In For a Penny Read Online Free Page A

that lay half covered with dead leaves.
    “From a blue jay!” Art said. “How many is that?”
    Nina counted the feathers in the shoebox, making a laborious job of it, losing track and recounting to get it right. “Five,” she said finally.
    They wandered home now, having pretty much run through the neighborhood birds. Beth’s car was gone. As they stepped up onto the front porch, Art heard the phone ringing, and instantly it came to him that it was Anthony again. He sprinted into the kitchen and grabbed it just as the answering machine picked it up. He punched the star sign to kill the recording.
    “Yeah,” he said breathlessly.
    “Art! It’s Anthony.”
    “Wow,” Art said. “I
guessed
it was you.”
    “Unlucky guess, eh?” Anthony laughed.
    “No, really. I was out on the front porch, and when I heard the phone ring, your name popped into my head. The same damned thing happened the other night when you called. It was kind of spooky, actually.”
    “Yeah, well, you
sounded
kind of spooked the other night. You didn’t say more than about ten words.”
    “I’ll tell you what, I had some weird experiences that night. If you’ve got a second…?”
    Art explained about the possum, giving the story slightly amusing overtones to diminish the kook factor, then told him about the phone call and Oliver Cromwell, before starting in on the interesting difference between the various occurrences. In the middle of the explanation the call-waiting signal went off in his ear. He kept talking, but Anthony interrupted him: “If you’ve got a call, grab it.”
    “To heck with it,” Art said. He hated to interrupt a long distance call, especially on Anthony’s dime. It always turned out to be Jimmy Carter butting in, selling talent show tickets. He finished telling his story, then waited for Anthony’s response.
    “I wouldn’t worry about it,” Anthony told him.
    “I wasn’t really
worrying
about it,” Art said. “I want to know what it means.”
    “I think it’s one of those things you never figure out. It’s better just to put it away, you know, back in the dead letter file. Worry about it when something starts to happen, like you start cutting the heads off of dogs or something. Until then, forget about it. You can’t explain it.”
    “Sure,” Art said, let down by this advice. They chatted for a while longer and then Art hung up. Anthony was probably right, but right or wrong, apparently his sailboat had tacked back into the psychic breeze.
    Feeling guilty about not answering the interrupting call, he picked up the receiver and punched star-six-nine into the keypad. The phone rang six times before a woman picked it up.
    “Hey,” Art said, “it’s Art Johnson, did somebody there call me?”
    There was silence on the other end, and then the woman said simply, “No.”
    “Sorry to bother you, then,” Art told her. He hung up, embarrassed, wondering what the hell he could have done to star-six-nine a wrong number. That didn’t seem possible to him, unless there was some kind of crossed line. Wait, he thought suddenly, figuring it out. The woman probably
had
called him, but by mistake. Probably
she’d
dialed a wrong number but didn’t know it because he hadn’t picked up her call. She had assumed simply that no one was home where she
thought
she’d called, and …
    The phone rang and he snatched it up, half expecting Anthony Collier. “Hello,” he said.
    “Art …?”
    “Yeah,” Art said. “Who’s this?”
    “It’s Nancy. Nancy Bronson.”
    For a moment the name meant nothing to him. Then he knew who it was—a woman he had known at college. Bronson was her married name. She’d moved to Texas a decade ago.
    “Nancy? How the heck are you doing?”
    “Did you just call me?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I
think
it was you. You just called my number and asked if I’d called your house, and then you hung up when I said no.”
    Art’s stomach turned over. He sat down in a kitchen chair,