Looking for Laura

Fourteen

Todd stormed into the New Day Café, nearly knocking over the woman at the counter. She had long black hair of differing textures, as if someone had woven yarn and spiderwebs into it, and when she moved her hands the silver bangles circling both forearms jangled like the contents of Sally’s tote bag.

If he hadn’t been the editor and publisher of the region’s preeminent newspaper, he might have been embarrassed by the fact that he recognized Madame Constanza, tarot card reader. But he knew her not from patronizing her downtown salon in search of spiritual guidance, but from writing a profile of her for the Valley News a few years ago, before he’d ascended to the editor-in-chief desk.

Madame Constanza wore a long red dress with an odd, crepe-paperish look to it. It was the sort of dress Sally might wear, except that Sally preferred more muted colors and she lacked Madame Constanza’s heft. Madame Constanza was built like someone who did the carbo loading but skipped the marathon.

She stared at him for a long moment, then turned her heavily mascaraed eyes back to Sally, who stood behind the counter, and said, “Didn’t I tell you there was a tall, dark man in your future?”

“You say that to all the girls,” Sally reminded her with a smile. Her hair was pinned back from her face in a style that emphasized the contours of her cheeks, the gentle curve of her jawline and her soft pink lips.

No. Her hairstyle didn’t emphasize her lips. He didn’t even notice her lips. As far as he was concerned, her lips didn’t exist.

“Actually—” Madame Constanza sent him another assessing look “—I said there was a tall, dark, handsome man in your future. What do you think?”

“I think he’s cute,” came a voice from the far end of the counter. Todd glanced that way and spotted Sally’s college-student assistant emerging from the kitchen carrying a tray laden with muffins. Their cinnamon aroma blended with Madame Constanza’s patchouli perfume in an unfortunate way. Todd prayed for Winfield’s resident prophet to leave so he could enjoy the scent of the fresh-baked muffins.

“Hear that, Todd?” Sally teased. “She doesn’t think you’re handsome.”

He frowned—not because he took her words as an insult, but because her voice lacked an edge and her eyes were dancing. Could Sally Driver be flirting with him?

Was he actually pleased by the possibility?

Damn, but he missed the good old days when he loathed Sally and knew the loathing was mutual. He missed the days when he could snicker at her peculiar earrings—the pair she had on today appeared to be small silver-toned replicas of the space shuttle—and her orange front door and her ridiculous hair, which wasn’t anywhere near as ridiculous as Madame Constanza’s, of course, just as her space shuttle earrings weren’t as ridiculous as the glut of hoops and beads adorning her assistant’s lobes.

He missed the days when Paul was still alive, keeping Todd anchored, keeping his mind focused on the simple, irrefutable fact that Sally was a fruitcake.

But Paul was dead, and he’d been posthumously exposed as a duplicitous bastard. And right now, as Todd viewed Sally and tried to interpret her playful smile, the pastry that came to mind was not a fruitcake but a warm, spicy muffin, round and moist, slightly crusty on the outside but soft and buttery on the inside.

The college girl reached Sally’s side and busied herself transferring the muffins from the tray to a shelf behind the glass display case. Every now and then she cast a flickering look Todd’s way. Her smile was much more openly coquettish than Sally’s.

She thought he was cute. Not handsome but cute—which was probably a higher designation among women younger than twenty-one. Was she flirting with him, too?

If she was, it was undoubtedly just for practice. He was no Adonis, no exemplar of studly appeal. He was no exemplar at all.

In fact, he never wanted to think about the word exemplar again.

Sally wasn’t flirting with him, either, he decided. She was simply taunting him, trying to undermine him, trying to keep him off balance—and very nearly succeeding.

“I need to talk to you,” he said, determined not to let these three dizzy ladies—one a professional fortuneteller, one a student with earlobes as porous as a colander and one Sally—detour him from his mission.

