Part 3 (1/2)

Three stories down on the lawn stood an air compressor. Positioned on a wooden pallet, the compressor was for blowing the insulation material into the s.p.a.ce between interior and exterior walls. About the size of the cab on a standard pickup truck, it had been delivered early that morning while she was still getting dressed.

And by the time she'd raced downstairs to ask them to move the machine upstairs, the delivery men had gone. Then the dogs, Monday the black Labrador and Prill the red Doberman, had begun dancing urgently around, indicating that they needed to go out.

So she'd taken them, even though it wasn't her job, being careful not to let them cross over into the precious rosebushes. She'd brought the animals in and fed them-not her job, either-and then the death threat had come in.

And in her annoyance over all these things, she had forgotten about the compressor. ”Dumb, dumb ...”

”What?” asked Ellie, but Jake was too vexed to answer. Even from this high above it, she could see that the machine the men had delivered featured a large metal intake hopper on one side and seventy-five feet of wide-bore, black corrugated plastic hose on the other.

A hose with a plastic nozzle on it, just as required. The trouble was, the compressor was way down there, but the insulation bales that needed to go into the hopper were all up here.

”Hmm,” she commented thoughtfully, which made Ellie look cautious.

”Jake,” said the pretty redhead in a warning tone born of experience.

Jake wasn't listening. The hose was plenty long enough to reach up here; she could still stick its nozzled business end into the third-floor walls to fill them with heat-saving material just as she'd planned, no problem at all.

But she was pretty sure she couldn't throw a bale out the window and hit the hopper with it, even if she could figure a way to get the plastic to come off the bale as it descended.

She could throw one out the window and not hit the hopper, though, and a bale of what was basically shredded paper couldn't do too much more than bounce at the bottom, could it?

Surely not. And then while she ran the hose, Ellie could just go down there and put the dropped insulation bale where it belonged, into the compressor's maw.

”Jake,” Ellie said even more warningly, but Jake just waved her off, experimentally hefting a bale.

It was a foot square, three feet long, and surprisingly heavy. Solid as a brick, too, in its blue plastic wrapper, almost pressurized-feeling, as if the contents were trying hard to burst out at her.

Downstairs, the phone began ringing. Jake ignored it as, with the bale in her arms, she staggered over to the window and raised the sash with her elbow, and gave the bale a shove.

”Wow,” said Ellie as the bale toppled out.

They watched it fall. As Jake had expected, it missed the hopper, dropping straight down to hit the ground just a foot or so away from the compressor.

But it didn't bounce. Instead, with a short, sharp pop that sounded like big trouble-and was-the insulation bale exploded.

Gray stuff spewed up from the burst blue plastic wrapper as if shot out of a cannon. An aerosol of pale gray insulation flew up past the third-floor window and just kept on going.

Jake felt her mouth drop open in awe as the stuff spread out over the neighbors' lawns, wherever it wasn't blocked by treetops. Where it was blocked, it snagged in the high branches and began fluttering in the breeze.

Fortunately, none of it landed on the rosebushes next door, because they were already burlap-wrapped. And that, as far as Jake could tell, was the only fortunate thing about the entire event.

”You know,” Ellie said thoughtfully, ”maybe that wasn't a good idea.”

”Right,” Jake said, as below, a familiar shape came around the corner of the house.

Thickly covered with a truly enormous amount of fluffy gray stuff, the shape strongly resembled the Abominable Snowman. Then, slowly, it looked up and saw them.

Jake recognized the figure. Under all the abominableness, it was her father, and despite his usual unflappable good nature, he did not look happy.

”Let's get out of here,” she said.

”No kidding,” said Ellie.

But then that phone started ringing again.

JAKE HAD A HUSBAND, A FATHER, A GROWN SON, AND A stepmother who was also her housekeeper living with her in the big old house on Key Street.

But, as often happened, when she wanted one of them, n.o.body was around.

Racing down the two flights of stairs from the third floor, she noticed in pa.s.sing that her son Sam's bedroom door was wide open and that his bed was neatly made. Like the dogs' anxiety to go out earlier and their not having been fed, this was unusual.

Sam, who was doing this year's autumn college semester here at home, was ordinarily very responsible about his animal ch.o.r.es and casual about his bed-making ones. But in her hurry she didn't pause to wonder about it.

That phone ...

She took the last few steps at a leap, sprinted into the telephone alcove between the dining room and the kitchen, and glanced at the caller ID. Undisclosed.

Answering, she spoke fiercely. ”Stop calling me. Do you hear me? You stop calling here, I mean it, or I'm going to ... What? Say that again, please?”

Bella Diamond peered in, her grape-green eyes inquisitive. Tall and rawboned with henna-dyed hair skinned back tightly into a rubber band, she smoothed her hands over the front of her white bib ap.r.o.n, then returned to her morning's task of cleaning the kitchen even though it was already so spotless that in a pinch, organ transplant surgery could have been done in it. Bella was the teensiest bit devoted to household hygiene, if by that one meant obsessed.

”Sorry,” Jake said distractedly into the phone, ”but I was expecting ...”

A death-threat caller.

”You are ... Who did you say?” she asked, still perplexed. ”And who did you say you wanted to-”

The caller p.r.o.nounced his name again; the light dawned. ”Oh, Chip Hahn! Of course I-”

Outside the dining room window, the Abominable Snowman had lost most of his fluffiness. He looked like Jake's father again, a lean, clean old man in faded overalls and a red flannel s.h.i.+rt, his stringy gray ponytail fastened back with a leather thong. But he still didn't look happy.

”Of course I remember you, Chip,” said Jake. ”But you're where? The police station? Here?”

She listened some more. Not much that came out of the phone sounded sensible, though. Mostly she understood that someone had gone missing; the rest was panicked babbling.

”Chip? Listen, you just stay there and I'll come and ... No. No, I'm not hanging up on you, I'm just ... Stop. No. Chip, listen to me, now, I-”

She took a deep breath. ”Chipper-Will. You. Shut. Up?”

So he did. And then she did hang up.

BELLA DIAMOND WATCHED JAKE AND ELLIE HURRY OUT OF the house, then lifted a large wooden box down from a pantry shelf. Her own feelings of pleasure at the younger women's liveliness mingled with regret that she could no longer share in it.

Or so it seemed. She had celebrated her sixtieth birthday a few months earlier, not that sixty was old, especially nowadays. But with age and experience had come caution, and now she worried that caution might be hardening into timidity.

Lately she feared heights, spiders, snakes, even the pilot light on the gas stove. And darkness-especially that. Going down into the cellar after nightfall had become a trial, because the string used to pull the light on was located several paces from the foot of the cellar stairs.

Paces that had to be taken blind, with no idea what horror might be reaching stealthily out of the darkness at her ...

Bella shuddered just thinking about it, at the same time as she made scornful fun of the thought. She was turning into a scaredy-cat, an idea she would have pooh-poohed vigorously only a few years ago.