "Just tell me, Col. This once, just tell me."

His tongue swiped at his lips once, and his cheeks puffed with apprehension. "It's-"

"Just tell me."

He watched her for a long time, and she didn't look away. Then he tucked his chin toward his chest and took a deep breath. "I want to marry you, Peg. I mean, I want you to marry me. I mean, will you marry me is what I mean. I mean. Yes." He nodded once, sharply. "Yes, I want to marry you."

"Then it's mutual," she said.

"No joke," he said, his stomach suddenly feeling queasy and hollow.

"No joke, Colin."

He frowned. "But I've never said I loved you."

She slid toward him and laced her hands around the back of his neck. "Yes you have," she said quietly. "Every time I see you." She kissed him, and he sighed and wrapped his arms around her, kissed her gently and leaned his chin on her shoulder while he stared at the trees.

"This is… nice."

She said nothing.

"I mean, this is great! I mean-" He pulled away and looked at her, frowning until he saw the color slipping from her face. "Peg?" Her lips were quivering just enough for him to see, and her right hand was pushing hard at his shoulder. He turned. "What's…" His eyes widened.

Across the road was an elm whose branches had been shaped by the wind until they grew around the trunk, leaning away from the ocean. The bole was wide and gnarled, several knobs of roots thrust through the ground.

He saw a hand there, part of an arm, a dark shape beyond them stretched under the tree.

The hand was a dull red, and so were the leaves beneath it. Peg was out of the car before he could move, waiting by his door when he finally realized she was gone. They held hands as they crossed the tarmac, slowly, trying not to stare and staring just the same. At the opposite verge she stopped and pulled back, but Colin released her and kept going until he could see Warren Harcourt sprawled in the shadows.

A fly walked across the dead man's brow.

"Oh… Jesus," he whispered, and closed his eyes, too late. At the man's neck, over his coatfront, and staining the tops of his sandy bare feet… never in his life had Colin seen so much blood.

Tess Mayfair liked to cook. If she had her way, she'd stay in the yellow-and-copper kitchen from breakfast to dinner and do nothing but watch the blue flames on the stove reach under the pots to boil the water and brown the fries and crisp the potato skins and curl the bacon. All while the TV on the windowsill would play her favorite western.

These days, of course, there was precious little to do what with the summer people gone and Muriel North working nights at the drug store and no one else from town bothering to come out to see her. That left her alone. All alone. Alone enough to wish sometimes she hadn't driven her third husband away five years ago because he was fooling around with a girl he'd met on the beach in July. And that's what she was. A girl. Thirty years younger than he, and there she was with her tanned little stomach and her tanned little legs and no chest to speak of and no brains, either, considering her choice.

It was damned embarrassing.

She'd seen him with her twice, suspected him more than that, and in a temper and snit on a Sunday afternoon she'd packed his bags and left them on the porch. Locked the door. Pulled down the shades. Listened to him bellow and plead and finally tell her what he thought of her and her westerns, while he staggered and stumbled down the flagstone walk to the street, staggered and stumbled along the pebbled verge until he was out of sight. Still yelling. Still cursing.

Five years gone, and the son of a bitch hadn't even sent her a postcard.

Crumb didn't even know what he was missing. Lord, she still had all her teeth, and her hair was still black without any fancy rinses, and her eyes were still bright and brown, and so what the hell if she was a little overweight.

She sniffed, and shook her head and plunged her hands back into the dishwater. A slow job tonight, just her own plates and coffee cup. As she stood at the sink she looked out at the garden through the gap in the yellow chintz curtains on the eye-level window. Next spring, she decided, she'd have to do a little weeding. Zinnias didn't grow this year, and those fool roses looked like hell. The wall of irises on the left she didn't need to touch at all; they were like her, independent and strong and too stubborn to die. The squirrels had dug up the tulip bulbs, though, all around the birdbath. Mums and tulips, she decided with a nod that rippled her three chins, mums and tulips against the birdbath.

She reached for a towel to dry her hands -

She reached for a cold roll she hadn't eaten at dinner.

She looked out the window again before heading in for the big TV in the living room, and saw the boy standing just in the trees.

A groan of exasperation, the dishcloth splashed back into the sink. Why, she wondered, didn't they ever learn? Every year it was the same thing. They didn't even bother to think of something new-wait until she had put a tape on the machine, or was watching a regular show, then sneak up the back and make a grab for the bowl on the concrete pedestal. They thought she couldn't hear them, but they didn't know she had ears that would put a prime fox to shame. They thought she couldn't run, but she grinned when she remembered the summer Cart Naughton had made it all the way to the birdbath, and she was out the door and down the steps before he could look up. Just a little luck and she would have had him, had his neck in her hands and his life popping out his eyes. But he ducked, and all she got was his black leather jacket.

The scream he gave when it tore off his back and dangled in her hand had her laughing for a week. She even tied it to the flagpole in front of the house and prayed he'd try to get it back. A lot of kids drove by and yelled, pointed, laughed when she beckoned with a sweet smile and a fist hidden behind her waist. But Naughton never came for it, and finally a storm ripped it free and blew it away.

So there he was again, and she sighed. On another day she would have welcomed the fun, but not tonight. Tonight she needed to rest because today had been worse than the hottest day in August-sweat bulging on her forehead, making her hair itch, had her looking out every window in the house hunting for the thunderheads she was sure were overhead. It wearied her. It made her think about starting that diet again, maybe even cutting down on her smoking.

She wasn't in the mood for this crap, not at all, not at all.

So she picked up the baseball bat she kept by the stove and she pulled open the door.

"Damn you," she shouted in her worst, fiercest voice. The boy didn't move.

She leaned forward, peering, and the breeze took the hem of her print dress and snapped it at her legs, drew it tight across her massive chest, puffed the sleeves and gave her a chill. A brittle leaf bounced across the porch. Tentacles of ivy dropped from the gutter and wove at her, scratching the air and whispering to themselves.

"Beat it!" she shouted.

The boy didn't move.

The woods behind him were encased in black, a soft and shifting black that shaded up toward dark green. She could hear a gull wheeling overhead, and the faint sound of the ocean moving in with the tide. A step forward, she grabbed a roof post, held the bat on her shoulder and decided that this might be better than TV.

"Well, if you're gonna do it, do it," she said, pretending she didn't give a damn one way or the other.

The boy shifted, and she could finally see his freckled face, his curly brown hair, those skinny arms that could barely lift his trousers around his skinny waist.

"Oh Lord, Frankie," she said as she moved down to the lawn, "what are you tryin' to do, anyway?" She laughed then, loudly. "You think you can really lift that thing?" She pointed at the bowl with the bat. "You lift it, boy, you can have it."

She waited.

Frankie began walking toward her, and she matched him step for step. She was in Dodge City now, facing down the Adams Kid, and there was no way in hell he could win because she had all the townspeople with rifles hiding in the hotel and the saloon and in the general store. Tim McCoy was on the stable roof, Ken Maynard was in the post office, and over there behind that buckboard she had Bob Steele waiting.

She smiled.

The goddamned Adams Kid was going to get himself blown dead away.

When they were ten feet apart, the birdbath between them, she finally saw his eyes. They were wide. And they were white. No color. Just white.

She frowned. "Frankie, you on something?" He reached for the bowl.

"Frankie, damn it, you answer me, boy. I ain't so old I can't give you a lickin' to learn you your manners."

He gripped the sculpted edges. His eyes were white.

Her tongue brushed her lips. She didn't like the way he looked at her, no expression, no nothing. Maybe he was wearing one of them fancy contact lenses she read about in the TV Guide, that changes a person's eye color for the part he was playing.

He lifted the bowl.

Her palms were suddenly wet. The muscles in those skinny arms weren't even bulging, and he was holding the bowl as if it were paper.

"Frankie…" she said, backing away.

The wind snarled her hair in front of her face. She brushed at it impatiently, and when she could see again he was holding the bowl over his head.

Jesus Lord, she thought, he's going to throw it. The little prick's gonna throw it.

