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When I reached the office it was a couple of minutes after five. Everyone but Ginny Burmeister Erlandson had gone home, and she was gathering up her belongings when I picked up the last phone messages of the day.

“Lots of cranks, huh, Ginny?” I commented, riffling through the half-dozen calls that had accumulated in my half-hour absence.

Ginny turned her plain but intelligent face to me. “What is this with Catholics?” she asked, looking and sounding weary. “Why do you—they—cause such a stir?”

I felt myself blink. “Do they? Do we?” I smiled to let Ginny know I hadn't taken her slip of the tongue personally.

Ginny sighed. “I don't know—maybe it's because I'm Lutheran, and most people in Alpine are. Most people who go to church, that is. But who gets excited about what Lutherans do? Or Methodists or Congregationalists or anybody else? But Catholics always seem to get the attention. Is it because of the pope?”

While the query wasn't without merit, I didn't know how to answer Ginny. “We're more international,” I said
vaguely. “Because we do have a pope in Rome, outsiders regard Catholics with suspicion. It's dumb, of course, but it's traditional. Maybe we seem kind of mysterious. We're not.”

Ginny gave a toss of her glorious red hair. “I know that. I mean you're not mysterious and the Bayards aren't, and neither is Mr. or Mrs. Bronsky.” She paused, gazing into the editorial office. “Is Mr. Walsh a Catholic?”

I nodded. “He's what we
call fallen away.
It means he doesn't go to church.”

“Fallen away.” Ginny seemed to savor the phrase. “See—that's what I mean. You have all these weird …” She fingered her chin, then suddenly stiffened as the color drained from her face. “Oh! Excuse me!” Ginny raced off, heading for the rest rooms directly behind the front office.

I smiled to myself. Ginny and Rick Erlandson had gotten married in February. While there had not yet been an official announcement, this was the third time in as many days that Ginny had made a precipitate exit from the office. If my guess was right, our office manager would be taking maternity leave sometime in March. I hoped she would decide to return to work, though I wouldn't blame her if she wanted to be a full-time mother. I'd never had that option.

There was hardly any breeze that evening, and the air felt heavy. A few clouds had rolled in over Mount Baldy, but rain wasn't in the forecast. When I arrived home, my little house felt stifling. I opened both doors and three windows before checking the mail and the answering machine. I could have waited longer: the delivery contained nothing but junk, and once again, there were no telephone messages. Annoyed, I sat down to call my son in Tuba City.

Ben's crackling voice was recorded, a familiar and somewhat involved message in English, Spanish, and
Navajo. As my disappointment mounted I started to call Milo. Halfway through his home number, I hung up. My perverse nature dictated that Milo should call me. Emotionally I was behaving as if I were fifteen; physically I felt about ninety. My cotton shirt was sticking to my back. My scalp itched. My feet felt as if they were a size too large for my skimpy sandals. I needed to hear from Adam. I needed to talk to Ben. I needed Milo.

I needed rain.

The rest of the week played out under a relentless sun and the pressure of deadline for the Labor Day special edition. I'd finally reached Ben and Adam late Friday night. My brother was looking forward to visiting me; my son was irritatingly vague. Maybe he'd come standby. Maybe he'd stay in Tuba City. Maybe he was a rotten kid.

Such was my conclusion after putting the phone down. My disposition didn't improve when Milo called ten minutes later to cancel our outing to Leavenworth. With the help of park rangers, he and Dwight Gould had finally tracked down some of the teenagers who had been stealing cars in Skykomish and Snohomish counties. Because of the conflict in jurisdictions, Milo had a pile of paperwork. Jack Mullins was already on vacation and Sam Heppner was due to take off the week before Labor Day. The sheriff was shorthanded, and the three-day weekend always promised its share of highway accidents. Milo was apologetic, but immovable. I was understanding, but irked. I tried not to let it show.

Somehow, I muddled through the empty, overwarm, uneventful Saturday. My good intentions of cleaning house before Ben arrived were hampered by the humidity. Pushing a vacuum cleaner in eighty-eight-degree weather was daunting. So was washing windows, scrubbing the kitchen floor, and scouring the bathroom. My efforts were halfhearted at best; the day ended as it began, on a sour, muggy note.

