Besides, Hilda had died suddenly, while cooking, without first suffering fever, incontinence-which ruled out the plague. And which, in fact, ruled out every other known infectious disease, too.
Yet there were no blatant signs of violence. No bleeding gunshot wounds. No stab wounds. No indications that the housekeeper had been beaten or strangled.
Jenny stepped around the body and went to the counter by the sink. She touched the head of cabbage and was startled to find that it was still chilled. It hadn't been here on the cutting board any longer than an hour or so.
She turned away from the counter and looked down at Hilda again, but with even greater dread than before.
The woman had died within the past hour. The body might even still be warm to the touch.
But what had killed her?
Jenny was no closer to an answer now than she had been before she'd examined the body. And although disease didn't seem to be the culprit here, she couldn't rule it out. The possibility of contagion, though remote, was frightening.
Hiding her concern from Lisa, Jenny said, “Come on, honey. I can use the phone in my office.”
“I'm feeling better now,” Lisa said, but she got up at once, obviously eager to go.
Jenny put an arm around the girl, and they left the kitchen.
An unearthly quiet filled the house. The silence was so deep that the whisper of their footsteps on the hall carpet was thunderous by contrast.
Despite overhead fluorescent lights, Jenny's office wasn't a stark, impersonal room like those that many physicians preferred these days. Instead, it was an old-fashioned, country doctor's office, rather like a Norman Rockwell painting in the Saturday Evening Post. Bookshelves were overflowing with books and medical journals. There were six antique wooden filing cabinets that Jenny had gotten for a good price at an auction. The walls were hung with diplomas, anatomy charts, and two large watercolor studies of Snowfield. Beside the locked drug cabinet, there was a scale, and beside the scale, on a small table, was a box of inexpensive toys-little plastic cars, tiny soldiers, miniature dolls-and packs of sugarless chewing gum that were dispensed as rewards-or bribes-to children who didn't cry during examinations.
A large, scarred, dark pine desk was the centerpiece of the room, and Jenny guided Lisa into the big leather chair behind it.
“I'm sorry,” the girl said.
“Sorry?-” Jenny said, sitting on the edge of the desk and pulling the telephone toward her.
“I'm sorry I flaked out on you. When I saw… the body… I… well… I got hysterical.”
“You weren't hysterical at all. Just shocked and frightened, which is understandable.”
“But you weren't shocked or frightened.”
“Oh, yes,” Jenny said, “Not just shocked; stunned.”
“But you weren't scared, like I was.”
“I was scared, and I still am.” Jenny hesitated, then decided that, after all, she shouldn't hide the truth from the girl. She told her about the disturbing possibility of contagion. “I don't think it is a disease that we're dealing with here, but I could be wrong. And if I'm wrong…”
The girl stared at Jenny with wide-eyed amazement. “You were scared, like me, but you still spent all that time examining the body. Jeez, I couldn't do that. Not me. Not ever.”
“Well, honey, I'm a doctor. I'm trained for it.”
“Still…”
“You didn't flake out on me,” Jenny assured her.
Lisa nodded, apparently unconvinced.
Jenny lifted the telephone receiver, intending to call the sheriff's Snowfield substation before contacting the coroner over in Santa Mira, the county seat. There was no dial tone, just a soft hissing sound. She jiggled the disconnect buttons on the phones cradle, but the line remained dead.
There was something sinister about the phone being out of order when a dead woman lay in the kitchen. Mrs. Beck had been murdered. If someone cut the telephone line and crept into the house, and if he sneaked up on Hilda with care and cunning… well… he could have stabbed her in the back with a long-bladed knife that had sunk deep enough to pierce her heart, killing her instantly. In that case, the wound would have been where Jenny couldn't have seen it-unless she had rolled the corpse completely over, onto its stomach. That didn't explain why there wasn't any blood. And it didn't explain the universal bruising, the swelling. Nevertheless, the wound could be in the housekeeper's back, and since she had died within the past hour, it was also conceivable that the killer-if there was a killer-might still be here, in the house.
I'm letting my imagination run away with me, Jenny thought.
But she decided it would be wise for her and Lisa to get out of the house right away.
“We'll have to go next door and ask Vince or Angie Santini to make the calls for us,” Jenny said quietly, getting up from the edge of the desk. “Our phone is out of order.”
Lisa blinked. “Does that have anything to do with… what happened?”