The bat dropped from her hand as she turned and started to run. Muscles or no muscles, she could outrun the little bastard any day of the week and twice on Sundays, and once she got to a phone she was going to call Garve and let him know that Frankie Adams was destroying private property. The little crumb was just like her husband-no respect for her and hers.

At the steps she turned, to be sure he wasn't following.

Frankie suddenly turned sideways and threw the concrete bowl like an oversized discus.

It came slow. It came fast. It may have hummed and it may have wobbled and it might have just missed her if she had ducked in time.

It struck her just below her breasts and smashed her through the door.

The small TV on the sill fell into the sink and shattered.

Frankie walked across the garden.

The wind didn't touch him, and his eyes were solid white.

FOUR

The wind came alive just after sunset, just as twilight had turned to autumn dusk.

Wally Sterling sat on a high, three-legged, peeling red stool in the ferry's cramped cabin jutting over the water from portside, center. Its octagonal walls were glass from waist to squared flat ceiling, the narrow panes pitted and smeared by salt spray and driven sand. The boat rocked gently, boards creaked, chains swayed. A gull pecked at a candy wrapper lying in the stern. Out of the chest-high side walls rose tall iron rods looped at the top and strung through with roping from which bleached plastic pennants hung, listless and dripping.

He stared as the last car reached the top of the slope, flared its red taillights and sped inland across Flocks. After it was gone, he shook his head and brushed a hand down over his yellow slicker, straightened his yellow nor-easter, sniffed and coughed loudly. The spoked wheel in his left hand was slick with sweat, and he slipped his palm around it absently, turning it once to make sure it still worked.

He was tired. That damned fool Screamer had these idiots pissin' in their pants they were so anxious to get away.

He groaned as he slipped off the stool and opened the narrow door, sidled out and walked stiffly to the ferry's steel lip resting against its place on shore. He grabbed the hooked end of the rusted iron guard chain, drew it across the opening and snapped it back into its eye. A loud sigh just for the sound, and he pulled the slicker open, his hands reaching around to grip the small of his back. He stretched, rolling at the waist while he groaned loudly again, blinked rapidly, taking in deep breaths and blowing them out in short, sudden bursts.

He was God-almighty and lay-me-down-to-die tired. And he was thirsty enough to empty the bay, what with all that exhaust and crap lodged in his throat. He coughed, spat, and the oily, metallic taste made him grimace and swear and think fondly of the cheap brandy he kept in his shack.

As he stepped to the right he heard the noise.

At first he thought it was a damned fool oil truck barreling down the highway through the state forest. That's what it sounded like, by God, and he was in no mood to tell the dumb ass driver politely there was no way in God's hell he was going to put such a rig on his poor little boat. Jesus, the old girl barely made the last crossing she was so weary of all the loads.

He stepped over the chain and walked to shore, kicking aside gravel and spitting toward the water. Goddamned Screamer, sending all them idiots inland like they never saw one before and thought they'd be dead come morning. Fools. A little wind never hurt nobody if you was careful. Fools.

Then the noise changed.

Over the roaring, the rumbling, he heard a whispering and a whistling that brought to mind dreams he'd just as soon not remember; but he was curious enough at last to take the slope to the road, shaking his head and muttering to his fists and not looking up at all until he reached the flat.

And when he did, his one eye widened, his bristled chin dropped, and he half turned to run, though he knew he wouldn't make it.

It wasn't a truck, or a van, or a race car without mufflers. It was the wind.

He could see it coming, though it was half a mile away. The woods closest to him didn't move at all, were dark and normal and holding shadows to their trunks. But straight down the road it was different- dust and leaves and branches and small stones were churning and spinning and dancing straight for him as if an invisible tidal wave were shoving them toward the beach. The stones he could see, and the branches and the dust, but the wind was without form. As far as he could tell it held to the road, and he could see it all coming, half a mile and closing. The trees on either side bent away, groaned away, some of the older ones nearly snapping in two, losing large boughs that bounced and pin wheeled into the woods, or slammed onto the tarmac and trapped leaves and dust and pebbles in their webs.

Wally only had time to throw himself down below the top of the slope and cover his head with his arms.

And it was on him.

Whispering and whistling, stabbing him in a hundred places, raising welts across his knuckles, stinging his neck and rattling against the slicker. His face turned toward the bay, and he could see the ferry lift and draw back, the moorlines creaking and straining. The water broke into whitecaps that swept toward the island, crashing high against the boulders that marked the opposite shore, spraying the trees and turning the air gray.

And just when he thought he was going to have to scream, just when he thought the air would be sucked clean from his lungs, it was gone.

Just like that it was gone.

One minute hell had been stamping hobnails and boulders all over his back, and the next it was as peaceful as it ever gets at night. Unsteadily, licking at his lips and being careful of his legs, he rose to his feet and stared at Haven's End. The wind was gone, and the only thing that let him know he hadn't dreamt it was the blood he wiped from the backs of his hands, the only way he knew he wasn't part of the Screamer was the direction.

And if it wasn't the Screamer…

The ferry rocked, slower, slower.

The whitecaps vanished.

Behind him, the forest was as quiet as dawn.

Jesus damn, he thought, and raced for the pistol he'd put under the cot's mattress. Jesus God damn! He'd better get himself a gull soon, because this place wasn't healthy.

By the time the wind reached the ocean it was spent, and the debris it had carried had been dropped in the bay; the few outside to hear it thought it was thunder over the horizon. When it rushed past them, they ducked away and yanked up their collars, thinking for sure they'd be drenched in a moment and goddamn the weatherman who can't read his own charts. And when it was quiet, no rain or lightning, they shrugged and headed home, and wondered about their neighbors. Blaming it on the Screamer was for some too easy; that wasn't due until late the next day, plenty of time to board the windows, fetch the cat, and take the ferry out. No, there was something more, they thought. Folks were unaccountably nervous, but the leaving seemed over and the night was fairly calm despite the clouds overhead. Supper, then, and the news, and a quick change of clothes. After all, it was Friday, with, half-priced beer at the Anchor Inn and quiet music at the Run, a new double feature at the theater and some TV before bed.

And only a few stopped to listen, with a nervous snap of their fingers.

The wind dropped to a breeze, and Lilla didn't know the difference.

She sat alone, cross-legged on the ground in front of the shack, and didn't bother to count the minutes until the sea turned black. The waves flared white, between the clouds there were stars, and once in a while at the horizon she could see the multi-colored eyes of a slow-passing liner. She was still in her black dress, and loose around her shoulders was a faded blue woolen shawl; she drew it snugly over her chest and nuzzled her chin into the worn tufts that had never been trimmed. She thought of nothing.

She rocked on her buttocks and didn't feel the sand. Her tangled hair stirred and she didn't feel the cool. She rocked, and she hummed, and when the night had gone full dark she wiped a bubble of saliva from the corner of her mouth.

She thought nothing, and that was fine.

The fog was with her, comforting and warm and sparkling like diamonds snared in a spider's web especially for her. It dazzled and it lulled, and though she could not reach out to touch it, it felt very strong. It protected her. It hid her. It trembled when there was danger and it floated when Gran was back.

As it floated now when she heard the shack's door rasping open behind her. It closed, and the web shuddered. Her nostrils flared at the acrid scent of spilled blood.

Blood; the web vibrated. Blood; the web parted. Blood and Warren Harcourt, and suddenly the fog was gone, the web torn, and she was running. Down to the beach where she stood at the brink of the climbing tide's foam and dared herself to walk in, walk in and keep on walking until she would either force herself to swim or choose to join her parents.

You told me they'd come back, Gran. You told me. You did.

A wave fanned in, pulled back, covering her feet with dark sand.

But Gran was angry now and wouldn't talk to her, not even in the fog. Not since that first time, after the funeral, after she'd found him and brought him back and sung him the words that had brought her the blood.

He was supposed to have been grateful, and he was supposed to have been smiling. But she knew now he had lied to her, lied to his Lilla. He had lied, he was angry, and he wouldn't let her go.

