He found his phone — if in fact that’s what it was. It looked all right, but the truth was he’d never really looked at it much since he bought it, and hadn’t looked much at the one Mr. Ear Hair had given him, either, and—

He opened it up and hit Redial, and it rang twice before Dot got to it. He relaxed when he heard her voice. They talked for a few minutes, and he brought her up to date.

“I’m in a holding pattern,” he said, “and I think I just made things more complicated than they needed to be. They have to let me know when it’s okay to do the work, and I just made it impossible for them to contact me.”

“If a phone rings and it’s underneath a mattress, does it make a sound?”

“Not when it’s turned off. I’ll have to check the desk for messages.”

“Or maybe they can send you signals through the fillings on your teeth.”

“If I were any more paranoid, I’d probably worry about that. I’d have to make myself a protective cap out of tinfoil.”

“You can laugh all you want,” she said, “but they work like a charm.”

The days passed slowly. Periodically he checked the Laurel Inn for messages, and on the third day the clerk read a number for him to call. He called, and a voice he didn’t recognize asked his name. “Leroy Montrose,” Keller said. “I’m supposed to call this number.”

“Hang on,” the voice said, and a moment later the man with the ear hair came on the line. “You’re a hard man to get hold of, Leroy,” he said. “You don’t answer your phone and you don’t check your voice mail.”

“You gave me a dead phone,” Keller told him. “And no charger. I figured you’d know to call the room.”