Relentless

class.
    Beddlington Promenade closed. Vandals broke the windows at many of the empty stores, and sheets of plywood took the place of glass. Now Day-Glo graffiti covered the walls and seemed to throb in the dark, reminding me of cave paintings and of the crude symbols of barbaric languages.
    The vast parking lot had once been graced with a geometric bosk of sizable trees, eighty to a hundred podocarpuses. With the failure of the Promenade, no effort was made to excavate these fine specimens and sell them. Over one summer, when the irrigation system was left off, the trees died.
    Turning from the street, we entered this darker part of the night, and Penny parked under a bleakness of leafless and beseeching limbs.
    We abandoned the Explorer and, with Lassie on a leash, walked two blocks to a bus stop.
    Milo envied our black raincoats and profoundly disliked his bright yellow gear. “I look like a baby chicken.”
    I told him earlier that the store offered children’s sizes only in yellow. Now I said, “Actually, you look more like a duckling.”
    “That makes me feel so much better.”
    “I’ll bet if I squeeze your nose, it’ll honk.”
    “Geese honk. Ducks quack.”
    “Let’s see,” I said.
    Putting a protective hand over his nose, Milo said, “Mom, you’ve
got
to convince him to get a new agent.”
    When the bus arrived at the stop, the driver did not want Lassie aboard. A discreetly offered hundred-dollar bill changed her mind.
    Penny and Milo sat side by side. I sat across the aisle with the wet dog on my lap.
    Face surrounded by the hood, Penny looked like Audrey Hepburn in a movie about a saint.
    Maybe the weather dampened spirits, but the other passengers were a somber lot. Only a few engaged in murmured conversations. Those at the window seats gazed out at the night or into the eyes of their reflections. The communal mood was that of people on their way to a forced-labor camp.
    We traveled over four miles to reach our stop. From there wewalked two and a half blocks to a Craftsman-style bungalow with a deep porch and a stained-glass window in the front door.
    As can happen in parts of Southern California even in November, pink roses were blooming along the front walkway. Pink roses were also the motif of the stained-glass window.
    We had called ahead and were expected. Vivian Norby answered the door before we could ring the bell.
    She wore pink sneakers, a set of pink exercise sweats, and a bracelet of pink and blue beads. Her hair was tied up with a pink-and-blue scarf.
    The gun in her right hand was big and not pink.

   The revolver had belonged to Vivian’s late husband, the homicide detective, but as she welcomed us into the foyer, she grimly assured us that she knew how to use it and that she had no compunctions about plugging anyone who might have followed us with mischief in mind.
    “We weren’t followed,” I said. “We took care not to be.” Holding the weapon down at her side, muzzle safely pointed at the floor, Vivian regarded me with motherly affection. “God love you, Cubby, you’re a sweet man and a fine writer, but by nature you’re a blithe spirit—”
    Wincing, I disagreed: “Not blithe. Cheerful, generally cheerful, but not all the way to blithe.”
    “Blithe spirit,” Vivian insisted. “You’re a flaming optimist—”
    “Not flaming,” I said as I took off my raincoat. “Generally optimistic but not flaming.”
    She favored me with an expression of such motherly indulgencethat I expected her to pinch my cheek. “You’re a
blithe
spirit,
a
flaming
optimist, and we’d want you no other way. But being the kind of man you are, you don’t understand how infernally clever a truly wicked person can be. So we’ll assume you
were
followed until time proves otherwise.”
    Frowning as Vivian closed the door, Penny said, “Okay, I told you on the phone we were in a spot of trouble. But how did you know it was the kind of trouble, you might need a gun?”
    “Cop’s-wife instinct,” she said. “This morning your house blows up, fire so intense there’s hardly ashes left. The news says you’re in Florida doing book research when I know for a fact you’re not. Then you call, trying not to sound scared, you need a little help. Hell’s bells, my instinct would have told me to keep the Smith and Wesson handy even if I had been married to
a
florist
.”
    Lassie shook her coat, and water flew, and Penny said, “I’m so sorry, we’re making a mess of your