she had decided was symbolic. Disentangling herself from the contraption and rubbing her left thigh, Kate limped down the stairs, muttering and unkempt as a street person, a young, muscular, well-fed street person wearing nothing but a navy blue silk tank top, a pair of Campbell plaid flannel boxer shorts, and a thin gold band on the ring finger of her left hand.
She flipped on the door viewer and was surprised to see only the small porch and the street beyond. No, wait - there was a head, the top of a head of dark hair bisected by a perfect sharp part. A child. Kate reached out both hands to turn bolt and knob.
'Look, kid, if you're out here at this ungodly hour selling Girl Scout cookies, I'm going to report you to… Jules? Is that you?'
The child on her doorstep nodded, a subdued movement so unlike the daughter of Jani Cameron that Kate had to lean forward to examine her. She wore a white T-shirt with some kind of foreign writing on it, cutoff shorts, sandals, and a backpack hanging from one thin shoulder; her glossy black hair was in its usual long, tight braids, and she had a Band-Aid on her left knee and a tattoo on the right - no, not an actual tattoo, just a drawing done in blue ink, smudged and fading. Her skin was browner than when Kate had seen her last, in the winter, but it had an odd tinge to it, Kate noted, and a strange, withered sort of texture.
'What's wrong with you?' she asked sharply.
'I just needed to see you, Casey. Kate. Do you think I could come in? It's kind of cold out here.'
Kate realized simultaneously that she was huddled behind the door more from self-protection than from modesty, and that the reason the child looked so gray and pinched was that she was half-frozen, shivering and damp in the dripping fog on this lovely late August morning in sunny California. Perceptive of you, Martinelli, Kate told herself as she stood back to let Jules in. Just call me Shirley Holmes.
'It was warm when I left this morning,' said Jules apologetically. 'I forgot about the fog you get here. It comes over the hills like a giant wave, doesn't it? A tsunami, it's called, a tidal wave. It looked like it was about to crash down and wipe out everything from Palo Alto on up. It's the heat inland that brings the fog, you know. I read an article on it; it's a cycle, a cyclical thing, heating up, the fog coming in, cooling off, and then there's a few clear days while —'
During this informative monologue, Kate led her visitor into the kitchen, switched on the electrical baseboard radiator and waved her hand at the chair nearest it, walked over to the coffee machine, abandoned that, and went out of the kitchen (Jules raised her voice but did not slow down a fraction), coming back with the tan alpaca throw rug that lived on the back of the sofa, dropped it on Jules's lap, then returned to the coffeepot, where she went like an automaton through the familiar motions of beans and grinder, filter and water before switching it on and standing, one hip against the counter and arms akimbo, completely oblivious of Jules's voice, watching with unfocused eyes as the brown liquid began to trickle out into the carafe, the gears of her mind unmeshed, idling, blessedly near to stillness, to sleep…
'Are you angry, Kate?'
Startled into awakeness, Kate turned and nearly knocked a coffee mug from the edge of the counter.
'Jules! Hi. Yes. No, I mean, I'm not angry. Why should I be angry?'
'You looked annoyed when you opened the door. I must've gotten you out of bed.'
'All kinds of people get me out of bed. No, I'm not angry. Are you warmer now? Want something hot to drink? You probably don't like coffee.'
'I like coffee, if you have milk and sugar.'
'Sure. Ah. This milk doesn't look very nice,' she noted as the watery blue blobs slid from the carton into the cup. She squinted at the due date. 'Looks more like yogurt. I don't suppose you want yogurt in your coffee? Doesn't smell very nice, either.'
'No, thank you,' said Jules politely. 'Black with sugar will be fine, but just half a cup, please.'
'Fine, fine,' said Kate, and nodded half a dozen times before she caught herself and took the milk carton and the mug to the sink to empty them. She rinsed the mug, dumped the milk down the drain, pushed the carton into the overflowing garbage can under the sink (hurriedly closing the door), then took out sugar, spoon, and another mug, and resumed her position in front of the gurgling, steaming coffeemaker, watching the coffee dribble slowly, hypnotically out.
'Are you all right?' interrupted the voice behind her. Kate's head snapped upright again.
'Yes, of course. Just not awake yet.'
'It is nearly nine o'clock,' said Jules in mild accusation.
'Yes, and I went to bed at five. I haven't been sleeping well lately. Look, Jules, are you just here for a friendly visit? Because if so, I'm not very good company.'
'No. I need to talk to you. Professionally.'
Oh hell. Kate scrubbed her face with both hands. A lost dog or a playground bully. The neighbor exposing himself. Do I need this?
'I wouldn't bother you if it wasn't important. Weren't. And I have tried the local police.'
'Okay, Jules, I'm not going to throw you out. Just give me ten minutes to jump-start the brain and then I'll put on my cop hat for you.'
'I didn't think homicide detectives wore uniforms.'
'A feeble attempt at humor.' She poured the coffee into two mugs and carried both of them out of the room. 'There's food if you want, Jules,' she called from the stairs.
A minute later, Jules heard the shower start. At twelve, she was, both by nature and through her mother's distracted style of nurturing, quite able to look after herself. She stood up and folded the alpaca throw neatly over the back of the chair, and began a systematic search of the kitchen cabinets and drawers. She found half a loaf of rock-hard French bread and some eggs in the refrigerator, a few strips of bacon in the freezer compartment, a bowl and a frying pan behind the low doors, then began with deliberate movements to assemble them into breakfast. She had to lean her entire weight against the Chinese cleaver to chop the bread into something resembling slices, and substitute frozen orange juice concentrate for the milk, but she had just decided that necessity may have given birth to an interesting invention when a ghastly noise from upstairs, half shriek and half growl, froze her arm in the motion of shaking nutmeg into the bowl. Before the noise had faded, though, she resumed, realizing that Kate was only reacting to a stream of suddenly cold water. Al made the same sorts of noises in the shower sometimes, though not quite so loud. When she had asked about it, he told her that it helped him wake up. She'd never had the nerve to try it herself, and reflected that it must be something they taught you at the Police Academy. She found a sugar bowl and added a large pinch to the beaten eggs.
Kate bounded down the stairs a few minutes later and burst into the kitchen.
'God, it smells like a Denny's in here. What have you been making?'
'There's a plate of French toast for you, if you want it, and some bacon. I couldn't find any syrup, but there's warm honey and jam and powdered sugar.'
Kate swallowed five thick slices and more than her share of the bacon, stopping only because Jules ran out of bread. She ran the last corner of the eggy, buttery fried bread through the pool of liquified honey, put it into her mouth, and sighed.
'I take back the insult. It smells like heaven and tasted like paradise, and what do I have to do to pay you back for it?'
'It's your food, you don't have to pay for it.'
'Wrong. Rule one of being an adult: Nothing in life is free. So, what do you want, how did you get here, and do people know where you are?'
'I took the bus and walked from the station. I actually thought I'd have more trouble, because I've only been here once, but your house is easy to find from downtown. You just walk uphill.'
'Well, that answers the least of the questions, anyway. Do we need to make a phone call so somebody doesn't report you missing?'
'Not really. I left at my normal time this morning - I'm going to a summer school course at the university on writing software. It's really interesting, and I'm sorry to miss today because we work in teams, so I'm wasting my partner's time, but he's always got something of his own he can do. He's a genius - a true genius, I mean, his IQ's even higher than mine. He sold a game to Atari when he was ten, and he's working on another version of it now, so he won't worry or anything if I don't show up. In fact, he might not notice; he has a strange sense of time when he's working. Anyway, nobody expects me home until three or four. Mom arranged for me to have dinner with the
