Donald Westlake - Smoke

In both exterior mirrors, The Sewing Kit and its collar of pine trees receded in bright morning sunlight, appearing to shiver slightly, as though not yet over last night's trauma. Everyone had seemed subdued at breakfast this morning in the overly cutesy sunroom, and Mrs. Krutchfield most subdued of all. As she brought out platter after platter of scrambled eggs and sausage and English muffins and fried potatoes and heavily buttered toast, her professional smile had been less than perfect and her doting attention to her guests hampered by an unremitting distraction. Jugs of orange juice and coffee and milk sloshed as she brought them from the kitchen, and she constantly darted glances over her shoulder. From time to time, she trembled all over, like a hard-ridden horse.

Peg had offered to sneak some food back for Freddie, but he'd said that was okay, he could wait until they left and get something at a deli somewhere, so Peg ate by herself while Freddie packed, and now they were on their way north in their continuing search for a nice place to spend the summer.

The problem was, most nice places were already gone. To be looking for a summer rental in the mountains north of New York City in the last week in June was an exercise in frustration. Most real estate agents had nothing left to show, and those few rentals that were still on the market were there for a very good reason: nobody could possibly want them.

Still, they were here, so, once they'd gotten Freddie a sandwich and a Coke to eat in the back of the van, on they went in their quest.

Most of the real estate agents Peg talked to wanted to use their own cars, naturally, to show this potential client around, but she always refused, saying she just wasn't comfortable as an automobile passenger anymore, not since that horrible accident that had led to so much reconstructive surgery; you can't see the scars, can you? Tell the truth, now.

So the real estate agents invariably agreed to travel with Peg in the van, unaware of the naked Freddie, lolling in the back. And wherever they went to look at a house, Peg would always leave her van door open. That way, Freddie could look the places over, too, and once Peg had returned the agent to his or her office, they could discuss what they'd seen.

Not that there was much to discuss. Kennels and chicken coops, chicken coops and kennels, and that was how the morning sailed by. For lunch, they picnicked on opposite sides of the van in a field full of flowers, with cows on the other side of a barbed-wire fence, and in calling back and forth to one another, their mouths full of take-out sandwiches, they admitted a certain discouragement. And not just with the house-hunt, either.

"I'll tell you the truth, Freddie," Peg called from her side of the van, waggling a pickle for emphasis, "this eating business is getting to be a drag."

"For me, too, Peg," Freddie's voice came back, floating around the van. "I'd like to go to a restaurant again, the two of us. I'd like to eat with you even at home sometimes, order out Chinese like we used to."

"That's the way I feel, too, Freddie."

Freddie could be heard chewing thoughtfully for a while, and then he said, "Peg, the fact is, there's a lot of advantages to this invisibility thing, I don't deny it, but there's a whole bunch of disadvantages, too."

" That's the truth."

"If I could turn it on or off, you know, whenever I wanted, it would be a different thing."

"Exactly."

"On the other hand, Peg," Freddie said, "I think maybe all these doghouses we've been looking at the last couple days have depressed us."

"Even more, you mean."

"Yeah. Even more. Maybe we should pack it in. Quit now, and go back to the city."

"We've only got one more guy on the list around here," Peg said. "Let's go see him, take a look at what he's got, and then we'll give it up, we'll go home and forget it."

"We can take a plane somewhere," Freddie said. "First Class is never full, we'll take one First Class seat, and I'll sit beside you."

"And spook the pilots, just for fun?"

"Did you like that? The ghost and Mrs. Muir?"

Peg laughed, and then Freddie laughed, and things were all right again for a while.

"I have something you're going to love," said Call Me Tom. He was a hefty amiable guy in a small office in what had once been a gasoline station back before OPEC, and he'd jotted down Peg's particulars on a form, asked her about price range, and then he'd smiled and said he had something she was going to love.

Fine. On the other hand, every other real estate agent had also had something to show Peg that she was going to love, and every one of them had been wrong. So Peg was restrained in her joy. "I'll look at it," she allowed.

"It just came on the market," Call Me Tom explained, "or it would have been snapped up already. The owners didn't leave till Tuesday, we needed the cleaning lady to go through, so it's only today I can start to show it."

Peg said, "How come the owners left in such a hurry?" Because if it didn't mean the owner was on the run from the Mob so the house was likely to get itself firebombed, it must mean the house was full of asbestos that the owner just found out about.

But Call Me Tom said, "He's a scientist with a big pharmaceutical company, they had some kind of problem in their plant out on the West Coast, all of a sudden he had to transfer out there for the next four months. He doesn't like to leave the place empty, so that's why it's for rent. Fully furnished. Within your price range."

"Let's take a look," Peg said.

Okay. Here's the house: It's a small old farmhouse, built in the early nineteenth century, a center-hall Colonial with entrance and second-floor staircase in the middle. Downstairs is a big living room, medium-size dining room, small kitchen, and tiny bath. Upstairs, two bedrooms and two more baths.

Modern windows and screens and central air. A wooden deck behind the house. The swimming pool, small but very nice, was in a wooden-fenced enclosure just beyond the patio. The circular asphalt drive in from the secondary country road included a spur to a two-car garage, built to match the style of the house; it contained a 1979 white Cadillac convertible up on blocks and space for another vehicle, such as Freddie's van. The house, tastefully furnished with American antiques and every known modern appliance, came with a cleaning woman and a guy to mow the lawn and take care of the pool, each showing up once a week.

All the way through the place, while Call Me Tom was pointing out features and Peg was trying to see and listen and comprehend, she kept getting insistent little jabs in the side and taps on the elbow from her invisible playmate. In the master bathroom, just as Call Me Tom was leaving and Peg was about to leave, steam appeared on the medicine cabinet mirror, which would be Freddie's breath, and a moving but not observable finger wrote TAKE IT.

Peg, who already knew that, rolled her eyes and would have left the room, but Call Me Tom had turned back to remark on something or other, and when Peg looked at him he was frowning past her toward that mirror.

Immediately, she turned back. Keeping her own head visible in the mirror, blocking Call Me Tom's view of the message, she stepped forward, saying, "I forgot to look in the medicine cabinet."

" That's funny," Call Me Tom said, musing, following her.

As Peg neared the medicine cabinet, an invisible palm swiped over the steam, removing it. Peg opened the door fast, hoping to whack her playful companion a painful one, but missed. The interior of the cabinet was empty. All the personal goods the owner had not taken with him had been stored away in the attic.

"Very nice," Peg said, and shut the cabinet door, to see in its mirror Call Me Tom's face looming over her right shoulder, frowning deeply at his own reflection. She lifted an eyebrow.