So mired was I in oppressive heat and self-pity that I had forgotten about the vote to expand the school board. Veronica Wenzler-Greene stood in the vestibule handing out ballots after Sunday Mass. Despite my attendance at the Tuesday meeting, I hadn't really given the proposal much thought. Staring at the sheet with its simple, printed declaration and choice of Yes/No boxes to check, I decided that adding two members was probably a good idea. If there were only three on the board and one of them got hit by a logging truck, a deadlock could ensue. Recklessly I checked the
Yes
portion and handed my ballot to Veronica.

Slipping out of the church, I headed for the parking lot. The morning haze had lifted, and the sun seemed capable of melting the newly laid tarmac that a parish work party had put in a couple of weeks earlier. It occurred to me that the danger of forest fires must be rising. The indicator sign at Old Mill Park had registered
HIGH
on Friday. I suspected that it had now moved up to

EXTREME.

Maybe it was just as well that Milo and I hadn't gone to Leavenworth. On the other side of the pass where the pseudo-Bavarian town was located, the weather was always hotter and drier than in the western part of the state. It would be much better to visit in early October, when the leaves had turned color and temperatures had cooled.

To my surprise, Vida's big white Buick was pulled up next to my mailbox. She got out of the car when she saw me approach the drive.

“Pastor Purebeck is on vacation,” she announced, referring to the minister at the Presbyterian church. “The Bible-camp children put on a puppet show. Mercifully the curtain fell down on top of them and it ended early. Really, Emma, can you imagine a Cabbage Patch Kid as the Queen of Sheba?”

After letting us into the house, I offered lemonade.

Vida accepted, and I suggested that we sit in the backyard under the shade of the evergreen trees.

“But you won't be able to hear the phone,” she protested.

I regarded my House & Home editor with puzzlement. “I've got the cordless kind,” I reminded her. “But why should I want to listen for it?”

Behind the big glasses, Vida fixed me with her gimlet eye. She was wearing what she would call a “summer frock” of blue, green, yellow, and white floral cotton, and an enormous straw cartwheel hat with a wide silk ribbon. If it was a conscious attempt at a little-girl look, it failed. There is nothing little about Vida, and, at sixty-plus, far less of a girl. She is all woman, perhaps superwoman. Naturally I flinched a bit as she continued to stare at me.

“The vote,” she finally said. “Won't they call you?”

I sagged a bit in the lawn chair. “You mean the school-board issue? No, I didn't ask them to call, I can find out tomorrow.”

Vida's nostrils flared in disapproval. “Really, Emma! I can't believe what I'm hearing! Everyone in town is abuzz! Where have you been for the last few days?”

I was taken aback. “It's no big deal,” I said, waving away a couple of deerflies. “All they're doing is trying to add two more members. Look, this isn't the public schools. We're talking about a hundred and forty kids and their parents. Oh, we'll carry an article, but this isn't earthshaking news.”

Over the rim of her lemonade glass, Vida's expression was skeptical. “I'm hearing otherwise,” she murmured.

“Like what?”

Vida shrugged her wide shoulders. “It's not for me to say. I'm Presbyterian.”

“You're also on my staff,” I pointed out dryly. “Cough it up, Vida.”

Tipping her head to one side, she put a hand on her
cartwheel hat. “Well … there's Greer Fairfax, for one thing. You must know her background.”

“No, I don't,” I admitted. “She doesn't belong to the parish. I only figured out who she was Tuesday night at the special meeting.”

Vida pursed her lips. “Before she married, she lived in a commune. In California.” The pause that followed was obviously for my dull-witted benefit. “She's very much involved in social issues and the environment. Her husband, Grant, works at a laboratory near Monroe.”

I felt vaguely bewildered. “Did you do an article on the Fairfaxes when they moved here? Did I miss it?”

“Carla did it, four years ago, right after you hired her.” Vida tried to appear nonjudgmental. “If I may say so, it didn't capture the real Fairfaxes. Carla concentrated on their dogs.”

“Oh.” I honestly didn't remember the story. Four years ago I was still learning names and family ties and all the internecine connections of a small town.

“The Fairfaxes had a registered AKC miniature border collie,” Vida continued. “I believe it got run over. Or a cougar ate it.”

“Oh.” I was still feeling rather lost. “That's too bad.”

“Greer is an activist,” Vida said. “You recall the chain incident at Icicle Creek.”

