"I'm still trying to figure it."

Shirley Trueblood arrived at five o'clock, matronly in a pale-yellow uniform with white lapels and cuffs.

After her came Ramon Padillo, who sniffed the aroma of chili and grumbled, "Needs a pinch of c.u.min."

When Steve Zillis breezed in at six, smelling of a verbena-scented aftershave and wintermint mouthwash, he said, "How're they hangin', Kemosabe?"

"Did you call me last night?" Billy asked.

"Who, me? Why would I?"

"I don't know. I got a call, a bad connection, but I thought maybe it was you."

"Did you call me back?"

"No. I could hardly hear the voice. I just had a hunch it might be you."

Selecting three plump olives from the condiment tray, Steve said, "Anyway, I was out last night with a friend."

"You get off work at two o'clock in the morning and then you go out?"

Steve grinned and winked. "There was a moon, and I'm a dog." He p.r.o.nounced it dawg.

"If I got off at two A.M., I'd be straight to bed."

"No offense, pilgrim, but you don't exactly ring the bell on the zing meter."

"What's that mean?"

Steve shrugged, then began to juggle the slippery olives with impressive dexterity. "People wonder why a good-lookin' guy like you lives like an old maid."

Surveying the customers, Billy said, "What people?"

"Lots of people." Steve caught the first olive in his mouth, the second, the third, and chewed vigorously to applause from the barstool gallery.

During the last hour of his shift, Billy was markedly more observant of Steve Zillis than usual. Yet he saw nothing suspicious.

Either the guy wasn't the prankster or he was immeasurably more cunning and deceitful than he appeared to be.

Well, it didn't matter. No one had been murdered. The note had been a joke; and sooner or later the punch line would be delivered.

As Billy was leaving the tavern at seven o'clock, Ivy Elgin came to him, restrained excitement in her brandy-colored eyes. "Somebody's going to die in a church."

"How do you figure?"

"The mantis. What prays has died."

"Which church?" he asked.

"We'll have to wait and see."

"Maybe it won't be in church. Maybe it's just that a local minister or a priest is going to die."

Her intoxicating gaze held his. "I didn't think of that. You might be right. But how does the possum fit in?"

"I don't have a clue. Ivy. I don't have a talent for haruspicy, like you do."

"I know, but you're nice. You're always interested, and you never make fun of me."

Although he worked with Ivy five days a week, the impact of her extraordinary beauty and s.e.xuality could make him forget, at times, that she was in some ways more girl than woman, sweet and guileless, virtuous even if not pure.

Billy said, "I'll think about the possum. Maybe there's a little bit of a seer in me that I don't know about."

Her smile could knock you off balance. "Thanks, Billy. Sometimes this gift... it's a burden. I could use a little help with it."

Outside, the summer-evening air was lemon yellow with oblique sunshine, and the eastward-crawling shadows of the elms were one shade of purple short of black.

As he approached his Ford Explorer, he saw a note under the windshield wiper.

Chapter 6.

Although neither a dead blonde nor an elderly cadaver had been reported, Billy halted short of the Explorer, hesitant to proceed, reluctant to read this second message.

He wanted nothing more than to sit with Barbara for a while and then to go home. He didn't see her seven times a week, but he visited more days than not.

His stops at Whispering Pines were one of the blocks with which the foundation of his simple life had been built. He looked forward to them as he looked forward to quitting-time and carving.

He was not a stupid man, however, and not even merely smart. He knew that his life of seclusion might easily deteriorate into one of solitude.

A fine line separates the weary recluse from the fearful hermit. Finer still is the line between hermit and bitter misanthrope.

Slipping the note from under the wiper, crumpling it in his fist, and tossing it aside unread would surely const.i.tute the crossing of the first of those lines. And perhaps there would be no going back.

He did not have much of what he wanted in life. But by nature he was prudent enough to recognize that if he threw away the note, he would also be throwing away everything that now sustained him. His life would be not merely different but worse.

In his trance of decision, he had not heard the patrol car enter the lot. As he plucked the note off the windshield, he was surprised by Lanny Olsen's sudden appearance at his side, in uniform.

"Another one," Lanny declared, as though he had been expecting the second note.

His voice had a broken edge. His face was lined with dread. His eyes were windows to a haunted place.

Billy's fate was to live in a time that denied the existence of abominations, that gave the lesser name horror to every abomination, that redefined every horror as a crime, every crime as an offense, every offense as a mere annoyance. Nevertheless, abhorrence rose in him before he knew exactly what had brought Lanny Olsen here.

"Billy. Dear sweet Jesus, Billy."

"What?"

"I'm sweating. Look at me sweating."

"What-Whatisit?"

"I can't stop sweating. It's not that hot."

Suddenly Billy felt greasy. He wiped one hand across his face and looked at the palm, expecting filth. To the eye, it appeared to be clean.

"I need a beer," Lanny said. "Two beers. I need to sit down. I need to think."

"Look at me."

Lanny wouldn't meet his eyes. His attention was fixed on the note in Billy's hand.

That paper remained folded, but something unfolded in Billy's gut, blossomed like a lubricious flower, oily and many-petaled. Nausea born of intuition.

The right question wasn't what. The right question was who, and Billy asked it.

Lanny licked his lips. "Giselle Winslow."

"I don't know her."

"Neither do I."

"Where?"

"She taught English down in Napa."

"Blond?"

"Yeah."

"And lovely," Billy guessed.

"She once was. Somebody beat her nearly to death. She was messed up really bad by someone who knew how to draw it out, how to make it last."

"Nearly to death."

"He finished by strangling her with a pair of her pantyhose."

Billy's legs felt weak. He leaned against the Explorer. He could not speak.

"Her sister found her just two hours ago."

Lanny's gaze remained fixed on the folded sheet of paper in Billy's hand.

"The sheriff's department doesn't have jurisdiction down there," Lanny continued. "So it's in the lap of the Napa police. That's something, anyway. That gives me breathing s.p.a.ce."

Billy found his voice, but it was rough and not as he usually sounded to himself. "The note said he'd kill a schoolteacher if I didn't go to the police, but I went to you."

"He said he'd kill her if you didn't go to the police and get them involved."

"But I went to you, I tried. I mean, for G.o.d's sake, I tried, didn't I?"

Lanny met his eyes at last. "You came to me informally. You didn't actually go to the police. You went to a friend who happened to be a cop."

"But I went to you." Billy protested, and cringed at the denial in his voice, at the self-justification.

Nausea crawled the walls of his stomach, but he clenched his teeth and strove for control.

"Nothing smelled real about it," Lanny said.

"About what?"

"The first note. It was a joke. It was a lame joke. There isn't a cop alive with the instinct to smell anything real in it."

"Was she married?" Billy asked.

A Toyota drove into the lot and parked seventy or eighty feet from the Explorer.

In silence they watched the driver get out of the car and go into the tavern. At such a distance, their conversation couldn't have been overheard. Nevertheless, they were circ.u.mspect.

Country music drifted out of the tavern while the door was open. On the jukebox, Alan Jackson was singing about heartbreak.

"Was she married?" Billy asked again.

"Who?"

"The woman. The schoolteacher. Giselle Winslow."

"I don't think so, no. At least there's no husband in the picture at the moment. Let me see the note."

Withholding the folded paper, Billy said, "Did she have any children?"

"What does it matter?"

"It matters," Billy said.

He realized that his empty hand had tightened into a fist. This was a friend standing before him, such as he allowed himself friends. Yet he relaxed his fist only with effort.

"It matters to me, Lanny."

"Kids? I don't know. Probably not. From what I heard, she must have lived alone."