Mrs. Balsam kept her casual jewelry in a sumptuous leather case nestled under scarves and stockings. The rest, including a diamond and sapphire dinner ring with matching earrings and a bracelet with alternating links of gold and emeralds, reposed in the inside pocket of an old raincoat with fraying cuff’s. “I can’t see going to the bank every time I want to wear something,” she had told Amanda in explanation of this novel arrangement, “and as they’ll be yours you ought, to know where they are.”
It was not quite the harebrained idea it might have seemed, because any rational burglar would have bypassed the kind of garment used for gardening in favor of a pale mink cape. And it was still working: When Amanda thrust a hand deep into the raincoat’s pocket a palmful of sparkle came out.
What had she thought, if it was anything as organized as thought? That her aunt might unwittingly have left a door unlocked, and returned to her house for her letters to find some menacing stranger emerging from it? Been given a violent push, precipitating the stroke?
The ghost of personal attack was laid. Amanda switched off the lamp, closed the door of the guest room very softly because this part of the house was chilly with the window lowered there, and jumped at the loud imperative clatter of the door knocker.
There were people who habitually announced themselves in this fashion, as though come with foreclosure papers, and they were not as a rule likable people. Amanda called militantly through the crack, “Who is it?” and received a terse “Colonel Robinson” in reply.
An escaped convict could call himself anything he liked, and a military title would be a nice touch. Amanda, who had left the light on for Apple, opened the door a stingy two inches and then opened it wider at once.
A tall trim pink-skinned man stood there, close-clipped white head tipped back so as to gaze disfavorably down at her. Behind him, now haltered, was Drougette, looking, with her ashen forelock, like a fairy-tale animal of silver and gold. At the foot of the driveway, a car with its headlights on throbbed impatiently.
“I believe this is your horse,” said the man without prelude.
“Yes.” It wasn’t a time for hairsplitting. “Thank you very much for bringing her back. Where did you—?”
“In my wife’s bonsai garden,” said the colonel uncompromisingly.
Those miniature trees, patiently trained into the staggery, asymmetrical shapes that appeared in Japanese prints, trampled happily under iron hooves. “I’m sorry,” said Amanda, feeling shriveled. “I know my aunt, Mrs. Balsam, that is, will be glad to do whatever you think is fair. If you could just tether the horse to one of the car bumpers while I— automatically, she indicated her robe and slippers “—I’ll see that you get your halter back tomorrow.
But the colonel, expecting a woman of his own age, had taken approving inventory of the cream and green robe which on Amanda was not quite knee-length, and the copper-brown hair beginning to tendril out of its top-of-the-head knot. If you can lend me a flashlight, I’ll be glad to put her away for you.”
It was nearly ten minutes before he knocked again, an interval during which the waiting car headlights snapped off with a suggestion of temper. “Wires were down at the northeast corner,” he said, handing the flashlight back to Amanda, “but I’ve gotten them to hold at least for tonight. That’s a beautiful mare, by the way.”
Amanda renewed her thanks. “And about your wife’s bonsai—”
“Unnatural damn little things,” confided the colonel. “What did you say your name was?”
Amanda told him and he withdrew into the dark, pink and military but no longer parade ground. She closed and locked the door with the conviction that her immediate world was beginning to right itself. The Afghan was still at large, true, but Rosie slept snugly in the guest room, Drougette had been returned without incident (or almost; how much did bonsai trees cost?) and was safely confined for the night; most importantly of all, her aunt had managed to speak.
Head for a while, because she was not an early retirer, and then give Apple one last call and go to bed. Amanda turned down the thermostat in preparation, propped pillows against one end of the couch, and stretched herself out.
Sitting in his pickup on a curve above the house, Sweet watched the disintegration of his plan.
This could not be the man the niece had hoped to enlist in the capture of the mare, which he had last seen cantering off into the dark. It was much too soon; the driver of the car had stayed in it; the white-haired man, visible in the light at the front door although Sweet could not see the woman inside, stood there less than a minute both times he appeared. This was the behavior of strangers rather than friends, neighborhood residents who had spotted the palomino, knew where it belonged, and, conscientious as most South westerners were in such matters, brought it back.
Which might mean there was someone else coming, someone to whom, after summoning him out on what had proved to be an unnecessary mission, the niece would be bound to offer coffee or a drink.
Patch would not wait past the appointed time; that was implicit. Enragingly, all Sweet needed in Mrs. Balsam’s house was ten minutes, maybe less, and he and Claude would be safely out of there. A way had to exist, because the alternative . . .
He had been fingering his short woolly beard as he gazed concentratingly down at his objective; now, he dropped his hand as if it had burned him. The speculation as to whether Mrs. Balsam had died had been in the back of his mind ever since Teresa had relayed the information that she was in the hospital, but it was suddenly in