She was frightened. She had spent the remainder of the night hiding in a cave just below the top of the cliffs, a cave not even Gran knew was her place to escape all the demons and ghosts. All day she had stayed there, until she thought she was safe. Then she had run to find someone to tell them Gran had come back.

She really hadn't wanted to scare the little boy but she knew him (forgot his name), and she knew he was Gran's favorite because he could do things with his hands, and she knew he was close to Colin, and she needed to talk to Colin now more than anything in the world. And when he hadn't come, the fog had come instead, and Colin (and the little boy with no name) was forgotten because the fog and the web and the diamonds were so pretty, and so warm, and the way it used to be when Gran loved her and held her and wouldn't let anyone do her harm.

She glanced furtively at the shack as if he'd somehow overheard her, and she was running again, veering sharply off the beach and scrambling over the dunes toward the houses. The big houses. The rich houses. Past their warm yellow lights and their warming shining cars and their warm pretty gardens bedded down for the winter. Past them and soon onto Neptune, past the darkened boarding house where her nostrils flared and she thought she smelled the blood.

It was easy, she told herself. If Colin wouldn't come to her, she would find him at home.

Because of all the people on the island, only he would understand when she told him about Gran.

Only he would understand why Gran had her singing.

She was halfway to the cottage when she felt Gran slipping back to spin the web, ride the fog. Tugging, coaxing, urging her back. No, she thought, no, I won't let you! And she was startled when the tugging stopped and she was left alone to keep running. She knew then his strength wasn't as great as she'd believed. Despite the sacrifice of Warren Harcourt's blood-the only time Gran walked, so he could drink the blood himself-it would take him a long time to be what he wanted. Meanwhile she had a chance. She had a chance to warn Colin, who would warn Garve and the others.

Warn them. Warn them. Like someone she knew from history who warned all the people that the enemy was coming.

Warn them, she had to warn them-and she stumbled. About what?

A frown loosened sand caked to her forehead and her lips tasted salt when her tongue flicked out.

I have to warn…

About what, Lil? About what?

Concentration quivered her lips. Warn them about Gran, about the singing, about the… rest.

She slowed and shook her head to rid it of the fog. She slowed and looked up, and saw the stars between the clouds. They were pretty. They always used to be pretty, but now they were prettier than she'd ever seen them before. Winking at her like lovers she had stored in her dreams, not cold as in all the poems, but whitely warm and… pretty.

She slowed to a walk.

Pretty stars, lovers' stars, and her eyes darted from side to side because she knew she was going to the cottage where Colin lived and did his work, and if she took her time and thought hard she might remember why.

The reception room at Doc Montgomery's used to be the garage. Now it was paneled in pine, carpeted in soft gold, furnished with Audubon prints and up-to-date-magazines, two beaten leather sofas and a handful of upholstered chairs. It smelled of lemon polish and recent cleaning. The five narrow windows had just that morning been washed.

Colin stood by the entrance, one hand on the door frame. He was frowning. The odd wind had battered through only five minutes before, and already he was wondering if it had been his imagination. A howling, and a whistling, and leaves slapped against the panes, and Peg, sitting on a sofa beside Garve, had nearly jumped into his arms. Now it was quiet. Dark, quiet, the radio on the end table switched off when they arrived.

Doc was in the examination room with Warren, Annalee assisting. Eliot was on his way to Flocks with a clear plastic bag containing Harcourt's wallet which Garve had found at his side.

Colin shivered against a cold that wouldn't leave his system, turned away from the window and leaned against the wall. Peg had driven back for the chief when Colin insisted on remaining behind, had returned in less than five minutes, but five minutes too long. He'd had a chance to look at Warren, at all that goddamned blood on his clothes and on the ground, and he'd had a chance to wonder who would want to kill a harmless alcoholic. Garve had asked the same question while he examined the corpse without touching it, wondering aloud about Cameron's friends, wondering aloud about Jim Fletcher and the enemies he had made. It was all speculation. No weapon was found, no footprints, no clues. Then Eliot had arrived with the patrol car, and Montgomery.

All the doc had said was, "It's too dark to do anything out here. Let's bring him back to my office."

A green plastic sack was zipped closed around him, and he was placed in the trunk and driven back.

While Montgomery played coroner, Garve asked the questions.

That was fifteen minutes ago, and now he was silent.

"I don't get it," Colin said at last, not liking the quiet. "I just don't get it."

Peg murmured helplessly, her hands winding and twisting in the folds of her lap. A strand of damp hair was slanted across her forehead.

Garve shoved himself to his feet and paced the width of the room, stared out at the night, closed the curtains and turned around. "Here," he said and he patted his stomach, "I know it was Theo Vincent. But…"

"But what?" Colin said impatiently.

"But where's the murder weapon, the proof, the evidence? Why would someone want to cut that poor dope's throat?"

"He knew something he shouldn't have," Peg suggested.

"Oh sure," he said sourly. "Sure."

"Well, hell, Garve," Colin said, "he walked all over the place all the time when he wasn't drinking. He could have heard things, known things-jeez, he even knew about Peg and me, I know I didn't tell him." He pushed away from the wall and sat next to Peg. "He might have heard them talking about… something, I don't know what."

"That's just it," Tabor said. "You don't know, and I don't know."

"So are you just going to forget it?"

The look was one of tolerant disgust. "Of course not. I'll go over and have a word with them, as soon as Doc's finished. But I'll tell you this, m'boy, I won't get what I want. They'll be surprised, y'see, and shocked, and they'll alibi each other until the tide turns and then some."

"It sounds to me like you're already giving up."

"No, just being realistic."

"What about the wallet?" Peg said. "Eliot's going all the way into-"

"Because there's a very small chance it just didn't fall out of his coat when he fell. There's a chance someone picked it out, and if they did there'll be fingerprints. Or maybe whoever did it picked it up, dropped it again when he heard someone coming. I don't know," he said in irritation. "Christ, I wish I did."

The far door opened and Hugh Montgomery came out. He was small, sandy-haired, his over-sized glasses continually slipping down his nose. When he smiled there was a large gap between his two front teeth, a gap made larger by the handlebar mustache waxed and poking below his chin. His white coat was stained faint red, and he was drying his hands on a towel.

"Razor," he said. "One slice. Sometime this morning, I'd say shortly after midnight. Can't be sure, but I don't think I'm far wrong."

Tabor reached for his coat. "Anything else?"

"What else is there?"

"You're the doctor, you tell me."

Montgomery scowled, and pushed at his glasses. "There is nothing else."

"Suicide?" Peg asked in a small, trembling voice.

"Absolutely not." He gave her a quick smile. "You want the details?"

"Thank you, Hugh, no."

"I'll be back," the chief said, and left with a brusque nod.

The moment he left, Montgomery stripped off his coat and tossed it into the other room, made for the nearest chair and fell into it with a sigh. He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Brother," he said quietly. "Brother."

Colin wanted to leave, but he couldn't help thinking of the way he'd found Warren, and that the lawyer was lying dead on the other side of the wall just behind him. The thought held him, and he barely felt Peg's hand slip into his own and squeeze.

"They're going to get away with it, aren't they," he said.

"Who?"

"Lombard. Vincent."

Montgomery shook his head. "Now, you don't know that, Colin, any more than Garve does. And if you want my opinion, I'd say you were wrong."

"Oh really?"

Hugh nodded. "Really. It serves them no purpose-"

"— unless Warren knew something he shouldn't."

"And it isn't their style." Then he looked deliberately at Peg. "I know what you're thinking, dear, but live years ago they were too far away from setting up the casinos, and they might have taken the chance. If, of course, these are the same men. But not this time. This time, if you'll excuse me, Colin, they're damned close to winning."

"I know," Colin said, shifting into the sofa's corner.

"So why screw up a good thing?"

"Because if Warren talked… about whatever… they'd lose for sure. And even Cameron's not stupid- if they lose this time it won't come up again."

