2 Landscape in Scarlet by Melanie Jackson

attention and she had a killer to catch.
    Jerry Hill was on his patio as she scrambled out of the bushes. He was a little startled to see his neighbor with a smudged face and sticks in her hair, but he only nodded when Juliet hissed , “You haven’t seen me!”
    “I haven’t?” He followed half-heartedly as she went to Esteban’s cottage and fetched the key from out of the bone birdhouse by the door. Juliet didn’t like sticking her fingers inside because, she told herself, there could be spiders. But truly she didn’t like it because it was bones and touching the remains of dead animals was off-putting.
    Esteban knew this and figured his key was safe.
    “I have an unwanted visitor,” Juliet explained. Then, inspired, she added , “It’s my ex. Sometimes he’s violent. It would be better to avoid him. If he doesn’t leave I’ll call the sheriff. ”
    Jerry’s eyes were big but he nodded again at this lie . Juliet slipped inside, relocked the door , and went to the desk where Esteban kept his binoculars.
    It took ten minutes, but the man in the bad suit with graying blond hair finally made it up the trail. Marley was following him , curious about the stranger who had come to his house and maybe amused by the way he kept plucking stickers from his pants .
    Jerry had disappeared inside his bungalow and Juliet was betting he wouldn’t answer the door. She wouldn’t be answering any doors either.
    The jangle of the old crank phone was loud and made her jump. Everyone knew Esteban was away, so the only one who would be calling on the internal system was someone who had seen the man and guessed that she might be hiding there to avoid him. Someone who knew that her cell could be monitored. Raphael.
    “Hello.”
    “You made it to sanctuary.”
    “Yes. Did he introduce himself to you ?”
    “Peter Davis, an old friend from back east. No badges were offered. ”
    “Uh - hu h . Look, he’s here now. I’ve got to go.”
    “I’ll call when he leaves the parking lot ,” Raphael said. “If it’s early enough we can have lunch and vilify your former employers .”
    “From your lips….” Juliet hung up the phone and stepped out of view of any of the windows. Fortunately Esteban made a habit in sitting in places that were out of the line of sight and using blackout drapes on the largest ones in the studio , so she was not uncomfortable in her borrowed chair tucked in the corner of the darkened room .
    The knock on the door made her flinch, but she waited quietly for the man to give up and go away . It was too much to hope that he would depart forever, but she wasn’t mentally braced to speak to him right then. And the thought of explaining her presence in Esteban’s bungalow, when she knew it would go into a report, made her angry.
    The visit also forced her to acknowledge that she wasn’t completely at ease in her new life. A part of her was still looking back, waiting for the past to tap her on the shoulder. She meant to recite her yoga mantra but found herself muttering a poem her father had taught her.
     
    The other day upon the stair
    I met a man who wasn’t there.
    He wasn’t there again today,
    O, how I wish he’d go away.
     
    Except the last line kept coming out as “ He must be in the NSA . ”
    Abandoning recitation, s he used invective instead. B ut softly. She didn’t much like having those words coming from her mouth, admitting that they had been inside, at her disposal for just such a moment.
    Even after the noise of someone circling the bungalow had ceased, she didn’t get up to look out of a window. Didn’t move when Marley scratched at the door. Patience, that’s what was needed.
    And it was rewarded some minutes later by the ringing of the compound ’ s internal phone.
    “Give me some good news.”
    “He’s gone,” Raphael said. “Bring the tuna and Marley, if he wants to come. I have the scotch and peanut butter cookies .”
    “See you in five.”
    Juliet hung up and opened