A Flower in the Desert by Walter Satterthwait Page B

long ears limp. Perhaps it had once been Melissa’s.
    I glanced around the room. It was cheery, festive—happy. I wondered whether Melissa, whose decorating had been so restrained throughout the rest of the house, who seemed to have denied a fondness for color and patterns, as though perhaps she were hiding herself, had felt suddenly liberated when she designed this room for her daughter.
    I looked down into the shiny brown glass eyes of the rabbit. He didn’t know the answer. Or if he did, he wasn’t telling.

Eight
    W HEN I GOT BACK DOWNSTAIRS, ARTHUR still sat staring out at the sea, which was invisible now in the blackness. His face, reflected in the glass wall, was empty.
    He glanced up at me, silently watched me circle the bar, turn on the light, and enter the kitchen. It had all the cooking toys, and then some—a restaurant-quality gas oven and stove, a microwave-convection oven, a Cuisinart, a blender, rows of Sheffield knives, ceramic pots holding an assortment of metal spatulas and wooden spoons, a deep freeze filled on one side with uncooked roasts and steaks and chops and hams and fish, and half filled on the other with leftovers carefully wrapped in aluminum foil and carefully labeled: pot roast, coq au vin, pork in ginger sauce. The cabinets were packed with expensive crockery and an impressive array of herbs and spices. Someone had removed all the perishables from the refrigerator, but it still contained a forest of commercial sauces and condiments: green chili jam, blueberry preserves, mayonnaise, three imported mustards, curry paste, mango pickle, lime chutney.
    From all of this I deduced that Melissa had been something of a cook. Or that Winona had been. Or that the two of them had hired someone who was.
    At the end of the bar, an answering machine sat beside a cordless telephone and its base. The indicator said that there were no messages, which meant that someone, at some time, had retrieved whatever messages might have been on the tape. But most of these machines don’t erase the most recent messages, even after they’ve been retrieved, until they record over them to receive a new one. I pushed the button. There was a silence, someone not speaking after hearing the outgoing message, then a beep. Another silence, then a series of three beeps, to let me know there were no more messages available.
    I fiddled with the machine until I found the button that played the outgoing message. I pushed it. A woman’s voice, flat, nonregional, announced the phone number and asked the caller to leave a message.
    Melissa’s voice, presumably. Melissa herself was off somewhere, but here in Malibu her disembodied voice was still mechanically greeting callers.
    The voice told me nothing about its owner. I hadn’t expected it to; people are usually a bit constrained when they’re recording a message into their machine.
    After the tape rewound, I opened the machine, fumbled the tiny cassette out of its berth, carried it around the bar and out to the porch.
    Chuck Arthur said, “Jesus, that gave me a start. Hearing Melissa’s voice on the machine like that.”
    â€œWhen the police were here,” I said, “did they take anything from the house?”
    He shook his head. “No. Nothing.”
    â€œDid Stamworth?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œHas anyone, that you’re aware of? Have you?”
    â€œNo, of course I haven’t. No one has.”
    I nodded. “You wouldn’t happen to have a mini tape recorder, would you?”
    He frowned. “In the car.”
    I would’ve bet on it. Would’ve bet that he had a cellular phone, too. And a laptop computer. Maybe he and Rita had modemed together.
    â€œCould you get it?” I asked him.
    â€œWhy?”
    I held up the cassette. “After you retrieve your messages, the answering machine rewinds the tape to the beginning. Any new messages are recorded over the messages already on the tape.