The Servants of Twilight

Coming out from behind his desk, he said, "Ms. Scavello, I'm Charlie Harrison. I'm so pleased to meet you."

She accepted his hand and said she was pleased to meet him, too.

Her hair was thick, shiny, dark-dark brown, almost black. He wanted to run his fingers through it. He wanted to put his face in her hair and smell it.

Unaccustomed to having such a strong and immediate reaction to anyone, Charlie reined himself in. He looked at her more closely, as dispassionately as possible. He told himself that she wasn't perfect, certainly not breathtakingly beautiful. Pretty, yes, but not a total knockout. Her brow was somewhat too high, and her cheekbones seemed a little heavy, and her nose was slightly pinched.

Nevertheless, with a breathless and ingratiating manner that wasn't like him, he said, "I apologize for the condition of the office," and was surprised and dismayed to hear himself make such a statement.

She looked puzzled." Why should you apologize? It's lovely."

He blinked." You really think so?"

"Absolutely. It's unexpected. Not at all what I thought a private detective's office would look like. But that just makes it even more interesting, appealing."

Her eyes were huge and dark. Clear, direct eyes. Each time he met them, his breath caught for an instant.

"Did it myself," he said, deciding the room didn't look so bad, after all." Didn't use an interior decorator."

"You've got a real flair for it."

He showed her to a chair and noticed, as she sat down, that she had lovely legs and perfectly shaped ankles.

But I've seen other legs as lovely, other ankles as well shaped, he thought with some bafflement, and I haven't ever before been swept away by this adolescent longing, haven't felt this ridiculously sudden surge in hormone levels.

Either he was hornier than he thought, or he was reacting to more than her appearance.

Perhaps her appeal was as much in the way she walked and shook hands and carried herself (with an easy, graceful minimum of movement), and in her voice (soft, earthy, feminine, yet unaffected, with a note of strength), and in the way she met his eyes (forthrightly), as it was in the way she looked. In spite of the circumstances in which he was meeting her, in spite of the fact that she had a serious problem about which she must be worried, she possessed an uncommon inner tranquility that intrigued him.

That doesn't quite explain it either, he thought. Since when have I ever wanted to jump into bed with a woman because of her uncommon inner tranquility?

All right, so he wasn't going to be able to analyze this feeling, not yet. He would just have to go with it and try to understand it later.

Stepping behind his desk, sitting down, he said, "Maybe I shouldn't have told you I'm interested in interior design. Maybe that's really the wrong image for a private detective."

"On the contrary," she said, "what it tells me is that you're observant, perceptive, probably quite sensitive, and you have an excellent eye for details. Those are the qualities I'd hope for in any man in your line of work."

"Right! Exactly," he said, beaming at her, delighted by her approval.

He was stricken by an almost irresistible urge to kiss her brow, her eyes, the bridge of her nose, the tip of her nose, her cheeks, her chin, and last of all her sculpted lips.

But all he did was say, "Well, Ms. Scavello, what can I do for you?"

She told him about the old woman.

He was shocked, intrigued, and sympathetic, but he was also uneasy because you never knew what to expect from flaky types like this old woman. Anything might happen, and it probably would. Furthermore, he knew how difficult it was to track down and deal with any perpetrator of this type of irrational harassment. He much preferred people with clear, understandable motivations. Understandable motivations were what made his line of work possible: greed, lust, envy, jealousy, revenge, love, hate-they were the raw material of his industry. Thank God for the weaknesses and imperfections of mankind, for otherwise he would have been without work. He was also uneasy because he was afraid he might fail Christine Scavello, and if he failed her, she would walk out of his life forever. And if she walked out of his life forever, he would have to be satisfied with only dreams of her, and he was just too damn old for dreams of that kind.

When Christine finished recounting the events of this morning-the murder of the dog, the call from the old womanCharlie said, "Where's your son now?"

"Out in your waiting room."

"All right. He's safe there."

"I'm not sure he's safe anywhere.

"Relax. It's not the end of the world. It's really not."

He smiled at her to show her that it wasn't the end of the world. He wanted to make her smile back at him because he was certain that her smile would make her lovely face even lovelier, but she didn't seem to have a smile in her.

He said, "All right, about this old woman. You've given me a pretty detailed description of her." He had made notes as she talked.