all he really wanted at this stage of his life was to indulge his better nature and drift in the middle of Lake Cherico, sip beer, and catch a few fish. Then he asked me if I’d be willing to give up my job at the hospital so we could just move. You see, I’d been an ICU nurse since I graduated from college, and we’d both been socking away a good bit for our retirement.”
“I’ve always admired you folks in the medical profession,” Maura Beth offered. “I’m afraid I faint at the sight of blood, but I’m glad there are people who don’t or the rest of us would be in big trouble.”
“Frankly, I wondered if I would miss it,” Connie added. “Especially the reality that I was always taking care of people on the brink. There was nothing more distressing to me than seeing somebody flatline. Oh, the finality of that monotonous sound, and the sorrow and trauma that it represented—I never did get used to it! On the other hand, I got such a kick out of seeing my patients recover and get on with their lives. That made it all worthwhile. I guess that’s why I don’t have trouble gutting all those fish Douglas catches. I’m not the least bit squeamish—I’ve seen it all.” Then she suddenly leaned forward. “Do I have on too much perfume?”
Maura Beth cocked an ear and blinked twice. “What?”
“Sorry,” Connie said, retreating slightly. “I just finished an entire stringer of perch before coming here. I was afraid my hands might smell too fishy no matter how many times I washed them. So I spritzed on some of my Estée Lauder for good measure. Too strong?”
Now that she was being asked to focus on it, Maura Beth actually thought that Connie had overdone it a tad. But she had no intention of saying so, as her best public servant instincts rose to the occasion. “I hardly even noticed it.”
“Good,” Connie replied, allowing herself to relax. “So, what’s our next step?”
Maura Beth handed over the notes she had been making, and Connie scanned them quickly, suggesting a few changes. The two of them went back and forth a couple of times and finally came up with a suitable plan: Maura Beth would design and produce the flyer, but Connie would pay for everything out of her “mad money,” as the library simply lacked the funds to pull it off; they would allow a period of two weeks for people to sign up for the club; then Maura Beth would call an organizational meeting at the library and officially get things under way.
“I only hope somebody else will show up,” Maura Beth observed, arching her eyebrows dramatically.
Exactly when Maura Beth had come up with the idea of hand-delivering one of her flyers to Councilman Sparks, she could not recall. But she had run it past both Periwinkle and Connie before acting on it, and the three of them had decided that an aggressive approach was the best one to take. She needed to let the councilmen know she meant business about proving the library’s worth and would be pursuing that goal immediately.
At the moment, she was standing in front of City Hall with its massive, three-story Corinthian columns—indeed, the ornate building dominated the otherwise low skyline of the town—while she summoned the courage to mount the steps and walk in to have her say. At all costs she must shrug off the lingering traces of intimidation that innumerable sessions with these politicians had produced.
Five minutes later, she found herself sitting in the councilman’s outer office, staring uncomfortably at his personality-free secretary, Nora Duddney. In all the visits she had paid over the years, Maura Beth was quite certain that she had never seen the woman come close to registering an emotion of any kind.
“Miz Mayhew! You’re looking lovely as ever!” Councilman Sparks exclaimed, bursting through the door unannounced after a tedious ten minutes had passed. “So sorry to keep you waiting, but I have the City of Cherico to run, you know. So many departments, so little time. But do come in and tell me what’s on your mind!” He gestured gracefully toward his inner office, turning on his bankable charm full-bore, but Maura Beth couldn’t help but notice that Nora Duddney was as charmless as ever, blankly typing things onto her computer screen.
“So, what brings you in this morning?” he began just after they had settled comfortably into their sumptuous leather chairs. Whatever