Winter Tides Read Online Free PDF Page A

ahead of her. She could see only the dim railing on either side of the pier, and, on her right, the lifeguard tower looming up again out of the fog, the lamplight glowing on the wide, angled-out windows.
    Then she saw something—movement, at the edge of the tower.
    She was certain that someone had just that moment stepped out of sight behind it, between the tower and the railing on a little outthrust section of pier. She had got just a glimpse of red—a flannel shirt? A cloth coat? She looked back again, her heart pounding, as she angled toward the opposite railing, ready to run, suppressing the urge to scream.
    There—she saw it again: someone standing still, facing her but half hidden by the corner of the wall, just a shadow in the fog that swirled across the pier, the shadow growing more and then less distinct. She felt suddenly dizzy, and she gripped the cold handrail to steady herself, unsure whether it was the fog that obscured the waiting figure, or the fog that made it visible, like a film slide projected on mist. And now it vanished altogether as the ocean breeze momentarily swept the fog clear, and then almost instantly the mists billowed in off the ocean again, and the figure materialized within it, closer now, as if she had stepped forward five or six paces and stopped, waiting for another gust of sea wind to hide it again.
    The sound of footsteps resumed, preternaturally loud, as if echoing down a corridor. Anne found herself running through the dreamlike fog, hearing the footsteps behind her louder even than the pounding of her own feet. She swung herself over the railing again, edged her way past the gate, and vaulted the railing back onto the pier where, after a quick backward glance, she headed straight across the Highway, ignoring the red light, not looking back down the empty sidewalk again until she was halfway up the block. A shadow in a doorway impelled her toward the curb, and when she realized that it was a man drinking out of a bottle in a paper bag, she almost sighed with relief. She slowed down now to catch her breath. There were no longer any footsteps. The night was quiet and still, but she hurried on up Main to Orange Street anyway, fumbling for her keys in her jeans pocket. Her hands shook as she unlocked the street door of her apartment, stepped through and locked it behind her, and then ascended the stairs through the empty building toward her flat on the second floor.

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    T HE HIGH, RECTANGULAR BUILDING THAT WAS THE EARL of Gloucester, a theatre props and sets company, was built back in 1927 as a feed and fertilizer warehouse. It took up most of the length of the block near the corner of 6th and Walnut Streets in Huntington Beach, about a hundred yards from the Coast Highway and another hundred yards west from Main Street. Its faded clapboard siding had been painted blue sometime in the 1970s, and the wooden windows were trimmed with white moldings that the ocean air had slowly repainted a shade of lichen gray over the years. At one time a lean-to boardwalk porch had stood along the 6th Street side of the warehouse, but most of it had been torn down and replaced with a more practical concrete loading dock. In front of the business entrance there was still a section of the old porch that ran on back to the end of the building. Two acres of weedy vacant lot separated the warehouse from the highway, and at the top of the lot stood one of the few working oil wells left in the downtown. It was fenced with rusted chain link and sagging barbed wire.
    The warehouse itself was a relic of Huntington’s sleepier past, weathered by salt air and wind and shaded by a pair of enormous eucalyptus trees that dropped bark and leaves and seeds onto the roof. Jolene, the Earl’s secretary, had recently computerized the inventory and the books. That and the new loading dock were the company’s concessions to the modern world. The Earl himself, Earl Dalton, still typed his letters on an ancient Royal