“You’ll have to wait your turn,” Sally said calmly. She resumed waiting on Madame Constanza, who was apparently quite particular about her biscotti. She wanted one plain and one chocolate dipped—no, one chocolate dipped and one amaretto—no, make that two amaretto, but without all those blanched almonds on the top. Although now that she thought about it, all the amaretto biscotti had a generous sprinkling of blanched almonds on them, and she really wasn’t in a blanched-almond mood, so perhaps it would be best to skip the amaretto biscotti and go with two chocolate dipped. And a plain one, just for the hell of it.

Todd stood at the counter beside Madame Constanza, twitching from the effort to remain patient. He’d like to tell Madame Constanza her fortune: someday in the not too distant future, someone was going to punch her in the nose for being so picky about her biscotti.

As irked as he was by Madame Constanza’s dithering, he was even more irked by Sally. She looked so relaxed, so serene, as if she actually enjoyed plucking biscotti from their bin, pinching the long, crescent-shaped crackers in a square of rattling tissue paper, then setting them back down and sifting through the assortment in search of specimens lacking in almonds. She seemed to take enormous pleasure in serving her customer.

Well, good for her. But his mother was a whole different thing.

“I need to talk to you,” he said again, once Madame Constanza had finally settled on three biscotti she could live with, paid for them and toted her little paper bag out the door in a cacophony of clinking bracelets and rustling skirts.

“If it’s about Laura Ryershank—”

“No, it’s not,” he interrupted, then hesitated and tossed a quick look at her assistant, who ducked her head and blushed at having been caught staring at him. He turned back to Sally. “What about Laura Ryershank?”

“I asked Tina about her.”

Tina promptly spun away from him and emptied a sack of coffee beans into a grinder. The beans clattered down the metal funnel. The clatter was replaced by a rumbling buzz once she turned on the machine.

Todd tried to ignore the noise. “And?”

Sally glanced over her shoulder, then shrugged. “She says Laura Ryershank is beautiful and charismatic.”

“Okay.”

“She gave two poetry readings on campus last year that were such a big hit, she was hired to be the visiting artist this year.”

“So she was in Winfield last year.”

“Indeed she was.”

He leaned toward Sally, resting his elbows on the countertop and murmuring, as if anyone could have heard him above the pulverizing drone of the grinder. “This could be the right Laura, Sally. This could be our lady.”

Sally didn’t back away. She held her position, her nose just inches from his, her lips—the lips he had absolutely no interest in—so close he could almost feel the air between their faces vibrate as she spoke. “It could be.”

“We need to find her.”

“I was going to make some calls this afternoon after I left here.”

“I’ll make calls.”

“That’s all right. I’m sure I can handle it.”

“I’ve got resources you don’t have.”

Her eyebrows quirked upward. “Resources?”

“I’m a newspaper publisher.”

“Oh.” She smiled wryly. “And all I’ve got is a telephone directory. I can’t hope to compete.”

Her sarcasm reminded him of why he’d left his office and stormed up Main Street to the New Day Café that morning like Sherman marching into Atlanta. He was on the warpath, raring to burn and pillage. “You hired my mother.”

The abrupt change of subject seemed to bewilder her. “What?”

“You hired my mother to work here. You gave her a job.”

“Oh—well, it’s just a few hours a week, to see if she likes it.”

“Sally! My mother ran a newspaper! She’s overseen staff. She’s managed production, finances, union negotiations—she isn’t a waitress!”

Sally leaned back a bit, her smile growing canny. “I’m glad to hear that, Todd, because we don’t have waitresses here. So you don’t have to worry about her being a waitress.”

“Then what did you hire her to do? Grind coffee beans?” The coffee grinder shut off just as he spoke the last three words, which resounded starkly in the small dining room. He glanced behind himself and noticed that skinny cop Bronowski glaring at him over the rim of his coffee cup, his right hand hovering near his service revolver as if he expected Todd to erupt in violence. Evidently, shouting “grind coffee beans” in a coffee shop marked one as having criminal tendencies.

Todd held up his hands and smiled at the cop, demonstrating his harmlessness. Then he spun back to Sally. “What did you hire her to do?”

“Whatever needs doing. It’ll be one full morning a week plus a few extra hours, just to see if she likes it.”