“I don't know,” Jenny said.
Her heart was pounding as she crossed the office toward the half-closed door. She wondered if someone was waiting on the other side.
Following Jenny, Lisa said, “But the phone being out of order now… it's kind of strange, isn't it?”
“A little.”
Jenny half-expected to encounter a huge, grinning stranger with a knife. One of those sociopaths who seemed to be in such abundant supply these days. One of those Jack the Ripper imitators whose bloody handiwork kept the TV reporters supplied with grisly film for the six o'clock news.
She looked into the hall before venturing out there, prepared to jump back and slam the door if she saw anyone. It was deserted.
Glancing at Lisa, Jenny saw the girl had quickly grasped the situation.
They hurried along the hall toward the front of the house, and as they approached the stairs to the second floor, which lay just this side of the foyer, Jenny's nerves were wound tighter than ever. The killer-if there is a killer, she reminded herself exasperatedly-might be on the stairs, listening to them as they moved toward the front door. He might lunge down the steps as they passed him, a knife raised high in his hand…
But no one waited on the stairs.
Or in the foyer. Or on the front porch.
Outside, the twilight was fading rapidly into night. The remaining light was purplish, and shadows-a zombie army of them-were rising out of tens of thousands of places in which they had hidden from the sunlight. In ten minutes, it would be dark…
Chapter 4 – The House Next Door
The Santinis' stone and redwood house was of more modern design than Jenny's place, all rounded corners and gentle angles. It thrust up from the stony soil, conforming to the contours of the slope, set against a backdrop of massive pines; it almost appeared to be a natural formation. Lights were on in a couple of the downstairs rooms.
The front door was ajar. Classical music was playing inside.
Jenny rang the bell and stepped back a few paces, where Lisa was waiting. She believed that the two of them ought to keep some distance between themselves and the Santinis; it was possible they had been contaminated merely by being in the kitchen with Mrs. Beck's corpse.
“Couldn't ask for better neighbors,” she told Lisa, wishing the hard, cold lump in her stomach would melt. “Nice people.”
No one responded to the doorbell.
Jenny stepped forward, pressed the button again, and returned to Lisa's side. “They own a ski shop and a gift store in town.”
The music swelled, faded, swelled. Beethoven.
“Maybe no one's home,” Lisa said.
“Must be someone here. The music, the lights…”
A sudden, sharp whirlwind churned under the porch roof, blades of air chopping up the strains of Beethoven, briefly transforming that sweet music into irritating, discordant sound.
Jenny pushed the door all the way open. A light was on in the study, to the left of the foyer. Milky luminescence spilled out of the open study doors, across the oak-floored foyer, to the brink of the dark living room.
“Angie? Vince?” Jenny called.
No answer.
Just Beethoven. The wind abated, and the torn music was knitted together again in the windless calm. The Third Symphony, Eroica.
“Hello? Anybody home?”
The symphony reached its stirring conclusion, and when the last note faded, no new music began. Apparently, the stereo had shut itself off. “Hello?”
Nothing. The night behind Jenny was silent, and the house before her was now silent, too.
“You aren't going in there?” Lisa asked anxiously.
Jenny glanced at the girl. “What's the matter?”
Lisa bit her lip. “Something's wrong. You feel it, too, don't you?”
Jenny hesitated. Reluctantly, she said, “Yes. I feel it, too.”
“It's as if… as if we're alone here… just you and me… and then again… not alone.”
Jenny did have the strangest feeling that they were being watched. She turned and studied the lawn and the shrubs, which had been almost completely swallowed by the darkness. She looked at each of the blank windows that faced onto the porch. There was light in the study, but the other windows were flat, black, and shiny. Someone could be standing just beyond any of those panes of glass, cloaked in shadow, seeing but unseen.
“Let's go, please,” Lisa said, “Let's get the police or somebody. Let's go now. Please.”
Jenny shook her head. “We're overwrought. Our imagination is getting the best of us. Anyway, I should take a look in there, just in case someone's hurt-Angie, Vince, maybe one of the kids…”
“Don't.” Lisa grabbed Jenny's arm, restraining her.
“I'm a doctor. I'm obligated to help.”
“But if you picked up a germ or something from Mrs. Beck, you might infect the Santinis. You said so yourself.”
“Yes, but maybe they're already dying of the same thing that killed Hilda. What then? They might need medical attention.”
