Once Roger dropped me off, I drove straight from Cooper’s to the Senator’s house. Joseph’s assistant answered the door and led me to the library, the same one where Celeste Todd had confessed her affair with Lewis Adams just a week ago. I felt ambivalent when Andre said Celeste wasn’t at home. Celeste had the right to know the truth. However, I doubted she had the strength, the inclination, or the mental stability to be my ally, which made her just another unpredictable variable. And I was finally learning that it’s good to keep those to a minimum.
There was a copy of the newspaper, along with a cold cup of coffee, next to an armchair. I settled in, reread the murder article, as much of the bad news in the rest of the world as I could stand, and had moved on to the comics by the time the
