From the Corner of His Eye

the walls where the art works had hung, because the nails still bristled from the pocket plaster, and picture hooks dangled from the nails.

Intuition told Tom Vanadium that the removal of the paintings was significant, but he wasn't a talented enough Sherlock to leap immediately to the meaning of their absence.

In the bedroom once more, before poring through the contents of the nightstand drawers, the dresser drawers, and the closet, he looked in the adjacent bathroom, switched on the light because there was no window- and found Bartholomew on a wall, slashed and punctured, disfigured by hundreds of wounds. Wally parked the Buick at the curb in front of the house in which he lived, and when Celestina slid across the car seat to the passenger's door, he said, 'No, wait here. I'll fetch Angel and drive the two of you home.'

'Good grief, we can walk from here, Wally.'

'It's chilly and foggy and late, and there might be villains afoot at this hour,' he intoned with mock gravity. 'The two of you are Lipscomb women now, or soon will be, and Lipscomb women never go unescorted through the dangerous urban night.'

'Mmmmm. I feel positively pampered.'

The kiss was lovely, long and easy, full of restrained passion that boded well for nights to come in the marriage bed.

'I love you, Celie.'

'I love you, Wally. I've never been happier.'

Leaving the engine running and the heater on, he got out of the car, leaned back inside, said, 'Better lock up while I'm gone,' and then closed his door.

Although Celestina felt a little paranoid, being so security-minded in this safe neighborhood, nevertheless she searched, out the master control button and engaged the power locks.

Lipscomb women gladly obey the wishes of Lipscomb men-unless they disagree, of course, or don't disagree but are just feeling mulish.

The floor of the spacious bathroom featured beige marble tiles with diamond-shaped inlays of black granite. The countertop and the shower stall were fabricated from matching marble, and the same marble was employed in the wainscoting.

Above the wainscoting, the walls were Sheetrock, unlike the plaster elsewhere in the apartment. On one of them, Enoch Cain had scrawled Bartholomew three times.

Great anger was apparent in the way that the uneven, red block letters had been drawn on the wall in hard slashes. But the lettering looked like the work of a calm and rational mind compared to what had been done after the three Bartholomews were printed.

With some sharp instrument, probably a knife, Cain had stabbed and gouged the red letters, working on the wall with such fury that two of the Bartholomews were barely readable anymore. The Sheetrock was marked by hundreds of scores and punctures.

Judging by the smeariness of the letters and by the fact that some had run before they dried, the writing instrument hadn't been a felt-tip marker, as Vanadium first thought. A spattering of red droplets on the closed lid of the toilet and across the beige marble floor, all dry now, gave rise to a suspicion.

He spat on his right thumb, scrubbed the thumb against one of the dried drips on the floor, rubbed thumb and forefinger together, and brought the freshened spoor to his nose. He smelled blood.

But whose blood?

Other three-year-olds, stirred from sleep after eleven o'clock at night, might be grumpy and would certainly be torpid, bleary-eyed, and uncommunicative. Angel awake was always fully awake, soaking up color texture-mood, marveling in the baroque detail of Creation, and generally lending support to the apperception-test prediction that she might be an art prodigy.

As she clambered through the open door into Celestina's lap, the girl said, 'Uncle Wally gave me an Oreo.'

'Did you put it in your shoe?'

'Why in my shoe?'

'Is it under your hood?'

'It's in my tummy!'

'Then you can't eat it.'

'I already ate it.'

'Then it's gone forever. How sad.'

'It's not the only Oreo in the world, you know. Is this the most fog ever)'

'It's about the most I've ever seen.'

As Wally got behind the wheel and closed his door, Angel said, 'Mommy, where's fog come from? And don't say Hawaii.'

'New Jersey.'

'Before she rats on me,' Wally said, 'I gave her an Oreo.'

'Too late.'

'Mommy thought I put it in my shoe.'

'Getting her into her shoes and coat sooner than Monday required a bribe,' Wally said.

'What's fog?' Angel asked.

'Clouds,' Celestina replied.

'What're clouds doing down here?'

'They've gone to bed. They're tired,' Wally told her as he put the car in gear and released the hand brake. 'Aren't you?'

Can I have another Oreo?'

'They don't grow on trees, you know,' said Wally.

'Do I have a cloud inside me now?'

Celestina asked, 'Why would you think that, sugarpie?

'Cause I breathed the fog.'

'Better hold on tight to her,' Wally warned Celestina, braking to a halt at the intersection. 'She'll float up and away, then we'll have to call the fire department to get her down.'

'What do they grow on?' Angel asked.

'Flowers,' Wally answered.

And Celestina said, 'The Oreos are the petals.'

'Where do they have Oreo flowers?' Angel asked suspiciously.

'Hawaii,' Wally said.

'I thought so,' Angel said, dubiosity squinching her face. 'Mrs. Ornwall made me cheese.'

'She's a great cheese maker, Mrs. Ornwall,' Wally said.

'In a sandwich,' Angel clarified. 'Why's she live with you, Uncle Wally? '

'She's my housekeeper.'

'Could Mommy be your housekeeper?'

'Your mother's an artist. Besides, you wouldn't want to put poor Mrs. Ornwall out of a job, would you?'

'Everybody needs cheese,' Angel said, which apparently meant that Mrs. Ornwall would never lack work. 'Mommy, you're wrong.

'Wrong about what, sugarpie smoosh-smoosh?' Celestina asked as Wally pulled to the curb again and parked.

'The Oreo isn't gone forever.'

'Is it in your shoe, after all?'

Turning in Celestina's lap, Angel said, 'Smell,' and held the index finger of her right hand under her mother's nose.

'This isn't polite, but I must admit it smells nice.'

'That's the Oreo. After I ate it up, the cookie went smoosh-smoosh into my finger.'

'If they always go there, smoosh-smoosh, then you're going to wind up with one really fat finger.'* Wally switched off the engine and killed the headlights. 'Home, where the heart is.'

'What heart?' Angel asked.