A Deadly Cliche (A Books by the Bay Mystery)

Haviland’s collar, she turned away and gave Flynn time to decide whether he wanted to open up about his destination or keep the identity of his ‘old friend’ private.
    Several seconds passed and she could sense a gulf widening between them. In that stretch of silence, they’d each taken a step away from one another.
    Olivia was ready to go. She pasted on a carefree smile and said, “I’ll be fine. See you soon.” She watched Flynn relax and reach for an umbrella.
    “Let me accompany you to your car. It’s raining buckets. Geysers. Veritable tsunamis.”
    Waving off the umbrella, Olivia gave Flynn a peck on the cheek and left without looking back. Pulling the hood of her raincoat over her hair, she tried to avoid the deeper puddles polka-dotting the road, poignantly aware that whatever progress she and Flynn had made last night had been lost. The look on his face when she mentioned accompanying him to Raleigh told of secrets Flynn wanted to preserve. If he had truly wanted to let her in, he would have spoken up, but the moment had passed and he’d been returned to bearing the label of casual lover.
    “It’s better this way. Less complicated,” Olivia told her rain-speckled reflection in the rearview mirror.
    She vowed to never wake up in Flynn’s bed again.

    At home, Olivia fed Haviland and printed out Millay’s chapter, intending to save the critique work as a means of entertainment during the inevitable power outage.
    The rain had increased in tempo since Olivia’s return. No longer the gentle and steady precipitation of last night, it fell in a disharmonious staccato. By early afternoon, the wind gained a voice, fluttering like heavy curtains in accompaniment to the rain. By four o’clock, however, it dominated the noise of the ocean and begun to rush around the sides of the house and over the roof like a low-flying airplane, growling and hissing. Soon, Olivia knew, it would sound less like an angry witch outsmarted by a fairy book child and more like the enraged howl of Jack’s giant.
    As the afternoon waned, Olivia’s lights flickered several times but did not go out. She kept near the television, watching in awestruck fascination as the storm hurtled toward the North Carolina coast. The recommendation to evacuate continued throughout the day and Olivia received several calls from her staff at The Boot Top as well as from members of the Bayside Book Writers asking after her welfare. The person she wanted to hear from most, however, did not call.
    For dinner, Olivia ate beef stew and fresh bread slathered with butter, then returned to the sofa with a glass of red wine. She had to turn the volume of the television higher in order to compete with the clamor of the rain-laden wind. A sodden journalist reported live from the Outer Banks where widespread power outages had occurred minutes before their broadcast. Hearing the news, Olivia checked the placement of her battery-powered lamps.
    “It won’t be long now,” she told an anxious Haviland.
    She also had her raincoat, hat, and waders waiting by the front door in preparation to start the small generator hidden behind a wooden screen on the side of the house. It could only power the refrigerator and the kitchen lights, but Olivia planned to run an extension cord from the outlet behind the fridge to the countertop, ensuring the continued use of her coffee machine.
    “Ophelia may huff and puff and try to blow the house down, but nothing will stop me from having coffee,” Olivia had declared to Haviland earlier that weekend.
    She also had a waterproof radio and TV unit to switch on once her main set went dark, but the little emergency television had a tiny screen and a flimsy antenna and Olivia doubted it would be of much good. Still, she turned it on and flipped between the three available stations until she was able to get a grainy picture of an anchorwoman’s face. Shortly afterward, a powerful burst of wind shook the walls from roof to foundation and the house fell into a state of semi-darkness.
    “I’ll be right back,” Olivia spoke soothingly to her agitated poodle. “I need to start the generator.”
    Outside, the sky had a surreal, white gray glow, as though Ophelia were exhaling wet smoke. Even dressed in her foul-weather gear, rain pelted Olivia’s face and crept under her collar. The wind was nearly strong enough to knock her flat, and when she had to use both hands to grab the wooden screen surrounding the generator to regain