22

She got out of bed at once. She hurried into clothes, barely stopping to decide what to wear with what, because this had not been an ordinary dream.

This had been a warning. Paul should have called by now, and she knew he was in danger.

She had blundered badly by sending Paul into the wine country. She remembered him as a boy, brought over by her husband’s sister, a bland woman with a large face. She did not want to cause him any pain, and what was waiting for him in the wine country was worse than pain.

She nearly wept with anxiety as she fastened snaps, and glanced at her face in the mirror. She had aged terribly. Perhaps, someday, after a long voyage among the Greek islands, and long walks along Aegean shores, she would regain her beauty. But now she was shattered, and anyone who saw her would see a broken woman.

She would muster her powers as best she could.

She drove through the early-morning rain. Water spurted from around manhole covers like long, gray tentacles, and lapped over the curb carrying rolls of half-dissolved newspaper.

To her annoyance the locksmith was not familiar to her, a surly Hispanic who seemed reluctant to speak English. She explained that she was an artist who had lost the key to her studio. Dropped it down a street drain, wasn’t that the most annoying thing?

He listened to her as if she were a talking tree, and glanced to the Mercedes, parked with one wheel on the curb. He hefted his toolbox, as if the clank of tools communicated something to him.

“It’s terrible when a person loses something,” she said, “it disrupts not only your life, but your peace of mind, too. And that is so important.”

The door was open in five seconds. The locksmith shook his head. “Is no good.”

“What?” she said, fumbling for money.

“No good. The lock. I have made it so that, now it will no longer work without repair.”

“That’s all right.”

“I will go to my truck and bring another lock.”

“It’s all right.”

“These things happen. It is unfortunate.”

“I don’t mind. Please don’t mention it.” She squeezed past him on the stairs.

“There will be no charge. This is a very nice lock. Very well built. It is very unfortunate that I have broken it.”

She looked back at him. She calmed herself in an instant. “Yes,” she said. “I would very much appreciate it if you would replace it at once. I keep valuable things here.” She stared across the expanse of empty floor to the huddle of furniture. “Computers. Cameras. I need a good lock. A lock that will work.”

The man knelt to the key slot, and spoke as if into it. “I will fix it.”

He lumbered down the stairs, and she scurried to the small living area. Paul had left a very un-Len-like clutter. Canceled checks were scattered across the desk. They were scraped into the most casual semblance of order, and she despaired for a moment that she would be able to follow Paul’s tracks, thoughtless ramble that they no doubt were.

She stared into the screen of the computer, finding the distended reflection of her face somehow calming. She let herself grow peaceful, and began to search in her thoughts not for where the hiding place of Len might be, or how she could find out where the name of the place might be hidden, but how Paul might have discovered it.

“I will have it fixed in almost no time at all,” called the echoing voice. “It will be a very easy matter.”

She nodded, pretending to be impatient, but actually glad to have someone there with her. This place was too cavernous, and too cold. Looking around the room, she felt that Len had never expected to return here. He had taken most of the books he would want to have by his side, and he had put the cemetery pictures into a kind of snapshot album. Tears filled her eyes as she saw the careful, fastidious manner in which her son pursued his madness.

She had told Paul that he was a ghost investigator. She had to offer some explanation for what Paul would no doubt realize was an odd hobby. She wished that he were a ghost investigator. It seemed like such a sane pursuit.

The metal box, the one he had kept locked, was gone. For an instant she thought that perhaps he had changed. Perhaps he had outgrown that obsession. But she laughed at herself. He had simply taken it with him. He would not let himself be parted from such an important collection.

If there were any sign of a memo, a notepad, a letter—anything—Paul had taken it. She was lost. She sat on the bed and stared at her hands. There was nothing she could do. Paul would be destroyed.

She wept. She would not allow herself to collapse. Not now. She dried her eyes with the linen handkerchief her mother had used, one of many her mother had brought back from Italy one spring. Her poor mother. Lost in the shuffle between a sportsman and his daughter, she had simply sat one morning a few months after her husband’s death, closed her eyes and died. A stroke, but in the sense of a “stroke of fortune.” She had suffered mostly bewilderment in living, and in her death had suffered not at all.

She put her hand on it before she realized what it was. The canceled check read, “North Coast Realty. Deposit, Parker Cabin.”

So it would be easy, after all.

“It is fixed now. It is okay.”

She put down the phone. Money crackled in her hand. “Thank you.”

“No problem,” he said, and for a moment seemed friendly. He opened his hand and gestured upward. “This is a big place. A very big place.”

“Yes,” she said cheerfully, enjoying the obvious. “Yes, it certainly is.”

“You are an artist.”

“Yes. An artist.”

“I am, too.”

“Oh?”

“I paint.”

“Ah.”

But she saw him glancing into the living space, so she added, “I am a photographer, actually. Not quite a painter.”

“Photography,” said the locksmith, plainly disappointed. “That is an art, too.”

“Oh, yes. And yet there is something impressive about painting. What do you paint?”

“Mesas.”

“Ah.”

“From the desert.”

“Of course.”

“This is a very big place,” he said, and waved himself out, seeming, by his last words, to dismiss her, and her art, as acceptable but effete, using too much money, and too little skill.