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There were five other roo room and a den at the front of the first floor; three bedrooms upstairs-plus one bath down and one up One of the bedrooms was theirs, and one served as Nora’s studio where she had done a little painting since theydeveloph the house seehway, and power poles followed the line of their dirt driveway

"I’?"

Einstein padded to his empty water dish, which was in the corner beside his food dish, and scooted it across the floor to the sink

They had not expected to be able to afford such a house so soon after fleeing Santa Barbara-especially not when, during their first call to Garrison Dilworth, the attorney informed them that Travis’s bank accounts had, indeed, been frozen They had been lucky to get the twenty-thousand-dollar check through Garrison had converted soht cashier’s checks as planned, and had sent them to Travis addressed to Mr Samuel Spencer Hyatt (the new persona), care of the Marin County motel where they had stayed for nearly a week But also, claiure price, he had sent another packet of cashier’s checks two days later, to the sa with him from a pay phone, Nora had said, "But even if you did sell it, they can’t have paid the money and closed the deal so soon"

"No," Garrison had admitted "It won’t close for ait to you"

They had opened two accounts at a bank in Carmel, thirty-odd ht the new pickup, then had taken Garrison’s Mercedes north to the San Francisco airport, leaving it there for hi the coast, they looked for a house in the Big Sur area When they had found this one, they had been able to pay cash for it It iser to buy than rent, and it iser to pay cash rather than finance the house, for fewer questions needed to be answered

Travis was sure their ID would stand up, but he saw no reason to test the quality of Van Dyne’s papers until necessary Besides, after buying a house, they were more respectable; the purchase added substance to their new identities

While Travis got a bottle of beer fro s, then filled Einstein’s dish ater, the retriever went to the walk-in pantry The door was ajar, as always, and the dog opened it all the way He put one paw on a pedal that Travis had rigged for hiht came on in there

In addition to shelves of canned and bottled goods, the huge pantry contained a coet that Travis and Nora had built to facilitate coainst the rear wall: twenty-eight one-inch-square tubes made of Lucite, lined up side by side in a wooden frahteen inches tall, open at the top, and fitted with a pedal-release valve at the bottom In the first twenty-six tubes were stacked lettered tiles froh letters to be able to fores On the front of each tube was a hand-drawn letter that shohat it contained; A, B, C, D, and so on The last two tubes held blank game tiles on which Travis had carved commas-or apostrophes-and question ure where the periods were supposed to go) Einstein was able to dispense letters fro on the pedals, then could use his nose to form the tiles into words on the pantry floor They had chosen to put the device in there, out of sight, so they would not be required to explain it to neighbors who ht drop in unexpectedly

As Einstein busily puainst one another, Travis carried his beer and the dog’s water dish out to the front porch, where they would sit and wait for Nora By the tie

COULD I HAVE SOME HAMBURGER? OR THREE WEENIES?

Travis said, "I’ets home Don’t YOU want to wait and eat with us?"

The retriever licked his chops and thought for a moment Then he studied the letters he had already used, pushed so with a K and a T and an apostrophe that he had to release from the Lucite tubes

OK BUT I’M STARVED

"You’ll survive," Travis told hiathered up the lettered tiles and sorted them into the open tops of the proper tubes

He retrieved the pistol-grip shotgun that he’d stood by the back door and carried it out to the front porch, where he put it beside his rocking chair He heard Einstein turn off the pantry light and follow him

They sat in anxious silence, Travis in his chair, Einstein on the redwood floor

Songbirds trilled in the mild October air

Travis sipped at his beer, and Einstein lapped occasionally at his water, and they stared down the dirt driveway, into the trees, toward the highway that they could not see

In the glove compartment of the Toyota, Nora had a 38 pistol loaded with hollow-point cartridges During the weeks since they had left Marin County, she had learned to drive and, with Travis’s help, had become proficient with the 38-also with a fully autoun She only had the 38 today, but she’d be safe going and co from Carmel Besides, even if The Outsider had crept into the area without Einstein’s knowledge, it did not want Nora; it wanted the dog So she was perfectly safe

But where was she?

Travis wished he had gone with her But after thirty years of dependency and fear, solo trips into Carmel were one of the th, independence, and self-confidence She would not have welcomed his company

By one-thirty, when Nora was half an hour late, Travis began to get a sick, twisting feeling in his gut

Einstein began to pace

Five minutes later, the retriever was the first to hear the car turning into the foot of the driveway at the main road He dashed down the porch steps, which were at the side of the house, and stood at the edge of the dirt lane

Travis did not want Nora to see that he had been overly worried because somehow that would seem to indicate a lack of trust in her ability to take care of herself, an ability that she did, indeed, possess and that she prized He re chair, his bottle of Corona in one hand

When the blue Toyota appeared, he sighed with relief As she went by the house, she tooted the horn Travis waved as if he had not been sitting there under a leaden blanket of fear

Einstein went to the garage to greet her, and ablue jeans and a yellow- and white-checkered shirt, but Travis thought she looked good enough to waltz onto a dance floor aowned and bejeweled princesses

She came to him, leaned down, kissed him Her lips arone, there was no sun, no trilling from the birds, no joy" He tried to say it flippantly, but it ca note of seriousness