Later, at home, I'd finished supper and was lazily soaking in a tub of beautifully hot water when the phone rang. "Mrs. Carson?" the voice inquired. "This is Lucy Jarvis. My grandfather, J. D. Jarvis, asked me to call you. He's changed his mind about the foreclosure and he wants to meet you at the Compound as soon as possible."

"What?" I said, not sure that I'd heard correctly. "Lucy? Where at the Compound?"

"In your shop. Please hurry." The phone clicked. A moment later, I heard a dial tone. I carefully returned it to the hook and reached for a towel.

I dressed again and drove back to the Compound. The parking area next to the maintenance room was empty except for Oliver's Buick Skylark, Charlie Ruggle's battered pickup truck and Steven McCoy's VW van. Oliver and Charlie were nowhere in sight but Steven was unloading large flat cardboard trays containing yet more unfired pottery.

"Hi, Steven," I greeted him. "You get a call too?"

He didn't bother to look up. "Huh? No, I got a class coming, I told you."

"Can I help carry in?" I offered.

"Yeah, that box over there," a jerk of his head indicated a big cubical cardboard carton, closed and sealed with masking tape.

I picked up the box - for its bulk, it was surprisingly lightweight - and carried it into the maintenance room. Immediately, Charlie Ruggles appeared and wrested the load away from me. "Here, let me take that, Miz Carson," the big man said reproachfully. "You'll throw your back out carrying things that way. You got to lift with your legs."

I was glad to see that Charlie, who had left the Tenants' Meeting looking very despondent, was acting like his old self again. Charlie's one point of pride has always been his youthful weight-lifting experience and the rest of us had long since given up any hope of being allowed to carry any parcel larger than a bread box through the maintenance room when he was present. "What's in here, Miz Carson?" he asked curiously, hefting the box and looking disappointed at its light weight.

"Don't know," I answered. "It's Steven's. Just leave it on his doorstep." Charlie carried the box through the door in a normal manner, then ostentatiously balanced it on his shoulder and set off for the west end of the court-yard. I went northeastward across to my own shop.

Seeing no sign of Jarvis, I unlocked my shop door, flipped on the lights and coffeepot and sat down to wait. A few minutes later, lights went on across the courtyard - Oliver's office. I glanced at the clock, 7:45, and wondered whether Jarvis were at Oliver's office and, if so, whether I should go over and join them.

I decided to stay put a bit longer. If Jarvis was there and they wanted me, they could come get me ... or call. If it was just Oliver mooning around there alone, I didn't really want to talk to him again until I knew more about what was going on ... I glanced at the phone, it was on its hook.

A moment later I heard bumping noises outside. I hurried to the front door and opened it to find Jonathan thumping his chair against the door. "Daisy, what the devil's going on?" he demanded as he glared up at me.

"Damned if I know," I admitted, holding the door wide open for him. "You got a call from Lucy too?"

"Yes, I did." Jonathan's chair bumped its way over the threshold. "And a very odd one too," he added as he maneuvered to his usual spot by the coffee stand.

He quoted substantially the same message that I'd received. "She wouldn't explain anything," he complained. "She sounded like a telephone solicitor with one of those idiotic memorized spiels," which was another of Jonathan's pet gripes. "Shorter though," he concluded on a faint note of approval.

The coffee pot's bubbling burp died into silence. We sat and waited a while longer, drinking coffee and speculating on Jarvis' sudden reversal and what the hell was going on generally. Finally, at straight up eight o'clock, I finished my second cup of coffee, threw the plastic container in the trash and stood up. "This is ridiculous. Maybe he went to Oliver's instead. I'm going to check."

I crossed the courtyard, seeing nothing but moonlight and hearing nothing but traffic on the street. I stepped up on the porch of Oliver's shop.

Through the window, I could see Oliver curled up asleep on the ornate Louis XIV sofa with ... No, when I looked closer, he didn't actually have his thumb in his mouth but that was the general effect. A bottle of Banana Cow was on the coffee table next to a ring of keys and the wrinkled foil holding Ginger's brownies. I decided not to wake him.

Instead, I crossed down the west side to the maintenance room. Charlie now had a good portion of the floor covered with cardboard boxes - all sizes. He was methodically sorting and packing bicycle parts, toasters, coffeepots and other small appliances. I didn't mention the phone call. I was beginning to think Jarvis must have changed his mind again ... or something, and there wasn't any point in raising the old man's hopes. Besides, Charlie had said every spring that he'd like to get his workbench cleaned up but never could seem to get to it.

Looking up from his work, Charlie nodded to me. "Miz Carson," he said, "do you know when Mr. McCoy is going to unpack that box I carried in for you? I'm going to need at least one more big box," he continued, thinking aloud. "I went and got all there was out of the dumpster right after that meeting but they ain't going to be enough."

"I don't know, Charlie," I answered. "You'll have to ask Steven ... Ah, has anybody else come back in tonight? I was supposed to meet somebody at my shop . . ?"

