The yard around the back door was covered with garbage- empty cans, soiled wrapping paper, all kinds of household refuse. Strange that the garbage can itself was upright, with the lid secured.

After pitching the scattered garbage piece by piece into a fresh plastic bag, she opened the tall can and saw that two bags were already there, heavy with something, and smelling of gore; and she felt disgust all over again. Traynor had put the bodies here. That sickened her. Couldn't he have given them a decent burial? This was going to be her last day working for Elliott Traynor. It took a really colossal nerve to leave such a mess, not only in the pantry but in the yard, not even to pick up the garbage, no matter how famous he was.

When she'd finished cleaning, she threw her mask and hair cover and gloves into the garbage, fetched a clean uniform and shoes from her van, and, in the Traynor's guest bath, washed her face and hands and arms, washed every exposed part of herself, dropping her soiled garments and shoes in a plastic bag to be discarded. She'd bill Traynor for replacements. Cleaning up after a murder didn't hold a candle to this.

Returning to the kitchen to fetch the vacuum, the thought struck her that not only raccoons but a man could have been shot in there.

How silly. Did she always have to imagine more than was possible?

And yet…

If there had been a man, she thought, panicked, she had destroyed the evidence.

Hurrying out to the garbage can, she hauled out the plastic bags she had filled and opened the two at the bottom.

Raccoons. Badly mangled. Surely that accounted for the blood and gore.

Tying up the bags again and stuffing everything back on top, she closed the lid tightly and went inside to scrub herself all over again-and to call the police department. Her feelings about Elliott Traynor, which had before today deteriorated from admiration to puzzled unease, had turned to disgust.

She supposed she was too inclined to see her heroes as giants above reproach. She expected Elliott Traynor to be without any possible fault.

Though she didn't suppose that it was illegal to shoot raccoons, under the circumstances, she thought she ought to tell Max of the incident, thought there might be some reason that he would need to know this. When she'd placed the call, the dispatcher told her Captain Harper was in court. She left a message for him to call her, she didn't want to tell the dispatcher why. She felt tired, enervated. Felt used and unnaturally defenseless-not her usual state of mind.

She wanted to see Max and feel the strength of him holding her, wanted to hear some wisecrack, some wry comment about murdered raccoons, some twisted cop humor that would make her laugh.

But then when she went to dust the dining room and mop its tile floor, she found Traynor's note. It lay on the table beside a hundred-dollar bill.

Ms. Getz:

Raccoons got in the pantry. No time to call anyone. I shot them with a target pistol. Sorry for the mess. Here's an extra hundred. Appreciate if you don't mention this. Embarrassing scene I’d not want talked about.

Not a graceful communication. Short and abrupt. Well, what did she want, a eulogy to dead raccoons? She felt inclined to leave his hundred-dollar bill. Surely Traynor had intended this as a bribe.

But she had more than earned the hundred, cleaning up his mess. If she didn't take it now, she'd be billing him for the extra work. Likely the money was intended as both payment and bribe.

She called it earned, slipped it her pocket, and got on with the vacuuming. She did the living room and front bedroom, emptying the wastebaskets with distaste, where Vivi's cherry seeds stuck to the plastic liners. Only when she started on Traynor's study did she slow her pace.

When she wheeled the vacuum into Traynor's study, it was as neat and tidy as ever. Nothing on the desk but his computer and the freshly printed chapter he had written the night before. He always left the new chapter on the desk, possibly to go over the next day when he and Vivi returned from their walk or from the theater. They went often to approve the sets that Cora Lee was painting, then had breakfast out.

Tryouts were tonight. Charlie supposed that when rehearsals began they'd be at the theater for longer periods. It seemed a rigorous routine for someone being treated for cancer. Traynor had told her, when they first arrived and were discussing her work routine, that he worked late into the night. He said that was when the juices flowed. She remembered the amused look in his eyes, some private joke-or maybe his faint smile was simply juvenile humor at the off-color connotation. A strange man. He still interested her, despite her anger this morning.

He was far more stern in real life than he looked in the promotion picture on his book jackets. Long before this morning, Traynor had made her uncomfortable. He seemed to analyze and weigh a person far too closely-maybe a writer's penetrating observation, she supposed, as he tried to see beneath the surface.

Did she, when she was sketching an animal, stare like that at her subject? Did she make her animals uncomfortable? With Joe and Dulcie, she'd seen them both wince when she was drawing them. And despite the kit's bright disposition, several times when she'd looked too hard at the kit, she'd gotten a hiss in return or a striking paw that surprised her and made her draw back.

Who knew what an animal felt when you stared at them? In the animal world, a stare meant the threat of attack. One was supposed to stare at a mountain lion, to keep him from attacking first-to show superiority. But one was not, while hunting, supposed to look a deer or rabbit in the eye, that only alerted them.

Joe and Dulcie and the kit were sentient cats, not instinct-driven wild beasts. Most of the time, logic drove those three-but a logic overlying the same deep feline nature as any ordinary kitty-they weren't any less cat, they were simply more than cat.

Vacuuming beneath the fine walnut desk and along beside the walnut bookshelves, she reached to try the desk drawers and file drawers. As usual, they were locked. Hesitantly she reached for the new pages of Traynor's book that lay before her.

All week she had been sneaking looks at Traynor's manuscript. Last Friday, reading his earlier pages, she had been shocked and deeply upset. She'd been so excited to have a look at his work, had told herself that after all, it was written for public consumption, and it was right there on the desk; she only wanted to see how he developed his prose, from the beginning. In school she had been interested in writing fiction-though far more fascinated, always, with drawing, with the visual images she wanted to create. But Traynor had always been a favorite; she had loved reading some of his passages over and over, simply for their poetry.

She'd heard him tell someone on the phone that this new book was set in Marin County, above San Francisco, at the turn of the century. She liked the title, Twilight Silver. She had stood with the vacuum paused and roaring, reading the neatly printed pages.

They'd been dreadful. The words stumbled, the paragraphs didn't make sense. She had started again, thinking her lack of comprehension was her fault. She had skipped ahead several pages, but had found no improvement. She'd decided this must be a first draft, a rough beginning. Surely a writer was allowed a flawed first draft.

But why print it out so neatly? Why bother, until it was the way he wanted it-why print out these garbled pages, this lack of clarity with not a hint of his lucid style?

Being an artist herself, with a duly accredited degree-for whatever that was worth, she thought wryly-she felt that she had some sense of how a work of art, a drawing or manuscript, grew to fruition. But those pages, despite the promise of an exciting plot, had been so clumsy they embarrassed her.