My amusement evaporated as soon as I took a deep breath. I had ten people coming for dinner on Labor Day, and it was already Thursday. Ten people and eight dining room chairs. I could put half of us in the dining room and half in the nook...no.
"What's wrong, Lark?" Freddy took a slurp of Coke. Tom frowned.
I opened my mouth to say "Nothing," but a commotion from the front of the house distracted me. Tom stood up.
I heard Jay, and Bonnie's lighter voice responding to him, and I shook my head.
Tom sank back on his chair. "I could get jumpy hanging around here."
Freddy laughed. I didn't. I hadn't realized I was jumpy, but I was as twitchy as Bonnie's cat.
Jay swung the door open and Bonnie preceded him, carrying a ceramic casserole dish. "Scalloped oysters for dinner," she said. "What's the matter, Lark?"
Jay was watching me, too. "Something wrong?"
I burst into tears.
I hate it when I do that. Even as I blubbered, I knew I was just reacting to too much adrenaline. I have always been far more apprehensive about social crises than about physical danger. I could tell myself I was foolish to disarm a maniac with one cool sweep of my sander, then fall to bits because a couple of strangers were coming to dinner, but I can't help being that kind of fool.
Though my little nerve-storm blew over almost at once, it lasted long enough for Freddy and Tom to disappear. Jay patted me. Bonnie murmured soothing phrases as she set her dish on the counter. I leaned against Jay's sweat-soaked jersey and hiccupped out an account of my disastrous dinner plans.
Bonnie said, "You could stash everybody upstairs on that nifty balcony."
"The balcony is off our bedroom," I moaned. "Besides, we can't eat outside. Jean Knight says it's going to rain."
Jay gave my shoulders a squeeze. "I guess we'll just have to do the living room."
Bonnie set the oven to preheat. "I can paint woodwork."
"But we can't finish--"
Jay kissed my ear. "Sit down at the table, darling, and make a list. I smell like a stalled ox, so I'm going up for a shower now, but I'll be right back."
I sat. Bonnie made me a cup of tea, and found paper and a pen in the drawer by the telephone. I wrote PAINT and stared at the word. The tea smelled good. Bonnie kept up a light chatter about her casserole.
One of the happier consequences of being a woman is that you can cry like a baby and forgive yourself. After a couple of calming sips I began to think. "You'll help?"
"Sure. I'll enjoy it."
"But there's so much to do, I still have to sand the damned floor, and now the hall looks like hell, too--"
"Leave the hall," Bonnie said. "The bullet hole will make a great conversation piece."
"God, Annie McKay is the newspaper editor."
"So let her photograph it. Give her an exclusive."
I snickered.
The back door opened, and Tom stuck his head in. "What's the joke?"
"Just basic goofiness," Bonnie said. Tom had visited his garden. "Salad stuff. That's great, Tom." She shoved him at the sink. "We're going to paint Lark's living room tomorrow."
"Good idea." He turned on the water and started rinsing bibb lettuce. "That's a high ceiling. How are you fixed for ladders, Lark?"
"One step ladder." I had used it when I painted the kitchen. "And some rollers and pans."
"We'll need a couple of extra ladders if we're all going to pitch in." Tom took my salad spinner from the shelf and started loading it with lettuce. "And tarps. Extensions for the roller handles."
I scribbled on my list.
"I have piles of remodeling gear locked up in my garage. My grandfather did repairs on summer people's houses."
"Won't your crew need the ladders?"
"Those bozos don't come until Tuesday."
"Frustrating," Bonnie said.
"A little." Tom glanced at me warily as if I might burst into tears again. "But the power's on, and at least they threw a tarp over the hole in the roof. Let's deal with Lark's living room. You won't need to buy hammers or a saw--" He gave the spinner a whirl.
"Geez!" I remembered the molding. And I still hadn't sanded the floor.
"I have carpenter's tools and fifty years' worth of nails." Tom twirled the knob, and the spinner rattled away. "You should apply a clear acrylic to that floor."
"I was going to use oil and wax," I protested.
"Nice theory." Tom peeked at the lettuce and put the lid back on. "Sand from the beach would chew up an oiled surface inside a week. Not to mention what water and mud will do when it starts raining again. Also you'll need to let the acrylic season thirty six hours or so."
"Oh." Thirty six hours!
"What colors are you going to use?" Bonnie interjected.
"White."
"Hmm." Bonnie sounded polite. Tom frowned and spun the wheel.
I stuck out my jaw. "I am going to paint everything in that room white except the floor."
