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and she realized that she’d forgotten to call Michael. She had to confront him with her suspicions. She had to know if he’d been in the house, in Danny’s room, without her knowledge or permission.
    It had to be Michael.
    She could turn on the light and call him now. He would be sleeping, but she wouldn’t feel guilty if she woke him, not after all the sleepless nights that he had given her. Right now, however, she didn’t feel up to the battle. Her wits were dulled by wine and exhaustion. And if Michael had slipped into the house like a little boy playing a cruel prank, if he had written that message on the chalkboard, then his hatred of her was far greater than she had thought. He might even be a desperately sick man. If he became verbally violent and abusive, if he were irrational, she would need to have a clear head to deal with him. She would call him in the morning when she had regained some of her strength.
    She yawned and turned over and drifted off to sleep. She didn’t dream anymore, and when she woke at ten o’clock, she was refreshed and newly excited by the previous night’s success.
    She phoned Michael, but he wasn’t home. Unless he’d changed shifts in the past six months, he didn’t go to work until noon. She decided to try his number again in half an hour.
    After retrieving the morning newspaper from the front stoop, she read the rave review of Magyck! written by the Review-Journal ’s entertainment critic. He couldn’t find anything wrong with the show. His praise was so effusive that, even reading it by herself, in her own kitchen, she was slightly embarrassed by the effusiveness of the praise.
    She ate a light breakfast of grapefruit juice and one English muffin, then went to Danny’s room to pack his belongings. When she opened the door, she gasped and halted.
    The room was a mess. The airplane models were no longer in the display case; they were strewn across the floor, and a few were broken. Danny’s collection of paperbacks had been pulled from the bookcase and tossed into every corner. The tubes of glue, miniature bottles of enamel, and model-crafting tools that had stood on his desk were now on the floor with everything else. A poster of one of the movie monsters had been ripped apart; it hung from the wall in several pieces. The action figures had been knocked off the headboard. The closet doors were open, and all the clothes inside appeared to have been thrown on the floor. The game table had been overturned. The easel lay on the carpet, the chalkboard facing down.
    Shaking with rage, Tina slowly crossed the room, carefully stepping through the debris. She stopped at the easel, set it up as it belonged, hesitated, then turned the chalkboard toward her.
     
NOT DEAD
     
“Damn!” she said, furious.
    Vivienne Neddler had been in to clean last evening, but this wasn’t the kind of thing that Vivienne would be capable of doing. If the mess had been here when Vivienne arrived, the old woman would have cleaned it up and would have left a note about what she’d found. Clearly, the intruder had come in after Mrs. Neddler had left.
    Fuming, Tina went through the house, meticulously checking every window and door. She could find no sign of forced entry.
    In the kitchen again, she phoned Michael. He still didn’t answer. She slammed down the handset.
    She pulled the telephone directory from a drawer and leafed through the Yellow Pages until she found the advertisements for locksmiths. She chose the company with the largest ad.
    “Anderlingen Lock and Security.”
    “Your ad in the Yellow Pages says you can have a man here to change my locks in one hour.”
    “That’s our emergency service. It costs more.”
    “I don’t care what it costs,” Tina said.
    “But if you just put your name on our work list, we’ll most likely have a man there by four o’clock this afternoon, tomorrow morning at the latest. And the regular service is forty percent cheaper than an emergency