Lillie White? Mack hadn't spent as much time with her after Charlotte had gotten out of the hospital. Did Lillie, a woman scorned, seek revenge?

Helga Van Brackle? Still furious with Mack for dumping her for Charlotte. Being at the college, she might have had the opportunity to get hold of the storeroom key.

Was there anybody in the Caven-Adams County area who didn't have a motive for killing the man? Maybe Cassie was right about me being obsessed. Maybe I should move on as she had suggested. I wasn't concentrating. I yawned and stretched, feeling very sleepy.

Someplace very far away, the wind whistled through the treetops. Almost as if it were a living creature, it sniffed at the windows, looking for a way to force itself into the old house. I pulled the afghan up to my chin as protection against the drafts and drifted off to sleep.

A man stood in the room, his back to me. “Garnet?” I tried to sit up but couldn't. I was paralyzed, unable to move a muscle. The man turned, ever so slowly. I smiled and started to reach out to him, but his face was a blank void, as if he were wearing Charlotte Macmil-lan's elastic mask. A gaping hole appeared where his mouth should be, only it was larger and blacker than any mouth I'd ever seen. Cold permeated my body. I wanted to scream, but no sound came out. The mouth hole grew larger. I thought of a wide-mouth bass, coming closer as if it wanted to swallow me whole. And as it drew near, I could smell evil. The mouth laughed, and it was not a man any longer, but a dragon. The foul smoke rushing from his mouth nearly choked me.

Gagging from the stench, I mustered all my strength and turned my face away from the beast, and something soft touched my cheek. A tear? Not paralyzed anymore, I brought my hand up slowly to wipe it away. Something sharp raked across my nose. I flung my arms out, connected with a cat, and was scolded by a sharp cry, followed by another, and another.

I sat up, choking, trying to figure out where I was, why everything was so dark. The disgusting smell from the stranger's mouth was still there, making me cough, choke, wheeze.

Softness pressed against me. “Fred?” I muttered into the darkness.

Reeow!

The stranger with no face and a huge black mouth- he had to have been a dream. I was awake now, wasn't I? Why was I having so much trouble seeing? Why was the terrible odor still there? I must still be dreaming, I decided, and lay back on the couch.

Meeow!

This was no dream. Fred was head-butting me and yelling at me in cat talk to get up. This time I flung the afghan off and got to my feet. And I realized that the room was not dream-darkened but was instead filled with a thick, acrid smoke. An orange glow on the small Persian carpet under the tea table was actually a smoldering fire, and little tongues of flame were already creeping up the afghan.

Wide awake at last, I grabbed the smoking afghan and rushed out of the room with it, wrestled open the front door, and heaved the thing onto the front lawn. Then I ran back into the room and with superhuman strength, born from desperation and need, dragged first the rug then the couch out of the house, onto the grass, and as far away from the building as I possibly could.

Back inside, I threw open the parlor windows and let the air circulate. The fire seemed to have been confined to the rug and couch, but I called the volunteer fire department and stood by the door, ready to flee if anything flared up again.

Fred and Noel stayed close to me as the firemen charged in wielding a ton of fire-fighting equipment. The men checked the ceiling and walls, pulled down the drapes, and chopped a big hole in the floor to make sure the fire hadn't spread to the floor joists. After about an hour they seemed convinced that there was no further danger. By the time Ethelind walked in the worst of the smoke and smells had dissipated.

Most of the trucks departed, leaving the fire chief and a few men to try to determine what had started the blaze. I tried to watch them, but my eyes kept blurring, and I grew so dizzy, I had to sit down. I hadn't felt this peculiar since the morning of my biopsy when I'd overdone the anti-anxiety medicine. I saw Chief Yoder bend over and pick up an ashtray that must have overturned during the commotion, perhaps as I'd knocked the tea table over trying to get the rug out from under it.

“Looks like you were a lucky young lady,” he said, scooping a few cigarette butts off the floor. “Don't imagine you'll be doing much smoking when you're sleepy from now on.”

“Look, Chief, I don't smoke.”

He cocked his head and looked skeptically at me. “Your voice sounds kind of slurred. Were you drinking?”

“I was not drinking. Except for some tea.” Ethelind's beautiful teapot and teacup lay on the floor, but by some miracle they didn't seem to be broken. “And I wasn't smoking. Why should I lie about it? Everybody who knows me will tell you I detest the smell of cigarettes.” Ethelind nodded her confirmation. “In fact, if that ashtray full of butts had been on the coffee table, I couldn't have sat down in here to read without emptying it and washing it out first.” I blinked, trying to bring the offending container into focus.

“Are you trying to tell me that someone came in here and planted a dirty ashtray in the room while you were sleeping?” He laughed. I couldn't blame him. It did sound ridiculous.

“Hey, Chief.” One of the firemen who'd been outside entered the room. “Take a look at this.” He held out a bag for Chief Yoder to inspect.

“What is it?” I asked, after the chief had looked, smelled, and even tasted the contents of the bag.

“Stuff I found on the rug you dragged outside,” the firefighter said. “Looks like a pile of dirty clothes that near burned up.”

Chief Yoder looked thoughtful and nodded. “Did you leave some of your underwear on the floor?” he asked me.

“Of course not. Wait a minute, do you think someone deliberately set this fire?”

“I'm beginning to think so, miss. Did you hear anything? See anything?”

“No, of course not.” Then I remembered something had happened. “My alarm went off upstairs at about ten o'clock. I thought I'd set it wrong. Now I wonder if it wasn't a trick to get me out of the room.” I looked at the empty teacup on the floor and began to shake. “My God, someone must have put something in my tea while I was upstairs. I got really sleepy a little while after I came back down. No wonder I feel so groggy.”

Chief Yoder and one of the men got down on their knees and inspected the teapot and cup. “There's a little tea left in the pot,” the chief said. The assistant carefully carried the teacup and pot out of the room. “We'll check the contents,” the chief said. “Do you have any idea how somebody might have gotten in?”

I started to say no, then realized I really had not checked to make sure anything was locked before I'd settled down to read. I'd been in Lickin Creek long enough to almost think like the natives that a locked door was “unneighborly.” Certainly locking up wasn't a major concern the way it had been in my Manhattan apartment.

“You need to be more careful,” the chief warned.

“I will.”

“Can you think of anybody who'd want to hurt you?”

“Nobody. I mind my own business and expect everybody to mind theirs. Why are you laughing like that?”

“Because I've heard you're the biggest buttinsky to hit town since the Secret Service organized a fishing trip here for President Carter back in the seventies.”

“But I haven't done anything to warrant this.” I gestured to the ruined parlor. “Oh my God!”

“What?”

“I just thought of something. Did you know that Professor Nakamura, from the college, was shot over in Gettysburg?”

“Yeah. I heard about that. Damn shame. Nice guy like that. Probably some poacher out on the battlefield shooting at deer and hit him by accident.”