The effect of all those shut doors in that blank corridor was also unnerving. It was like a little beige tunnel, interrupted only by the pay phone mounted on the wall. I recalled once telling Bankston Waites that if that phone rang, I’d expect Rod Serling to be on the other end, telling me I had now entered the “Twilight Zone.” I half smiled at the idea and turned to grasp the knob of the door to the big meeting room.

The phone rang.

I swung around and took two hesitant steps toward it, my heart banging against my chest. Still nothing moved in the silent building.

The phone rang again. My hand closed around it reluctantly.

“Hello?” I said softly, and then cleared my throat and tried again. “Hello,” I said firmly.

“May I speak to Julia Wallace, please?” The voice was a whisper.

My scalp crawled. “What?” I said shakily.

“Julia…” whispered the caller.

The other phone was hung up.

I was still standing holding the receiver when the door to the women’s room opened and Sally Allison came out.

I shrieked.

“God almighty, Roe, I don’t look that bad, do I?” Sally said in amazement.

“No, no, it’s the phone call…” I was very close to crying, and I was embarrassed about that. Sally was a reporter for the Lawrenceton paper, and she was a good reporter, a tough and intelligent woman in her late forties. Sally was the veteran of a runaway teenage marriage that had ended when the resulting baby was born. I’d gone to high school with that baby, named Perry, and now I worked with him at the library. I loathed Perry; but I liked Sally a lot, even if sometimes her relentless questioning made me squirm. Sally was one of the reasons I was so well-prepared for my Wallace lecture.

Now she elicited all the facts about the phone call from me in a series of concise questions that led to a sensible conclusion; the call was a prank perpetrated by a club member, or maybe the child of a club member, since it seemed almost juvenile when Sally put it in her framework.