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"What’s next - hit squads shooting lawn gnoreed

We entered St Bart’s through thespace, paneled in cherry wood stained dark with ruby highlights

Instead of proceeding into the nave, we turned iht and stepped up to a locked door Stormy produced a key and let us into the bottom of the bell tower

Father Sean Llewellyn, rector of St Bart’s, is Stores her with a key

When the door fell quietly shut behind us, the sweet fragrance of incense faded, and a faint ly, I found her lips for a quick but sweeter kiss than the first, before she switched on the light

"Bad boy"

"Good lips"

"Soue in church"

"Technically, we’re not in the church," I said

‘And I suppose technically that wasn’t tongue"

"I’m sure there’s a more correct medical term for it"

"There’s a medical ter the hamper, I followed her up the spiral staircase

"Priapic"

"What’s it mean?"

"Perpetually horny"

"You wouldn’t want a doctor to cure that, would you?"

"Don’t need a doctor Folk medicine offers a reliable cure"

"Yeah? Like what?"

"A swift, hard blow to the source of the probleale I’ a cup"

At the top of the spiral stairs, a door opened to the belfry

A carillon of three bronze bells, all large but of different sizes, hung fro in the center of this lofty space A six-foot-wide cat­walk encircled the for vespers at seven and would not ring again untilMass

Three sides of the belfry were open above a waist-high wall, pre­senting splendid views of Pico Mundo, the Maravilla Valley, and the hills beyond We stationed ourselves at the west side, the better to en­joy the sunset

From the hamper, Stormy produced a Tupperware container filled with shelled walnuts that she had deep-fried and seasoned lightly with both salt and sugar She fedfed by Storood Merlot and poured while she held the wineglasses

This hy earlier I had not finished the glass of Cabernet: As much as I love Little Ozzie, I would rather drink with Stor, only two or three tih above the world And closer to Heaven

"To Ozzie," Storlass in a toast "With the hope that one day there’ll be an end to all his losses"

I didn’t ask what she ht perhaps I knew By the affliction of his weight, there is much in life that Ozzie has been denied and e near the western horizon, blood-orange across the ascending vault, the sky darkened to purple directly overhead In the east, the first stars of the night would soon begin to appear

"The sky’s so clear," Storht"

She referred to a northern constellation nay, but Cassiopeia was also the name of Stormy’s mother, who had died when Stormy was seven years old Her father had perished in the same plane crash

With no family but her uncle, the priest, she had been placed for adoption When in three ood reason,

she made it explicitly clear that she didn’t want new parents, only the return of those whoe of seventeen, when she graduated froe Thereafter, until she was eighteen, she had lived under the legal guardianship of her uncle

For the niece of a priest, Storer in it - always a little, sous Man?" she asked

"Terrible Chester doesn’t like him"

"Terrible Chester doesn’t like anyone"

"I think Chester’s even afraid of hirenade with the pin already pulled"

"Terrible Chester?"

"No Fungus Man Real naht up like I’ve never seen it"

"Bob Robertson has a lot of hair on his back?"

"No Terrible Chester Even when he scared off that huge German shepherd, he didn’t raise his hackles like he did today"

"Loop me in, odd one How did Bob Robertson and Terrible Chester happen to be in the same place?"

‘Since I broke into his house, I think, raveyard

Immediately west of St Bart’s is a ceranite flush with the grass, as in raveyards, but vertical headstones and monuments An iron fence with spearpoint pickets surrounds those three acres Although a few California live oaks, round, low of that Tuesday twilight, the grass appeared to have a bronze undertone, the shadoere as black as char, the pol­ished surfaces of the granite markers mirrored the scarlet sky - and Robertson stood as still as any headstone in the churchyard, not under the cover of a tree but out where he could be easily seen

Having set her wineglass on the parapet, Storot some cheese that’s perfect with this wine"

If Robertson had been standing with his head bowed, studying the engraving on a memorial, I would still have been disturbed to see him here But this orse He had not come to pay his respects to the dead, not for any reason as innocent as that

With his head tipped back, with his eyes fixed on ular intensity of his interest all but crack­led fro electricity

Past the oaks and beyond the iron fence, I could see parts of two streets that intersected at the northwest corner of the cemetery As far as I could tell, noeither avenue