When She Was Bad

7

Irene had no appointments scheduled for Thursday afternoon-according to her original schedule, she was still supposed to be in Portland. Her spirits somewhat buoyed by Pender’s mid-afternoon telephone call (from what she’d been able to make out over what sounded like the roar of a hurricane, he and MacAlister had an extremely promising lead and were driving up to Shasta to check it out), she’d spent the day catching up on a myriad of chores-correspondence, revisions for the new edition of her textbook on dissociative disorders, a little dusting, a little gardening.

After supper (a prepacked salad of wilted baby greens, glazed pecans, crumbled feta, and dried cranberries from Trader Joe’s that had been in her fridge since Sunday-hence the wilted greens), Irene went outside to water her prize-winning Cecil Bruner roses, then ran the vacuum cleaner and did a load of laundry: as an eco-conscious, energy-saving Californian, she always did her watering and ran her major appliances in the evening.

Irene locked up the house and went upstairs to bed around ten o’clock. She set her alarm, laid out her jogging outfit, changed into her last surviving pair of Frank’s oversize pajamas-she had to turn the sleeves and legs up several inches-and climbed into bed with the new issue of Psychology Today, which for her constituted light reading.

At eleven, she switched off the light and turned on the TV at the foot of the bed to watch the news. KSBW, the NBC affiliate in Salinas, led with the story of last night’s murders in Oregon, hitting hard on the two local angles-Lily’s Pebble Beach address and Maxwell’s previous rampage in Monterey County.

But there was no real clarification of Lily’s status. “Portland police say they still aren’t clear as to whether the young woman from Pebble Beach was involved directly with any of the killings, but stressed that until they know more, both fugitives should be considered armed and dangerous,” cautioned the sad-eyed, folksy anchorman with the David Letterman widow’s peak.

“Oh, shut up,” said Irene, switching off the television. She lay there in the dark for another few minutes, then climbed out of bed and went back downstairs to double-check whether she had indeed locked both doors.

As it turned out, she had-for all the good it would do.