Phantoms

make sense, damn it. Living tissue couldn't swell that fast. Abrupt swelling was symptomatic of certain allergies, of course; one of the worst was severe allergic reaction to penicillin. But Jenny was not aware of anything that could cause critical swelling with such suddenness that hideously ugly, universal bruising resulted.

And even if the swelling wasn't simply classic postmortem bloat — which she was sure it wasn't — and even if it was the cause of the bruising, what in the name of God had caused the swelling in the first place? She had ruled out allergic reaction.

If a poison was responsible, it was an extremely exotic variety. But where would Hilda have come into contact with an exotic poison? She had no enemies. The very idea of murder was absurd. And whereas a child might be expected to put a strange substance into his mouth to see if it tasted good, Hilda wouldn't do anything so foolish. No, not poison.

Disease?

If it was disease, bacterial or viral, it was not like anything that Jenny had been taught to recognize. And what if it proved to be contagious?

“Jenny?” Lisa called.

Desease.

Relieved that she hadn't touched the body directly, wishing that she hadn't even touched the sleeve of the housedress, Jenny lurched to her feet, swayed, and stepped back from the corpse.

A chill rippled through her.

For the first time, she noticed what lay on the cutting board beside the sink. There were four large potatoes, a head of cabbage, a bag of carrots, a long knife, and a vegetable peeler. Hilda had been preparing a meal when she had dropped dead. Just like that. Bang. Apparently, she hadn't been ill, hadn't had any warning. Such a sudden death sure as hell wasn't indicative of disease.

What disease resulted in death without first progressing through ever more debilitating stages of illness, discomfort, and physical deterioration? None. None that was known to modern medicine.

“Jenny, can we get out of here?” Lisa asked.

“Ssssshhh! In a minute. Let me think,” Jenny said, leaning against the island, looking down at the dead woman.

In the back of her mind, a vague and frightening thought had been stirring: plague. The plague — bubonic and other forms — was not a stranger to parts of California and the Southwest. In recent years, a couple of dozen cases had been reported; however, it was rare that anyone died of the plague these days, for it could be cured by the administration of streptomycin, chloramphenicol, or any of the tetracyclines. Some strains of the plague were characterized by the appearance of petechiae; these were small, purplish, hemorrhagic spots on the skin. In extreme cases, the petechiae became almost black and spread until large areas of the body were afflicted by them; in the Middle Ages, it had been known, simply, as the Black Death. But could petechiae arise in such abundance that the victim's body would turn as completely dark as Hilda's?

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