Cry for the Strangers

“Not if we put in an alarm system. And not if we find out who did it.”

“Oh, come on, Chip. We’re not going to find out who did it, and you know it.”

“We might,” Chip said. Then he decided he might as well be honest. “No, you’re right, we probably won’t. Hell, we don’t even know why they did it.”

“I guess you know what I think,” Glen said.

“Can I make a suggestion?” Chip asked, deliberately ignoring Glen’s comment. Without waiting for an answer, he went on. “Take the day off. Go home and tell Rebecca what happened, then decide what the two of you want to do. We’ll start cleaning up tomorrow. I’m off duty.”

“Okay. The mess has to be cleaned up anyway.” Glen’s face clouded as a memory came back to him. “Rebecca said something was going to happen,” he said. “Just this morning, when we got up. She said something’s happened or is about to happen. I guess she was right.”

They had walked from the back room into the gallery, but suddenly Glen returned to the workroom. A minute later he was back.

“They didn’t get everything,” he said triumphantly. “There was one picture I put away and they didn’t find it.”

Chip looked curiously at him as Glen turned the picture he held. It was the canvas depicting Sod Beach and the weathered old house with the strange presence in the window.

“I’m glad it was this one,” Glen said. “I put it away because I was saving it. But you’d better take it now, Chip. It might not be around much longer.”

“Take it? What are you talking about?”

“I was going to give it to you the day we finished the gallery,” Glen explained. “So I put it away, just so I couldn’t be tempted to sell it. But I think you’d better take it now, just in case.”

“I can’t take it,” Chip protested. “My God, it’s all you’ve got left.”

But when they left the gallery a few minutes later, Chip was carrying the painting and planning where to hang it.

Harney Whalen sat in Dr. Phelps’ cluttered office, and described what had happened the previous afternoon. Phelps listened patiently. When Harney finished he shrugged his shoulders.

“I don’t see why you came to me,” he said. “You froze at the wheel for a couple of seconds. Everybody does that now and then.”

“But it’s more than that, Doc.” Harney hesitated. “I have spells.”

“Spells? What do you mean, spells? Sounds like a little old lady’s symptom.”

“It’s the only way I can describe them. It’s almost like blacking out for a while, I guess. They don’t happen very often, or at least I don’t think they do, but when they start my hands start to twitch and I feel funny. Then there’s nothing until I wake up.”

Phelps frowned. “When was the last time you had one?”

“Last night,” Whalen admitted. “I was watching television and I felt it coming on. I don’t remember anything until this morning. I was in bed, but I don’t remember going to bed.”

“Hmm,” Phelps said noncommittally. “Well, we’d better look you over.” He took Whalen’s blood pressure and pulse, tested his reflexes, and went over him with a stethoscope. Then he took a blood sample and had Whalen produce a urine sample as well.

“I’ll have to send these down to a lab in Aberdeen, but we should find out if there’s anything there in a couple of days. Apart from the ‘spells’ how do you feel?”

“Fine. Same as ever. When have I ever been sick?”

Phelps nodded. “Well, everything looks normal so far. If nothing turns up in the samples, how would you feel about going into a hospital for a couple of days?”

“Forget it,” Whalen said. “I’ve got too much to do.”

Phelps rolled his eyes. “Oh, come on, Harn. You and I are the most underworked people in town. Or we were until recently.”

“It’s the strangers,” Whalen murmured. “Every time strangers come we have trouble.”

“You mean the Palmers?” Phelps asked.

“Them and the new ones. Randall’s the name. They moved into my old house out at the beach.”

Now Phelps’s interest was definitely piqued. “The Baron house? I thought you weren’t going to rent it anymore.”

Whalen smiled bitterly. “I wasn’t. But it seems I did.” He frowned, searching for the best way to explain what had happened. “I guess I had one of my spells while I was showing the place to Randall and his wife. Anyway, they showed up with a signed lease, and I don’t remember signing it.” He stood up, and began buttoning his shirt. “Well, what about it? Am I going to live?”

“As far as I can tell,” Phelps said slowly. “But what you just said bothers me. I have a good mind to send you to Aberdeen right now.”

Whalen shook his head. “Not a chance. If you can’t find anything wrong, that’s that. Never been in a hospital. I don’t intend to start now.”

“Suit yourself,” Phelps said. “But if you won’t follow my advice, don’t ask me what’s wrong with you.”

“Maybe nothing’s wrong with me,” Whalen said amiably. “Maybe I’m just getting old.”

“Maybe so,” Phelps replied tartly. “And maybe something is wrong with you and you just don’t want to know about it.”

“What you don’t know can’t hurt you.”

“Can’t help you either,” Phelps countered. “And what about other people? You might hurt someone — you almost did yesterday.”

“But I didn’t,” Whalen reminded him. “And I won’t.”

As Harney Whalen left his office Dr. Phelps wished he were as confident as Whalen seemed to be. But he wasn’t. The idea of Harney Whalen having “spells” worried him. It worried him very much.

* * *

Glen Palmer arrived home to find the cabin deserted. A note from Rebecca said she had gone down to the Randalls’ to see if she could give them a hand. He could fix his own lunch or come and get her. Since it was still early Glen decided to walk down the beach.

The leaden sky showed no signs of clearing; the sky to the west was almost black, and near the horizon storm clouds were scudding back and forth, swirling among themselves as if grouping for an attack on the coast. The light rain that had been coming down all night and all morning still fell softly, soaking into the beach immediately, leaving the sand close-packed and solid. The tide was for out, and the level beach, exposed far beyond its normal width, glistened wetly.

Glen walked out toward the surf line, then turned south, moving slowly, almost reluctantly. He was trying to decide how to break the news to Rebecca and what her response would be.

She would give up and demand that they leave Clark’s Harbor. Or she would be angry. Or prepared for a fight, ready to do anything to show that she could not be frightened off. The last, he thought, would be typical of Rebecca.

He was wrong. Rebecca saw him coming when he was still fifty yards from the old house on the beach and went out to meet him.

“It happened, didn’t it?” she asked softly.

Glen looked up, startled. He hadn’t seen her coming — he’d been staring at the sand at his feet, preoccupied. He nodded mutely.

“What was it?”

“The gallery’s been vandalized,” Glen told her.

“Vandalized? You mean someone broke in?”

“They broke in, they wrecked the gallery, they smashed all your pottery, and they shredded all but one of my canvases.”

“Which one?” Rebecca asked irrelevantly, and Glen realized that she was shutting out what he had said. Of all the possible reactions, this was one Glen hadn’t considered.

“The one I gave Chip,” he said softly. Rebecca turned slowly and gazed at the old house that was the subject of Glen’s only surviving canvas.