“That's intolerable.”
“But that's the situation, sir.”
“And your hands are tied?”
“Quite effectively, Mr. Barnaby.”
“Then I have to wait them out — or get my own court order that would permit the state police to step into the picture.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Very well,” Barnaby said, leaning back in his chair as if the decision had been made, the problem solved, and he could now relax. “Thank you for coming to me about this, Sheriff. Can you find your own way out?”
“Certainly, Mr. Barnaby. Good day.”
“Same to you, Sheriff.”
Alone in the quiet study, then, Barnaby picked up his silver letter opener, raised it high overhead, and drove the point through the blotter and half an inch into the top of the desk. “
They were all together again: mother, father, Ginny, Gwyn…
They were very happy.
In all her life, Gwyn had never been happier.
They played on the beach together, at the Miami summer house, went swimming together, joked and laughed, went to the movies together, read in the evenings, always together, a perfect life…
When she woke, at half-past two Wednesday afternoon, she tried to regain those dreams, to shove away the bedroom, the daylight, the real world, and sink back into the past.
“Are you awake?” Elaine asked.
Reluctantly, Gwyn opened her eyes and looked at the chair beside her bed, where the older woman sat with the book folded in her lap. “Yes,” she said, through a mouth that felt gummed with cobwebs.
“Feeling better?”
Actually, she was not feeling better at all, despite her rest. If anything, her body felt heavier, more bloated; her eyes were grainier, her mouth dry, her stomach a ball of knots that not even an escape artist could untie. But she didn't want to upset Elaine after all the older woman had done for her, and so she lied. She said, “Yes, I'm feeling much better, thank you.” And she tried a feeble smile which was only a partial success.
“You slept right through lunch,” Elaine said.
“I didn't miss it, really.”
“You should still eat. I've had Grace keep something warmed up for you. While you use the bath, I'll bring it.”
“Please,” Gwyn said, “I'd rather just sleep.”
“You can't take medicine without food in your stomach,” Elaine said. “Now, don't be headstrong.”
Elaine helped her to her feet. Her head was lighter, her legs more rubbery than before, but she managed the short walk to the bath and had the strength to refresh herself and return to bed by the time the woman had come back with the tray of food.
“Eat hearty, now.”
“It looks delicious,” Gwyn said.
In fact, it looked colorless and stale.
To please her aunt, she forced herself to eat: pot roast, browned potatoes, corn, a salad, rich chocolate pudding. Everything but the pudding was a chore to chew up and swallow, especially since the food was without taste or was nauseatingly flat; her reaction to each dish varied from bite to bite, so that she knew the shortcoming was in her own appreciation, not in the food itself. The spoon and the fork each weighed a couple of pounds and kept slipping from her fingers…
Though she could force herself to eat, she could not make herself hold up a viable conversation, and she did not even try. Her thoughts kept returning to the dreams, making her smile as she recalled a pleasant fragment of some unreal scene. The dreams were so wonderful, so filled with real happiness, because no one had died in them: death did not exist…
“I think I've had enough,” she said, after a few minutes, trying to push her tray off her lap.
Elaine examined the dishes, looked worried. She said, “You most certainly haven't had enough. One or two bites of everything. Let's see you clean up your plate.”
“Oh, Elaine—”
“No excuses.”
Though the fork and spoon were still as heavy as before, she ate faster. The sooner she was done, the sooner she could have another pill, could lie back and sleep and dream…
While Gwyn struggled with her lunch, William Barnaby sat in his study downstairs, holding the telephone receiver to his ear and listening to it ring again and again at the other end of the line. He hoped that Paul Morby was at home, and that the man could take on the job that he had for him. If Morby couldn't be gotten, Barnaby didn't know to whom he could turn for help. While he waited, he held the silver letter opener in his free hand and tapped the point rapidly against his blotter, not to any time he had in mind, but to the furious tempo of his anger.
The phone was picked up at the other end: “Hello.”
The gruff voice, deep-toned and uncompromising, was evocative of Morby's appearance: tall, heavy, a man made out of planks and wire and hard pressed steel, with hands twice as wide as any other man's hands and enough crudely shaped cles to attract all the girls on the beach.
“Barnaby here,” Will said.
“Yeah?”
“I have a job for you.”
“Can you hold on?” Morby asked. “I was coming in with the groceries when you rang. I want to pop a couple of things in the freezer.”
Barnaby preferred the kind of employee who'd let the frozen goods be ruined rather than make such a request, but he said it was all right, he'd hold the line. Men like Morby, with Morby's talents and his lack of scruples, were difficult to find.
He had used Morby twice before in the last two years, both times when a business deal was stymied by a man reluctant to sell his land. In one case, Morby delivered the adversary a rather thorough beating. In the second instance, Morby had burned the man's house to the ground, in such a clever fashion that no one had suspected arson. Not only had this made the potential seller more anxious to be rid of his property, but it made the purchase of the land cheaper for Barnaby, since the value of the house — now that there was no longer a house — could be subtracted from the package offer that Edgar Aimes had made.
Morby was good. He was dependable, and he could keep his mouth shut. If Sheriff Plunkett couldn't do anything about the squatters at the Niche, Morby could, with more speed and effectiveness.
“Okay, the ice cream's in the freezer,” Morby said, picking up the phone again. “What'd you want?”
“Remember the second job you did for me?”
Morby said, “The house?”
“That's it.”
“What about it?”
“Can you take on a similar contract?”
Morby thought, then said: “When?”
“Tonight.”
“Short notice.”
Barnaby said, “But I'll pay a good bonus if this goes right.”
“It always goes right when I do it,” Morby said. After another long silence, in which he considered his schedule, he said, “Is this another house — and if so, what size?”
“A boat,” Barnaby said.
Morby was surprised, but he recovered rather quickly. “You want me to do to a boat what I did to a house, is
