Programmed for Peril

strength. “Like what, Leftover?”
    His face was round, ringed with heavy brown beard and hair four months from a barber’s attention. With his thick nose he looked like a bear cub—more so when he frowned, as he did then. “Like maybe being out in the van and thinking you’re being followed.”
    Trish cocked her head. “By whom? Driving what?”
    “A guy I couldn’t see good. Driving a gray four-door Detroit something.”
    “When?”
    “Now and then over the last week.”
    A lot more of Trish’s questions produced very little additional information about Leftover’s sometime shadow. What they did produce was an increase in her anxiety level. How far was Rocco DeVita willing to go to eliminate PC-Pros as a competitor?
    Getting into her Acura, she shoved all that off into a corner of her mind. It all might be coincidental and trivial on the close inspection she wasn’t willing to conduct right then.
    The closer to her rambling Victorian rental she drove, the more her grin turned up.
    Melody would be home from school!
    Janine was on the porch thumbing through Seventeen. A denim headband held her heavy black hair. Her skin was smooth and white. Trish didn’t need to know her name was O’Connor to see the Irish in her. Though only thirteen, she had a way with children. Melody liked her. Trish wouldn’t let her get away. “How is she, Janine?” Trish said, climbing the stairs.
    “Need you ask? Listen.”
    From Melody’s second-floor room came high-pitched, fluid notes.
    “Is that her flute?” Trish said.
    “When I last looked in it was the Irish whistle. Chieftains look out!” Janine’s smile was silvered with expensive orthodontia.
    Trish pulled a check out of her purse. New month. Time to settle baby-sitting accounts. Janine tucked the check into the back pocket of her tight denim shorts. “Thanks, Ms. Morley!” She spun on her $150 pump-up sneakers and was gone. She didn’t need the money. She was building character.
    Trish took the uneven stairs to the second floor two at a time. “Heads up, kiddo,” she shouted. “Here comes your loving mother!” The music stopped, sneakered feet thudded. Seven-year-old Melody burst forth at full run, carrot-topped, freckled. Come to me, sweet pea, sweetheart, sweet crumb of my flesh!
    She had school papers to show; teacher was cleaning out her desk with only days to go before vacation. Trish lavished motherly praise on bestarred pages of single-number to single-number addition (no carrying yet) and the briefest of essays written laboriously on lines set an inch and a half apart. This fallout from the enrichment program, promising as it was, paled before Melody’s musical aptitude. If she heard something once, she could play it on any of her modest battery of instruments: flute, cheap electronic keyboard, plastic clarinet, soprano and alto recorders, or on her latest acquisition, the tin whistle, three dollars at the Irish fair Foster had taken them to last week.
    Trish gave her an extra hard hug. “Hey, kiddo... pretty soon no more pencils, no more books, no more teacher’s dirty looks,” she sang.
    “You’re flat, Mommy. Anyhow, after this year I’m never going to school again!”
    “In the middle of August you’ll be begging to go back.”
    “No way!”
    “We’ll see.”
    “Can I have a Yodel for my snack, Mom?”
    “I thought we had you on a health kick: carrots, raisins, and rice cakes.”
    “Today I want something gooey.”
    “Let’s check your teeth.”
    “Aaaaaaaah.”
    Trish peered into perfect pink and white alignment. No decay. No soft spots. Let’s hear it for prenatal fluoride! “Come on down to the kitchen.”
    That room and its adjoining pantry were high-ceilinged and spacious, paneled with dark, waist-high wood—eighty years away from today’s trendy free-standing counters and eye-level microwaves. She loved this shadowy old house with its angles and crannies—except in heating season. She opened the package of Yodels, stared down at the twin artificial-chocolate-covered cylinders. Melody’s hand was out. “Just one,” Trish said. “We’ll save the other one for another time—maybe for next year.”
    “Mom!”
    Trish raised a cautioning finger. “You forgetting the rules? No complaining. And no whining.” She poured Melody a small Dick Tracy glass of milk. She gulped down the Yodel in less than five seconds.
    “Melody! You’re making a pig of yourself!”
    “I was hungry.” She put her dish and glass