Strangers

as if he were returning their scrutiny.
        

        
        While Dom and Ginger were examining the back-issue files at the Elko Sentinel, Ernie and Faye Block were working in the office of the Tranquility Motel, trying to contact the people whose names were on the guest list for July 6, two summers ago, but who had thus far been unreachable. They were behind the check-in counter, sitting opposite each other at the oak desk, which had kneeholes on both sides. A pot of coffee stood within reach on an electric warming-plate.
        Ernie composed a telegram to Gerald Salcoe, the man who had rented two rooms for his family on July 6, the summer before last, and who was unreachable by phone because his number in Monterey, California, was unlisted. Meanwhile, Faye went back through last year's guest book, day by day, looking for the most recent entry for Cal Sharkle, the trucker who had stayed with them on that July 6. Yesterday, Dom had tried the telephone number Cal had printed in the guest registry that night, but it had been disconnected. The hope was that a more recent entry would provide his new address and phone number.
        As they performed their separate tasks, Ernie was reminded of countless other times throughout their thirty-one years of marriage when they had sat facing each other at a desk or, more often, at a kitchen table. In one apartment or another, in one house or another, at one end of the world or another, from Quantico to Pendleton to Singapore, nearly everywhere the Marines sent him, the two of them had spent long evenings at a kitchen table, working or dreaming or worrying or happily planning together, often late into the night. Ernie was suddenly filled with poignant echoes of those thousands of huddled conferences and shared labors. How very fortunate he had been to find and marry Faye. Their lives were so inextricably linked that they might as well have been a single creature. If Colonel Falkirk or others resorted to murder to terminate this investigation, if anything happened to Faye, then Ernie hoped he would die, too, simultaneously.
        He finished composing the telegram to Gerald Salcoe, called it in to Western Union, and requested immediate delivery - all the while warmed by a love that was strong enough to make their dangerous situation seem less threatening than it really was.
        Faye found five occasions during the past year when Cal Sharkle had stayed overnight, and in every case he had listed the same Evanston, Illinois, address and phone number that he had entered in the registry for July 6 of the previous year. Apparently, he had not moved, after all. Yet, when they dialed this number, they obtained the recording that Dom had gotten yesterday, informing them that the telephone had been disconnected and that no new Evanston listing existed.
        On the chance that Cal had moved out of Evanston into the "Windy City" itself, Faye dialed Area Code 312 Information and asked if there was a number for Calvin Sharkle in Chicago. There was not. Using a map of Illinois, she and Ernie placed calls to Information in the Chicago suburbs: Whiting, Hammond, Calumet City, Markham, Downer's Grove, Oak Park, Oakbrook, Elmhurst, Des Plaines, Rolling Meadows, Arlington Heights, Skokie, Wilmette, Glencoe… No luck. Either Cal Sharkle had moved out of the Chicago area, or had dropped off the face of the earth.
        

        
        While Faye and Ernie worked in the first-floor office, Ned and Sandy Sarver were already preparing dinner in the kitchen upstairs. This evening, after Brendan Cronin arrived from Chicago, after Jorja Monatella and her little girl flew in from Vegas, there would be nine for dinner, and Ned did not want to leave preparations until the last minute. Yesterday, when all six of them joined forces to prepare and serve the evening meal, Ginger Weiss had observed that the occasion was almost like a family holiday gathering; and indeed, they felt an extraordinary closeness though they hardly knew one another. With the idea that reinforcement of their special affection and camaraderie might give them strength to face whatever lay ahead of them, Ned and Sandy had decided that tonight's meal ought to be like a Thanksgiving feast. Therefore, they were preparing a sixteen-pound turkey, pecan stuffing, scalloped potatoes, baked corn, carrots with tarragon, pepper slaw, pumpkin pie, and made-from-scratch crescent rolls.
        As they chopped celery,