“Sally.” He took a deep breath and tried to recover his composure, which dangled just out of reach, like the string of a helium balloon floating up into the clouds. “Sally,” he said again, envying her her equanimity. “My mother can’t work for you.”

“Why not?”

The question brought him up short. All he knew was that yesterday afternoon, when his mother had shouted across the newsroom from her office to his, and he’d picked up his phone and dialed her office so they could talk to each other without screaming through glass walls, she’d surprised him with the news that she was going to be serving coffee at the New Day Café a few mornings a week. She’d added a garbled quote from a Robert Frost poem, recited a few clichés about turning over new leaves and rolling with the punches and told him she’d be starting tomorrow.

Todd had been fuming ever since. But now, standing eye to eye with Sally, he wasn’t sure what about the situation upset him the most. Was it the notion of his mother engaged in what amounted to menial labor, a job that required no education or experience? Was it the subtle message she might be giving him, that because he’d made her feel unwelcome at the newspaper, she’d been forced to demean herself by accepting a waitressing position? Or was he infuriated by the fact that she’d be working for Sally?

He couldn’t mention the servile nature of the job without insulting Sally or her assistant. Nor could he complain about the absurdity of his mother, a certified power broker in Winfield, a friend of the mayor and the college president and a member of the board of directors of at least three major philanthropic organizations in town, being employed by Sally.

“She’s supposed to go to Hilton Head Island with my father,” he said.

Sally picked up a dishcloth and wiped the counter. “No problem. She can start when they get back.”

“They’ll be getting back at the end of June.”

Sally flashed him a puzzled look. “Two months? She’s going to be gone for two whole months?”

“They aren’t leaving until the beginning of June,” he explained, then sighed. “If they go at all. My father really wants to.”

“Ah.” Sally’s gaze narrowed slightly. She was studying him critically. Judging him. Condemning him.

“Ah? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means, you don’t want your mother to make any commitments that might interfere with what your father wants.”

He couldn’t miss the scorn weighing down her voice. “The trip is my father’s idea, not mine,” he said defensively.

“I don’t suppose your father asked your mother for her input, did he?”

“Sure he did. It’s a great opportunity. They have the use of his cousin’s villa down there, gratis, for a month.”

“Well, it’s up to her whether she’d rather go there or stay here and work.”

“Stay in Winfield and pour coffee for minimum wage, or golf and lie on the beach on Hilton Head Island for a month. You tell me which choice she ought to make.”

“I won’t tell you. It’s her choice to make.”

He shook his head and snorted. “And she thinks my father’s going senile.”

“Maybe he is,” Sally said with a cheerful wink. “Maybe both your parents are nuts. You’re genetically compromised on both sides.”

“I am not.” He took several slow, even breaths, cleansing his lungs and settling his nerves. He resented everything about Sally: her certitude, her martini-dry irony, her inexplicable alliance with his mother, the way her dress draped over her body. “I am not genetically compromised,” he insisted. “I am worried that my mother took this job of yours only because she wants to make a point.”

“Well, if it doesn’t work out, she can always quit. It won’t be the first time someone’s quit on me.”

“Why do they quit? Because you’re a lousy boss?”

“No. They graduate from college and leave town.”

“So my mother’s going to be working the sort of job that usually goes to Winfield College students.”

“She’s young at heart. She’ll fit right in.”

“How did this happen?” His voice cracked slightly and his shoulders slumped. He gave up trying to be reasonable, trying to stay poised. “How did you and she hook up?”

“You were the one who sent her here,” Sally reminded him.

“For a fucking cup of coffee!”

Sally glanced past him. Turning, he saw Bronowski rising, his hand once again hovering near his gun. Todd hadn’t realized using the f word was a capital offense in Winfield.

But then Bronowski picked up his mug and approached the counter for a refill. Tina had the pot in her hands by the time the cop was within range. Bronowski looked much taller than Todd because he was so skinny, but Todd would bet that if they removed their shoes, no more than an inch in height would separate them. They exchanged glowers, and then Bronowski addressed Sally while Tina poured his coffee. “Everything all right here, Mrs. Driver?”