Charlie frowned in thought. "Just you. And Mr. Bell, he came in. That's all I know of. And Mr. McCoy, of course. But I been in and out a little. Who was you looking for?"

"I'm not real sure," I lied. "The message was pretty garbled."

Shaking his head sadly, Charlie went on: "That Oliver Fulton now, I don't think he ever went home. He'll just wander out around in that courtyard and then go back in the shop." Involuntarily, Charlie ran an affectionate hand over the corner of his much-scarred workbench. "I can take stuff with me," he explained. "Mr. Fulton's the one with real trouble, I guess."

A loud, impatient knock on the courtyard door interrupted us but, before Charlie could reach to open it, the door was flung open almost in his face. "What the devil's going on here?" Steven demanded loudly. He looked very fierce and African and was brandishing a small parcel clumsily wrapped in dusty black plastic. "I though you were supposed to be guarding this place!"

"What's wrong, Mr. McCoy?" Charlie was patient as ever.

"Damn turkeys!" Steven roared. "Damn practical jokes! I thought I told you not to let my students go back around that kiln when I'm not there."

Charlie shook his head. "No students been in tonight that I know of, Mr. McCoy, but I don't remember you telling me nothing like that ..."

Steven shrugged angrily. "Well, I'm telling you now for next time ..." He broke off abruptly, remembering too late that Charlie had been given notice.

I asked hastily, "What's in the package?"

"Damned if I know!" Steven stared at the parcel as though he had forgotten he was holding it. "Some turkey left it in the corridor and I damn near fell over it. You can take it and stick it in your ... lost and found," he amended hastily. He tossed the package into a box of handlebars. The result was a sound like breaking china. "Damnit! Come on, Charlie, I'll show you what they did!"

I'd intended - if no one had seen Jarvis - to walk across the parking lot to the Bonneview Apartments and knock on his door. Instead, I followed Steven and Charlie. After everything else that had happened tonight, I was feeling nervous ... It wasn't only the cool air that made me shiver.

Steven was muttering a endless stream of indecencies as he lead the way to the west end of the courtyard, then down the stone-paved corridor to the small kiln yard at the back. Two spotlights cast long criss-cross shadows across the pavement. "There, damnit!" he growled, sounding almost satisfied. "What do you say about that?"

The trestle tables were covered with soon-to-be-fired wares. In front of the kiln lay the broken shards of the elongated Coke-bottle sculpture Steven had earlier rejected as being too tall for his planned firing. Otherwise, everything looked perfectly normal.

"For God's sake, Steven!" I snapped, my nervousness flashing into sudden anger. "Calm down! That was a stinking lousy piece and you know it!"

"Huh? ... Oh, that." With an eloquent gesture, Steven dismissed the breakage. "No, damnit, the kiln. Can't you feel it?"

"Being as we're standing at least ten feet away ..." I began, then stopped as the sense of what he was saying soaked in. The air in the small kiln yard was, in fact, almost pleasantly warm ...

"Bastard kids got in here and burnt an effigy in it!" Steven complained. From the work table, he took a small flashlight and strode over to the kiln. In the side facing us was a peephole, about two by four inches and plugged with firebrick. Steven pulled the makeshift stopper, then motioned for us to take a look.

Screwing my face up against the heat radiating from the interior, I took the flashlight and peered through the opening.

Sure enough, on the floor inside was what looked like a limply-stuffed life-sized dummy, charred black and tapering considerably toward the extremities. I guessed I was still on edge because a weird, morbid, paranoid thought crossed my mind and I sniffed experimentally. The sniff didn't tell me anything - a strong draft of air was flowing from outside into the kiln. I looked at the temperature gauge on the pyrometer. It was reading 350 degrees. That was in Centigrade - I wasn't sure what it was in Fahrenheit, hot for sure. "Ah ... Steven," I asked tentatively, "what could the dummy be made of?"

"Huh? I don't, . . not porcelain, . . could be stoneware ...No, raku, that's it," he concluded darkly. "It's an effigy of me - in unglazed raku!"

I hoped he was right. Unglazed raku - when fired in the proper manner - does yield a handsome Negroid color. But, pottery clay - raku or any other kind - has to be dried to the point of rigidity before going in the kiln. This object, from the way it rested against the floor and back wall, looked very much as though it had been limp when it was stuffed in.

Charlie was taking his turn at the peephole. Trying to fit both an eye and a flashlight to the single opening - which was a good five inches deep - didn't allow convenient examination. When Charlie stepped back, I raised an eyebrow inquiringly. His answer was a frown and a shake of his head.

I turned to Steven. "Have you got a poker around here? Or anything similar?" I asked.

Steven looked as though he'd never heard the word but Charlie nodded with comprehension. He left us standing silent and returned a couple of minutes later carrying a long crowbar. His "Better let me do that, Miz Carson," broke the silence.

"Thanks but no," I refused him. I fetched a pair of Steven's insulated mittens from their hook on the wall, took the crowbar, held my breath against the heat radiating from the kiln and poked.

The object in the kiln flopped ... softly.

Steven called the police.