“I don't think it's a disease,” Lisa said bleakly, echoing Jenny's own thoughts. “It's something worse.”
“What could be worse?”
“I don't know. But I… I feel it. Something worse.”
The wind rose up again and rustled the shrubs along the porch.
“Okay,” Jenny said, “You wait here while I go have a look.”
“No,” Lisa said quickly, “If you're going in there, so am I.”
“Honey, you wouldn't be flaking out on me if you-”
“I'm going,” the girl insisted, letting go of Jenny's arm. “Let's get it over with.”
They went into the house.
Standing in the foyer, Jenny looked through the open door on the left.
“Vince?”
Two lamps cast warm golden light into every corner of Vince Santini's study, but the room was deserted.
“Angie? Vince? Is anyone here?”
No sound disturbed the preternatural silence, although the darkness itself seemed somehow alert, watchful-as if it were a crouching animal.
To Jenny's right, the living room was draped with shadows as thick as densely woven black hunting. At the far end, a few splinters of light gleamed at the edges and at the bottom of a set of doors that closed off the dining room, but that meager glow did nothing to dispel the gloom on this side.
She found a wall switch that turned on a lamp, revealing the unoccupied living room.
“See,” Lisa said, “no one's home.”
“Let's have a look in the dining room.”
They crossed the living room, which was furnished with comfortable beige sofas and elegant, emerald-green Queen Anne wing chairs. The stereo phonograph and tape deck were nestled inconspicuously in a corner wall unit. That's where the music had been coming from; the Santinis had gone out and left it playing.
At the end of the room, Jenny opened the double doors, which squeaked slightly.
No one was in the dining room, either, but the chandelier shed light on a curious scene. The table was set for an early Sunday supper: four placemats; four clean dinner plates; four matching salad plates, three of them shiny-clean, the fourth holding a serving of salad; four sets of stainless-steel flatware; four glasses-two filled with milk, one with water, and one with an amber liquid that might be apple juice. Ice cubes, only partly melted, floated in both the juice and the water. In the center of the table were serving dishes: a bowl of salad, a platter of ham, a potato casserole, and a large dish of peas and carrots. Except for the salad, from which one serving had been taken, all of the food was untouched. The ham had grown cold. However, the cheesy crust on top of the potatoes was unbroken, and when Jenny put one hand against the casserole, she found that the dish was still quite warm. The food had been put on the table within the past hour, perhaps only thirty minutes ago.
“Looks like they had to go somewhere in an awful hurry,” Lisa said.
Frowning, Jenny said, “It almost looks as if they were taken away against their will.”
There were a few unsettling details. Like the overturned chair. It was lying on one side, a few feet from the table. The other chairs were upright, but on the floor beside one of them lay a serving spoon and a two-pronged meat fork. A balled-up napkin was on the floor, too, in a corner of the room, as if it had not merely been dropped but flung aside. On the table itself, a salt shaker was overturned.
Small things. Nothing dramatic. Nothing conclusive.
Nevertheless, Jenny worried.
“Taken away against their will?” Lisa asked, astonished.
“Maybe.” Jenny continued to speak softly, as did her sister. She still had the disquieting feeling that someone was lurking nearby, hiding, watching them-or at least listening.
Paranoia, she warned herself.
“I've never heard of anyone kidnapping an entire family,” Lisa said.
“Well… maybe I'm wrong. What probably happened was that one of the kids took ill suddenly, and they had to rush to the hospital over in Santa Mira. Something like that.”
Lisa surveyed the room again, cocked her head to listen to the tomblike silence in the house. “No. I don't think so.”
“Neither do I,” Jenny admitted.
Walking slowly around the table, studying it as if expecting to discover a secret message left behind by the Santinis, her fear giving way to curiosity, Lisa said, “It sort of reminds me of something I read about once in a book of strange facts. You know-The Bermuda Triangle or a book like that. There was this big sailing ship, the Mary Celesta… this is back in 1870 or around then… Anyway, the Mary Celesta was found adrift in the middle of the Atlantic, with the table set for dinner, but the entire crew was missing. The ship hadn't been damaged in a storm, and it wasn't leaking or anything like that. There wasn't any reason for the crew to abandon her. Besides, the lifeboats were all still there. The lamps were lit, and the sails were properly rigged, and the food was on the table like I said; everything was exactly as it should have been, except that every last man aboard had vanished. It's one of the great mysteries of the sea.”