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service . . .” She looked
     across the counter at the closed kitchen door. “Where’s our friend Peter today?”
    “Getting my orange/peanut chicken.”
    Luella laughed. “You, too? I swear, that stuff’s got some magic drug in it. I walk
     in here and tell myself I’m going to have something else and when the time comes to
     order, the words just sort of spill out of my mouth. Orange/peanut chicken.”
    “Got it right here!” Peter came out of the kitchen holding the to-go container with
     my lunch in it, stopped and gave Luella a look. “You, too?”
    “Me, too!” She stepped up to the counter. “As a matter of fact, Peter, give me two.
     It’s supposed to snow, you know, and that way if it does, I’ll have an extra in the
     fridge for dinner one night this week.”
    Peter wrote up Luella’s order while I counted out the money for mine.
    “Don’t forget to finish your reading,” Luella called to me as I was leaving.
    I told her I wouldn’t forget—which didn’t mean I’d get around to it—and headed outside
     only to find that it was even colder than when I walked in a few minutes earlier.
     But maybe that was a good thing, after all. Otherwise I might have stood outside watching
     Peter, wondering what his beef had been with the man in the trenchcoat, and what it
     had to do with the creepy, threatening note I found.
    A blast of cold wind brought me to my senses, and I hauled the food bag up in my arms
     and started toward home. Peter might have tried his best to act as if nothing was
     wrong, but I knew better, and knowing it, a chill that had nothing to do with the
     falling temperatures crept up my back. Something was up, and it was not something
     good.
    Good thing the street was deserted. That way, nobody gave me a weird look when I barked
     out a laugh. But then, I’d just found myself thinking I could have used some of Chandra’s
     mystical powers. Where’s a good crystal ball reader when you need one?

4
    I f I had any fantasies about a leisurely stroll into town for the next day’s book discussion
     group meeting, they dissolved in a flash when I looked out the window.
    Monday morning, there were snowflakes dancing in the air. By afternoon, that dance
     had turned into a choreographed routine, and by the time I needed to leave for the
     library, it was a full-fledged Busby Berkeley production number.
    I hoped the folks I’d talked to at the grocery store were right about how the snow
     wouldn’t hurt spring flowers, because by dinnertime, the poor daffodils in the front
     beds were smothered. That was about the same time I discovered that my new roof had
     a leak. In an ironic twist of fate that did not leave me laughing, just as I was putting
     pails on the floor of the bathroom in Suite #6 to catch the drips, my sole guest,
     Amanda Gallagher, announced that there was no way she could go out in the elements.
    ���I expect,” she said with a tilt to her chin that showed more chutzpah than I’d
     expected from a woman who’d been as quiet as the proverbial mouse since she checked
     in, “that you will be providing dinner.”
    Side note here: I’m not morally opposed to cooking. In fact, I’d been known to do
     it myself a time or two, mostly when I’m trying to impress some guy and figure he’ll
     be blown away by my mother’s bolognese. But there is a reason they call it a bed-and-
breakfast
, after all, and remember, I’d hired Luella’s daughter Meg to take care of the breakfast
     part.
    Always the good sport (well, always when I’m so inclined), I opened a couple cans
     of chicken soup and left it simmering on the stove, showed Amanda where to find crackers,
     bread, and the blueberry muffins left over from breakfast, pretended I didn’t hear
     her mumbled comment about how canned soup wasn’t exactly what she had in mind when
     she mentioned dinner, and left the B and B.
    Stepping through the three inches of slush that had accumulated in the driveway to