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berm, the weed-covered hillside sloping down on their right side. “You think we should get moving? Is that it?”
     
     
    The dog looked at him, peered out the rear window, then turned and sat with its hind legs tucked to one side, facing forward again.
     
     
    Travis started the engine, put the truck in gear, pulled onto Santiago Canyon Road, and headed north. Glancing at his companion, he said, “Are you really more than you appear to be . . . or am I just cracking up? And if you are more than you appear to be . . . what the devil are you?”
     
     
    At the rural eastern end of Chapman Avenue, he turned west toward the McDonald’s of which he’d spoken.
     
     
    He said, “Can’t turn you loose now or take you to a pound.”
     
     
    And a minute later, he said, “If I didn’t keep you, I’d die of curiosity, wondering about you.”
     
     
    They drove about two miles and swung into the McDonald’s parking lot.
     
     
    Travis said, “So I guess you’re my dog now.”
     
     
    The retriever said nothing.
     

 
    chapter two
     

     

1
     
     
    Nora Devon was afraid of the television repairman. Although he appeared to be about thirty (her age), he had the offensive cockiness of a know-it-all teenager. When she answered the doorbell, he boldly looked her up and down as he identified himself—“Art Streck, Wadlow’s TV”—and when he met her eyes again, he winked. He was tall and lean and well-scrubbed, dressed in white uniform slacks and shirt. He was clean-shaven. His darkish-blond hair was cut short and neatly combed. He looked like any mother’s son, not a rapist or psycho, yet Nora was instantly afraid of him, maybe because his boldness and cockiness seemed at odds with his appearance.
     
     
    “You need service?” he asked when she hesitated in the doorway.
     
     
    Although his question appeared innocent, the inflection he put on the word “service” seemed creepy and sexually suggestive to Nora. She did not think she was overreacting. But she had called Wadlow’s TV, after all, and she could not turn Streck away without explanation. An explanation would probably lead to an argument, and she was not a confrontational person, so she let him inside.
     
     
    As she escorted him along the wide, cool hallway to the living-room arch, she had the uneasy feeling that his good grooming and big smile were elements of a carefully calculated disguise. He had a keen animal watchful-ness, a coiled tension, that further disquieted her with every step they took away from the front door.
     
     
    Following her much too closely, virtually looming over her from behind, Art Streck said, “You’ve got a nice house here, Mrs. Devon. Very nice. I really like it.”
     
     
    “Thank you,” she said stiffly, not bothering to correct his misapprehension of her marital status.
     
     
    “A man could be happy here. Yeah, a man could be very happy.”
     
     
    The house was of that style of architecture sometimes called Old Santa Barbara Spanish: two stories, cream-colored stucco with a red-tile roof, verandas, balconies, all softly rounded lines instead of squared-off corners. Lush red bougainvillaea climbed the north face of the structure, dripping bright blossoms. The place was beautiful.
     
     
    Nora hated it.
     
     
    She had lived there since she was only two years old, which now added up to twenty-eight years, and during all but one of them, she had been under the iron thumb of her Aunt Violet. Hers had not been a happy childhood or, to date, a happy life. Violet Devon had died a year ago. But, in truth, Nora was still oppressed by her aunt, for the memory of that hateful old woman was formidable, stifling.
     
     
    In the living room, putting his repair kit beside the Magnavox, Streck paused to look around. He was clearly surprised by the decor.
     
     
    The flowered wallpaper was dark, funereal. The Persian carpet was singularly unattractive. The color scheme—gray, maroon, royal blue—was un-enlivened