"Why not let me call Clara Klein?" Tom gave the spinner a last twist.
I moaned again. "And invite her to dinner?"
He laughed. "Invite her to look at your living room. She has a great eye."
"We need to get started right away."
"Sure. I'll drive you over to Kayport tonight in the pickup, if you like. McKay Supply stays open until nine. Meanwhile, let me call Clara."
I rolled my eyes. "Okay, but you'll have to ask her to dinner on Labor Day. I'd better call Ruth Adams and Matt too."
Bonnie cleared her throat. "That's thirteen people, Lark."
I waved my hand in a grandiose gesture, slopping tea. "Who's superstitious?"
Tom called Clara. I was relieved to hear she already had an invitation for Labor Day. She was on her way to the bar of the Blue Oyster for a drink and dinner--they didn't allow smoking in the dining room--and she'd pop over on her way.
When Tom hung up I took over the phone. Ruth thanked me, but her kids were coming with the grandchildren, and was it true a crazy man had taken a potshot at Tom in my front hall? I gave Ruth an exclusive. She sounded as if she might ask for my autograph. Matt Cramer wasn't home, so I left a confused invitation on his recorder.
By the time I rang off, Jay had come down in jeans and a work shirt. He and Tom took a steel measuring tape into the living room.
Bonnie set her oysters in the oven and turned on the timer. "Early dinner. The painting's going to be fun."
"Chaos," I said with affected gloom, but I felt much more cheerful. I am a creature of action.
I got up and finished making salad. Tom had brought two tomatoes from his hot frame. Bonnie's scalloped oysters were delicious, though we scarfed dinner in record time. I started parceling out tasks at the table.
Jay and Freddy had built Jay's log house in Monte when Freddy was only fifteen, so Freddy couldn't claim inexperience. He did point out that if he wasted his time daubing my walls the computer would languish. I excused him only after he promised to deliver Tom's chapters in time for the party. Also he would have to forage for himself. I had no intention of cooking.
It was clear from the way they exchanged dimensions that Jay and Tom were the logical ones to lay in the painting supplies. I intended to sand the floor. Bonnie said she'd vacuum after me and clean up the kitchen.
Shortly after the men took off in Tom's pickup, Clara Klein rang the bell. She was wearing a wild batik with a matching turban and narrow tan trousers. She waved a cigarette at my couch and sofa--they were still shoved against the dining room wall--and when I showed her the living room she told me it had great proportions.
I said I wanted it all white. Clara didn't even try to argue. She just nodded and smoked, making little hmmms. Finally she said the red brick fireplace should definitely disappear under at least three coats of white. There was a special paint for bricks. When I repeated that I wanted the walls white, she smiled and admired the mantel. It was rather nice. She tossed her cigarette in the fireplace and looked at her watch.
I knew I was being surly. I gritted my teeth. "I really appreciate your coming over, Clara."
"No problem. See you in the morning."
I hadn't bargained on that. I told her the men had orders to bring home four gallons of white latex.
She gave me a pat on the shoulder and made for the front door. "Great proportions. Night." She hopped into her Karman Ghia and drove off.
I put on the mask the rental company recommended, grabbed my old Walkman and a couple of Springsteen tapes, and started sanding. I sanded the floor three times with different grades of sandpaper. Every pass I took was another swipe at Donald Hagen. It felt good.
Bonnie was true to her word. Each time she heard the sander stop, she trotted in with my vacuum cleaner and shooed me off to the kitchen for a break. By my first break the kitchen was clean. By the second I found she had hauled out my ancient crockpot. I lifted the lid and sniffed. Soup for the troops. A good idea--it could cook all night and all day.
Bonnie and I were scrubbing the floor with Green Stuff when Tom's pickup turned into the drive. Long strips of wood hung out the back of the truck. Tom and Jay unloaded it and came in to admire our handiwork. It was ten o'clock. We had a last cup of coffee, and Bonnie went home. Jay and I were in bed by eleven, and I fell into sleep as if I were falling down Alice's rabbit hole. I think Jay was exhausted, too. He didn't thrash around the way he often does.
To my surprise Darla showed up the next morning before eight-thirty. Freddy had called her the previous night. She was wearing a long-sleeved blue work shirt and jeans, and she said she wanted to help. She had taken a day off work. I was touched, though I did wonder whether she was hot to paint or hot to be at the center of the action. I had heard the story of the shooting on the Astoria radio station when I listened to the seven o'clock news. Five reporters of assorted media had left messages on the answering machine.
