Pursued by Shadows by Medora Sale Page B

her, she has spoken to the photographer, possibly to ask for a job, and she has had some dealings with the antique store. And that for some reason they don’t want us to know that she’s been here.” John put his arm around Harriet’s shoulders and stared out at the lake. A small crowd of hopeful ducks, who hadn’t read the sign concerning municipal prohibitions against feeding them, gathered at the water’s edge and made small, discontented duck noises.
    â€œYou think she’s dead, don’t you, John? Otherwise they wouldn’t be lying like that.”
    â€œThey could be sheltering her,” said Sanders, doubtfully. “If she’s hiding from Guy Beaumont. It sounds as if he’s made it down here as well.”
    â€œThe biker,” said Harriet.
    â€œBig, lots of brown hair, menacing-looking. You have to admit it sounds like him. And he’s searching for Jane. But why here?”
    â€œI don’t know.” Harriet shoved her hands in her jacket pocket and slouched down on the bench. “I just can’t see the connection between this little town and whatever is going on in their lives.” She stared at the water for a long, brooding minute, and then unzipped her jacket, took out her Olympus, and began taking pictures of the ducks. “I’m starved,” she said. “Let’s go buy some cookies and feed the ducks, and spend the rest of the afternoon going for boat rides and taking pictures and forgetting that we know anyone else in the entire world.”
    Eight miles to the south, Jane walked nervously into a very dimly lit barnlike room and followed Amos up a single flight of wooden stairs to a door at the top. He stopped on the landing and looked back at her. For a second, she thought she saw a flash of pain or uncertainty distort his face, and then it resumed its faintly ironic, noncommittal expression. He pushed open the door and stepped back, gesturing to her to precede him.
    The contrast was dazzling. The room faced the southwest. It was just as large as the one downstairs, but it danced with sun and dappled reflected light from a window at least eight feet high, and about as much across, which looked out across the lake. “It’s nice here this time of year,” said Amos, speaking with a kind of diffidence that Jane hadn’t heard in his voice before. “Before all the summer people come.”
    â€œIt’s very beautiful.” There seemed nothing else to say.
    In the corner to her right, sharing the western wall with the window, was a neat, clean, moderately well-equipped kitchen. It would have been open to the rest of the loft, except for a pair of heavy maroon velvet curtains hanging on a thick wooden rod. They looked as if they had been stolen from a theater somewhere and put here to spare those sitting at the round table in front of the window the sight of cooking mess. Jane shook her head.
    â€œDon’t blame me,” said Amos, following the direction of her eyes. “They were here when I took the place over. The damned rod is too well built to take down without a hell of a lot of effort.”
    Facing her were a chesterfield and a couple of basket chairs, and down at the other end of the room, a double bed. The far wall was heavily curtained as well. “What’s behind there?” asked Jane. “The furnace room?”
    â€œCome and see.” She followed him back, past bathroom and closets, to the thick dark green cloth that covered the back wall. Amos pulled the curtains back, revealing a pair of windows and door leading out to a narrow wooden deck that ran the width of the building. “That used to be the entrance,” he said. “When this was servants’ quarters to the house up there and completely separate from the boathouse. I demolished the stairs. They were pretty rickety, and people kept turning up on the balcony and peering in, looking for me. You can open the curtains