In the early spring an antilogging group had protested clear-cutting by chaining themselves to various trees near the Icicle Creek ranger station. One of the activists hadn't been able to undo his chains, which had resulted in a heated debate over whether or not to cut down the tree to which he was shackled. Greer had been dispatched to drive into town and get a chain saw. None was to be found. Apparently word of the fiasco had already reached the fuming loggers, who had made certain that no implements were available to free the protester. Luckily, by the time Greer returned with the bad news,
somebody had figured out how to undo the chains without damaging the tree.

“Bill Daley seems sound,” Vida went on in her assessment of the three existing school-board members. As usual, she knew more about my fellow parishioners than I did. “But that's an illusion. Bill is a businessman, and inclined to follow the wind. The same might be said for Buddy Bayard.” The gray eyes peered at me. “So what is the point?”

“Of what?” I was definitely feeling drowsy, lulled by the heat and the stillness and the bees buzzing in the fuchsia bush.

A flicker of impatience crossed Vida's broad face. “Of adding members. If, as I've heard, the goal is to secularize the school, Greer would be for it. Buddy and Bill would be against. The younger faction needs to offset the, more conservative votes. But can they guarantee the election of like-minded candidates?”

“Not necessarily,” I allowed, watching an Alaskan robin hop between the branches of the nearest fir.

“Perhaps we're on the wrong track concerning goals. Maybe it's finances,” Vida speculated. “Or a personal matter, involving your pastor. It might be Polly Patri-celli's cracked vase.”

Vida had finally penetrated my lethargic state. “Polly's vase? What are you talking about?”

“Emma! Shame on you!” Vida clucked. “You must have heard. It's all over town. I thought of mentioning it in 'Scene,' but it struck me as possibly in poor taste. And Polly is old as well as unreliable.”

Appollonia Patricelli was the mother of Itsa Bitsa Pizza's Pete and eight other grown children. She was a gnarled little shrub of a woman, who had come from Italy as a young girl, but never quite put aside her old-country ways.

“Sorry,” I said, trying to look properly contrite. “I haven't heard about Polly's vase. What about it?”

Vida emitted a short but deep sigh, then sat back in the lawn chair. “The vase is very old. It's fairly large and ceramic. Polly's parents brought it from their home in Assisi. A few months ago it developed a crack. Polly couldn't use it for flowers anymore because it leaked. But of course she couldn't bear to throw it out or even put it away. So she kept it on the mantel.” Vida stopped for a beat, eyeing me in an apparent attempt to make sure I was really in ignorance. When she realized that I definitely was, she continued.

“Early this month—I believe it was a Sunday—Polly came home and discovered that the crack had gotten larger and more detailed. It looked to her—or so she told my sister-in-law, Ella Hinshaw, who admittedly is very deaf—as if it were the face of Christ. A few days later— Friday, as I recall—Polly insisted that despite the fact she hadn't put water in the vase since Easter, the eyes had wept.” Vida took a deep breath. “Now what do you make of that?”

I was stumped. But if Polly's vase wasn't a miracle, it was enough to wake me up.

S
ATURDAY NIGHTS WERE
the worst when it came to couples beating up on each other in Alpine. But the last Sunday in August had set a record for domestic violence. Maybe it was the weather. Maybe it was the economy. Maybe it was the booze. Maybe it was the frustration of seeing another summer pass amid tall stands of untouchable timber.

Whatever the reasons, Milo had spent his weekend doing the part of his job that he hated most. Answering a call involving familial abuse often erupts into open season on law-enforcement officials. Domestic violence is tricky for journalists, too. The best way of handling reports is to list the type of official call, the address where the incident occurred, and the time and date. If readers are sufficiently curious, they can figure out who's thumping on whom. In a town the size of Alpine, most people already know.

“So that's why you didn't call last night,” I said after Milo had unloaded a few harrowing family episodes. “I almost phoned you.” It was late Monday morning, and I'd stopped by the sheriff's office on the pretext of checking the log.

Across the desk, Milo's hazel eyes showed a glimmer of interest. “You did?”

“I thought I heard a prowler.” It was only a small lie. Something—maybe a dog or a deer—had knocked over part of my woodpile in the carport.

“Oh.” Milo swung around in his chair and hauled his feet onto his desk. “I thought you might have wanted to see those pictures I got back from the ocean trip.”