couldn’t think of any. As the miles rolled by, the only thing that came to her mind was Ron Green’s unpleasant story. Well, it might prove to be a good icebreaker. Most people liked to talk about the occult. It might be just the right subject to open up a religiously oriented young man.
“We had something odd happen in town last night,” she said. “I work there, in Riveredge, as a reporter. They were preparing a body in one of the local funeral homes when it got up and tried to walk out the door. Did you ever hear of—”
She stopped short, shocked by his reaction. His face twisted momentarily into a grimace that might have been anguish. He muttered something aloud.
“Are you all right?” she asked nervously.
Saul had recovered completely. He looked calm.
“I was in Vietnam, and I saw some funny things there,” he said. “But you don’t want to hear about all that.”
She was jolted. Without committing a breach of good manners, he had put her down deftly and firmly.
“I didn’t mean to upset you,” she said. “I was just trying to start a conversation. I’m curious about all the hitchhikers and strangers I’ve seen around lately. I thought you might be able to tell me something.”
He considered her words for a while. Then he said, “I can’t speak for anybody else. I came to town to see some old friends, to have a get-together, that’s all. You can let me off here.”
Marcia awoke to her surroundings. They had arrived at Blackwood’s Corners, a confluence of three country roads marked by a general store, a church, and a few darkened houses. She pulled to a stop near the gas pumps in front of the store.
“As long as I’ve taken you this far—”
“This is fine,” he interrupted, already wrestling his bag from the back seat. Thanks very much.”
She sat and watched as he walked through the glare of the headlights. Long-legged and purposeful, without a backward look, he crossed the main road and strode away down one of the country lanes. He was soon gone from sight.
She thought back to the moment when he had interrupted her obviously ill-chosen story about the reanimated corpse. What had he muttered? Too soon. That’s what it had sounded like. What was that supposed to mean? Nothing, of course. Vietnam had left a lot of scars. Saul was just another casualty of the war.
If she tried to share her story with Ken, he would tell her she was crazy for picking up a hitchhiker. Maybe she was. She would have arrived home late anyway, and now it would be nearly midnight before she got there.
Perhaps they would all have gone to bed, and she could have that quiet drink in solitude after all.
CHAPTER FOUR
Ken had designed their home as an advertisement for his professional ability, to show what kind of house he could build when given a free hand and plenty of money. Glass and redwood predominated. Its canted roofs suggested wings, as if it were an ungainly creature straining to take flight from the hill where it had been bound.
Marcia had never really liked it. It was a California house, designed to take advantage of an environment perpetually bright and sunny. Here, its open, glassy style made the often-dismal weather a more intimate and unavoidable part of their lives. No part of it could be called cozy. In their most bitter argument, Marcia had called it a futuristic henhouse. It had taken Ken a long time to forgive her for that.
Now, surprisingly, light flooded from the glass walls of the living room. As Marcia came up the long drive, she saw that lights were on everywhere. Ken’s car wasn’t in the carport. She felt a chill. Had something happened to one of the children while she’d been dawdling at the office or taking the hitchhiker out of her way?
She ran from her car, not bothering to close the door. Her fears multiplied when Lucifer didn’t appear, barking and dancing in circles to celebrate her homecoming. Something was very wrong.
The front door wasn’t locked, but that wasn’t unusual. She raced up the front stairs and through the brick-walled atrium, another feature inappropriate to the climate: the plastic bubbles that roofed it always leaked when it rained or snowed. She hurried into the immense living room, where Melody sat listening to the stereo.
The spotlights running on two tracks in the high ceiling had been turned to illuminate the Japanese garden outside. One of them was arranged dramatically to spotlight Melody’s gold hair. She looked unperturbed—but then, she always did. Even so, her quiet, relaxed pose had a calming effect on Marcia. She paused to catch her breath.
Analyze Melody feature by feature, and you would have said she was a weird-looking girl; but the totality of her face transcended the sum of its parts to produce something that was striking and original and almost alarmingly attractive. Her blue eyes were narrow and slanted over very high and prominent cheekbones. Her nose was short, and tilted up at an angle that might have made it seem ugly on another face. Her mouth was wide, her lips firm and full above a squarish chin that was cleft in the middle. She wore her hair in two gold braids encircling her small, regal head. Her expression was habitually one of total impassivity, but it nevertheless gave to strangers an impression of contemptuous arrogance, even cruelty: with her slanted eyes and lithe, compact body, she might have been a princess of the Huns.
Melody was Marcia’s oldest child—her child, not Ken’s. She had been conceived at the time of Marcia’s nervous breakdown at the commune in the Black Hills, and Marcia didn’t know who her father was.
Marcia found the courage necessary to walk into the living room and determine what was going on. Melody turned her expressionless face toward her mother. She could light up a room when she smiled, but she seldom did.
“Lucy’s gone,” Melody said gravely.
“Oh, God,” Marcia groaned, half in relief. “Turn the music down, won’t you?”
Melody got up to comply as her mother sank into a chair. Melody had highbrow taste that ran to the more obscure baroque composers. Marcia preferred rock. Sometimes she had the odd feeling that her daughter was more mature than she was.
“What happened?” Marcia asked when the music had been muted to a silvery whisper.
Melody shrugged. “He just didn’t show up for his dinner. The kids carried on something awful. They wouldn’t go to bed until Ken promised to drive around and look for him.”
“He’s probably in love again.”
Melody studied her for a long moment, then said: “Maybe. He’s been wandering off at night a lot. But I think this is the first time in his life he ever missed his dinner. I think the dognappers got him this time.”
“Oh, I don’t think so. Who’d steal a Doberman?”
“That’s the kind they want. I read in this article. Because everybody is scared and wants to have a killer dog. Plus they want them for dog-fights, with betting.”
“Well. If that’s the case, they’ll give him back when they find out what they’ve stolen.”
Marcia’s relief that her children were safe didn’t last long. A sudden pang of grief hit her at the thought of Lucifer’s possible theft. His personality was unique among his breed. He would make playful but timid overtures to cats and rabbits. He had always reminded her of Ferdinand the Bull, who would rather smell flowers than face matadors. The idea of his theft by men who would try to train him to viciousness was almost unbearable.
Nor was that her only worry. “How did Ken take all this? I mean, what kind of mood was he in?”
“You mean, was he drunk?” Melody asked.
Marcia was often disconcerted by her daughter’s talent for discerning her unspoken thoughts.
“Not really,” Melody went on, as if answering herself. “He was sort of harassed and fretful, you know, with the kids acting up. And he thinks Lucifer is a royal pain in the ass anyway.