Montgomery replaced his glasses, and whistled soundlessly through the gap in his teeth. "Colin, think about what you're saying here. Who would listen to him, really? Warren? Our Warren? A nice guy drunk, a self-pitying slob sober. If he walked up to you and said he knew something terrible was going on between Cameron and those men, would you believe him? Quite aside from the fact that it wouldn't surprise any of us, would you believe it if Warren told you?"

Colin wanted to say yes. Instead he waved away the question. Another thought floated briefly, and he looked at Montgomery. "I guess," he said, conceding the point. "But if they didn't do it, Hugh, then who the hell did?"

"Ask Garve. He's the chief around here."

"Yeah. Thanks."

A silence laced with apprehension. "Are you finished?" Montgomery asked. Colin nodded.

"Then may I suggest the two of you get the hell out of my office so I can chase Annalee around the table?

Go home, get a drink, I don't care, just go away. Okay?"

"I… okay," and Colin followed Peg to her feet, yelled a good-bye to Annalee and was outside, in the dark.

"Colin?"

"Yes?"

"You'll… stay?" He nodded.

She leaned against him and he slipped an arm around her waist, thinking this was going to be a hell of a thing to tell their grandchildren. On the night I proposed to your grandmother she had just said yes when suddenly we found a bloody corpse. We spent the rest of the night waiting for the island doctor to tell us he was razored, going home and turning on every light in the house because we thought there was a madman on the loose out there. A nut. A psycho. A hell of a story.

He closed his eyes, then, and saw Warren bleeding. Not the dried blood on his coat, or the dried blood on the ground, but fresh blood, running blood, seeping from the black gash beneath his chin-like the blood that had seeped fresh from the gashes on his wrists. He shuddered, and Peg squeezed his arm.

"Changing your mind, sailor?" she said too brightly.

He remembered. "Listen, Peg," he said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out the keys to drop into her hand, "there's something I want to get from the house. You pick up Matt and I'll meet you there, okay?"

"Colin?"

He kissed her cheek softly. "Hey, it's all right, don't worry."

"But whoever killed-"

"It's all right," he insisted, already walking away. "You get Matt. I'll see you. Twenty minutes."

He averted his gaze to avoid her eyes, stuffed his hands in his pockets as he headed toward Bridge Road. At the corner Peg drove by and waved at him.

He waved back and turned right, hurrying now, Warren's death temporarily shunted aside while he considered what we'd done.

It was curious. He thought he'd feel elation, or release, or some Busby Berkeley extravaganza exploding into glorious showgirls and vibrant celebration around him. But there was nothing but an odd sense of fear. He'd made up his mind to stop stalling and propose, and he'd done it; Peg had accepted. Now it was too late to turn back (do you want to?) If he reneged, he couldn't stay on the island (do you want to?) If he told her he'd made a mistake, would he be able to look Matt in the eye again (do you?)

Christ, he thought, I'm really fucked up.

The first time, so long ago he might have read about it in a book, he had proposed because it was the thing to do, the high school sweetheart and the ivy-covered cottage thing to do in order to complete a life not yet begun and destined never to end. The second time it almost worked (and would have if she'd lived, he demanded to believe). This time was calculated. This time it was deliberate. No passion, no yearning, no 'doing the right thing.' And though he'd felt fine when he'd said it, now he wondered if he had said the right thing.

Goddamn!

He swerved off the sidewalk and almost ran through the trees, took the stairs to the porch and had his hand out for the latch before something odd finally registered. He stopped with a palm slapped against the frame, staring down as if someone had thrown up a glass wall.

The door was open.

He knew he had closed it this morning, but now it was open.

The living room was dark, the only light a pale shade of night slipping in from the side window. He entered cautiously, avoiding the plank that creaked like an alarm just over the threshold. Water dripped in the bathroom shower; the refrigerator in the kitchen coughed on and sputtered; the furniture waited just beyond the focus of his eyes, blending into the walls and bringing them closer. He could feel the bruise on his stomach, Warren's blood on his hands, the roof of the cottage adding weight to the dark.

He could smell it, then, and he could touch it, and he could hear it in the way his mouth opened to breathe the stale air-there was someone in here. Someone was waiting for him, hiding in the black.

Vincent, he thought in a swift and brief panic, and an instant denial as his shoulder hunched in anticipation of another attack. Not Vincent, it was too soon. Not Garve, not Peg, maybe Cart Naughton bound to keep the promise he'd made that afternoon.

No. No one like that.

But someone was in here, back in the shadows, waiting for him.

And suddenly a lamp was switched on and the black was gone.

He blinked wildly and ducked, one arm up and across his chest to protect himself from a blow that never came.

By the window, by the table, was Lilla. She was looking at the sculpture of The Screaming Woman; she didn't turn around.

"God," he said, one hand bracing himself against the top of the television while relief weakened his knees. "God, you scared me half to death."

"Me," she said quietly, tonelessly. A linger reached out to touch the woman's open mouth, probe the darkened mouth. "This is me." She looked over her shoulder, and he saw the wide eyes, the sand-dusted cheeks, and no smile at her lips. "Gran did this of me."

Only then did he notice she was still in her funeral dress, ragged and damp, one shoulder nearly gone. It had only been a day, but she seemed markedly thinner, almost emaciated, and her fingers snapped at the air as if galvanized in a lab. He shook his head with relief and walked over to the sofa.

"Lilla, you will never know how glad I am to see you." He dropped with a loud, laughing sigh, filled his cheeks and blew loudly before patting the cushion beside him once to bring her over. When she didn't move at a second or third invitation, he felt no annoyance. No matter how she was acting, it was enough she had finally left that miserable hovel. "Peg and I, we were on our way to see you when… well, no sense in going into details, Lil, but I have to tell you Warren Harcourt's dead and some kind of killer is walking around out there. We were afraid for you. We were going to take you home."

Her gaze returned to The Screaming Woman. "Home."

"It isn't right for you to be staying out there, you know that. It isn't healthy. I know there's no such thing as running water or anything, and I'll bet a year's salary you haven't eaten since yesterday."

"I'm not hungry. Gran is."

"Listen, Lil, we were also thinking about Cameron's shindig tomorrow and we kind of thought it might be really nice if you… what?" He cocked his head slightly as if he hadn't heard what she'd said, and again she fixed him over her shoulder. "What did you say?"

"Gran."

He nodded, not quite frowning. "Yes."

Her lower lip drew in between her teeth, and he felt as though he were being examined, tested, her eyes unblinking while she searched him for something.

"Lilla," he said quietly, still smiling, easing forward to rest his forearms on his knees, "Lilla, what's wrong?"

She shifted, and he saw dark red stains splattered across the front of the dress. "Gran," she said, her right hand out to caress the head of the sculpture.

Oh God, he thought.

Warren. And the blood. All that goddamned blood.

"Lilla." He swallowed, and hated himself for staring, for checking to see if she were carrying a weapon. "Lilla, Gran's dead."

"Yes."

"You can't do anything for him now."

"I know."

He took a shallow breath and prayed for Peg to walk in the door. "He loved you, you know. He loved you very much."

She sniffed. "He was my Gran."

It can't be, he thought. God, Lil, don't read my mind.

He opened a palm to her. "He was indeed, Lil, and I know he wouldn't want you"-and he pointed at her disarray-"like this. Not like this, not his Lilla. He'd want you back in the house on the Terrace where it's warm and you have food and where your friends can come and see you, help you." He almost rose, but her eyes didn't move. "Lilla-"

She faced him fully, suddenly, and her hands drew to lists that brushed at her legs in time to the words that pelted him like hail. "He's mad, Colin. He's very, very mad. You think he likes you, likes me, likes everyone here, and maybe he did. Maybe he thought this was a fine place to live a very long time ago. Maybe he thought it a good place because the old place didn't like him and made him leave. They said he was crazy, that he did things wrong. He didn't, Colin. He did things, but they weren't wrong. And when he came here he thought it all would be better. Maybe he thought it was. But he doesn't anymore. Not anymore. He says he could be the big man on the hill, Colin, but no one gave him the chance. Not there, not here. Now he doesn't like this place anymore. He don't like anyone anymore. He's mad, Colin. He's mad."

