have been making sexual advances toward her. Not toward her.
She was, after all, quite undesirable. Plain. Homely. Perhaps even ugly. Nora
knew this was true because, regardless of Violet’s faults, the old woman had
some virtues, one of which was a refusal to mince words. Nora was unattractive,
drab, not a woman who could expect to be held, kissed, cherished. This was a
fact of life that Aunt Violet made her understand at an early age.
Although his personality was repellent, Streck was a physically attractive man,
one who could have his choice of pretty women. It was ridiculous to assume he
would be interested in a drudge like her.
Nora still wore the clothes that her aunt had bought for her—dark, shapeless
dresses and skirts and blouses similar to those that Violet had worn. Brighter
and more feminine dresses would only call attention to her bony, graceless body
and to the characterless and uncomely lines of her face.
But why had Streck said that she was pretty?
Oh, well, that was easily explained. He was making fun of her, perhaps. Or, more
likely, he was being polite, kind.
The more she thought about it, the more Nora believed that she had misjudged the
poor man. At thirty, she was already a nervous old maid, as fear-ridden as she
was lonely.
That thought depressed her for a while. But she redoubled her efforts on the
sketch, finished it, and began another from a different perspective. As the
afternoon waned she escaped into her art.
From downstairs the chimes of the ancient grandfather clock rose punctually on
the hour, half-hour, and quarter-hour.
The west-falling sun turned more golden as time passed, and as the day wore on
the room grew brighter. The air seemed to shimmer. Beyond the south window a
king palm stirred gently in the May breeze.
By four o’clock, she was at peace, humming as she worked. When the telephone
rang, it startled her.
She put down her pencil and reached for the receiver. “Hello?”
“Funny,” a man said.
“Excuse me?”
“They never heard of him.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, “but I think you’ve got the wrong number.” “This is you,
Mrs. Devon?”
She recognized the voice now. It was him. Streck.
For a moment, she could not speak.
He said, “They never heard of him. I called the Santa Barbara police and
asked to speak with Officer Devon, but they said they don’t have an Officer
Devon on the force. Isn’t that odd, Mrs. Devon?”
“What do you want?” she asked shakily.
“I figure it’s a computer error,” Streck said, laughing quietly. “Yeah, sure,
some sort of computer error dropped your husband from their records. I think
you’d better tell him as soon as he gets home, Mrs. Devon. If he doesn’t get
this straightened out . . . why, hell, he might not get his paycheck at the end
of the week.”
He hung up, and the sound of the dial tone made her realize that she should have
hung up first, should have slammed down the handset as soon as he said that he’d
called the police station. She dared not encourage him even to the extent of
listening to him on the phone.
She went through the house, checking all the windows and doors. They were
securely locked.
4
At McDonald’s on East Chapman Avenue in Orange, Travis Cornell had ordered five
hamburgers for the golden retriever. Sitting on the front seat of the pickup,
the dog had eaten all of the meat and two buns, and it had wanted to express its
gratitude by licking his face.
“You’ve got the breath of a dyspeptic alligator,” he protested, holding the
animal back.
The return trip to Santa Barbara took three and a half hours because the
highways were much busier than they had been that morning. Throughout the
journey, Travis glanced at his companion and spoke to it, anticipating a display
of the unnerving intelligence it had shown earlier. His expectations were
unfulfilled. The retriever behaved like any dog on a long trip. Once in a while,
it did sit very erect, looking through the windshield or side window at the
scenery with what seemed an unusual degree of interest and attention. But most