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Dare picked up the receiver, put it to his ear and heard the distant, steady ringing at the end of the line. He frowned, then put the phone gently back on the desk. “Oh, well, it could be a bomb scare or something.”

“Or not. Same thing happens when I try to get an operator. Shit!” She ripped off a length of computer tape and crumpled it up in her fist. “Now I’ve got to do the freaking thing over!”

Dare stood pondering silently with his head down, his hands deep down in the pockets of his jeans. “God, I really miss the dogs,” he said wanly.

Freeboard punched at the calculator rapidly.

“Times one-oh-point seven two …”

Dare looked up as if in sudden realization and dismay.

“The dogs!” he exclaimed. “I forgot to bring the dogs!”

“No, you brought them,” said Freeboard.

Dare frowned, looking puzzled and uncertain. “No, the dogs aren’t here. I must have left them behind.”

“I could swear that you brought them,” Freeboard murmured distractedly as she punched in another set of numbers.

Uneasy, Dare looked down at the telephone receiver. “Begin the Beguine” had just ended, there was silence and the ringing at the end of the line seemed more resonant now, although somehow even farther away. Dare shook his head and bit his lip, then spoke quietly.

“How on earth could I have forgotten the dogs?”

Chapter Five

Trawley sipped tea laced with sugar and milk as she stared out the window almost touching her shoulder where splatters of rain fell in random strikes. “How long is this predicted to last? Have you heard?”

Case followed her gaze and shook his head. “No, I haven’t. There’s still no reception on radio or television.”

“Oh.”

“Must be the storm. I’m getting nothing but static.”

Trawley turned to study his face. “Me too.”

He looked around and met her gaze. They were sitting across from each other at a table in a windowed nook of the breakfast room that was tucked away just off the kitchen. Case gripped the handle of the porcelain teapot. “More?”

The psychic shook her head and said, “No.”

He poured for himself and then plucked two sugar cubes from a bowl. They made a crisply papery sound as he unwrapped them. “And so what do you make of all this?”

“Make of what?”

“This whole thing.” Case plopped the cubes into the teacup and stirred. “Miss Freeboard seems bored beyond terminal ennui,” he went on, “yet she pressed me to take this thing on.”

“Oh, well, yes. She did the same thing with me.”

“She told me she was doing it as an enormous favor for a friend. Forgotten his name. Oh, yes, Redmund, I think,” recalled Case.

“James Redmund.”

“Oh.”

“Why ‘Oh’?”

“Well, Mr. Dare was going on about some friend of Miss Freeboard’s for quite a little while in the limo driving up. Said he’d ‘seen better faces in a Kuwaiti police lineup.’ Could that be the same person, I wonder? Smokes a pipe?”

“I don’t know. Miss Freeboard told me that he’d begged her to put this thing together. Did she tell you that, too, by any chance?”

“Not exactly. She said if it turned out that the house is haunted, she could never in good conscience make a sale at any price.”

“No, of course not,” Case agreed with a shake of the head.

Their eyes met eamestly for a moment, and then suddenly they broke into laughter together. “Oh, I suppose we’ll get the truth of it one of these days,” said Trawley as their chuckling tapered to smiles.

“Yes, I’m sure that we will one day. So we will.”

Suddenly the tempo of the rain picked up. Trawley turned to look out but the rain was slashing and the arbor of trees beyond was blurred. “Reminds me of a science fiction story I once read,” she mused. “About a planet where it never stopped raining. That could surely put an edge on, couldn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me, how did you get into this field?”

“Through death.”

She turned her head and found him brooding out the window.

“The death of someone close to me,” Case said very softly. “Someone that I loved more than life … more than myself. I grew obsessed with somehow proving to myself that she hadn’t been utterly