The Mojave sun is not a timid little Boston sun or even a don't-worry-be-happy Caribbean sun. The Mojave sun is a fierce, aggressive beast that isn't going to be intimidated by the shadows of five-story apartment buildings.

Counting its tower and the spire that sits atop the tower, St. Bartholomew's Church is by far the tallest structure in Pico Mundo. Sometimes at twilight, under the barrel-tile roofs, the white stucco walls glow like the panes in a storm lantern.

With half an hour remaining before sunset on this Tuesday in August, the western sky blazed orange, steadily deepening toward red, as though the sun were wounded and bleeding in its retreat. The white walls of the church took color from the heavens, and appeared to be full of holy fire.

Stormy waited for me in front of St. Bart's. She sat on the top step, beside a picnic hamper.

She had traded her pink-and-white Burke & Bailey's uniform for sandals, white slacks, and a turquoise blouse. She had been cute then; she was ravishing now.

With her raven hair and jet-black eyes, she might have been the bride of a pharaoh, swept forward in time from ancient Egypt. In her eyes are mysteries to rival those of the Sphinx and those of all the pyramids that ever were or ever will be excavated from the sands of the Sahara.

As if reading my mind, she said, "You left your hormone spigot running. Crank it shut, griddle boy. This is a church."

I s.n.a.t.c.hed up the picnic hamper and, as she rose to her feet, I kissed her on the cheek.

"On the other hand, that was a little too chaste," she said.

"Because that was a kiss from Little Ozzie."

"He's sweet. I heard they blew up his cow."

"It's a slaughterhouse, plastic Holstein splattered everywhere you look."

"What's next - hit squads shooting lawn gnomes to pieces?"

"The world is mad," I agreed.

We entered St. Bart's through the main door. The narthex is a softly lighted and welcoming s.p.a.ce, paneled in cherry wood stained dark with ruby highlights.

Instead of proceeding into the nave, we turned immediately to the right and stepped up to a locked door. Stormy produced a key and let us into the bottom of the bell tower.

Father Sean Llewellyn, rector of St. Bart's, is Stormy's uncle. He knows she loves the tower, and he indulges her with a key.

When the door fell quietly shut behind us, the sweet fragrance of incense faded, and a faint musty smell arose.

The tower stairs were dark. Unerringly, I found her lips for a quick but sweeter kiss than the first, before she switched on the light.

"Bad boy."

"Good lips."

"Somehow it's too strange getting tongue in church."

"Technically, we're not in the church," church," I said. I said.

"And I suppose technically that wasn't tongue."

"I'm sure there's a more correct medical term for it."

"There's a medical term for you," you," she said. she said.

"What's that?" I wondered as, carrying the hamper, I followed her up the spiral staircase.

"Priapic."

"What's it mean?"

"Perpetually h.o.r.n.y."

"You wouldn't want a doctor to cure that, that, would you?" would you?"

"Don't need a doctor. Folk medicine offers a reliable cure."

"Yeah? Like what?"

"A swift, hard blow to the source of the problem."

I winced and said, "You are no Florence Nightingale. I'm going to start wearing a cup."

At the top of the spiral stairs, a door opened to the belfry.

A carillon of three bronze bells, all large but of different sizes, hung from the ceiling in the center of this lofty s.p.a.ce. A six-foot-wide catwalk encircled them.

The bells had rung for vespers at seven and would not ring again until morning Ma.s.s.

Three sides of the belfry were open above a waist-high wall, presenting splendid views of Pico Mundo, the Maravilla Valley, and the hills beyond. We stationed ourselves at the west side, the better to enjoy the sunset.

From the hamper, Stormy produced a Tupperware container filled with sh.e.l.led walnuts that she had deep-fried and seasoned lightly with both salt and sugar. She fed me one. Delicious - both the walnut and being fed by Stormy.

I opened a bottle of good Merlot and poured while she held the winegla.s.ses.

This was why earlier I had not finished the gla.s.s of Cabernet: As much as I love Little Ozzie, I would rather drink with Stormy.

We don't eat in this perch every evening, only two or three times a month, when Stormy needs to be high above the world. And closer to Heaven.

"To Ozzie," Stormy said, raising her gla.s.s in a toast. "With the hope that one day there'll be an end to all his losses."

I didn't ask what she meant by that because I thought perhaps I knew. By the affliction of his weight, there is much in life that Ozzie has been denied and may never experience.

Citrus-orange near the western horizon, blood-orange across the ascending vault, the sky darkened to purple directly overhead. In the east, the first stars of the night would soon begin to appear.

"The sky's so clear," Stormy said. "We'll be able to see Ca.s.siopeia tonight."

She referred to a northern constellation named after a figure of cla.s.sic mythology, but Ca.s.siopeia was also the name of Stormy's mother, who had died when Stormy was seven years old. Her father had perished in the same plane crash.

With no family but her uncle, the priest, she had been placed for adoption. When in three months the adoption failed for good reason, she made it explicitly clear that she didn't want new parents, only the return of those whom she had loved and lost.

Until the age of seventeen, when she graduated from high school, she was raised in an orphanage. Thereafter, until she was eighteen, she had lived under the legal guardianship of her uncle.