I set Bonnie and Darla scrubbing woodwork. Clara Klein breezed in fifteen minutes later. She accepted a cup of coffee, and I dug out my lone ashtray. We strolled, cups in hand, to the living room. Bonnie and Darla looked up, and Clara gave them a big smile. Then she turned on me.
She explained, very gently, that white fireplaces were okay and even white woodwork. She could tolerate a white ceiling. But acres of white wall? No. The room would look like a very old-fashioned hospital--a TB sanatorium, perhaps, as in Thomas Mann, or selected scenes from A Farewell to Arms.
She had set the ashtray on the mantel. "Trust me, Lark." She flicked an ash. Her eyes gleamed.
"Not mauve." I was wavering.
Clara's eyebrows shot up. "Mauve would be stunning."
"I don't want stunning. I want comfortable."
She grinned. "Trust me. I've seen your couch."
"My mother-in-law gave us that sofa and the matching chairs. They're ghastly expensive." They were real suede, pale cocoa-colored and squishy with cushions. There was also a very large hassock.
"I can believe it. Expensive and boring. Never mind. Everything will look great." She stubbed out her cigarette, plunked her coffee cup on the mantel and held out her hand. "Receipt?"
What could I do? I found it for her and even helped her load the four gallons of flat white latex into the Karman Ghia.
Jay and Tom were bringing in Tom's extra stepladders. They spread tarps over my sanded floor and went into the kitchen for coffee. Then they stood in the living room with their mugs, making male planning noises while Bonnie and Darla scrubbed. We had filled all the cracks in the ceiling within half an hour and were ready to start in on it with long-handled rollers.
Jay had bought a white paint thickened with sand for the ceiling. To my surprise, it covered in one coat plus daubs. It was dry by eleven-thirty, and Darla and Bonnie had scrubbed everything in sight, including the fireplace. We were ready to attack the walls.
Clara hadn't returned, so I called time and we took a lunch break. Darla pointed out that I ought to remove the salmon from the freezer if I wanted it thawed by Monday. I would not have thought of that. I dashed out for the salmon, and Darla dashed upstairs to get Freddy.
All of us repaired to the kitchen where we built enormous sandwiches and talked strategy. Darla and Bonnie argued over whether to strip several coats of paint from the woodwork or just to sand. Tom and Jay rumbled over the relative merits of rollers and sponges for painting walls. Freddy gave us a computer update in his light, eager tenor. Listening to them, I realized I was enjoying myself hugely.
So were they. Jay had lost the look of tooth-grinding tension. Tom, whose black hair was speckled with bits of plaster, kept making the kind of wisecracks that are hilarious in context and make no sense otherwise. We laughed and ate. We were full of energy.
For a mad moment I considered suggesting Tom fire his laggard crew. We could finish my living room and move on to his place in a kind of pioneer barn-raising. Fortunately I kept my thought to myself. Tom didn't need to think about his charred belongings. Bonnie didn't need to brood about her prowler, or Jay about his close call with an urban cowboy, or Darla about her coming injunction. None of us needed to think about the murder. I had inadvertently created an island outside of time. I wished it wouldn't end.
Clara showed up as we straggled back to the living room. She declined a sandwich but took a cup of coffee and my ashtray. She had bought taupe paint. Gray, she assured me, would look cold in the normal northwest overcast. Taupe was much warmer. It was pale taupe, she said.
I associated taupe with panty-hose, but I decided to keep my mouth shut and see what the walls looked like before I squawked. I could always cover them with white later.
Clara eyed me defensively through her protective cloud of smoke. So I thanked her. When she discovered we were about to open the cans of sealant, she took off for home. She was allergic to the fumes, she said, but she promised to come back early Monday to supervise hanging my great-grandmother's woven coverlet.
Before we covered the powdery residue of the defunct wallpaper with sealant we had to patch more cracks. That took all five of us and two hours of creative spackling. Then we opened the sealant, and I understood Clara's flight. The stuff smelled like a World War I gas attack.
Tom made us open all the windows and doors--he had used the sealant before--and we worked in teams. Tom, Jay, and I used the long-handled rollers on the upper reaches. We took a break and headed for the dunes to air our lungs while Bonnie and Darla finished off.
Jean Knight's rain had not yet begun, but a gusty wind was blowing from the southwest. The three of us stood on the crest of dunes behind Bonnie's house and looked south. There were no helicopter noises from the resort site and no signs of life. The stillness had an air of expectation, of dread, possibly. I shivered in the rising wind.
