Phantoms

comes to desserts.”
    The kitchen was a large, high-ceilinged room. Pots, pans, ladles, and other utensils hung from a gleaming, stainless-steel utility rack above a central cooking island with four electric burners, a grill, and a work area. The countertops were ceramic tile, and the cabinets were dark oak. On the far side of the room were double sinks, double ovens, a microwave oven, and the refrigerator.
    Jenny turned left as soon as she stepped through the door, and she went to the built-in secretary where Hilda planned menus and composed shopping lists. It was there she would have left a note. But there was no note, and Jenny was turning away from the small desk when she heard Lisa gasp.
    The girl had walked around to the far side of the central cooking island. She was standing by the refrigerator, staring down at something on the floor in front of the sinks. Her face was flour-white, and she was trembling.
    Filled with sudden dread, Jenny stepped quickly around the island.
    Hilda Beck was lying on the floor, on her back, dead. She stared at the ceiling with sightless eyes, and her discolored tongue thrust stiffly between swollen lips.
    Lisa looked up from the dead woman, stared at Jenny, tried to speak, could not make a sound.
    Jenny took her sister by the arm and led her around the island to the other side of the kitchen, where she couldn’t see the corpse. She hugged Lisa.
    The girl hugged back. Tightly. Fiercely.
    “Are you okay, honey?”
    Lisa said nothing. She shook uncontrollably.
    Just six weeks ago, coming home from an afternoon at the movies, Lisa had found her mother lying on the kitchen floor of the house in Newport Beach, dead of a massive cerebral hemorrhage. The girl had been devastated. Never having known her father, who had died when she was only two years old, Lisa had been especially close to her mother. For a while, that loss had left her deeply shaken, bewildered, depressed. Gradually, she had accepted her mother’s death, had discovered how to smile and laugh again. During the past few days, she had seemed like her old self. And now this.
    Jenny took the girl to the secretary, urged her to sit down, then squatted in front of her. She pulled a tissue from the box of Kleenex on the desk and blotted Lisa’s damp forehead. The girl’s flesh was not only as pale as ice; it was ice-cold as well.
    “What can I do for you, Sis?”
    “I’ll b-be okay,” Lisa said shakily.
    They held hands. The girl’s grip was almost painfully tight.
    Eventually, she said, “I thought… When I first saw her there… on the floor like that… I thought… crazy, but I thought… that it was Mom.” Tears shimmered in her eyes, but she held them back. “I kn-know Mom’s gone. And this woman here doesn’t even look like her. But it was… a surprise… such a shock… and so confusing.”
    They continued to hold hands, and slowly Lisa’s grip relaxed.
    After a while, Jenny said, “Feeling better?”
    “Yeah. A little.”
    “Want to lie down?”
    “No.” She let go of Jenny’s hand in order to pluck a tissue from the box of Kleenex. She wiped at her nose. She looked at the cooking island, beyond which lay the body. “Is it Hilda?”
    “Yes,” Jenny said.
    “I’m sorry.”
    Jenny had liked Hilda Beck enormously. She felt sick at heart about the woman’s death, but right now she was more concerned about Lisa about anything else. “Sis, I think it would be better if we got you out of here. How about waiting in my office while I take a closer look at the body. Then I’ve got to call the sheriff’s office and the county coroner.”
    “I’ll wait here with you.”
    “It would be better if—”
    “No!” Lisa said, suddenly breaking into shivers again. “I don’t want to be alone.”
    “All right,” Jenny said soothingly. “You can sit right here.”
    “Oh, Jeez,” Lisa said miserably. “The way she looked… all swollen… all black and b-blue. And the expression on her face—” She wiped at her eyes with the back of one hand. “Why’s she all dark and puffed up like that?”
    “Well, she’s obviously been dead for a few days,” Jenny said. “But listen, you’ve got to try not to think about things like—”
    “If she’s been dead for a few days,” Lisa said quaveringly, “why doesn’t it stink in here? Wouldn’t it stink?”
    Jenny frowned. Of course, it should stink in here if Hilda Beck had been dead long enough for her flesh to grow dark and for her body