After Caroline by Kay Hooper

on that.” He smiled at her. “In the meantime, is Joanna Flynn here?”
    “Yes,” she replied, making no pretense of not knowing who he was talking about. “She’s upstairs with the microfilm reader. Seems to know her way around a library.”
    “What’s she reading up on?”
    “Town history, so she said. Asked about the town founders, and which families could trace their roots back. Said the property around here was lovely, and wondered who owned what. She copied a few maps and plats. She seemed pleased that we keep the birth, death, and marriage records here instead of City Hall. And the newspaper morgue.” Mrs. Chandler paused, then added deliberately, “Strange how much she looks like Caroline, isn’t it? If it weren’t for the coloring and the voice…”
    “Yeah.” Since Griffin had no good official reason for wanting to talk to Joanna, he didn’t offer one. He merely nodded to the grave librarian and made his way upstairs to the second floor, where most of the town’s archives—such as they were—were kept.
    The old stairs and floorboards creaked beneath his weight, but the woman at the microfilm machine was sointent on what she was doing that she obviously didn’t hear his approach. Griffin paused a few feet away and studied her, trying to be objective. It was unexpectedly difficult. Even under harsh fluorescent lighting, her hair gleamed gold, and despite frowning in concentration, she was lovely. Yet even in profile, the resemblance to Caroline was amazing. A long-lost twin? Looking at her, it didn’t seem so unlikely.
    He might have risked money on that possibility himself if he hadn’t known with fair certainty that Caroline had never had a sister.
    Griffin drew a breath and walked toward her at about the same moment as she realized she was no longer alone. She started when she looked around and saw him, and perhaps that was why her hand moved suddenly—or perhaps she had quite deliberately made sure he wouldn’t see what it was she had been reading with such intentness.
    He wasn’t happy to realize he suspected the latter.
    “Sheriff. Fancy meeting you here.”
    “Miss Flynn.” He sat down in a chair near hers and in that moment caught the light scent of her perfume. He liked it, but it also unsettled him for some reason he couldn’t immediately put his finger on. Then he realized. He had expected her to smell of cigarette smoke.
    “Oh, please, Sheriff, call me Joanna.” There was dry-ness rather than friendliness in her tone. “I mean, since we’re apparently fated to turn up in the same places day after day.”
    Griffin’s silent debate was a brief one; he decided not to let her sarcasm get under his skin. Not today, at any rate. “I’m not following you around, if that’s what you think,” he told her. “My office is across the street, and I saw you come in here. Do you realize you’ve been here for at least three hours?”
    “So?” she demanded somewhat belligerently.
    “So I thought you might be ready for a break. Why don’t I buy you a cup of coffee?”
    She eyed him uncertainly. “Is this a trick question?”
    He laughed despite himself. “No. Look, I was ready to take a break and I thought you might be too. There’s a cafe just down the street where they happen to make great coffee. What do you say?”
    After a moment, she shrugged. “Sure, why not. Just give me a minute to put things back where I found them.”
    “Through for the day?” he asked mildly.
    “I think so. Spending
more
than three hours in a library on my vacation, even on a rainy day, sounds a bit too obsessive, wouldn’t you say?”
    “That probably depends,” he said, “on what you’re looking for.”
    Joanna paused in rewinding a spool of microfilm and looked at him steadily. Then, in a reflective tone, she said, “Tell me something, Sheriff. Suppose you went to a quiet little town on vacation, and when you got there you discovered that you looked an awful lot like someone who had