As I got out of the BMW, I found myself looking anxiously around, as if expecting Detective Watson to leap out from behind the bushes, waving handcuffs at me. If Connor noticed, he said nothing. He told me he’d love to take me to dinner, but he had a meeting with the commissioners he couldn’t get out of. He was going to break the news to them that he’d approved a substantial, although temporary, increase in the library budget. He was expecting, Connor said, with a shake of his head, that the strongest objection would be from the commissioner who was also a member of the library board. Why anyone would volunteer to be on a library board who didn’t think there was value in reading, Connor never understood. Dinner another time, perhaps? I’d agreed. Back home in my lighthouse aerie, I prepared my chicken salad dinner and ate it with a book propped up on the sugar bowl in front of me. Charles finished his own dinner and paced the kitchen, wondering what I’d done with the rest of it.
