The Sentinel by Konvitz Jeffrey;

Author:Konvitz, Jeffrey;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2015-11-09T15:21:27+00:00

16

The staircase was familiar. Steeply angled, warped, and eroded. But for no apparent reason, it seemed even more precarious than the day she’d first climbed it to the rental office. Undoubtedly, her own apprehension had much to do with it. She was tense, irritable, strangely terrorized by the expectation of a confrontation with Miss Logan. Earlier in the day she’d decided that the time had come for the agent to answer some additional questions, and since the agent had refused to answer her office phone, and since no home listing in any borough or suburb for J. Logan or Joan Logan could be found, a trip to the office had become the only realistic alternative.

Staring upward for several minutes, she ran her hands over the heavy makeup she’d applied to cover her pallid complexion, then climbed the staircase and tried the office door. It was unlocked; she entered. The room was precisely the way she remembered it, but empty of Miss Logan or anyone else. The dust on the desk chair indicated that no one had been there in several days. Strange. Miss Logan wasn’t the type to have left her door unlocked or office untidy. And what had happened to the associate, if there was such a person. Allison was no longer sure of the associate’s existence, even though the agent had referred to the associate, because she now had serious doubts as to certain other representations made by the spinster. But it wasn’t just the presence of dust that suggested the place had been abandoned. The calendar date was ten days old and the last dated application was the same. And she couldn’t ignore the coincidence. It had been ten days since her merry jaunt into apartment 4A in the middle of the night.

She shuffled through the desk papers, as that seemed the obvious thing to do, and found nothing startling, except for a phone number with the name Joan Logan written next to it. She dialed the digits, but a voice answered and declared, this is not a working number. Please consult your directory for the appropriate listing. She had already. She slammed down the phone and rubbed her eyes, which ached constantly, looked around the office once more, then hesitantly made her way down the staircase to the street.

She looked down the block. Several feet away was the entrance to a flower shop. She walked over and stared in the window. An old woman in a dotted dress walked around the wrapping table, glanced in her direction, and smiled. She entered.

“Can I help you?” the woman asked, brushing away discarded stalks.

Allison glanced at the refrigerated display case in the rear of the store. “I’d like a rose.”

“Red?”

“Yes.”

“I have some beautiful new arrivals,” the woman said proudly. She turned, opened the cabinet, and removed a long-stemmed Tropicana. “It will take just a minute.”

Allison leaned against the wall, watching the woman gather some greens to add to her package. “Would you know the rental agent next door?” she asked matter-of-factly.

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