“Well, I better get back to work,” he said.
She gave him a calculatedly distracted smile, and nodded. She began to hum
softly as she returned to her own task, as if untroubled.
He crossed the kitchen and pushed open the swinging door, then stopped and said,
“Your aunt really liked dark places, didn’t she? This kitchen would be swell,
too, if you brightened it up.”
Before she could respond, he went out, letting the door swing shut behind him.
In spite of his unasked-for opinion of the kitchen decor, Streck seemed to have
pulled in his horns, and Nora was pleased with herself. Using a few white lies
about her nonexistent husband, delivered with admirable equanimity, she had
handled him after all. That was not exactly the way a cat would have dealt with
an aggressor, but it was not the timid, frightened behavior of a mouse, either.
She looked around at the high-ceilinged kitchen and decided it was too dark. The
walls were a muddy blue. The frosted globes of the overhead lights were opaque,
shedding a drab, wintry glow. She considered having the kitchen repainted, the
lights replaced.
Merely to contemplate making major changes in Violet Devon’s house was dizzying,
exhilarating. Nora had redone her own bedroom since Violet’s death, but nothing
else. Now, wondering if she could follow through with extensive redecoration,
she felt wildly daring and rebellious. Maybe. Maybe she could. If she could fend
off Streck, maybe she could dredge up the courage to defy her dead aunt.
Her upbeat self-congratulatory mood lasted just twenty minutes, which was long
enough to put the cake pans in the oven and whip up the icing and wash some of
the bowls and utensils. Then Streck returned to tell her the TV set was repaired
and to give her the bill. Though he had seemed subdued when he left the kitchen,
he was as cocky as ever when he entered the second time. He looked her up and
down as if undressing her in his imagination, and when he met her eyes he gave
her a challenging look.
She thought the bill was too high, but she did not question it because she
wanted him out of the house quickly. As she sat at the kitchen table to write
the check, he pulled the now-familiar trick of standing too close to her, trying
to cow her with his masculinity and superior size. When she stood and handed him
the check, he contrived to take it in such a way that his hand touched hers
suggestively.
All the way along the hail, Nora was more than half-convinced that he would
suddenly put down his tool kit and attack her from behind. But she got to the
door, and he stepped past her onto the veranda, and her racing heart began to
slow to a more normal pace.
He hesitated just outside the door. “What’s your husband do?”
The question disconcerted her. It was something he might have asked earlier, in
the kitchen, when she had spoken of her husband, but now his curiosity seemed
inappropriate.
She should have told him it was none of his business, but she was still afraid
of him. She sensed that he could be easily angered, that the pent-up violence in
him could be triggered with minor effort. So she answered him with another lie,
one she hoped would make him reluctant to harass her any further: “He’s a. . .
policeman.”
Streck raised his eyebrows. “Really? Here in Santa Barbara?”
“That’s right.”
“Quite a house for a policeman.”
“Excuse me?” she said.
“Didn’t know policemen were paid so well.”
“Oh, but I told you—I inherited the house from my aunt.”
“Of course, I remember now. You told me. That’s right.”
Trying to reinforce the lie, she said, “We were living in an apartment when my
aunt died, and then we moved here. You’re right—we wouldn’t have been able to
afford it otherwise.”
“Well,” he said, “I’m happy for you. I sure am. A lady as pretty as you deserves
a pretty house.”
He tipped an imaginary hat to her, winked, and went along the walk toward the
street, where his white van was parked at the curb.