It didn't take him long to recognize the hysteria in her eyes, to see her lips begin to quiver. He was on his feet quickly and had his hands on her upper arms before she could move. The dress felt like dried paper.

Bits of sand and kelp and dead leaves soiled her hair, and there was an odor he could not define, one that wrinkled his nostrils and almost made him turn.

Gently. "Lilla… love… he's dead."

She nodded.

"You and I and all your friends, we were together last night. We saw Gran, and we saw you, and it's over, it's all over."

She nodded. "And Warren," she whispered.

"You knew?"

"I hear. I know."

"But how? How-"

She caught a sob in her throat, and he held her closely, absently stroking her back until he realized he was waiting for her to cry, until he realized the long black hair felt like rope when he touched it.

"Lilla?"

She wouldn't look up. "He's mad."

"Lilla, please."

Her forehead pressed against his chest, but her hands stayed at her sides. "He wanted to buy me things, you know. He wanted to be the man on the hill, and buy me pretty things. But he's mad now. He said to me, 'Child, they took it all when I had it and now I give it to them in the way they gave it to me.' "

A deep breath filled his lungs until he had closed his eyes once, hard. When he opened them his hand was brushing through her hair, and through the grains of sand like insects burrowing in her scalp. For a moment he couldn't think of anything to say. The funeral had obviously twisted her sense of time, and she was telling him now what Gran had said most likely on his deathbed. A rush of anger then, at the stupid old man who couldn't die in peace, couldn't leave his own family with a smile or a prayer.

"Lilla," he whispered, "you knew Gran better than anyone. You knew him, and he was bitter." A nod toward The Screaming Woman. "He made those things, and people, very important people came down to see them. You know that. You know that's true."

She nodded, once.

Outside the cottage, the stir of a wind.

"And you know he was offered a great deal of money for them. Even if he'd taken it all he wouldn't have been rich, but it would have been more than he'd ever seen in his life. I swear they weren't patronizing him, Lilla, and they weren't doing it for me. They saw something in his work that… I don't know. I don't know exactly what it was, but they saw it, and they wanted it, and Gran was too contrary to give them a chance.

"I swear to God, Lil, I don't know why he wouldn't cooperate. I guess because he'd grown used to being angry, and anything else was… kind of a threat to the way he was used to living. It's crazy, but it isn't unusual."

"He's mad." The words almost lost in the thickness of his jacket.

"He was mad," he corrected gently. "But he's gone now, Lil. He's gone, and you're not." She shuddered.

The wind rattled leaves softly against the pane.

"You're not listening," she said finally.

His lips parted slightly, almost a smile. "I heard you, Lil. You said he was mad because he thought we didn't like him and we kept him from getting rich, from being the man on the hill."

"No."

He frowned and held her away, but she wouldn't look up.

"Then what?"

She shuddered again, and he stared at his hands to be sure they were still gripping her arms. For a moment he thought he'd taken hold of ice.

"Lilla, maybe we ought to see Doc Montgomery."

"No!" And she shoved him away, so unexpectedly hard his legs clipped the back of the cobbler's bench and spilled him onto the couch. She was backed into the corner now, out of reach of the lamp. "No! No! Why won't you listen?"

"Lilla!"

"No! Gran won't like it!"

And just as he made to rise, Peg came through the door.

"No!" Lilla shouted. "Colin, what's-"

He looked to her, pleading, one hand gesturing toward the girl. "She was here when I got back, Peg. She keeps saying-"

The explosion made him duck, made Peg scream. A pine bough slammed suddenly through the window, knocking over the table and spilling the lamp and the driftwood woman onto the floor. Lilla yelled hysterically, and Colin shoved the bench aside as he went to hold her.

And stopped when Peg grabbed hold of his wrist.

The wind growled through the broken pane, the fallen lamp sputtered and went out. The room was black.

The Screaming Woman rocked on its base, slowly, staring up.

"Lilla," Peg said as if comforting a child.

"No!" she shrieked, and lifted her head as she raced for the door.

No one moved to stop her.

It's the light, Colin thought. It's the light. It's the light.

The wind caught a magazine and flipped over its pages.

When Lilla screamed and ran, her eyes turned dead white.

FIVE

Damn, Eliot thought, what am I going to tell Garve now? One simple, lousy job, and those jerks in Flocks screw him up. It's a murder case, for crying out loud, and there they go and try to tell him the fingerprint lifted from Harcourt's wallet belonged to Gran D'Grou. Gran's fingerprint, my ass.

He had told them the old man was dead, and all they did was stare at him like he was crazy. Then they as much as called him a liar and told him to stop farting around, this wasn't a joke. Of course it ain't a joke, he'd said, but they insisted all the way out the goddamned door that either they were right, or he was more stupid than they thought.

Gran. A dead man leaving fingerprints on a wallet. Shit and damnation.

The only good thing about this will be when Garve gets on the horn and chews those bastards out, or calls the chief at home and raises holy hell. That'd really be something else to hear, really something else. They wouldn't be so damned snotty if they'd seen Warren there under that tree.

He almost braked then when the headlights began picking out islands and swirls of stones and twigs scattered over the state forest road, and when he switched on the floodlight on the dash and directed it at the twisted trees along the verge, he wondered how the hell he'd managed to miss the hurricane. That goddamn Screamer wasn't due until tomorrow.

Suddenly he felt uncomfortably warm.

The night was too black, the dashboard light too green, the whine and thump of the tires too loud by half. Without thinking he turned on the overhead red-and-blues, switched the beams to high and snapped on the radio. It didn't matter that all he heard was static; what mattered was the sound, and the light, and the feel of the wheel sweating beneath his hands.

A large branch clawed at the side of the car. A rock bleached gray jerked him to the right. The dark ahead refused to give ground, and by the time he reached the landing his shirt was soaking wet, his hair dripping sweat down the run of his back. He braked and stared at the low-wave water grayed by the headlights. He stared at the canted shack, willing Sterling to appear. He honked the horn. He stared at the ferry. He honked the horn again.

Sterling came out, one hand buried large in his peacoat pocket, the other gesturing at him to be silent for crying out loud, he weren't deaf and he weren't a goddamned servant that he had to jump like a freak just because a cop blowed his horn.

El didn't care what the old man thought. He drummed on the dash until the chain was pulled away. Then he drove the cruiser over the steel lip and onto the boat, stopping it dead center. Sterling hobbled into the cabin and coughed the engines into grinding. The ferry shuddered and rocked and slipped away from the shore.

At length, he could see the island. At length-and none too soon for his oddly jangled nerves-the engines reversed, and the bow dipped toward the bay. An adjustment to swing the lip and landing into line, and the ungainly boat coasted into place. Smooth, easy, so expertly done El didn't realize what had happened until Sterling crossed through the beams with the guard chain in his hand. El nodded and fired the ignition, hesitated a moment when he remembered what he had to do, then tore off the boat with a screech and stench of rubber.

Sterling watched him bump up to the road, spat disgustedly over the side and dragged the chain back. Ground fog drifted into the glaring light. He waited for a moment, thinking it would be just his luck tonight that another car would come screaming down to the landing just as he'd shoved off. Then he'd have to coax the ferry in again, unhook the chain, and pray the driver didn't dive off the far end.

He had had enough trouble as it was this weekend. Goddamned folks spooked at the storm, and he was going to have to spend practically all day tomorrow making sure the ferry was secure enough not to be dumped halfway across the goddamned state. Good God, when it all went friggin' wrong…

He spat again and wiped a rough sleeve over his chin, had half turned to head for the cabin when he thought he saw something moving, out there just beyond the reach of the floods. A dark thing, undefined, perhaps a tree shadow or a break in the fog. He frowned, and waited, his hand curling around the target pistol in his pocket. The margin of the floodlights' reach formed a white wall on the landing, and now that he took a good look he knew damned well someone was standing there. He would have called out, but that had been Stu's job. Little brother Stu was the friendly one, always hanging back and screwing up the schedule to be sure they weren't leaving anyone behind.

