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for just a moment. I’m going to put Harry back in his cage.”
    I wasn’t angry. If anything, I felt a little sad. She had been duped and I wondered if there had been others that Charles had duped. How many women were there like her who had been taken past their childbearing years with no promise of a future?
    I remembered then that Judith had once sent me a message. It said she didn’t want to take Charles away from his family, she just wanted to share him. What was Charles? A summerhouse in the Hamptons?
    I gave Harry a piece of cucumber and went back to the living room. She was standing and had on her coat, which she was buttoning.
    “I’m assuming we won’t be neighbors?” she said.
    “I’m sorry. You seem like a very nice woman but I just couldn’t…”
    “I understand,” she said. “I’m sorry, too.”
    I let her out and from behind my curtains I watched her walk down the street all the way to the corner. She didn’t want to live with someone who would always be judging her and I didn’t want a reminder of Judith in my home. At least she understood that. She was the kind of woman who would be better off in a high-rise apartment building with the degree of anonymity it offered.
    I looked in the other direction and saw Kevin just barreling down the block, carrying a sack that I guessed was his lunch.
    “Hi! What’s the rush?”
    “Thank God you’re home! Come inside. You’re not going to believe what I have to tell you!”
    “What on earth?”
    We all but jumped through the door and into my apartment.
    “Want to split a chef salad?”
    “Sure. I’ll get plates.”
    “Okay. Here’s the skinny. You know that nice man you interviewed yesterday?”
    “Yeah. I was just going to call him. Why? What?”
    “Miriam? He’s a registered sex offender.”
    “Stop! No way! How did you find out so fast?”
    “My friend in HR? She dates a detective. He looked him up for her. He even double-checked it. Miriam, we almost had a perv living with us! She ran to me as soon as there was no doubt.”
    “Merciful mother!” My heart was racing again. This was too much for one day.
    “Miriam? He has a criminal record!”
    “No! He seemed so nice!”
    “Nice? Nice? Miriam Swanson! Didn’t I tell you he gave me the willies?” Kevin opened my refrigerator and stared inside.
    “Yes. You surely did. Thank the good Lord and all His angels and saints that your radar works, Kevin. What do you need, hon?”
    “Salad dressing. They forgot to put it in the bag.”
    “Here,” I said, and scooted him aside. “Blue cheese okay?”
    “Perfect.”
    I dumped the chef salad into a bowl, spooned in some salad dressing, and started tossing it all around. Then I ground some pepper over it and gave it a sprinkle of salt. Kevin handed me two plates and I mounded the salad in the center.
    “Voilà,” I said. “And thanks for saving our lives.”
    “Voilà, indeed. You’re welcome. So call the guy today and tell him no thanks so that he can start forgetting where we live.”
    “No kidding. Right after lunch.”
    “Want to know what’s even more bizarre?”
    “Go on…”
    “That he was a friend of Mr. O’Hara.”
    “Oh! I hadn’t even thought of that! Well, it just goes to show you.”
    “That you never know about people, right? Let’s sit at the dining-room table. A change of venue. Do you think O’Hara was a deviate?”
    “Heavens! Absolutely not! I mean, he subscribed to National Geographic, for goodness sake.”
    “Right. Harmless. Hmmph. National Geographic . When I was a young lad—”
    “Kevin, you’re not going to tell me stories about gaping at photographs of topless Aborigines, are you?”
    Dead silence. I giggled.
    “Well, he’s dead,” Kevin said. “It doesn’t matter.”
    “And, I’m sure it’s not true. Are you home for the day?”
    “No, but you could twist my arm. Don’t you have another candidate this afternoon? Oh! I forgot to ask. How was that woman this