BY REASON OF INSANITY by Edward L. Woodyard

By Reason of Insanity Chapter Sixty-Six

We walked around Chrystalis. The feral calico cat was nowhere to be found, but we weren't looking for her; we were looking for personages, eidolons, phantoms or ghosts, real or imagined, depending on whose head was doing the investigating or was being investigated.

Barbara and I checked the bushes behind the swimming pool. We looked in her blue Chevy Malibu. We went into the garage to peer inside my convertible. I steered her away from the box with the sunscreen.

We opened the door of a tool shed on the side lawn. We looked up into a palo verde tree. Nothing there. We searched in and around the patio pool furniture. We returned to the front of the house and stepped back toward the street so we could check the flat roof of Chrystalis. Again nothing. We finished our quest where we started, by the front door.

Barbara's voice got loud. "See? There's nothing?"

"Of course not. While we were on this side of the house, they were on that side."

"Okay then. I'll go this way and you go that way."

"They're too clever for that. They'll go into the house and through it."

"We'll lock the doors and windows."

"They have keys. They come into my room at night, you know. These are brilliant minds at work. Very sophisticated."

"Let's go have some lunch. I'm hungry. Aren't you?"

We entered the house through the front door and I turned right into the kitchen. I had forgotten to eat breakfast. My coffee was ready under the Keurig spout and my whole wheat toast was cold in the toaster.

Barbara stopped and peered into the living room. She scurried to the couch and became excited.

"Well, look at this. Here's your appointment book. It must have been behind this cushion the whole time."

I rushed over to her. She took it out from behind a back cushion of the couch and the bargello needlepoint throw pillow.

"He knows he left this book at his office. They got in the house and planted it here. Or was it you?"

Barbara dismissed my accusation as a delusion. She opened the appointment book.

"It's right here. See for yourself. See? You didn't have any appointments for today. Weren't you scheduled to go golfing today?"

I found the page for that day's date. It was clean.

I rushed out of the house and went to the end of the driveway, turning back toward the house and screamed into the air. 'YOU'RE OUT HERE! WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?! YOU'RE NOT GOING TO MAKE ME NUTS! YOU'RE NOT GOING TO GET ME TO KILL MYSELF!"

My paranoia was believable. I didn't know if there was really someone out there or if I was trying to fool Barbara. However, I was again talking in first person singular.

I hadn't seen Mara suddenly park her car at the street end of the driveway. She was in an ivory oversized bateau neck blouse over a Courreges red-and-blue batik skirt; she carried a small paper bag. She rushed over to me. "Adam, it's just me. Mara. Calm down, please. Okay?"

I became a child for her. "Okay," I gurgled.

Behind Mara walking up the driveway was Cameron Whitaker. He had parked on the street and was dressed in a gray Hugo Boss suit and Florsheim wingtips, open collared white shirt and no tie. Mara turned me toward him. "Adam, look who's here to see you."

"I just wanted to see how you're doing, Adam. And to apologize for what I said."

I recognized Cameron, but my mind was elsewhere. "It's not you. No, it's not you."