The Servants of Twilight

"I'll bet those are the moments you live for," Val said.

"No one looks forward to being shot at or punched in the face by the husband in a nasty divorce case."

"You're just being modest," Val said, shaking a finger at him, winking as cute as she knew how.

And she sure knows how, Christine thought. Val was an extremely attractive woman, with auburn hair, luminous green eyes, and a striking figure. Christine envied her lush good looks.

Although a few men had told Christine that she was beautiful, she never really believed those who paid the compliment. She had never been attractive in her mother's eyes; in fact, her mother had referred to her as a "plain" child, and although she knew her mother's standards were absurdly high and that her mother's opinions were not always rational or fair, Christine still had an image of herself as a somewhat pretty woman, in the most modest sense, more suited to being a nun than a siren. Sometimes, when Val was dressed in her finest and being coquettish, Christine felt like a boy beside her.

To Charlie, Val said, "I'll bet you're the kind of man who needs a little danger in his life to spice it up, the kind of man who knows how to deal with danger."

" You're romanticizing me, I'm afraid," Charlie said.

But Christine could see that he enjoyed Val's attentions.

Joey said, "Mom, please, come on. Come out to the car. We got a dog. A real beauty. Come see him."

"From the pound?" Christine asked Charlie, cutting in on Val's game.

"Yeah," he said." I tried to get Joey to go for a hundredand-forty-pound mastiff named Killer, but he wouldn't listen to me."

Christine grinned.

"Come on and see him, Mom," Joey said." Please." He took her hand and pulled on it, urging her toward the door.

"Do you mind closing up by yourself, Val?" Christine asked.

"I'm not by myself. I've got Tammy," Val said." You go on home." She looked wistfully at Charlie, obviously wishing she had more time to work on him. Then, to Christine: "And if you don't want to come in tomorrow, don't worry about it."

"Oh," Christine said, "I'll be here. It'll help the day pass.

I'd have gone crazy if I hadn't been able to work this afternoon."

"Nice meeting you," Charlie said to Val.

"Hope to see you again," she said, giving him a hundredkilowatt smile.

Pete Lockburn and Frank Reuther left the shop first, surveying the promenade in front of the rows of stores, suspiciously studying the parking lot. Christine was self-conscious in their company. She didn't think of herself as important enough to need bodyguards. The presence of these two hired guns made her feel awkward and strangely pretentious, as if she were putting on airs.

Outside, the sky to the east was black. Overhead, it was deep blue. To the west, over the ocean, there was a gaudy orangeyellow-red-maroon sunset back-lighting an ominous bank of advancing storm clouds. Although the day had been warm for February, the air was already chilly. Later, it would be downright cold. In California, a warm winter day was not an infrequent gift of nature, but nature's generosity seldom extended to the winter nights.

A dark green Chevrolet, a Klemet-Harrison company car, was parked next to Christine's Firebird. There was a dog in the back seat, peering out the window at them, and when Christine saw it her breath caught in her throat.

It was Brandy. For a second or two, she stood in shock, unable to believe her eyes. Then she realized it wasn't Brandy, of course, but another golden retriever virtually the same size and age and coloration as Brandy.

Joey ran ahead and pulled open the door, and the dog leaped out, emitting one short, deep, happy-sounding bark. He sniffed at the boy's legs and then jumped up, putting paws on his shoulders, almost knocking him to the ground.

Joey laughed, ruffled the dog's fur." Isn't he neat, Mom? Isn't he something?"

She looked at Charlie, whose grin was almost as big as Joey's.

Still thirty feet away from the boy, out of his hearing, she spoke softly, with evident irritation: "Don't you think some other breed would've been a better choice?"

Charlie seemed baffled by her accusatory tone." You mean it's too big?

Joey told me it was the same size as the dog.

you lost."

"Not only the same size. It's the same dog."

"You mean Brandy was a golden retriever?"

"Didn't I tell you?"

"You never mentioned the breed."

"Oh. Well, didn't Joey mention it?"

"He never said a word."

"This dog's an exact double for Brandy," Christine said worriedly." I don't know if that's such a good idea-psychologically, I mean."

Turning to them, holding the retriever by its collar, Joey confinned her intuition when he said, "Mom, you know what I'm gonna call him? Brandy!

Brandy the Second!"

"I see what you mean," Charlie said to Christine.

"He's trying to deny that Brandy was ever killed," she said, "and that's not healthy."

As the parking lot's sodium-vapor lamps came on, casting yellowish light into the deepening twilight, she went to her son and stooped beside him.