He sighed, startling himself with the sudden and brief touch of loneliness that brought an even briefer burning to his eyes.

Then he shook it off and frowned, stepped over the chain and peered into the light.

"Hey!" he called, in memory of Stu.

The figure moved closer, and he could see now it was a short man. Or a boy.

"My God," he whispered. "Stu? Stu?"

And he cursed soundly and viciously when he saw Frankie Adams walking arrogantly toward him. What the hell right did that damned kid have, fooling him like that? It wasn't nice. It was cruel. The dumb-

Frankie walked through the white wall, and Wally's eye widened. The front of the kid's shirt was covered with blood.

"Jesus, kid, you all right?" he said, hurrying off the boat and wondering what he was going to do now. Frankie looked like he'd been hit by a truck, for God's sake. Maybe that wind, he thought suddenly, A branch came down and clobbered him maybe.

"Kid, listen, didn't you see Nichols go by just now? You should've flagged him down. I ain't got no car, for Pete's sake. Listen, I'll-"

He stopped abruptly.

Frankie raised his head and opened his eyes.

"Oh my God," Wally said. "Oh my God!" And he yanked out the target pistol and started firing. The reports were echoed, confined within the reach of the light and slammed back.

Frankie's shirt rippled, but Frankie didn't stop.

With Harcourt tucked back into his plastic sack, and placed in the large refrigeration unit kept in the office basement, Hugh Montgomery decided it would be the gallant and prudent thing to do to walk Annalee home. She protested, as always, but this time he managed to override her by pointing out bluntly that whoever killed Warren might still be on the island. It may be only an isolated episode, but you never knew about the kinds of nuts running around the world these days. He was pleased when he realized she was relieved, and he even kept his hand on her elbow the entire way. With luck, Garve would have finished whatever it was he was doing, pass by and see them. He might get jealous. He might even stop and grab Annalee, throw her into the car and put an end to everyone's agony, for once and all time.

Fat chance, he thought then, pushing his glasses back up his nose.

Annalee, though a full head taller, stayed close to him until they reached her porch. Then, while he waited patiently, staring puzzledly across the street at the darkened police station, she fished her keys out of her purse and unlocked the door.

"You want some coffee?" she asked, and gave him a smile.

Beautiful. God, she was beautiful! There were times when he wanted nothing more than to bury his hands in all that lovely hair, bury his face between those uncommonly lovely breasts; but there were also times when he knew he'd win the state lottery and retire a millionaire.

"Thanks, no, Lee," he said. "Feels like fog coming in again, and I want to get back." He rubbed the back of his neck, and sighed shyly. "I'm tired, too."

"You going to be able to sleep?"

"You mean with Warren keeping me company?"

She nodded, looking over his head, across the street.

"I've done it before. It doesn't bother me. Besides, if I get the insomnia, I can always call Hattie and let her tell me all about Greek gods or Egyptian burial practices or the mythology of the Manitoba back-country."

Annalee laughed quietly. "She does go on, I guess."

"The world's leading expert on-" He stopped, realized he didn't have her full attention. "Well, don't worry, anyway. If Hattie isn't home, I'll take a pill or something."

She nodded again, absently, and opened the door. "See you tomorrow morning."

"Sure thing," he said, and was alone on the porch.

The blinking amber light over the intersection, the night sound of the ocean tearing at the island, and the fog. The lamp just extinguished in Annalee's window, Warren on the table, and the fog outside his bedroom.

He shuddered the images away and decided maybe home wasn't exactly where he should be right now. The idea of listening to Hattie Mills fill him in on the latest mythological gossip was absolutely more than he could bear tonight. He had just put his hand to the driftwood door of the Inn when he heard a speeding car. He turned and saw the patrol car, lights whirling, hit the intersection and squeal into a sharp turn to race down Neptune. He wasn't quick enough to see who was driving, but knew it was probably Nichols. Even in an earthquake Garve would take his time.

He shrugged and went in, blinked at the dim lighting from the lanterns on the rough walls, and took a stool at the corner of the deserted bar. A glance, and he frowned; he was the only one in the place. But he said nothing to the bartender, only ordered Bloody Marys to be served in formation-when one was half-finished there should be another one waiting.

There was, each one perfect, and he stared at his hands and thought of Annalee and her breasts.

An hour later his knuckles were slightly blurred.

Poor old Warren. What a jackass.

An hour after that he was trying to figure out why the glasses were so slippery.

Poor old Warren. Leave it to the lush to get his throat cut when guys like Carter Naughton walked around still alive.

He blinked at the vicious thought, and felt a chill that disturbed him. He wasn't drunk; he knew that. He knew, and the bartender knew, his capacity, and he was still four drinks away from being barely able to walk home. What he felt was a gentle, and not unpleasant, buzzing in his right ear, a hydrogen cloud in his head, and a tingling in his left foot. So why be so maudlin about a dumb drunken lawyer, and so damnably cold about a miserable teenaged kid?

He shrugged, and nibbled at the celery stick plucked from his glass. Such philosophical musings were best left to daylight.

The door opened then, and before he could turn around, Garve Tabor slammed onto the stool beside him and ordered a triple bourbon. As Hugh watched, mouth agape, Tabor downed it in a swallow and ordered two more.

"Jesus," he said, "you want to slice up your liver?"

Garve looked at him and scowled. "I've had a bad night."

Hugh nodded, knowing exactly what bad nights were. "You wanna… do you want to talk about it?"

"Nope."

Two more glasses emptied, two more in line.

"You're gonna get drunk."

"Yup."

Hugh sniffed, and pulled at the ends of his mustache. "You shouldn't, y'know. You have duties to perform."

"I tried," Garve said. Two gone; two more. "Goddamn it, I tried."

He waited for an explanation, and when none came he sipped from his last drink and looked in the mirror rising behind the bottles opposite his seat. It was obvious the man needed something, and that something wasn't liquor. Garve was, in fact, very much like himself twenty years ago. He had practiced on the mainland, was successful (except with women), and didn't quite know what the hell was wrong with his life. Then a friend had called, and would Hugh mind covering his office while he was in Barbados? Hugh asked where, asked where again, and decided what the hell. He came, he saw, the island conquered and his friend gladly stayed away because Haven's End was no place to make a million.

Fate, perhaps, but Hugh never questioned it. If he was, as his father had put it just before he died, a rabbit afraid of a little hard living, then this was the perfect burrow for his soul.

Garve groaned, and his elbow slipped off the bar.

"My friend," Hugh said, "I'm going to write you a prescription."

Garve nodded slowly, as if his head were threatening to come loose.

"In fact, I'm even going to fill it for you."

Garve nodded again and glowered at his reflection.

Hugh gripped the leather edge of the bar and slipped himself off the stool. When he was positive the door wouldn't move away, he headed for it, heard Garve shout behind him and ignored him. Outside, he shivered, angled to his left and aimed straight for Annalee Covey's.

Five minutes later Garve realized he was alone. He squinted at the stool beside him, rubbed the heel of his right hand over his eyes, and squinted again. Son of a bitch, he thought, the doc's a magician. Wish to hell I could make myself disappear.

He hadn't been kidding about "one of those nights."

He'd found Lombard at Cameron's house out at the Estates and had come on like some simpleminded refugee from the worst episode of "Dragnet." Warren Harcourt's had his throat slit just down the road and all I want is the facts. Just the facts, mac, and don't give me no crap. And they hadn't. They'd sat there in that cushy living room at least as big as his own place, and offered him Glenlivet neat or on the rocks, and smiled and talked and just about got him down on his knees so they could pat his head and call him a good dog.