Jay said, "I talked to the sheriff. He agreed to let me off the hook."
"Great." I was relieved. "When did you call him?"
"Yesterday--after I ran."
Tom squinted in the fitful sunlight. "What do you mean, off the hook?"
"I'm not going to take part in the official investigation."
"I thought you wanted to."
"Not particularly. I have a textbook to finish, remember? I just didn't want to offend the police."
"Don't you get your students from the high schools?"
"Some. The best are working cops, though. I pointed out to the sheriff that getting shot at by one of the suspects was likely to compromise my testimony. I've already given Nelson guidelines. He's pretty sharp, so the evidence should be okay. The main problem with that department is lack of organization."
They talked for a while about the kinds of physical evidence a forensics team ought to evaluate. Tom got interested in insects. He sounded as if he were taking mental notes. I would have laid a bet that his next novel would involve a crime with a bug-ridden corpse.
Writers are weird people. My mother once told me she was collecting images for one of her better-known poems at her grandfather's funeral. I can't manage that degree of detachment.
After perhaps five minutes of investigative theory, I steered the conversation back to the events of the previous day. "How much do you know about Donald Hagen, Tom?"
He shrugged. "We've never met. After yesterday, I can't say I want to meet him."
"Was he younger than your...than Cleo?"
"Four or five years. Cleo and I were the same age, but she always had an eye for younger guys."
"I thought Hagen was pretty stupid."
"I gather he's no genius, but he doesn't have to be. The Hagen Group is a family firm--privately owned."
"A sinecure. He must be a rich man."
"Cleo had an eye for the main chance." He sounded more amused than bitter. "But she always pulled her weight. She earned more than I did the whole time we were married, though I was making a good salary."
Jay said, "What did you do?"
"Wrote advertising copy."
"Ugh!" That boggled my mind. Nothing in the style of either book suggested advertising, and Small Victories satirized TV hype. Debasement of language was one of the book's major motifs.
Tom smiled. "As long as you can look at it as a game, like Scrabble or acrostics, writing copy's enjoyable. I had interesting accounts--couple of Napa Valley wineries, a software firm, a chain of Mexican restaurants."
"But you quit to write novels full time?" Jay hunched a shoulder against the wind.
Tom sighed. "Not just like that. I came north when my grandparents died. They were killed in a car wreck."
I said, "I'm sorry, Tom. That must've been awful."
"It was a shock. They were getting on, of course, and I'd thought about illness--cancer or heart trouble. I wasn't ready to lose them both." He rubbed his forehead. "Hell, I wasn't ready to lose either of them, and not that way. My mother was killed in a car wreck when I was twelve."
We stood silent for a while, and then Tom added, "My grandparents died five years ago, the year after I divorced Cleo."
So he had initiated the divorce. I wondered if Jay found that as interesting as I did.
Jay is a professional interrogator. He changed the subject. "How did you get started writing?"
Tom blinked. "I dunno. I guess I've always been a story teller. It runs in the family." He laughed. "The LaPorte family anyway. Grandma was famous for her tall tales. My grandfather was a reader, a great patron of the Shoalwater Public Library. I remember him reading me Forester's Hornblower stories when I was really young."
Jay turned his back on the wind. "Did you study writing?"
Tom nodded. "At UCLA, after I got out of the army. I'd published a couple of stories by the time I graduated, and I thought I could write fiction on the side. Most writers do."
I rubbed my arms. "Couldn't you get a fellowship?"
He shrugged. "Maybe, if I'd applied. I needed a job with a decent salary. My grandparents were getting older. Grandpa shouldn't have been out in all kinds of weather harvesting oysters--not that he was going to listen to me. I thought I ought to help them out. Besides, I wanted a piece of the action myself. Poverty is over-rated. I got through UCLA by cleaning rich people's swimming pools and eating a lot of beans. I don't like beans."
I knew that. He liked salmon, and crab at fifteen dollars a pound. I sighed. "Did you meet Cleo in San Francisco?"
"Yeah, at a party. She looked good through the haze of dope. She looked good when the smoke cleared, as a matter of fact. She was a beautiful woman--" He shoved a hand through his hair. "Cleo knew how to make her beauty vulnerable. I'm usually intimidated by beautiful women, but she got past that. I have no idea why she decided I'd make a good investment."
"Maybe she liked writers," Jay suggested.
"A groupie?" Tom snorted. "She never read anything but annual reports and the Wall Street Journal. And she was jealous as hell of the time I spent writing Starvation Hill."
