Watchers

with Garrison Dilworth, Aunt Violet’s attorney—Nora’s attorney now—during their meetings to settle the estate. She had answered his questions as succinctly as possible and had sat in his presence with her eyes downcast and her cold hands fidgeting in her lap, crushingly shy. Afraid of her own lawyer! If she couldn’t deal with a kind man like Garrison Dilworth, how could she ever handle a beast like Art Streck? In the future, she wouldn’t dare have a repairman in her home, no matter what broke down; she would just have to live in ever-worsening decay and ruin because the next man might be another Streck—or worse. In the tradition established by her aunt, Nora already had groceries delivered from a neighborhood market, so she did not have to go out to shop, but now she would be afraid to let the delivery boy into the house; he had never been the least aggressive, suggestive, or in any way insulting, but one day he might see the vulnerability that Streck had Seen .
    She hated Aunt Violet.
    On the other hand, Violet had been right: Nora was a mouse. Like all mice, her destiny was to run, to hide, and to cower in the dark.
    Her fury abated just as her cramps had done.
    Loneliness took the place of anger, and she wept quietly.
    Later, sitting with her back against the headboard, blotting her reddened eyes with Kleenex and blowing her nose, she bravely vowed not to become a recluse. Somehow she would find the strength and courage to venture out Into the world more than she’d done before. She would meet people. She
    would get to know the neighbors that Violet had more or less shunned. She would make friends. By God, she would. And she wouldn’t let Streck intimidate her. She would learn how to handle other problems that came along as well, and in time she would be a different woman from the one she was now. A promise to herself. A sacred vow.
    She considered unplugging the telephone, thus foiling Streck, but she was afraid she might need it. What if she woke, heard someone in the house, and was unable to plug in the phone fast enough?
    Before turning out the lights and pulling up the covers, she closed the lockless bedroom door and braced it shut with the armchair, which she tilted under the knob. In bed, in the dark, she felt for the butcher’s knife, which she’d placed on the nightstand, and she was reassured when she put her hand directly upon it without fumbling.
    Nora lay on her back, eyes open, wide awake. Pale amber light from the streetlamps found its way through the shuttered windows. The ceiling was banded with alternating strips of black and faded gold, as if a tiger of infinite length were leaping over the bed in a jump that would never end. She wondered if she would ever sleep easily again.
    She also wondered if she would find anyone who could care about her— and for her—out there in the bigger world that she had vowed to enter. Was there no one who could love a mouse and treat it gently?
    Far away, a train whistle played a one-note dirge in the night. It was a hollow, cold, and mournful sound.
     
     
7
    Vince Nasco had never been so busy. Or so happy.
    When he called the usual Los Angeles number to report success at the Yarbeck house, he was referred to another public phone. This one was between a frozen-yogurt shop and a fish restaurant on Balboa Island in Newport Harbor.
    There, he was called by the contact with the sexy, throaty, yet little-girl voice. She spoke circumspectly of murder, never using incriminating words but employing exotic euphemisms that would mean nothing in a court of law. She was calling from another pay phone, one she had chosen at random, so there was virtually no chance that either of them was tapped. But it was a Big Brother world where you didn’t dare take risks.
    The woman had a third job for him. Three in one day.
    As Vince watched the evening traffic inching past on the narrow island street, the woman—whom he had never seen and whose name he didn’t know—gave him the address of Dr. Albert Hudston in Laguna Beach. Hudston lived with his wife and a sixteen-year-old son. Both Dr. and Mrs. Hudston had to be hit; however, the boy’s fate was in Vince’s hands. If the kid could
    be kept out of it, fine. But if he saw Vince and could serve as a witness, he had to be eliminated, too.
    “Your discretion,” the woman said.
    Vince already knew that he would erase the kid, because killing was more useful to him, more energizing, if the victim was young. It