Chapelwood (The Borden Dispatches #2)(118)

I don’t know why Simon would be distracted by a tiny piece of jewelry like that. It wasn’t even hanging down around my bosom, and you have to forgive a man if he glances that way every now and again.

“When will my office be ready?” I asked, by way of changing the subject.

“Tomorrow,” he said real fast. “That’s what they tell me, and they’re usually right. We’ll have a case or two for you sometime next week. I’ll accompany you at first, but in time you’ll investigate these things on your own. Are you prepared for that?”

“I will be. I’ll get used to it.”

“There will be ghosts, and worse things,” he warned. “Possessions, poltergeists, and the like. We’ll do what we can to teach you how to handle them. But I must be absolutely clear: We are all flying blind. At its core, this is a place of learning. Success does not always mean a resolution; success means new information, reported responsibly and accurately.”

I said I understood, and I was looking forward to the challenge. “If everybody else is learning as they go, then so can I.”

“Excellent!” he declared, and with two more fingers of whiskey each, we clinked glasses and did a little toast.

“To new beginnings!” I offered.

He liked that one. Then he added, “To absent friends. To old doctors, and the ocean, and to promises made and kept.”

We finished our drinks and I left him alone, because I still had an apartment to unpack and it was getting late. I think he wanted to be left alone. He was getting that faraway look again, and I guess he was really thinking about absent friends, like George and Lizbeth. And probably a dozen others—I don’t know; he’s a lot older than I am, and I like him a whole lot, but I don’t know much about him.

So I took my coat off the back of the chair, put it on, and wished him good evening.

“Have a good night,” he said. “I’ll see you here first thing in the morning, yes?”

“Eight o’clock sharp. I’m always on time—don’t you worry.”

“I won’t, I won’t . . . ,” he promised in that faraway voice that said he wasn’t paying attention anymore.

He was looking down at a folder someone had left on the edge of his desk. It was tied off with string and finished with a round red wax seal. He ran his fingers over it and smiled softly, like it meant something important to him, but he didn’t plan to explain it to me.

That was all right.

It wasn’t my business, and anyway, it was just a little imprint of a starfish.