Well, maybe not that bad. Cameron had had the sense to be scared out of his mind. Lombard, however, was oily and smooth and quiet and maddening, and when neither of them admitted to knowing where Theo Vincent was, he'd actually lost his temper. Something inside burst like a stoppered pipe, filling him with a bile he could only get rid of by yelling. He reared up and read them his own version of the riot act and stormed out as if he'd just whipped them to within an inch of their miserable lives. The door had slammed behind him. He had driven away so recklessly fast he'd jounced over three curbs before he regained control.

And he knew as he headed back into town that he'd made an absolute jackass of himself. After that speech to Colin and Peg in Hugh's office, after all he'd tried to teach Eliot about the difference between the law and justice and the tightrope between them, he'd forgotten himself.

"You're an Indian, Chief?" Lombard had asked, as casually as if he'd been wondering if it were dark outside. "No. No, I'm wrong, and I'm sorry. Part Indian, right? A grandmother, as I recall."

So carefully phrased, so gently put, and it sounded to Garve as if he'd just been called a half-breed.

That was when his temper went, and that was when he stormed out and roared into the Anchor Inn's parking lot and thundered into the bar and began drinking himself to death.

Suddenly a blast of damp, cold air washed over the bar. His untouched paper napkin fluttered, the collar of his shirt jumped to cover his neck. He lowered his glass slowly, turned, and stared a long moment at Annalee before he finally nodded.

"Hugh wants to give you a prescription," she said. She was wearing a plaid shirt open two buttons down and pulled out of her jeans, sandals on her bare feet, a cardigan cloaked over her shoulders.

"Hugh," he said, stifling a belch, "is a noisy twerp."

She sat and folded her arms on the bar. "You're drunk."

"Not yet, but I'm working on it." He raised a finger to signal the bartender, and she grabbed it, held it until he turned to face her. "Lee, I'm not…" He was going to say, I'm not in the mood, but the look of her, and the touch of her hand, stopped him. He shrugged with a lift of an eyebrow and lowered his hand; she did not let go.

"Where's Hugh?" he asked, trying not to let the smell of her hair penetrate the sharp odor of the bourbon.

"On his way home, I hope," she said, her hand shifting from one finger to the whole hand. "A little wobbly, but I think he'll make it."

"He's a good man."

"You said he was a noisy twerp."

He grinned lopsidedly. "I speak with forked tongue."

"You drink another one of those and you won't be able to speak at all."

He managed a barking laugh, picked up his glass, emptied it, and slammed it onto the counter so hard he made himself wince. There was no taste to the liquor at all; he'd burned out his tongue, and the fire in his stomach was rapidly turning to acid.

Ten minutes passed while they stared at each other in the mirror. Garve licked his lips. Her eyes, that hair-damn, but she was making him nervous.

"Hugh said you had a bad night."

"Hugh talks too much."

"You, uh, want to talk?"

Yes, he thought, Lord, yes.

"No," he said. Then he smiled. "I don't… I don't think I can."

"Okay," she said. "Maybe later."

Later? he thought. Jesus Christ, Hugh, what did you say to her?

"C'mon," she said then, standing and taking his arm.

"What?"

She pulled him to his feet, and grabbed his waist when he discovered that someone had substituted rubber for his knees. It wasn't right, he thought as she lead him carefully to the door, I can walk, damn it. She doesn't have to carry me.

The door opened, and the fresh air smacked his cheeks, dried his throat. "Oh God," he groaned, "I think I'm dying."

"You're impossible, you know that, don't you," she said, guiding him across the parking lot toward her house.

"Where are we going?"

She looked at him sideways. "Are you really that drunk?"

He felt stupid and helpless, and was amazed to realize that he didn't mind at all. As long as she was there to hang on and keep him from falling, as long as she was there, period, he decided he would survive.

At the end of the parking lot he stumbled over a raised section of curbing, laughed self-consciously, and looked up to the small house. Fog had drifted in from the woods behind it, pooling in the yard, clinging to his face and pulling his skin tight. He stopped when they were halfway there, turned and stared at the street. The bourbon was numbing him, fuzzing his mind, but he still didn't like the way the street looked.

He thought he heard footsteps on the grass, beside the house, in the dark.

"Lee?"

She was hugging his arm now. "Yes," she said. "I know. C'mon, let's hurry."

They almost ran the last few steps to the porch, and he was grateful she had not locked the door, that the lights witch was right at hand, that she did not stop but led him straight to the bedroom.

"Lee?"

"Garve," she said, pulling at his shirt while he sagged onto the bed. "Garve, don't worry. I'm here. It's all right."

He rubbed at his eyes, felt the mattress on his back, and knew that she was lying. Whoever was out there, whatever was out there, it wasn't all right at all. It wasn't all right.

Eliot decided to check on the Estates, to try to rid his system of its inexplicable nervousness-they weren't Gran's prints, damn it-and to see if anyone needed help boarding windows, loading cars. He nearly braked when he reached the Sunrise Motel and thought he saw a light behind one of the drawn curtains. The hell with it, he thought, speeding up again; if Cart wanted to take himself some tail that was no concern of his. With luck the storm would blow the creep away.

Just beyond Mayfair's he swung left, wincing at the tires' high-pitched protest against the tarmac, slowing as he entered Dunecrest Estates. The homes began on his left, dark for the most part, a few lighted as they swung left with the road. He parked at the curve and switched off the ignition, and with a glance to his right remember that Lilla was supposedly still in Gran's shack.

He hesitated, then thought, why not. Save a crazy-with-grief girl and make yourself a hero. It was certainly better than scaring himself to death.

This print, patrolman, belongs to Gran D'Grou.

He shuddered and slid out of her car.

The sand was cold beneath his shoes, the sawgrass slapping harshly against his legs. The ocean grumbled, a giant turning in its sleep, and he slipped once, going down on one knee before he was able to right himself again.

"Hell."

He dusted off his trousers, slapped his palms together, and grunted when the sand flattened and hardened and he could see the shack, just barely, just black.

He stopped.

He should turn around right now and try to find Garve, to give him the information and take the temper tossed into his lap. Even while he stood here the chief was probably ringing his house, cussing a blue streak and hitching at his belt. He may not have called Flocks, but he knew El was due back, and he needed to know what they'd found on the card. A disgusted grunt, and he started forward, There was a light on in the shack. He could see it wavering in the cracks in the walls, sec it leaking from beneath the poorly-hung front door. He glanced around and scratched at the side of his neck, looked around again and lifted his hand to knock.

The door swung open.

He stared at his fist, at the door, at the darkened room beyond and the light in the back-a red-gold light that refused to remain still. Firelight. Candlelight. And with it a faint stench that finally registered and pursed his lips. He swallowed.

"Lilla?" Softly, as though he would frighten her if he used his normal voice.

"Hey, Lil, it's Eliot."

A foot over the threshold cautiously, one hand out to grip the door's frame. "Lil? Lilla, it's El Nichols." The light.

A board creaked sharply when he stepped inside, and he was back on the sand in a single nervous jump. He gnawed on his lower lip, pulled at the side of his neck. This was stupid. He should walk right in, calling her name, and tell her he was going to take her back to her home. Simple as that.

But the front room was dark, and the light was red-gold.

And the stench made him think of damp open graves.

He listened then, shunting the sound of the ocean to one side, thinking he might have heard the sound of her weeping. A moment later he gave up; there was nothing. His imagination. The shack was empty, except for that damned light.

And the beach was empty, except for the footsteps behind him.

He wanted to spin around with his gun in his hand. The night, the storm, and Gran's fingerprints, had spooked him. Instead, he turned slowly, a smile waiting to spread in case it was Lilla.

There was a shadow in the trees.

He relaxed.

"Lilla, for God's sake."

The light flared behind him, rushed past him, and stretched his shadow along the sand until its tip reached the feet of the shadow in the trees. Instinctively, his hand cupped the butt of his revolver, his fingers automatically unsnapping the flap. At the same time he began to sidle toward the dunes.

The light carved a cavern out of the dark.

He was ready to call out, but the moment his lips parted he knew he would sound like a little boy scared of slimy creatures in the corner. He swallowed instead, looked at the shack, and continued to back away.

The shadow beneath the trees stepped into the red-gold.

