“Thanks,” said Fig. “Kevlar body armor?”
“Huh?”
“Kevlar. Bulletproof.”
“Bulletproof vests?” Dusty said.
“Got ’em?”
“No.”
“Want ’em?”
“You have body armor?” Martie marveled.
“Sure.”
Skeet said, “You ever needed it, Fig?”
“Not yet,” said Fig.
Martie shook her head. “Next you’ll be offering us an alien death-ray pistol.”
“Don’t have one,” Fig said with evident disappointment.
“We’ll skip the body armor,” Dusty said. “They might notice how bulked up we look going through airport security.”
“Might,” Fig agreed, taking him seriously.
The doctor found nothing more to engage him downstairs. Though he had a lively interest in the arts and interior design, he didn’t pause to admire even one painting, article of furniture, or
In the bedroom were signs of a hasty departure. Two dresser drawers weren’t closed. A closet door stood open. A sweater lay discarded on the floor.
On a closer inspection of the closet, he saw two matched pieces of luggage stored overhead on a shelf. Beside those two was an empty space where two smaller bags might have been shelved.
Another bedroom and bath provided no clues, and then he came to Martie’s office.
Busy blue-eyed girl. Busy making Hobbit games. Death waits in Mordor.
Across her large U-shaped work area were stacked books, maps of fantasy lands, sketches of characters, and other materials related to her project based on
As he pored through the computer-assisted designs for Hobbits and Orcs and other creatures, the doctor realized one reason why he was able to compose routinely better haiku about Martie than he’d been able to write when Susan and other women were his inspiration. He and Martie shared this gaming interest. She liked the power of being the game master, as did he. At least this one aspect of her mind resonated in sympathy with his.
He wondered if, in time, he might discover other attitudes and passions they shared. Once they were past the current regrettable ferment in their relationship, how ironic it would be to learn that they were fated to have a more complex future together than he had ever envisioned, distracted as he had been by Susan’s exceptional beauty and by Martie’s family connections.
The sweet sentimentalist in Ahriman delighted at the thought of falling in love or at least in something like it. Although his life was full and his habits long established, he would not be averse to the complication of romance.
Proceeding from desktop to desk drawers, he felt now less like a detective than like a naughty lover leafing through his darling’s diary in search of the most guarded secrets of her heart.
In a bank of three drawers, he found nothing to interest either a detective or a lover. In the wide but shallow center drawer, however, among rulers and pencils and erasers and the like, he came upon a microcassette on which SUSAN had been printed in red letters.
He felt what a gifted Gypsy might feel when tipping a mess of tea leaves on a plate and glimpsing a particularly ominous fate in the soggy patterns: a chill that turned the pia mater of his spine into a membrane of ice.
He searched the remaining drawers for a tape recorder that would accept the microcassette. Martie didn’t have one.
When he saw the answering machine on one corner of the desk, he realized what he held in his hand.
The aluminum awning, vibrating in the wind, had the guttural growl of a living beast, as though in the night something hungry waited for Dusty to open the trailer door.
“If the weather forecasts can be believed, the rest of the week is going to be a mess,” he told Fig. “Don’t even try to go out to the Sorenson job. Just look after Skeet and Valet for me.”
“Till when?” Fig asked.
“I don’t know. Depends on what we find out there. Probably be back the day after tomorrow, Friday. But maybe Saturday.”
“We’ll keep ourselves entertained,” Fig promised.
“We’ll play some cards,” Skeet said.
“And monitor shortwave frequencies for alien code bursts,” Fig said, in what was for him the equivalent of an oration.
“Listen to talk radio, I bet,” Skeet predicted.
“Hey,” Fig said to Skeet, “you want to blow up a courthouse?”
Martie said, “Whoa.”
“Joke,” said Fig, with an owlish wink.
“Bad one,” she advised.
Outside, as Dusty and Martie descended the steps and crossed the small porch, the wind tore at them, and all the way to the car, large dead-brown magnolia leaves scuttled like rats at their feet.
Behind them, out of the open door of the trailer came a piercing and pathetic whine from Valet, as though canine precognition told him that he would never see them again.
The indicator window on the answering machine showed two waiting messages. Dr. Ahriman decided to listen to these before reviewing the cassette labeled SUSAN.
The first call was from Martie’s mother. She sounded frantic to find out what was wrong, to learn why her previous calls had not been returned.
The second voice on the tape was that of a woman who identified herself as an airline ticket agent.
Dr. Ahriman marveled at their having focused so quickly on the central importance of his New Mexico days. Martie and Dusty seemed to be supernatural adversaries…until he realized that the Santa Fe connection must have been made for them by Saint Closterman.
Nevertheless, the doctor’s slow and steady pulse, which even during the commission of murder was seldom elevated by more than ten beats per minute, accelerated upon the receipt of this news regarding the Rhodeses’ travel plans.
With an athlete’s intimate awareness of his body, ever sensitive to the maintenance of good health, the doctor sat down again, took several deep breaths, and then consulted his wristwatch to time his pulse. Usually, when he was seated, his rate ranged between sixty and sixty-two beats per minute, because he was in exceptional condition. Now, he counted seventy, a full eight-point elevation, and with no dead woman handy to credit for it.
In the car, as Dusty went in search of a hotel near the airport, Martie at last phoned her mother.
Sabrina was distraught and in full fluster. For minutes, she refused to believe that Martie was not injured or maimed, that she was not the victim of a traffic accident, a drive-by shooting, fire, lightning, a disgruntled postal employee, or that horrid flesh-eating bacteria that was in the news again.
As she listened to this rant, Martie was filled with a special tenderness that only her mother could evoke.