For the niece of a priest, Stormy has a strange relationship with G.o.d. There is anger in it - always a little, sometimes a lot.

"What about Fungus Man?" she asked.

"Terrible Chester doesn't like him."

"Terrible Chester doesn't like anyone."

"I think Chester's even afraid of him."

"Now that is is news." news."

"He's a hand grenade with the pin already pulled."

"Terrible Chester?"

"No. Fungus Man. Real name's Bob Robertson. The hair on his back was standing straight up like I've never seen it."

"Bob Robertson has a lot of hair on his back?"

"No. Terrible Chester. Even when he scared off that huge German shepherd, he didn't raise his hackles like he did today."

"Loop me in, odd one. How did Bob Robertson and Terrible Chester happen to be in the same place?"

"Since I broke into his house, I think maybe he's been following me around."

Even as I spoke the word following, following, my attention was drawn to movement in the graveyard. my attention was drawn to movement in the graveyard.

Immediately west of St. Bart's is a cemetery very much in the old style: not bronze plaques set in granite flush with the gra.s.s, as in most modern graveyards, but vertical headstones and monuments. An iron fence with spearpoint pickets surrounds those three acres. Although a few California live oaks, more than a century old, shade portions of the burial ground, most of the green aisles are open to the sun.

In the fiery glow of that Tuesday twilight, the gra.s.s appeared to have a bronze undertone, the shadows were as black as char, the polished surfaces of the granite markers mirrored the scarlet sky - and Robertson stood as still as any headstone in the churchyard, not under the cover of a tree but out where he could be easily seen.

Having set her winegla.s.s on the parapet, Stormy crouched at the hamper. "I've got some cheese that's perfect with this wine."

If Robertson had been standing with his head bowed, studying the engraving on a memorial, I would still have been disturbed to see him here. But this was worse. He had not come to pay his respects to the dead, not for any any reason as innocent as that. reason as innocent as that.

With his head tipped back, with his eyes fixed on me where I stood at the belfry parapet, the singular intensity of his interest all but crackled from him like arcing electricity.

Past the oaks and beyond the iron fence, I could see parts of two streets that intersected at the northwest corner of the cemetery. As far as I could tell, no marked or unmarked police vehicle was parked along either avenue.

Chief Porter had promised to a.s.sign a man at once to watch the house in Camp's End. If Robertson hadn't been home yet, however, that officer could not have established surveillance.

"You want crackers with the cheese?" Stormy asked.

Crimson had seeped down the summer sky, closer to the horizon, staining the western swathe of bright orange until it narrowed to a swatch. The air itself seemed to be stained red, and the shadows of trees and tombstones, already soot-black, grew even blacker.

Robertson had arrived with nightfall.

I set my winegla.s.s beside Stormy's. "We've got a problem."

"Crackers aren't a problem," Stormy said, "just a choice."

A sudden loud flapping-fluttering startled me.

Turning to see three pigeons swooping into the belfry and to their roost in the rafters above the bells, I b.u.mped into Stormy as she rose with two small containers. Crackers and wedges of cheese spilled across the catwalk.

"Oddie, what a mess!" She stooped, set the containers aside, and began to gather the crackers and cheese.

Down on the darkening gra.s.s, Robertson had thus far stood with his arms at his sides, a slump-shoulder hulk. Aware that I was as fixated on him as he was on me, he now raised his right arm almost as if in a n.a.z.i salute.

"Are you going to help me here," Stormy asked, "or are you going to be a typical man?"

Initially I thought he might be shaking his fist at me, but in spite of the poor - and rapidly fading - light, I soon saw that the gesture was even less polite than it had seemed at first. His middle finger was extended, and he thrust it toward me with short, angry jabs.

"Robertson's here," I told her.

"Who?"

"Fungus Man."

Suddenly he was on the move, walking between the headstones, toward the church.

"We better forget dinner," I said, drawing Stormy to her feet with the intention of hustling her out of the belfry. "Let's get down from here."

Resisting me, she turned to the parapet. "I don't let anyone intimidate me."

"Oh, I do. If they're crazy enough."

"Where is he? I don't see him."

Leaning out, peering down, I couldn't see him either. Apparently he had reached the front or the back of the church and had turned a corner.

"The door at the bottom of the steps," I said, "did it lock behind us automatically when we came into the tower?"

"I don't know. I don't think so."

I didn't like the idea of being trapped at the top of the tower, even though we could shout for help and surely be heard. The belfry door had no lock, and I doubted that the two of us could hold it shut against him if, in a rage, he was determined to open it.

Grabbing her by the hand, pulling to impress on her the need for urgency, I hurried along the catwalk, stepping over the cheese and crackers, around the bells. "Let's get out of here."

"The hamper, our dinner-"

"Leave it. We'll get it later, tomorrow."

We had left the lights on in the tower. But the spiral stairs were enclosed, and I couldn't see all the way to the bottom, only as far as the continuously curving walls allowed.

Below, all was quiet.

"Hurry," I urged Stormy, and without using the handrail, I preceded her down those steep steps, setting a pace too fast to be safe.