“Everything is fine, thank you. How was that apple tart?”

“Good,” he said, taking his refilled mug from Tina, directing one final quelling scowl at Todd and returning to his table.

“What exactly do you have a bug up your ass about?” Sally asked. “Your mother wants to work here. I want her to work here. You don’t want her to work at the paper. You ought to be thrilled by the way things fell into place.”

He opened his mouth and then shut it. He should be thrilled. For a few mornings a week he was not going to have to worry about being summoned by transoffice hollering from her. He was not going to have to talk her through the intricacies of Windows 2000. He was not going to have to listen with filial respect to long-winded lectures on why he should or should not support the mayor’s new sewer initiative.

He should be ecstatic.

But Sally…Sally was going to be his mother’s boss.

“You’ll see,” she said, her smile losing its acerbic edge. “It’s going to work out perfectly. I like your mother. She’s great with kids, too.”

“Kids? What, are you opening a child care center on the side?”

Sally shook her head. “I had Rosie and a friend in here yesterday and your mother was terrific with them. She must have been a fantastic mother. It makes me wonder why you turned out the way you did.”

Fresh indignation welled within him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s supposed to mean—” her smile softened “—that you left your sense of humor behind when you left home this morning. Would you like a cup of coffee? It might help.”

He longed to say no, just because he didn’t want her to be right. But it was Wednesday morning, he’d been in her company for all of ten minutes, and she’d been right about everything else, so she might as well be right about this, too. “Yeah,” he grunted. “I’d like a cup of coffee.”

“The Irish créme is very good,” Tina remarked.

It sounded alcoholic—which might be exactly what he needed, but not this early in the morning. “I’ll take the most normal coffee you’ve got. And one of those muffins,” he added, remembering how enticing they’d smelled when Tina had brought them in from the kitchen. Remembering how they’d made him think of Sally, warm and soft inside and spicy.

Sally pulled a waxed tissue from a box and used it to grip a muffin. She started to place it on a plate, but he halted her. “To go,” he said. He couldn’t bear to spend any more time here, seated at one of those charming round tables beneath an incoherent painting, with Bronowski on one side and on the other some crazed guy dressed for a funeral, penning a manifesto in a spiral-bound notebook. He couldn’t bear to spend another minute in Sally’s presence, when she’d soundly defeated him on every level and yet lacked the arrogance to look smug about it.

Instead, he took his bag and his lidded cardboard cup, handed Sally a five-dollar bill, pocketed his change and headed for the door, resisting the urge to drop the coins into the tip jar near the cash register. Just the thought of his mother pocketing coins from that jar, an extra few nickels and quarters to supplement her wages, made him queasy.

Had everything fallen into place? It had fallen, all right, but he wasn’t sure where or how far. All he knew was that he wasn’t the least bit pleased.

She hadn’t expected him to show up at her front door at six o’clock that evening, but she wasn’t really surprised to see him standing on the porch when she answered the doorbell. At the café that morning he’d been fueled by a righteous anger that was totally unjustified. Now he looked weary and haggard, his fuel-gauge needle aiming at empty. The jacket he’d had on at the New Day was gone, and he stood before her in wrinkled khakis and an even more wrinkled white shirt, the collar open and the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. His hair was a tangle of black waves, and his expression was contrite.

“I’m an asshole,” he said.

She grinned. “Now, there’s something we agree on.”

“Can I come in?”

Her Crock-Pot was going to buzz in a couple of minutes. She’d abandoned Rosie in the kitchen, assigning her the task of adding olives to the salad. If she remained on the porch with Todd, Rosie was going to add twenty olives to the salad and eat another dozen while she worked. Sally ought to start buying the kind with pits in them, so she could keep track of Rosie’s olive consumption.

Even if she didn’t have to check on her daughter and the stew, she would have invited him in. He’d apologized, after all, sort of. “Sure,” she said, gesturing him into the hall. “Would you like something to drink?”

“As long as it isn’t coffee.”

