Phantoms

many physicians preferred these days. Instead, it was an old-fashioned, country doctor’s office, rather like a Norman Rockwell painting in the Saturday Evening Post . Bookshelves were overflowing with books and medical journals. There were six antique wooden filing cabinets that Jenny had gotten for a good price at an auction. The walls were hung with diplomas, anatomy charts, and two large watercolor studies of Snowfield. Beside the locked drug cabinet, there was a scale, and beside the scale, on a small table, was a box of inexpensive toys—little plastic cars, tiny soldiers, miniature dolls—and packs of sugarless chewing gum that were dispensed as rewards—or bribes—to children who didn’t cry during examinations.
    A large, scarred, dark pine desk was the centerpiece of the room, and Jenny guided Lisa into the big leather chair behind it.
    “I’m sorry,” the girl said.
    “Sorry?” Jenny said, sitting on the edge of the desk and pulling the telephone toward her.
    “I’m sorry I flaked out on you. When I saw… the body… I… well… I got hysterical.”
    “You weren’t hysterical at all. Just shocked and frightened, which is understandable.”
    “But you weren’t shocked or frightened.”
    “Oh, yes,” Jenny said. “Not just shocked; stunned .”
    “But you weren’t scared, like I was.”
    “I was scared, and I still am.” Jenny hesitated, then decided that, after all, she shouldn’t hide the truth from the girl. She told her about the disturbing possibility of contagion. “I don’t think it is a disease that we’re dealing with here, but I could be wrong. And if I’m wrong…”
    The girl stared at Jenny with wide-eyed amazement. “You were scared, like me, but you still spent all that time examining the body. Jeez, I couldn’t do that. Not me. Not ever.”
    “Well, honey, I’m a doctor . I’m trained for it.”
    “Still…”
    “You didn’t flake out on me,” Jenny assured her.
    Lisa nodded, apparently unconvinced.
    Jenny lifted the telephone receiver, intending to call the sheriff’s Snowfield substation before contacting the coroner over in Santa Mira, the county seat. There was no dial tone, just a soft hissing sound. She jiggled the disconnect buttons on the phones cradle, but the line remained dead.
    There was something sinister about the phone being out of order when a dead woman lay in the kitchen. Perhaps Mrs. Beck had been murdered. If someone cut the telephone line and crept into the house, and if he sneaked up on Hilda with care and cunning… well… he could have stabbed her in the back with a long-bladed knife that had sunk deep enough to pierce her heart, killing her instantly. In that case, the wound would have been where Jenny couldn’t have seen it—unless she had rolled the corpse completely over, onto its stomach. That didn’t explain why there wasn’t any blood. And it didn’t explain the universal bruising, the swelling. Nevertheless, the wound could be in the housekeeper’s back, and since she had died within the past hour, it was also conceivable that the killer—if there was a killer—might still be here, in the house.
    I’m letting my imagination run away with me, Jenny thought.
    But she decided it would be wise for her and Lisa to get out of the house right away.
    “We’ll have to go next door and ask Vince or Angie Santini to make the calls for us,” Jenny said quietly, getting up from the edge of the desk. “Our phone is out of order.”
    Lisa blinked. “Does that have anything to do with… what happened?”
    “I don’t know,” Jenny said.
    Her heart was pounding as she crossed the office toward the half-closed door. She wondered if someone was waiting on the other side.
    Following Jenny, Lisa said, “But the phone being out of order now … it’s kind of strange, isn’t it?”
    “A little.”
    Jenny half-expected to encounter a huge, grinning stranger with a knife. One of those sociopaths who seemed to be in such abundant supply these days. One of those Jack the Ripper imitators whose bloody handiwork kept the TV reporters supplied with grisly film for the six o’clock news.
    She looked into the hall before venturing out there, prepared to jump back and slam the door if she saw anyone. It was deserted.
    Glancing at Lisa, Jenny saw the girl had quickly grasped the situation.
    They hurried along the hall toward the front of the house, and as they approached the stairs to the second floor, which lay just this side of