Jay's eyebrows rose. "Did you write that in San Francisco?"
I was surprised too. The book was pure Pacific Northwest--culture, language, geography.
"Partly." Tom made a face. "Took me seven years, counting the time I spent on it in college. Chapter two was my senior thesis."
A four-wheeler loaded with kids jounced down the beach, well in excess of the twenty-five mile-an-hour speed limit. We watched it out of sight.
"Shitheads. They're driving on the clam beds." Tom sighed. "People think novelists just whip stories out. Maybe some do, but Starvation Hill took a lot of digging."
I was thinking about Cleo. "And your wife didn't like your preoccupation?"
"I don't know which she resented more--the amount of money I spent on research, or the time. At first she was enthusiastic. She even came up here with me a couple of times, though she hated Shoalwater. I guess she thought I'd write the kind of novel that gets you on "Geraldo". That rarely happens, especially not with a first novel, but she kept talking as if I was going to turn into Tom Wolfe or Norman Mailer. She had unrealistic expectations, which is strange, because otherwise Cleo was as hard-headed as they come."
"Did you have problems selling the novel?"
He laughed. "Freddy tells me you're a bookseller. What do you think?"
"That books like Starvation Hill come along once a decade." I added, with reluctant truth, "And that you probably had a hard time placing it. Publishers don't like risks." I hung on doggedly. "The house that did print it--"
"Wheeler Incorporated." He looked as if the name tasted sour. "They went out of business. The receivers remaindered Starvation Hill about three weeks after it was published. Since I'd never seen a check for the advance--"
"What!" That stunned me, though it shouldn't have. Jay was scowling.
Tom looked away as if the confession embarrassed him. "I was a patsy." He dug at a clump of beach grass with the toe of his sneaker. "When the committee told me Starvation Hill had won that book award, I had to tell them it was already out of print. They were sympathetic, but it was a damned awkward situation. I felt like a fool."
Jay made a growling sound.
"What did Cleo think of that?" I asked. "Were you divorced by then?"
"We split six years ago, one of those no-fault California divorces. If she'd known about the book she would have felt vindicated." He smiled a small, wry smile. "I was damned glad she didn't. It was not a good year for me. The IRS audited my tax returns and reclassified writing as my hobby."
I drew a sharp breath.
Tom's mouth twisted. "Technically I'm not a writer at all, I'm a fisherman."
"Can they do that?" Indignation sharpened Jay's voice.
"Can and did. I wasn't earning enough from writing. Until I sold Small Victories last year I couldn't even have got a hearing."
I said, "Small Victories has to be doing well now."
Tom nodded. "It's selling. When the critics liked it, the secondary rights people put the paperback rights up for auction. That brought in a nice chunk of cash, or it will when everything's ironed out. The film rights sold, too. I can file as a writer next year."
"Are you going to?"
He grinned. "I thought it would be more entertaining to see if the feds audit me again and insist I'm a fisherman."
"Maybe they'll classify fishing as a hobby this time," I offered.
"Did Cleo Hagen know about Small Victories?" For the first time Jay sounded like a cop.
There was a long pause. A car passed our house going south. The driver craned to look at us. We were due for the Siege Curious.
Tom said, "Cleo's information was out of date. I didn't enlighten her."
Jay's face stayed neutral. "She thought you were broke?"
"People with Cleo's resources have no trouble doing credit checks on peons like me. She knew what I made last year to the dollar, and she knew I'd sold Small Victories for a modest advance. She hadn't heard about the rest."
"So she offered to buy your house out of the kindness of her heart?"
Tom was watching Jay with dark, wary eyes. "She knew how I felt about the place, and she thought she could take it from me."
Jay raised his eyebrows. "A motive for murder?"
"It would have been last year. This year I can afford a lawyer."
I had been doing some adding up. "When you said you were going out on a boat on Labor Day, you meant working."
Tom nodded. "Yeah, Darla's Uncle Henry lets me crew when I need cash. It gets a little uncomfortable in winter, but I've been working on the boats off and on since I turned fifteen."
If you fell into the ocean off the Shoalwater Peninsula you would die of hypothermia within twenty minutes. In summer.
Tom was saying, "At least fishing doesn't do weird things to my head."
I kicked at a clump of dunegrass. "You're being inconsistent. You said writing copy was like a game--"
"I said as long as I could think of it as a game I could go on doing that, but writing anything else while you're in a book mucks up your sense of language. I'm better off fishing." He added, when he caught my unbelieving stare, "Maybe not financially. Better off as a writer. Small Victories was a fairly cynical attempt to produce a commercial novel."
