CHAPTER 6

"It belonged to Demaine the oil man." He turned me around again, politely but abruptly. "We'll go inside."

We walked through a high hallway into a bright, rosy-colored space, delicately connected to the house by French windows at either end. The windows were ajar and

gleaming white against the fresh grass outside, which seemed to encroach a bit into the house. A breeze flowed through the room, blowing the curtains in at one end and out

the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding cake of the ceiling—and then rippled over the wine-colored rug, casting a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.

The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were propped up as if upon an anchored balloon. They were both

dressed in white, and their dresses fluttered and rippled as though they had just been blown back in after a brief flight around the house. I must have stood for a few

moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as Max Caldwell shut the rear windows, and the

trapped wind dissipated around the room, allowing the curtains and the rugs and the two young women to settle slowly to the floor.

The younger of the two was a stranger to me. She lay full length at her end of the divan, completely still, with her chin raised slightly as if she were balancing something precariously on it. If she noticed me out of the corner of her eye, she gave no indication

—indeed, I was almost tempted to murmur an apology for having disturbed her by coming in.

The other girl, Lily Winters, made an attempt to rise—she leaned slightly forward with a