suit.
NINE
W hen she next awoke, the moon had been replaced by bright sunshine, the kind that makes nightmares seem silly. A quick glance at the clock, however, reawakened that sense of dread. Sometime during the night, she must have hit it, turning the alarm off. Or â no, Esmé was nowhere to be seen. Whatever had happened, Dulcie had no time for breakfast. The departmental meeting would begin in fifteen minutes, and especially as she still had no new evidence for her thesis, she really didnât need Thorpe on her case.
âWhoa!â Chris had been unlocking the front door as she rushed out, and she spun on her heels to give her boyfriend a quick kiss.
âGotta run. Meeting.â
âCall me!â His voice followed her down the stairs. One of these days , Dulcie thought with a twinge of regret, weâll have a normal life . For now, trotting up the street, Dulcie tried to organize her thoughts. First, the meeting, which promised to be dull but necessary. At least Nancy, the departmental secretary, made good coffee, and Dulcie had had the forethought to grab her oversized travel mug before sheâd bolted.
Dulcie hurried toward Mass Ave, realizing that she hadnât even bothered to button her sweater. The Pacific North-West had been damp and cool, but the winters never seemed as bitter as they did here in New England. Here, from late October on, Dulcie piled layer on layer. Now, between her steady trot and the bright sun, she was actually warm. She smiled up at the sky, at the little fluffy clouds making their way across a clean, fresh blue â and walked into a wall of wool.
âWatch it, why donât you?â The harsh Boston accent, akin to a seagullâs caw, took Dulcie aback. It couldnât totally destroy her mood, however, and she looked up with a smile.
âIâm sorry.â She tried to make eye contact with dark eyes, buried deep under bristling brows. âI was distracted by this beautiful weather.â
âNutcase.â The large wool-clad person â a man, Dulcie thought â said, loud enough for her to hear, before turning and stalking off.
âFriendly,â Dulcie replied, a little softer, and followed. It was true â she hadnât noticed that the light had changed, and had the man not stopped her with his bulk, she might have stepped into traffic. He might have saved her life. âSorry,â she said again, sending the apology into the space where he had been. If she had inherited anything from Lucy, it was a sense of karmic balance. Maybe she deserved that verbal slap for being so inattentive.
âI wonder if thatâs what Esmé needs,â she asked of a passing sparrow. Mr Grey had come to her fully grown and had been a gentle cat from the first. âOr maybe itâs just Chris.â Whatever she didnât know about training a kitten, she knew that his genial rough-housing was wrong and would only lead to tears.
That, however, was a problem to be tackled later. As the high-rises and storefronts of Central Square gave way to the red-brick of the university, Dulcie returned to planning her morning. First, the meeting â the thought of that coffee made her mouth water, and she found herself swallowing. If she were lucky, Roland would be there. She might have to make up some kind of story about why sheâd called, but she could handle it. If he wasnât â and, really, there were a million reasons why he might not be â sheâd ask Thorpe about him. Or, no, even better â sheâd ask Nancy. Just a casual question thrown out there to let her know if the jovial Texan had gone missing or, worse, turned up dead. Odds were, that would take care of the whole problem.
Either way, she thought, she might be able to get more out of Trista. Her friend had been so upset the night before, as close to hysteria as Dulcie had ever seen her. A visit from the cops could do that, what with their
Emma Wildes
Matti Joensuu
Elizabeth Rolls
Rosie Claverton
Tim Waggoner
Roy Jenkins
Miss KP
Sarah Mallory
Jennifer McCartney, Lisa Maggiore
John Bingham