Midnight by Dean R. Koontz

“People really make money in stocks?” Peckham asked. “I thought it was about as good an investment as a craps table in Reno. Wasn’t everybody wiped out when the market blew up a couple years ago?”

“It’s a mug’s game for the little guy, but you can do all right if you’re a broker and if you don’t get swept up in the euphoria of a bull market. No market goes up forever or down forever; you just have to guess right about when to start swimming against the current.”

“Retiring at forty-two,” Peckham said wonderingly. “And when I got into the bar business, I thought I was set for life. Told my wife—in good times, people drink to celebrate, in bad times they drink to forget, so there’s no better business than a tavern. Now look.” He indicated the nearly empty room with a sweeping gesture of his right hand. “I’d have done better selling condoms in a monastery.”

“Get me another Guinness?” Sam asked.

“Hey, maybe this place will turn around yet!”

When Peckham returned with the second bottle of stout, Sam said, “Moonlight Cove might be what I’ve been looking for. I guess I’ll stay a few days, get the feel of it. Can you recommend a motel?”

“There’s only one left. Never been much of a tourist town. No one here really wanted that, I guess. Up until this summer, we had four motels. Now three are out of business. I don’t know … even as pretty as it is, maybe this burg is dying. As far as I can see, we aren’t losing population but … dammit, we’re losing something.” He snatched up the bar rag again and began to polish the oak.

“Anyway, try Cove Lodge on Cypress Lane. That’s the last cross street on Ocean Avenue; it runs along the bluff, so you’ll probably have a room with an ocean view. Clean, quiet place.”

5

At the end of the downstairs hall, Chrissie Foster threw open the front door. She raced across the wide porch and down the steps, stumbled, regained her balance, turned right, and fled across the yard, past a blue Honda that evidently belonged to Tucker, heading for the stables. The hard slap of her tennis shoes seemed to boom like cannon fire through the swiftly fading twilight. She wished that she could run silently—and faster. Even if her parents and Tucker didn’t reach the front porch until she was swallowed by shadows, they would still be able to hear where she was going.

Most of the sky was a burnt-out black, though a deep red glow marked the western horizon, as if all the light of the October day had been boiled down to that intense crimson essence, which had settled at the bottom of the celestial cauldron. Wispy fog crept in from the nearby sea, and Chrissie hoped it would swiftly thicken, dense as pudding, because she was going to need more cover.

She reached the first of the two long stables and rolled aside the big door. The familiar and not unpleasant aroma—straw, hay, feed grain, horseflesh, liniment, saddle leather, and dry manure—wafted over her.

She snapped the night-light switch, and three low-wattage bulbs winked on, bright enough to dimly illuminate the building without disturbing the occupants. Ten generously proportioned stalls flanked each side of the dirt-floored main aisle, and curious horses peered out at her above several of the half-size doors. A few belonged to Chrissie’s parents, but most were being boarded for people who lived in and around Moonlight Cove. The horses snuffled and snorted, and one whinnied softly, as Chrissie ran past them to the last box on the left, where a dapple-gray mare named Godiva was in residence.

Access to the stalls also could he had from outside the building, although in this cool season the exterior Dutch-style doors were kept bolted both top and bottom to prevent heat escaping from the barn. Godiva was a gentle mare and particularly amicable with Chrissie, but she was skittish about being approached in the dark; she might rear or bolt if surprised by the opening of her exterior stall door at this hour. Because Chrissie could not afford to lose even a few seconds in calming her mount, she had to reach the mare from inside the stable.