She beckoned him to follow her down the hall to the kitchen, where she caught Rosie flagrantly stuffing a fist ful of olives into her mouth. “That’s enough,” she said, pulling the jar away from her. “How many did you eat?”

“Hi, Daddy’s Friend!” Rosie greeted Todd before justifying her gluttony. “I was starving.”

“We’re eating in—” she glanced at the Crock-Pot “—two minutes.”

“Good, ’cuz I’m starving. Are you gonna have dinner with us, Daddy’s Friend?”

“Could you call me Todd, please?” he asked, then lifted his gaze to Sally, as if searching for approval.

“Are you gonna have dinner with us?” she echoed Rosie.

“Um…sure. I guess. Actually, I was thinking about that drink you offered.”

“There’s beer in the fridge.”

The Crock-Pot buzzed. Todd opened the refrigerator, pulled a bottle of beer from the door shelf and twisted off the cap. Sally emptied the stew into a serving dish and carried it to the table. Rosie brought over the salad, which appeared to be three parts olives to two parts everything else. Sally got the bread, a crusty, floury loaf she’d picked up at the bakery on her way home from the café, and Rosie got the butter. Todd sipped his beer, then took the chair Sally pointed out to him.

He peered through the glass lid of the serving dish. “What is it?” he asked delicately.

“Lentil stew.”

“Lentil stew,” he echoed, his upper lip flexing as if it wanted to curl in disgust.

“It’s good,” Rosie assured him, kneeling on her chair and passing her plate to Sally for a portion. “It tastes like glue.”

“It does not,” Sally refuted her. “And how would you happen to know what glue tastes like?”

“Well, it’s gloppy like glue,” Rosie explained. “It tastes like beans.”

Sally could live with that. She spooned a portion onto Rosie’s plate, helped herself and then passed the spoon to Todd, who dabbed a modest amount on his plate and stared at it dubiously.

“So,” Sally said. She liked having Todd in an apologetic mood. She liked having him greet the food she’d served—food she knew damn well was delicious—with apprehension.

Mostly, though, she just liked having him in her house. The realization shaved a layer off her cheerfulness.

“So?”

“So, why did you call yourself that thing on my porch?”

“What did he call himself, Mommy?”

“A thing.”

“An ass,” Todd told her, editing lightly.

“Eeew. Yuck!” Rosie erupted in laughter. “Trevor says an ass is a donkey, but I know it’s really a butt.”

“That’ll do it for the anatomy lesson,” Sally cut her off. “So, Todd—I guess my real question is, what brings you here? Surely it can’t be my wonderful lentil stew.”

“It’s not bad,” he said manfully after taking a tentative bite of the concoction. He helped himself to several thick slabs of bread, sipped his beer and said, “If my mother wants to work at your café, who am I to say no? If you make her happy, Sally, I’ll be happy.”

“I can’t promise I’ll make her happy. But I think she’ll enjoy the job.”

“I don’t know what my dad’s going to do about Hilton Head, though.”

“Perhaps you ought to let your parents figure that out.”

He gave her a long look, as if she’d just delivered Solomonic wisdom. “You’re right. I love them both, but I don’t like them dragging me into their situations.”

“Then don’t let them.”

He nodded. “I also…used my resources today.”

In other words, he’d learned something about Laura Ryershank. She rolled her eyes toward Rosie, who was mining olives from the salad bowl, and rolled them back to him.

He nodded again, obviously comprehending her silent message. “So, Rosie, how was your day?” he asked.

“It was stupid,” she said, then launched into a detailed description. A boy in her class had taught several of the other boys how to suck a straw half-full of milk, then aim it and exhale through the straw, squirting the milk at a chosen target. Milk had spewed back and forth long enough to cause a significant mess, and the school’s head teacher had come to lecture Rosie’s whole class even though the girls hadn’t done anything wrong because they weren’t stupid like the boys. Instead of recess, everyone had to stay indoors and clean the milk. It was utterly stupid.

And that wasn’t all. Her teacher was also stupid, because she’d tried to teach the class the lyrics to a song she didn’t know, and so she’d made up new words for the second verse, but her words didn’t rhyme and they made the song sound stupid.

