The Mole in His Bed novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: Thursday Dinner

The house in Hampden still had the blue door.

I had painted it myself, the spring before I died, and somebody had touched it up in the same blue.

Judith had put a recorder in the top button of my blouse and a marshal in a parked car at the end of the block.

"Ten minutes of silence and he comes in," she'd said. "I mean it."

I rang the bell.

Paula opened the door in an apron with flour on it and threw both arms around me.

"You came," she said into my hair. "I was so afraid you wouldn't."

The hall smelled of garlic and tomatoes.

The coat hooks were where I had screwed them in, and a woman's raincoat hung on the one I used to use.

The kitchen had new cabinets, white ones, and a new island with stools.

Neil stood at the stove in his shirtsleeves, stirring something.

He looked up when I came in.

"Detective Tallant," he said.

I had been in bed with him the night before, and he said it flatly, to a stranger.

"Lieutenant."

"Sit, sit," Paula said. "Cora, you're the guest."

I sat at the island on the stool nearest the back door.

The lasagna was good, and that was the worst part.

Paula talked all through it, easy and quick, about the weather and the chief's wife and a trip she and Neil had taken to Maine.

"Neil proposed to me on that beach," she said. "In the rain, the idiot. I said yes before he finished the sentence."

"I remember the rain," Neil said.

"Paula, pass the salt," he added a moment later, and Paula passed it.

I put my fork down.

The name had gone through the room I had told him to keep it out of, and he knew it. His eyes lifted to mine for a second.

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