I scuffed the sand. "It's a good book!"
"It's solid contemporary satire, and the research cost $l7.42 counting a library fine."
"Cost-effective. The IRS should love it."
"That's what I thought. It's my IRS book."
I said, "The next one's not satire, is it?"
"No."
"So Cleo Hagen knew about your financial troubles."
"That's right. And she was going to push me to sell the house."
"Do you think the Hagen Group will keep after you?"
"I doubt it. They don't need my place. If they'd needed it, they would've wanted Bonnie's, too. The cottage was on the market almost a year."
"At thirty-five thousand?" I still found the prices incredible.
"Is that what she paid for it?" Tom didn't even sound interested. "Cleo offered me seventy-five. Just enough to stay within the limits of probability. If she'd wanted land, she'd have snapped up Bonnie's place, and grabbed for this one and Matt Cramer's lot, too. But she didn't. She was just trying to get at me."
Jay tugged at his mustache, eyes on Tom's face. "If I were you, I wouldn't repeat what you've said to Dale Nelson. He thinks the offer for your house meant you had to want Cleo Hagen alive and dealing. That's the only reason he didn't arrest you."
"Do you think I killed Cleo?"
"No." Jay didn't hesitate.
Tom scuffed sand. "I wish to hell I knew who did it."
"Want me to try to find out?"
I stared at my husband. Ordinarily he despises what he calls civilian interference in police cases. I had underestimated his outrage.
Tom drew a long breath. "If you're serious, yes. Strange as it may seem, I loved Cleo. I didn't like her, mind you. I couldn't live with her. But I did love her."
"Will you cooperate?"
"Yes. I can't say it'll break my heart if the killer turns out to be Donald Hagen."
Jay's face closed. "If he is, I'll find out. I called my mother yesterday. My late stepfather--Freddy's dad--had a lot of connections in California real estate. I told Ma to cash in her favors. She keeps in touch with those people--or her lawyer does."
The thought of my mother-in-law, Nancy, playing detective tickled me so much I was ready to call her myself.
Jay was saying, "Of course you realize I'll have to give whatever I find out to Nelson if it seems relevant to the official investigation."
Tom shrugged. "I have no beef with Dale. He's trying to be fair, and he isn't the sort to make an arrest without a strong case."
Jay stuck out his hand. "I'll do what I can, then."
Tom shook it. "Thanks. I keep saying that--"
"Uh, I think Bonnie wants us across the street," I said.
When we got to the porch, Bonnie announced that she and Darla had finished and that Matt Cramer had called from the hospital. Lottie was going into surgery to remove a blood clot in her brain. That cast a pall.
We waited an hour for the sealant to dry on the walls. The taupe paint went on fast. It looked awful. When I saw the grungy brown I almost had another fit of weeping. However, the paint did dry lighter. Tom and Jay nailed the strips of wood to the baseboards in short order while the female contingent gave the fireplace its first coat. The disappearance of the red brick almost convinced me the walls needed color--but not taupe. Though we spent a lot more time painting the woodwork, the chore went surprisingly fast with all of us working. I kept my eyes averted from the taupe walls.
Jean Knight called again, horrified to hear of the shooting. She volunteered to cancel, but I had got the bit between my teeth. Besides, if Jay was serious about doing an independent investigation, he would want to meet the McKays. They represented an important focus of hostility to what Cleo Hagen had stood for. In a sense, Cleo and Annie McKay had been rivals for power in the community. I wondered how seriously Annie took her leadership role. I wondered how she felt about Tom's book.
We painted and grazed in the kitchen and painted some more. Bonnie's soup was tasty, though less interesting than mine. Jay took a couple of official calls and Tom one. Two reporters left messages. We kept painting. By ten I had to admit that everything except the floor was looking as good as it was going to look. Tom thought we might get away with two coats of acrylic. Jay held out for three. Bonnie yawned. I sent her home, and we headed for our bedrooms. Darla and Freddy were brooding over the computer.
As Jay and I snuggled into the big bed, the first rain hit the French doors. I listened, drowsing.
"You ought to drive to the hospital tomorrow," Jay murmured.
"To see how Lottie's doing?" Rain rattled the windows. "You're right. It's my turn."
"Flowers."
I nestled against him. "She'll be in intensive care. Jay?"
"Mmn?"
"I don't like taupe."
He didn't answer. The wind gusted and the rain poured down. I decided to let my grievance ride.