She turned and looked at the phone, which was a walnut box model that stood on a corner desk. It rang, rang.
"Hilary?"
"I'll bet it's him," she said.
"Him who?"
"I've been getting these calls...."
The strident ringing continued.
"What calls?" Tony asked.
"The last couple of days, someone's been calling and then refusing to speak when I answer. It's happened six or eight times."
"He doesn't say anything at all?"
"He just listens," she said. "I think it's some nut who was turned on by the newspaper stories about Frye."
The insistent bell made her grit her teeth.
She stood up and hesitantly approached the phone. Tony went with her. "You have a listed number?"
"I'm getting a new one next week. It'll be unlisted."
They reached the desk and stood looking at the phone. It rang again and again and again.
"It's him," she said. "Who else would let it ring that long?"
Tony snatched up the receiver. "Hello?"
The caller didn't respond.
"Thomas residence," Tony said. "Detective Clemenza speaking."
Click.
Tony put the phone down and said, "He hung up. Maybe I scared him off for good."
"I hope so."
"It's still a good idea to get an unlisted number."
"Oh, I'm not going to change my mind about that."
"I'll call the telephone company service department first thing Monday morning and tell them the LAPD would appreciate a speedy job."
"Can you do that?"
"Sure."
"Thank you, Tony." She hugged herself. She felt cold.
"Try not to worry about it," he said. "Studies show that the kind of creep who makes threatening phone calls usually gets all his kicks that way. The call itself usually satisfies him. He usually isn't the violent type."
"Usually?"
"Almost never."
She smiled thinly. "That's still not good enough."
The call had spoiled any chance that the night might end in a shared bed. She was no longer in the mood for seduction, and Tony sensed the change.
"Would you like me to stay a while longer, just to see if he calls again?"
"That's sweet of you," she said, "But I guess you're right. He's not dangerous. If he was, he'd come around instead of just calling. Anyway, you scared him off. He probably thinks the police are here just waiting for him."
"Did you get your pistol back?"
She nodded. "I went downtown yesterday and filled out the registration form like I should have done when I moved into the city. If the guy on the phone does come around, I can plink him legally now."
"I really don't think he'll bother you again tonight."
"I'm sure you're right."
For the first time all evening, they were awkward with each other.
"Well, I guess I'd better be going."
"It is late," she agreed.
"Thank you for the cognac."
"Thank you for a wonderful dinner."
At the door he said, "Doing anything tomorrow night?"
She was about to turn him down when she remembered how good she had felt sitting beside him on the sofa. And she thought of Wally Topelis's warning about becoming a hermit. She smiled and said, "I'm free."
"Great. What would you like to do?"
"Whatever you want."
He thought about it for a moment, "Shall we make a whole day of it?"
"Well ... why not?"
"We'll start with lunch. I'll pick you up at noon."
"I'll be ready and waiting."
He kissed her lightly and affectionately on the lips, "Tomorrow," he said,
"Tomorrow."
She watched him leave, then closed and locked the door.
***
All day Saturday, morning and afternoon and evening, the body of Bruno Frye lay alone in the Forever View Funeral Home, unobserved and unattended.
Friday night, after Joshua Rhinehart had left, Avril Tannerton and Gary Olmstead had transferred the corpse to another coffin, an ornate brass-plated model with a plush velvet and silk interior. They tucked the dead man into a white burial gown, put his arms straight out at his sides, and pulled a white velvet coverlet up to the middle of his chest. Because the condition of the flesh was not good, Tannerton did not want to expend any energy trying to make the corpse presentable. Gary Olmstead thought there was something cheap and disrespectful about consigning a body to the grave without benefit of makeup and powder. But Tannerton persuaded him that cosmetology offered little hope for Bruno Frye's shrunken yellow-gray countenance.
"And anyway," Tannerton had said, "you and I will be the last people in this world to lay eyes on him. When we shut this box tonight, it'll never be opened again."
At 9:45 Friday night, they had closed and latched the lid of the casket. That done, Olmstead went home to his wan little wife and his quiet and intense young son. Avril went upstairs; he lived above the rooms of the dead.
Early Saturday morning, Tannerton left for Santa Rosa in his silver-gray Lincoln. He took an overnight bag with him, for he didn't intend to return until ten o'clock Sunday morning. Bruno Frye's funeral was the only one that he was handling at the moment. Since there was to be no viewing, he hadn't any reason to stay at Forever View; he wouldn't be needed until the service on Sunday,
He had a woman in Santa Rosa. She was the latest of a long line of women; Avril thrived on variety. Her name was Helen Virtillion. She was a good-looking woman in her early thirties, very lean, taut, with big firm breasts which he found endlessly fascinating.
A lot of women were attracted to Avril Tannerton, not in spite of what he did for a living but because of it. Of course, some were turned off when they discovered he was a mortician. But a surprising number were intrigued and even excited by his unusual profession.
He understood what made him desirable to them. When a man worked with the dead, some of the mystery of death rubbed off on him. In spite of his freckles and his boyish good looks, in spite of his charming smile and his great sense of fun and his open-hearted manner, some women felt he was nonetheless mysterious, enigmatic. Unconsciously, they thought they could not die so long as they were in his arms, as if his services to the dead earned him (and those close to him) special dispensation. That atavistic fantasy was similar to the secret hope shared by many women who married doctors because they were subconsciously convinced that their spouses could protect them from all of the microbial dangers of this world.
Therefore, all day Saturday, while Avril Tannerton was in Santa Rosa making love to Helen Virtillion, the body of Bruno Frye lay alone in an empty house.
Sunday morning, two hours before sunrise, there was a sudden rush of movement in the funeral home, but Tannerton was not there to notice.
The overhead lights in the windowless workroom were switched on abruptly, but Tannerton was not there to see.
The lid of the sealed casket was unlatched and thrown back. The workroom was filled with screams of rage and pain, but Tannerton was not there to hear.
***
At ten o'clock Sunday morning, as Tony stood in his kitchen drinking a glass of grapefruit juice, the telephone rang. It was Janet Yamada, the woman who had been Frank Howard's blind date last night.
"How'd it go?" he asked.
"It was wonderful, a wonderful night."
"Really?"
"Sure. He's a doll."
"Frank is a doll."
"You said he might be kind of cold, difficult to get to know, but he wasn't."
"He wasn't?"
"And he's so romantic."
"Frank?"
"Who else?"
"Frank Howard is romantic?"
"These days you don't find many men who have a sense of romance," Janet said. "Sometimes it seems like romance and chivalry were thrown out the window when the sexual revolution and the women's rights movement came in. But Frank still helps you on with your coat and opens doors for you and pulls your chair out and everything. He even brought me a bouquet of roses. They're beautiful."
"I thought you might have trouble talking to him."