But wait—there was more. Ashleigh Cortez was stupid because she was wearing gold nail polish and bragging about it, like it was real gold, fourteen karat, she’d said, but it was just nail polish, not jewelry, and Ashleigh Cortez was stuck-up because her father was the chairman of the biology department at Winfield College and if it wasn’t for him, no one from Winfield would ever get into medical school. At least that was what Ashleigh said.

Amazingly, Rosie was able to eat while she recited this soliloquy. She even chewed with her mouth closed most of the time.

Sally was grateful—and not just that Rosie chewed with her mouth closed. With her daughter monopolizing the conversation, she could sort her thoughts while she ate.

Todd had been an asshole that morning. But a man who could apologize was a rarity. Paul never used to apologize. When he’d made a mistake, he would rationalize it, explain why it really hadn’t been his fault, or, if necessary, shift the blame onto Sally. If he came home late from work to an overcooked dinner, he would never say he was sorry; he’d say he had told Sally he was going to be home late, and her forgetfulness had led to the overcooked meal. If he broke a stained-glass ornament, responsibility lay not with him but with her, for having so damn many ornaments stuck to the window that a man couldn’t make a sweeping gesture without knocking one off its suction cup hook. If he acted like an asshole—and as she reminisced about it, she realized that he did quite often—he always had a rationale for his behavior.

But Todd had acknowledged his own assholeness, which paradoxically made him seem like the exact opposite of an asshole to her.

And he was eating her lentil stew, eating it without complaining about how much he loved red meat. And he was listening to Rosie without yawning or glancing at his watch.

And he’d come to share the information he’d gathered about Laura Ryershank.

And his hands were…big. Large and manly as he wielded a fork, as he lifted a chunk of bread to his lips, as he took a swig of beer from the bottle. Sally hadn’t had a man eating at her table since the day Paul had died.

She liked this. She liked feeding Todd.

“I’m done,” Rosie announced, apparently referring both to her saga of school stupidity and her dinner. “Can I be excused?”

“I’ve got something for you, Rosie,” Todd said, rising to his feet as she did.

Sally opened her mouth to protest that he shouldn’t have brought Rosie anything. She still owed him for the rice necklace; she didn’t want to be even more deeply indebted to him. And just because he’d behaved foolishly at the café that morning didn’t mean he could exonerate himself by showering gifts upon her daughter.

But he was already on his way through the kitchen door. “It’s in my car. I’ll be right back.”

“What did you get me?” Rosie singsonged, chasing him out of the room. “Is it a toy?”

Swallowing her misgivings, Sally cleared the dishes from the table. Todd had cleaned his plate and drained the beer bottle. As troubled as she was by her pleasure in feeding him, she was even more troubled by how naturally he’d fit into their kitchen, their evening meal, how easily he’d made himself at home. Just that morning she’d have been the first to label him with the word he’d used to describe himself.

But now she could almost convince herself she liked him. Which was…well, troubling.

Hearing his voice and Rosie’s, she abandoned the sink and crossed to the doorway. They stood in the hall, Todd handing Rosie a stack of computer diskettes. “These are your dad’s games, remember? DragonKeeper and Dark Thunder, and I don’t know, some other games.”

“Cool!” Rosie’s eyes widened.

“I thought you’d enjoy them more than me. And they were your dad’s, so…”

“Cool!” Rosie took them from Todd’s outstretched hand. “Can I play them now, Mommy? Can I?”

“Um…I don’t—”

Rosie swung back to Todd. “Thank you!” she said, then peered up at her mother hopefully. “Can I play them, Mommy?”

Sally caught Todd’s eye. He nodded slightly. He wanted Rosie to play the games. Sally couldn’t say no. “Sure. But turn the sound down. I don’t want to hear all that booming and banging.”

“Okay! Thanks! Thanks, Daddy’s—I mean, Todd!” Rosie scampered off to the den, the laces in her sneakers glittering in the light from the ceiling fixture.

