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slicing minislabs off the roast and dimpled at Mitch while Mae used a lot more force than he thought was necessary to clean his lip. Then June caught sight of Bob and patted her hip. "Come here, Bob. Get away from the counter."
    Bob blinked at her and yawned.
    Mae dabbed at Mitch's mouth again, gentler this time, and he looked up into her eyes. "Sorry about Carlo," she said softly, and pressed the towel against his lip for a moment, and Mitch forgot she'd been nasty. In fact, as far as he was concerned, she could hold that towel there forever, her face tipped close to his, her scent drifting to him, her jacket gaping open. It was the best he'd felt in a long time. A few more hours with Mae, and he might even get back his enthusiasm for life.
    Then she stepped back and surveyed her handiwork, and the mood was broken. "That'll do it. You're fine. He barely tapped you."
    "Thank you for the sympathy." Mitch scowled at her.
    Harold came back from the pantry with a loaf of homemade bread on a breadboard and a huge knife. "Get away from that counter, you dumb dog."
    A bird chirped outside, and Bob swung his head around and smacked it sharply into the cabinet.
    "I told you to move," Mae said to him, but Bob just blinked at her.
    "He does this a lot?" Mitch asked.
    "Daily," Mae said. "He's male. Like you. He never learns."
    "Be nice, Mae," June said.
    "Food in the library in five minutes," Harold said. "Take Bob before he brains himself again."

    The library was like the rest of the house, full of dark paneling and heavy furniture upholstered in rich, dark colors, this time complemented by shelves of leather-bound books in dark brown, blood red and deep green, some protected by locking glass doors, all looking as if they'd never been read. Mitch had to fight the urge to shove the heavy velvet drapes back from the windows and let in a little light. "Nice place," he said to Mae as he sat at the massive table in the middle of the room. Bob collapsed next to him, laying his head across Mitch's shoe.
    Mae looked at him as if he were demented. "You think so? It makes me want to scream. I always want to open the drapes. Now, about the diary—''
    Mitch leaned back in his chair. "I like libraries. Mostly because I've dated a lot of librarians. Some of the best experiences in my life have been in libraries." He gazed around, noting for the first time that some of the brocade inserts in the paneling had dark squares where the fabric had faded around something that no longer hung there. He opened his mouth to ask Mae about it, but she interrupted him.
    "About the diary," she said pointedly.
    Mitch thought about insisting on following his own train of thought and then looked at the stubborn set of her mouth and gave up. "All right," he said. "Tell me about the diary."
    Mae walked over to one of the glass-fronted bookcases while Mitch watched her in appreciation. If he got nothing else out of this case, at least he got to watch Mae Belle Sullivan move. She turned the key to open the door, and pulled down the last leather-bound volume from several rows of identical volumes.
    "These are all Armand's diaries," she told him as she turned back to him. "There were fifty-eight of them, one for every year since he turned eighteen. He had these bound specially for him, and he kept them locked in this case. This is last year's diary." She handed it to him.
    The book was thick and heavy, about five by seven inches, bound in hand-tooled leather and stamped on the spine with "Lewis" and the date. Mitch flipped it open to the middle and began to read Armand's account of the evening at the opera followed by a night with Stormy. Three pages later, he looked up to see Harold delivering a tray loaded with thick sandwiches, tankards of milk, and chocolate-chip cookies the size of small Frisbees.
    Mae surveyed him across the table. "Found a good part, did you?"
    "I can't wait to meet Stormy." Mitch closed the book and dropped it on the table, startling Bob, who