Hide and Seek

the cities. There's not enough clientele for that. Bar life is about

as democratic as we get.

"Jim Palmer was in yesterday. We were talking about you."

"Me? I hardly know the guy."

"Well, not about you exactly. I mentioned that your friend had seen

lights over at the Crouch place. Jimmie did all the contracting on the

place, remember? Anyhow, he says there's nobody there now. So it must

have been kids."

"I guess."

"Found out a few things, though."

"Like what?"

He settled back in the high-back chair and sipped the head off a

fresh-poured beer.

"Well, for one thing, that doctor left scared."

"Scared?"

"According to Palmer. Says he was up there maybe a month before the

old guy left the place, because there was some patch-up that needed

doing on the front porch, but the doc wouldn't let him bother with it.

Had to go down into the basement instead to seal up a hole in the wall.

Big hole. Said it looked as though somebody'd been whacking away at it

with a sledgehammer. He couldn't figure it. Said the doc was a pretty

weird guy. But he could understand him wanting it patched up again.

The draft was fierce."

"In the basement?"

"Sure. Palmer says that in a couple of places the foundation's sitting

right beside some open spaces in the seawall. Tunnels. Erosion or

whatever. Said that whole stretch of coast is honeycombed with 'em. So

you open up one of those spaces and the wind runs right in from the

sea. Anyway, he closed it up. I told him about our little excursion

out that way when we were kids."

"I still don't get it. The draft was what scared him? What was he,

afraid of summer colds?"

"Jimmie says he doesn't really know what it was. Maybe he was afraid

the whole house was going to slide down into those tunnels someday. You

know, the way they go out in California. But that cellar is sunk in

solid rock. He had no problem there. No, hecouldn'tfigure what it

was."