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When we sat down, I said, “You cooked this?”

“Are you kidding? I bought it at Morton’s and heated it.”

“Oh, good. I was afraid you’d cooked it. I mean, not that I was afraid it wouldn’t be good if you cooked it, it’s just that everything else is so perfect I couldn’t stand it if you were a good cook too.”

I didn’t even care that he laughed. Dating was fun. I loved dating.

The lasagna was delicious, the salad was sublime, and dessert was chocolate-tipped strawberries, of which, so far as I’m concerned, there is no whicher.

I helped him clear the table and put away leftovers, and then he poured us teeny cups of very strong coffee to take with us to the white linen furniture grouping. The coffee was flavored with cinnamon and it was delicious too, but it wasn’t exactly romantic. It was more like something to give wine-drinking guests before they drive home. The music wasn’t romantic either. It was the kind of music you listen to when you’re working, the kind to keep you alert. Like a not-so-subtle announcement that romance wasn’t on Ethan’s mind.

I sneaked a quick look at my watch, which said it was close to midnight. I stood up and carried my cup to the kitchen counter.

I said, “I have to get up at four, so I’d better say good night.”

He said, “I’ll walk you to your car.”

Sam raised his head and thumped his tail goodbye as we went out the door, and for a moment I felt like falling on the floor and having a fine leg-banging tantrum. Here I’d worried all week about how I would handle the sex thing, and there wasn’t any sex thing. I’d been invited to dinner and that’s all I’d got. I hadn’t even been offered a choice, just like I hadn’t been offered white wine.

At the Bronco, I turned to Ethan and said, “It was a lovely evening. Thank you.”

He didn’t answer. Just put his hands on my arms and leaned down and kissed me, long and hard.

“Good night, Dixie. Drive safely.”

I poured myself into the driver’s seat and started the Bronco and backed out while Ethan stood in the headlights and watched me. I didn’t begin to breathe until I was on the street.

I was surprised my breath didn’t come out flaming.

TWENTY-SIX

The world seemed to have taken on a new clarity as I drove home, as if the evening with Ethan had sharpened my senses. The streets were bright with both moonlight and man-made light, with deep pools of shadow under oaks and clumps of palms, many of their trunks outlined by teensy Italian Christmas lights and weighed with plate-sized bursts of night-blooming cereus. I put the Bronco’s windows down and inhaled the salty night air drifting from the sea. I felt oddly deflated and exhilarated at the same time, as if I’d failed to get something I greatly wanted and was wildly grateful for failing.

I thought about the kitten waiting for me at home, and it felt good. I wasn’t planning on keeping her, but a kitten waiting for you to come home is a spot of love in your life, and that’s nice. It’s actually very nice.

Approaching the Kurtz house, I automatically swiveled my head to look down the moonlit driveway. As I did, another part of the puzzle fell into place. I not only knew there was another room between the garage and the wine room, I knew what kind of room it was and how it was being used. I also knew without a shadow of doubt why somebody had tried to steal Ziggy, and what Ken Kurtz was up to in that house. The realization caused my hands to shake on the steering wheel.

Another thing about being a little bit off-center is that it robs you of your ability to justify things that are just flat wrong. Normal people come up with all kinds of political explanations and religious rationalizations and rose-colored social delusions when they’re confronted with things that shouldn’t be. Slightly loopy people can’t do that anymore. Like the kid compelled to blurt out that the emperor was naked as a jaybird, we can only see things as they are and tell things as they are.

The way I saw it, I had no choice but to go inside that house and find what I knew was there. I didn’t think past that, I just knew I had to do it.

Every sensible bone in my body told me to call Guidry and tell him what I’d figured out. Every experienced bone in my body said no judge would give him a search warrant to look for something that nobody knew existed except me, especially since I had nothing to go on except intuition and a knowledge of iguanas.

In the not-so-distant past, I would have gone home first and got a weapon, but I couldn’t do that now. Not just because Guidry hadn’t returned my .38, but because I knew I couldn’t live with myself if I killed anybody else.

I eased the Bronco around the curve in the driveway and parked in front of the garages. I was careful not to let the door make a loud click when I closed it and then covered the pavement as fast as I could to get between the long garage wall and the privacy hedge in front of the house. I wished I had spare Keds in the car. To keep my high heels from clacking, I had to walk almost on tiptoe.

When I reached the glass wall of the living room, I kept my pace steady, as if I had legitimate business there. Through the glass, the living room was in darkness but I could see a subdued glow in the great fireplace, as if Kurtz had left a fire burning and gone to bed. Okay, so far so good. I tippy-toed back down the walk and turned the corner to skitter past the row of closed garage doors. In the bright moonlight, I felt like the sky was shining a spotlight on me. If anybody was watching the house, they could surely see me.

Ducking into the narrow alcove to the side door, I fitted one of Kurtz’s keys into the lock and eased the door open. Once inside, I left the door slightly ajar in case I needed to make a hasty exit. I was banking on the second key being to the wine room. I looked down the southern corridor toward Kurtz’s bedroom, where everything was dark and silent. Creeping down the southern corridor past the wine room, I stuck my head around the corner and looked into the living room to verify that it was empty.

The room was quiet, the only sound the sighing and subtle crackling of white-hot logs in the fireplace. My guess was that a big fire had roared there about an hour ago, and without care it had dwindled to a hot memory of itself. I stopped for a minute and considered my options. The most sensible one was to retrace my steps, get in my Bronco, and drive home. But no matter how much my head told me to do that, my feet turned toward the wine room.

Holding my breath, I slipped the second key into the lock and turned the doorknob. Closing the door behind me, I flipped the light switch to fill the room with a ghostly red glow, and almost tripped over Ziggy. He was stretched on the floor just inside the door, and when he felt me he raised his tail and whipped it back and forth. I leaped out of the way, and he lowered his tail. Not because he couldn’t reach me, but because he was too weak to lash at me. In the chill of the wine room, Ziggy was closing down. His normal bright green had darkened to ripe avocado, which meant he hadn’t been in the room very long. My guess was that Kurtz had moved him to the wine room at about the same time he’d left the fire to burn itself down.

I whispered, “I’ll get you out of here later, Ziggy, but right now I have to find a secret door.”

I moved to the back of the room and began looking for a hidden control that would open a passage to the room that I knew lay between the wine room and the garage. I felt along the underside of every wine shelf and on each side of every supporting column, but I didn’t find anything. I was making my second sweep down the back wall of wine bottles when I tried pulling on the columns. One of the columns moved, and an entire section swung outward on invisible hinges.