outlive men by several years. Actuarial tables aren't wrong."
  "Always the insurance agent."
  "Well, it's true," he said, finally turning the key in the proper direction and firing 
up the engine.
  "Gonna sell me a policy?"
  "I didn't sell anyone else today. Gotta make a living. You all right?"
  "Scared," she said.
  Instead of shifting the car into drive, he placed one of his bearish hands over both of 
her hands. "Something feel wrong?"
  "I'm afraid you'll drive us straight into a tree."
  He looked hurt. "I'm the safest driver in Bright Beach. My auto rates prove it."
  "Not today. If it takes you as long to get the car in gear as it did to slip that key 
in the ignition, our little girl will be sitting up and saying 'dada' by the time we get 
to the hospital."
  "Little boy."
  "Just calm down."
  "I am calm," he assured her.
  He released the hand brake, shifted the car into reverse instead of into drive, and 
backed away from the street, along the side of the house.
  Startled, he braked to a halt. Agnes didn't say anything until Joey had taken three or 
four deep, slow breaths, and then she pointed at the windshield. "The hospital's that 
way."
  He regarded her sheepishly. "You all right?"
  "Our little girl's going to walk backward her whole life if you drive in reverse all 
the way to the hospital."
  "If it is a little girl, she's going to be exactly don't think I could handle two of 
you." he said.
  "We'll keep you young."
  With great deliberation, Joey shifted gears and followed the drive way to the street, 
where he peered left and then right with the squint-eyed suspicion of a Marine commando 
scouting dangerous territory. He turned right.
  "Make sure Edom delivers the pies in the morning," Agnes reminded him.
  "Jacob said he wouldn't mind doing it for once."
  "Jacob scares people," Agnes said. "No one would eat a pie that Jacob delivered without 
having it tested at a lab."
  Needles of rain knitted the air and quickly embroidered silvery patterns on the 
blacktop.
  Switching on the windshield wipers, Joey said, "That's the first time I've ever heard 
you admit that either of your brothers is odd."
  Not odd, dear. They're just a little eccentric."
  "Like water is a little wet."
  Frowning at him, she said, "You don't mind them around, do you, Joey? They're 
eccentric, but I love them very much.
  "So do I," he admitted. He smiled and shook his head. "Those two make a worrywart 
life-insurance salesman like me seem just as light hearted as a schoolgirl."
  "Your turning into an excellent driver, after all," she said, winking him.
  He was, in fact, a first-rate driver, with an impeccable record at the age of thirty: 
no traffic citations, no accidents.
  His skill behind the wheel and his inborn caution didn't help him, However, when a Ford 
pickup ran a red traffic light, braked too late, and slid at high speed into the driver's 
door of the Pontiac.
  
  Chapter 9
  ROCKING AS IF AFLOAT on troubled waters, abused by an unearthly and tormented sound, 
Junior Cain imagined a gondola on a black river, a carved dragon rising high at the bow 
as he had seen on a paperback fantasy novel featuring Vikings in a longboat. The 
gondolier in this case was not a Viking, but a tall figure in a black robe, his face 
concealed within a voluminous hood; he didn't pole the boat with the traditional oar but 
with what appeared to be human bones welded into a staff. The river's course was entirely 
underground, with a stone vault for a sky, and fires burned on the far shore, whence came 
the tormenting wail, a cry filled with rage, anguish, and fearsome need.
  The truth, as always, was not supernatural: He opened his eyes and discovered that he 
was in the back of an ambulance. Evidently this was the one intended for Naomi. They 
would be sending a morgue wagon for her now.
  A paramedic, rather than a boatman or a demon, was attending him. The wail was a siren.
  His stomach felt as if he had been clubbed mercilessly by a couple of professional 
thugs with big fists and lead pipes. With each beat, his heart seemed to press painfully 
against constricting bands, and his throat was raw.
  A two-prong oxygen feed was snugged against his nasal septum The sweet, cool flow was 
welcome. He could still taste the vile mess of which he had rid himself, however, and his 
tongue and teeth felt as if they were coated with mold.
  At least he wasn't vomiting anymore.
  Immediately at the thought of regurgitation, his abdominal muscles contracted like 
those of a laboratory frog zapped by an electric current, and he choked on a rising 
horror.
  What is happening to me.
  The paramedic snatched the oxygen feed from his patient's nose and quickly elevated his 
head, providing a purge towel to catch the thin ejecta.
  Junior's body betrayed him as before, and also in new ways that terrified and 
humiliated him, involving every bodily fluid except cerebrospinal. For a while, inside 
that rocking ambulance, he wished that he were in a gondola upon the waters of the Styx, 
his misery at an end.
  When the convulsive seizure passed, as he collapsed back on the spattered pillow, 
shuddering at the stench rising from his hideously fouled clothes, Junior was suddenly 
struck by an idea that was either madness or a brilliant deductive insight: Naomi, the 
hateful bitch, she poisoned me!
  The paramedic, fingers pressed to the radial artery in Junior's right wrist, must have 
felt a rocket-quick acceleration in his pulse rate.
  Junior and Naomi had taken their dried apricots from the same bag. Reached in the bag 
without looking. Shook them out into the palms of their hands. She could not have 
controlled which pieces of fruit he received and which she ate.
  Did she poison herself as well? Was it her intention to kill him and commit suicide?
  Not cheerful, life-loving, high-spirited, churchgoing Naomi. She saw every day through 
a golden haze that came from the sun in her heart.
  He'd once spoken that very sentiment to her. Golden haze, sun in the heart. His words 
had melted her, tears had sprung into her eyes, and sex been better than ever.
  More likely the poison had been in his cheese sandwich or in his water bottle.
  His heart rebelled at the thought of lovely Naomi committing such Sweet-tempered, 
generous, honest, kind Naomi had surely been incapable of murdering anyone-least of all 
the man she loved.