On any other day in any other month he would have laughed and shook his head at his own foolishness. But tonight she stood there in the black mourning dress, her hair snaked across her face, her arms rigid at her sides. She said nothing, and she moved no closer, but the light flared again and Eliot bolted.

His shoes thumped on the hard sand, hissed on the soft, and he threw himself over the first dune and slid into the trough on the seat of his pants. He looked up. She was standing there, in her black mourning dress and her eyes opened wide. He gagged and ran on, up the next dune, down the slope and onto the road, nearly tripping over the curb he'd forgotten was there. He didn't stop until his arms thrust out and he slammed hard into the front of the patrol car, gasping, his fingers trying to take hold of the paint.

Jesus. Jesus.

His head lowered and his lungs worked and he kicked at a tire until the pain stopped him. Jesus.

The hood was cool, and the touch calmed him, suddenly made him ashamed that some grief-crazy woman had terrified him into cowardice. It was stupid. He was stupid. There was no other word for it. Yet when he looked over his shoulder, his mouth wide, nearly wheezing, he couldn't bring himself to go back. Jesus. She must think him drunk out of his mind for running like that. It was that dumb shack, that's what it was-that godawful smell and that candlelight, enough to spook even Garve. But he couldn't go back; he wanted to, but he just couldn't. Not with the shack, and the light, and her not saying a word.

"Goddamn fool," he muttered as he pushed away from the car and hitched at his belt. "Idiot. Jackass!"

He kicked the tire again as hard as he could, stepped toward the door, and paused when he saw the woman by the rear fender.

Oh, Christ, he thought wearily, I don't need this now.

"What is it?" he said, not bothering to be polite. "Somebody dig up your garden?" He shook his head and waved her away. "Why don't you call in the morning, okay? Call the office. It's late and I'm off duty, and if you don't mind, I'm going home to bed."

He opened the door without bothering to wait for an answer, sat behind the wheel and reached for the door's handle.

Tess Mayfair grabbed his elbow.

Behind them, in the Estates, the lights blurred in the fog.

"Hey!" he shouted, trying to jerk his arm free. "Jesus, Tess, that hurts!"

Tess pulled again, dragging him half out of the cruiser, his hip catching the wheel and burning. He swung at her with his free hand, but it was too awkward-he was pinned, and she didn't seem to care. Then she pulled again, hard, and Eliot screamed as he heard his shirt tearing at the shoulder, screamed once again when his arm tore from its socket.

"I suppose you realize that the last time something like this happened was when Claudette Colbert stretched a blanket across the room to stop Clark Gable."

Peg nodded, but didn't turn around; she was spreading sheets and covers over the sofa.

Colin leaned against the windowseat, arms folded across his chest. "I'll bet he didn't sleep all night."

She grunted.

"That's from It Happened One Night, you know." She nodded and slapped the pillow against the armrest. "Peg-"

"I know," she told him kindly as she sat on the center cushion. "I know." From a one-sided smile: "You could always take a cold shower."

"I could, but they're cold."

Then he gave her a martyr's sigh and pushed himself back until he was sitting cross-legged, his spine against the window. The panes were cool, and without turning he could feel the fog climbing from the lawn. At his side was a snifter of brandy Peg had poured for him earlier, after she had returned with Matt and had seen him to bed. They'd talked for quite a while, of his past and hers, of the casinos and the past season that had been one of the island's most successful.

They talked of everything except Lilla, Gran D'Grou, and Warren.

He watched her until she looked down at her hands. He watched the lamp's light shimmer off her blouse and catch fire in her hair, watched the play of her lips and the stretch of her neck. It was a curious feeling, to see her suddenly ill-at-ease. The sly remarks and the innuendos had vanished the instant they both realized what it was they had done.

"I love you," he said softly.

She looked up without raising her head. "I know. I love you, too." A quick smile, and a deep breath. "What are we going to do?"

"Get married, I guess."

"No," she said. "About Lilla."

He shrugged. "We'll have to tell Garve, and Hugh, and then… then I suppose someone will have to go out there and get her."

"Oh, hell."

"Yeah."

He took a long sip of the brandy, shuddered, and uncrossed his legs. At the same time, Peg rose and stood in front of him, waiting until his arms slipped around her waist. Then she lay her head against his chest.

"Her eyes."

"It was the light," he said, much too quickly.

He turned with her still in his arms and looked out the window. All the lights were burning in Hattie Mills' place, and a few were still on at the Adams'. He kissed her hair softly. "I'll bet Rose has seen everything that's happened over here."

Peg turned her head and saw the second-story window glowing, the shades up, the curtains tied to one side. "She'll tell Mitch, and he'll clean your room a hundred times Monday, hoping to get gossip for her."

They stood for a long moment, a quiet moment, feeling shirt against blouse, trousers against skirt, the idea that it all felt too right for them to move.

"Tomorrow," he whispered finally.

"Huh?"

"Tomorrow," he whispered louder. "Soon as we let Garve know what happened we'll pack a ton of crap food and tooth-eating soda and we'll go to the cliffs for a picnic."

"It's going to rain."

"Nope."

She leaned back and looked up, smiling. "You sure?"

He smiled back. "I have arranged it, m'dear. You and I and Matt are going to have a hell of a good day tomorrow. Besides, it seems to me we owe ourselves some sort of celebration."

She agreed with a wink, then frowned as she looked at him from the corner of her eye. "We have to announce it, you know."

"I suppose."

"In the paper?"

"With our pictures and everything?"

"Or," she said, "we could do it at the party tomorrow night."

He drew back his head and stared. "You wouldn't."

"Wouldn't I?"

"Jesus, you're terrible."

"Yeah. I know."

They kissed, softly and for a long time before she leaned back. Her hand reached out to cup his cheek, poke the tip of his chin. "God help me, I do love you."

"Yeah," he said softly. "Yeah."

They kissed again, and he could feel the warmth of her lips and the press of her breasts and the way her legs stirred against his. His palm stroked her back; her palm cupped his head. He pulled loose her skirt and scratched lightly along her spine to her shoulders. She shuddered, moved her head to lay it in the hollow beneath neck and shoulder.

"Don't," she said when his hand paused. "Please, Colin."

He kissed her hair, kissed her cheek, shifted so he could unhook her bra strap. She sighed, lips brushing his neck; she sighed, and stood far enough away for his hands to come around to the front. When they reached her breasts she sighed again and half-closed her eyes.

"Your hands are cold," she whispered without protesting.

"Cold hands, warm heart," he said, "to coin an old cliche."

She kissed him suddenly, hard, and looked to the sofa.

He nodded and kissed her back, and they had taken one step when they heard a noise on the staircase. "Mom?" Sleepy, worried.

He almost told her to ignore the boy, almost turned himself to send Matt back to bed. Then, when she couldn't help a smile, he repeated his martyr's sigh and shook his head in defeat.

"It's all right," she called to Matt. "It's all right," she said to Colin. "I'll take that shower for you. Turn out the lights when you go to bed." And she was out of the room and up the stairs without looking back.

He waited for several minutes, standing there listening, then took a deep breath and let himself grin. A grin that banished Warren and Lilla and the fog and the island. His doubts were gone as he turned from the window and headed for the couch. His fears for the time were smothered by a buoyant growing bubble that expanded in his chest and made him feel giddy, making him wish he were back at the cottage so he could throw his arms up and shout.

Boots and socks off, shirt and jeans laid across the coffee table, the blanket pulled to the hollow of his throat, his ankles propped on the armrest, his head on the pillow. He was going to have a stiff neck in the morning, but for the moment he didn't care. For the moment he would deal with murder and madness and shuffle them back to, the bottom of the deck.

He reached up awkwardly and switched off the light.

The room settled into pale gray from the spray of the streetlamp.

There was a chill from the night that made him shiver once and draw the blanket higher. But he was warm, and he liked it, and he hoped Peg would let him be there when she told Matt the good news.

A slow exhalation to beckon sleep from the corners, and just as his eyes closed the streetlight went out.