Todd gazed after Rosie until she was out of sight, then turned to Sally with a smile. “If you offered me another beer, I’d say yes.”

“Help yourself. I’ve got dishes to do.”

He trailed her into the kitchen. “I thought it would be better to talk about Laura Ryershank if Rosie wasn’t around,” he explained, swinging open the refrigerator and pulling another bottle from the door shelf. Wrenching off the cap, he planted himself right by the sink so he could confer with Sally while she filled the basin with soapy water.

She squirted a little extra soap, inhaled the lemon-scented steam rising from the water and shut off the faucet. “What did your resources come up with?” she asked.

He slouched against the counter, beer in hand, hair mussed. A faint shadow of beard darkened his jaw. He had extraordinarily dark, thick eyelashes. She’d never noticed that before. “This Laura has published three books of poetry, and they’re all for sale at the college bookstore. None of them had her photo on the inside of the cover, so I didn’t bother to buy them.”

“Of course not,” Sally said with a chuckle. “Why buy them for the poetry?”

“I don’t like poetry, okay? If my mother quotes ‘The Road Not Taken’ one more time I’m going to muzzle her.”

“That’s a nice poem. ‘Two roads diverged in a wood…’”

“I’ll muzzle you, too,” he threatened.

“Okay.” She smiled sweetly at him. “Is your mother a Robert Frost fan?”

“No. She’s just quoting the poem because she likes watching me destroying four years’ worth of expensive orthodonture by gnashing my teeth.” He put down his bottle, pushed away from the counter and unhooked the dish towel from the cabinet doorknob on which it hung. “How come you don’t have a dishwasher?” he asked, taking the plate she’d just finished rinsing and wiping it with the towel.

“It’s an old house. There was no dishwasher in it when we bought it.”

“You could put a dishwasher in.”

“I suppose.” She scrubbed the tines of a fork until they glinted. “I don’t mind washing dishes. I’ve always found it kind of soothing.”

He took the fork from her and spent more time than warranted drying it off. “So, this Ryershank woman lives in Great Barrington, which would put her less than an hour away from Winfield. Easy for Paul to see her, but far enough away that she might choose to write him letters.”

“I wonder how he would have met her,” Sally said.

“Maybe he attended one of her poetry readings.”

She shot him a telling look. “You knew Paul longer than I did. Do you think he’d ever attend a poetry reading?”

“If he knew the poet was beautiful and charismatic?” He arched one eyebrow.

Sally felt the dishcloth slip from her fingers. “Are you saying he went out of his way to find beautiful, charismatic women?”

“Well…” He realized he’d divulged more than he should have. Then he shrugged. “Every healthy male does.”

“Do you? Do you go to poetry readings just to ogle the poet?”

“If I heard she was beautiful and charismatic?” He shrugged again. “Nah. I prefer to ogle beautiful, charismatic women at the Chelsea.” The Chelsea was a pool hall and bar a few blocks south of the Valley News headquarters, near the train tracks. “All heterosexual men go out of their way to ogle beautiful, charismatic women. If they don’t, nine times out of ten it’s because they’re dead.”

“And the tenth time?”

“They’re with their wives.” He held out his hand as if waiting for her to pass him something to dry.

She rinsed a bowl and delivered it into his towel-draped hands. “All right. Maybe he attended a poetry reading and went berserk over Laura Ryershank. So berserk he had an affair with her—the only affair of his that you know about,” she added, testing him. If he thought Paul had been within the realm of normal male behavior in sitting through a poetry reading, he might know of other instances when Paul had ogled women.

He didn’t take her bait but simply dried the bowl.

“And he went berserk enough to give her my pocketknife.”

“His pocketknife. You gave it to him.”

“Whatever. Do you know exactly where in Great Barrington she lives? We could drive out there—”

“She’s not there now. She’s on the board of directors of a writers’ colony in upstate New York. It’s closed during the winter, but she helps to open it up in the spring.”

“Where in upstate New York?” Sally didn’t remember ever hearing about any writers’ colonies when she’d been growing up—but then, she didn’t hear about lots of things when she’d been growing up.