Bill Pronzini: With an Extreme Burning

“Not in the water, it won't. What time are you leaving tomorrow?”

“Ted says we'll be on the road by seven, but if we're off by eight, I'll be happy.”

“Coming back Monday or Tuesday?”

“Labor Day, dammit, fighting traffic all the way. I've got to be at the hospital at eight A.M. on Tuesday. Still—seven glorious days of R and R.”

“I envy you. I'd settle for a two-day vacation right now.”

“Honey, are you sure you can't get away for that long? There's plenty of room at the cabin; the boys can double up.”

“I'd love to, I really would, but I've got showings scheduled for next week and there's a good chance the couple from Walnut Creek will decide to make an offer on the Morrison property. I really need at least one commission soon. Otherwise I don't buy any new fall clothes or you any more lunches.”

“Well, if things happen fast and you have the time, just come ahead. No need to call first.”

“I will.”

“Give my love to Dix when you see him,” Eileen said, and winked, and went off toward the public parking lot behind the Mill, her ample hips grinding inside those hideous paisley stretch pants she insisted on wearing.

Cecca drove to Better Lands to check her voice mail. The Agbergs, the Walnut Creek couple, were still debating, evidently—not that she'd expected otherwise. They were a methodical pair; it might take a week or two before they made up their minds. There were no other messages and not much going on at the office. Tom Birnam, boss and friend, told her there'd been only half a dozen calls and one showing all day. Saturdays were usually a busy time and she'd been a little sorry to have this one off. End-of-summer doldrums … but she knew that wasn't it. This damn recession was hurting everybody. She'd had just two sales in the past fifteen months, and it was the sheerest luck that one of those had been on the Ridge. One of the other agents hadn't had a sale of any kind in ten months.

And what made the pill even more bitter was the fact that Los Alegres had once been and should still be a real estate agent's paradise. Home prices had climbed radically in the greater Bay Area in recent years, but most houses here were still affordable and a good value for the money. Small-town America was dying, thanks to global shrinkage, overpopulation, technology, a dozen other factors. You couldn't find many towns in California these days, particularly close to a major urban center like San Francisco, that had a hundred-and-fifty-year history, an untricked-up, old-fashioned ambiance, community pride, good schools, a jobless rate of four percent (half the state average), no serious drug or gang problems, at least not yet, and therefore a relatively crime-free environment, and a commute to the city of not much more than an hour. Escapees from Oakland and Berkeley and San Francisco ought to be flocking here, engaging in bidding wars for prime home sites. Would be, once the economy perked up. If it perked up in the foreseeable future.

She stopped at Safeway for a few things, so it was almost three when she turned onto Shady Court. She'd always loved this one-block cul-de-sac; it was the prettiest little street on the west side. Tall elms lined both sides, their branches interlocked overhead to form a tunnel of summer shade. Well-maintained old houses of mixed architectural styles: Spanish, Victorian, neo-colonial, 1920s frame. Shady Court had such traditional charm that Hollywood location scouts, like bugs with highly sensitized antennae, had scoped it out and offered enough money to make the residents give in and allow their homes to be used as backdrops for (at last count) three TV commercials and scenes in two films. Cecca had voted against the intrusion of cameras and outsiders the last time, but as the newest resident, she was outvoted. In fact, she'd been the only dissenter.

She had adored Shady Court as far back as she could remember. Her parents' Christmas-tree farm had been a nice enough place to grow up, but it was too far out in the country to suit her; she preferred town and its attractions. When she was at Los Alegres High, eight blocks to the north, she had driven by the Court often on her way to and from school and had told her friends, “I'm going to live there someday.” They'd laughed at her. Well, it had taken her twenty years and an ugly divorce, but here she was. Thank you, Chet, she thought wryly and not for the first time. Walking out on Amy and me was a lousy thing to do, but at least you were decent about the settlement. Half the joint savings, Chet agreeing to give her seventy-five percent of the proceeds on the sale of their Cherry Street house in exchange for title to the Mendocino beach cottage, this place coming on the market at just the right time and at just the right price … sometimes in the midst of chaos there is an island of good.

Amy's little Honda, that her granddad had bought her over Cecca's protests last Christmas, was neither parked out front nor in the driveway. Off somewhere with her friends; she finished work at Hallam's Bookshop at one on Saturdays. Cecca felt a small disappointment. Eileen had psyched her up and she thought she knew now how to approach Amy on the subject of sex, if not the subject of the condoms. You had to walk such a fine line with the girl sometimes. Most of her hostility was gone, but it still flared up now and then, when Amy felt she was being threatened in some way. “If you and Dad had stayed married, it wouldn't be like this.” Insecurity. Distrust. Thank you again, Chet Bracco, you deceitful jerk. At least Amy's hostility had extended to her father as well, and in fact seemed to be lingering there, where it belonged. Cecca couldn't have stood it if she had somehow been twisted around in her daughter's mind so that she became the villain.

Some leaves were down already, she noticed as she dragged the groceries out. Elm and magnolia both. Still August, hundred-degree temperatures, and the trees were showing fall color and losing leaves. Easterners were wrong about California not having seasons, but there was no getting around the fact that the seasons were erratic.

It was relatively cool on the porch. She thought she would sit out there for a while and wait for Amy to come home. The porch was her favorite part of the house—a half wraparound that extended to the back on the south side, with rounded pillar supports and intricate filigree work, wide enough for plenty of furniture and plants without crowding. The house, a two-story frame, had been built in 1926, when life was much slower paced and people had time to sit and relax on porches like this. The fact that modern architects wouldn't even think of putting such a porch on a new house was a sad commentary on present-day lifestyles. Houses weren't built to last like this one either. Nearly seventy years old and in sound condition; its succession of owners had treated it well. The people she'd bought it from had painted it four years before, in rich browns and tans, and done the interior with such style and taste that she hadn't had to alter much of it at all. Eight large rooms, two and a half baths, a detached garage … too much house, really, for just Amy and her.

Just her in another year, she thought. Amy seemed determined to move out next summer, take an apartment with a couple of girlfriends who were also planning to attend UC Berkeley. Eighteen and caught up in the wild Berkeley scene … every small-town mother's nightmare. She wouldn't listen to Cecca's touting of Balboa State. She wanted to be out on her own, she said, and she had the grades to get into UC, and UC's journalism program was so much better than Balboa State's—a point Cecca could hardly argue. Amy wanted to be an investigative reporter, either TV or newspaper/magazine, but preferably TV. She would probably succeed at one level or another; she had the talent and the determination. But she was still so young, prone to letting her emotions rule her common sense. And now this thing with the condoms. Good or bad, wise or foolish—Cecca couldn't decide which.