Catch a Falling Knife

room with them. Now Mark, you’re going to tell what happened pretty much as we heard it, but you’re going to do it in a sensitive manner. For example, when you tell about pushing your accuser away you’re going to say that you were trying to protect her because you understood that she might have a crush on you that could affect her judgment.”
    Although Tess had not held a job most of her life—her career had been that of a housewife—she had a truckload of common sense and she was a lot better at the sensitivity thing than I was. My advice to Mark might have been to tell everybody involved with the case to go to hell, which wouldn’t have gotten him anywhere except thrown out on his ear. Knowing my weakness, I was happy to let Tess take the lead.
    As the others talked and Tess took notes, I thought about my next step. I needed a man to help me. Ordinarily, I would have asked Mark, but I had to disqualify him because he was the defendant. Wesley was too old. He didn’t drive much at night and he was too far removed in years from his youth to be able to think like a young man. I had only one logical choice—my son, Albert.

Chapter 5
     
    Albert had some of the same flowers blossoming on his farm that I had seen at Crescent Heights College, including daffodils and forsythia. In addition, he had flowering quince, star magnolia, plum trees and some early roses. A warm spell at the end of February had followed a snowstorm and prompted the flowers to make their appearances, causing the earth to look and smell like spring. I hoped that the quick freezes we were subject to wouldn’t kill them all off.
    The four generations of our family had a tradition of eating Sunday brunch at the farm. I brought baked goods while Albert and Sandra prepared the main meal. Sandra’s two-year-old son, Winston, brought his charming and inquisitive self.
    As I drove along the mile-plus length of the gravel road leading to the farm I couldn’t help but shiver when I passed the spot where I had almost been killed the previous summer in order to keep me from exposing the murderer of Gerald Weiss. But as time went by the shivers decreased and I could look back on the experience from a distance, as if it hadn’t really happened to me.
    Mark had been a regular at these brunches for many months, but he had declined to come today, saying that if Sandra didn’t want him to live with her she wouldn’t want him to eat with her, either. Instead, he went to the Durham restaurant where he had been a bartender while attending the University of North Carolina to see about getting his old job back. He wasn’t exactly brimming with confidence about the outcome of his “fact-finding procedure,” as the Crescent Heights College policy manual called it.
    The only vehicles parked beside the large brown house were Albert’s pickup truck and Sandra’s red Toyota. Albert got razzed by his colleagues about being a college professor who drove a pickup truck, but he shrugged it off. He often invited one of what seemed to be an endless stream of girlfriends to brunch, but perhaps we would be alone today. I hoped so.
    Romper, Albert’s yellow Labrador retriever, came bounding up to the car to greet King and me. I let King out of the back seat and she immediately ran off with her friend. Here on the farm was the only place I allowed her to run free without a leash.
    I entered the house by the door near the kitchen, carrying an apple pie, and found my three descendants busily working on brunch. Albert and Sandra cooked while Winston ate. I got hugs from Sandra and Albert. This gratified me because I had been a little worried about Sandra’s reaction to my harboring of Mark.
    Albert was his usual cheery self, but Sandra had a grave expression on her beautiful face and her long blond hair looked as if it hadn’t been brushed.
    I kissed the soft cheek of Winston, which would much too soon be rough with whiskers. He said, “Great-grandma, do you have your car keys?”
    He checked out everybody’s car. I gave him my key case and he promptly picked out my car key from among the others. Then he snapped it shut and said, “We don’t want your keys to get lost.”
    I determined not to be the first to bring up the subject of Mark. No one mentioned him until we were eating. Then Albert said, “All right, you two. Tell me what’s happening with Mark. I’ve only heard bits and pieces.”
     Sandra and I looked at each other. He was her boyfriend. She