“One has to be careful of seeing the world through the lens of popular fiction,” Dr. Lorelei intoned. “Books like that create unreasonable expectations in their readers.”
“It’s not creating unreasonably expectations in me,” I said with a shrug. “I don’t believe the stuff; Ijust read it to kill time when I’m stuck in line someplace. Or when I’m here at the desk.”
Dr. Lorelei sniffed.
“I don’t really buy into the heaving this and throbbing that, and midnight assignations in deserted places,” I went on, fixing her with a stare.
She turned pale and left, rather hurriedly.
“You’ve upset her.”
I looked up to see the mousy, bespectacled face of Lorelei’s partner.
“Sorry,” I said. “But she didn’t have to give me a hard time just because I picked up something to read that isn’t on the list of the world’s hundred greatest works of literature.”
“She’s very fierce about what she believes,” he said with a smile. “I think that’s what I’ve always loved about her.”
I made a noncommittal noise. Loved about her? This was interesting.
“I think it took two years of discussions before she finally agreed that it would not compromise her principles for us to get married,” he said.
“You’re her husband?” I asked, astounded.
“We prefer the term ‘life partners,’ ” he said. “Not only is that a gender-neutral term, but it carries much less negative psychological baggage, particularly for the female in the partnership.”
To me, life partners sounded more like a title at a law firm, but to each his own.
“So my taste in reading offended her feminist principles,” I said. “Someone should have warned me.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, patting my hand. “Sometimes Lorelei forgets that other people aren’t as evolved as she is in these matters. She’s very impatient with all the trappings of romance - she feels society uses them to indoctrinate women into the conventional roles that a paternalistic society attempts to impose upon them.”
Was it just my imagination, or did his words sound a little flat, as if he’d used them far too often. And did he look a little wistful? And what, pray tell, did he think of the outfit Dr. Lorelei had worn last night? Didn’t last night’s four-inch heels and slinky black dress count as “trappings of romance”? Not that she’d have waltzed out of the house wearing them, of course - even the most oblivious of husbands wouldn’t have overlooked that. Obviously she’d have put on her usual sensible business attire to make the “Sorry, dear - I have a patient who’s having a crisis” announcement. But if he didn’t even know her slinky outfit existed, that was a really bad sign, wasn’t it?
While I was pondering, Dr. Lorelei’s life partner sighed, checked his watch, and padded back toward his office. I flipped through Anna Floyd’s book again. Tall blond heroines… mousy, bespectacled heroes.
What if either Dr. Lorelei or what’s-his-name, her life partner, was secretly writing under the pseudonym of Anna Floyd?
I waited until Luis passed through again.
“Luis,” I said.
“I’m working on it.”
“I have another job for you.”
“What now?” he said, rolling his eyes.
“Do the therapists have a network, or just their personal PCs?”
He frowned. “They have a network,” he said. “Separate from ours, but Roger administers it, too.”
“Great,” I said. “Can you search our network and theirs for any occurrences of this name?”
I wrote “Anna Floyd” on a piece of paper and handed it to him.
“Who’s she?” he asked.
I held up the book. He wrinkled his nose.
“This is connected with the murder?”
“Who knows?” I said. “Just find out if anyone here has ever mentioned the name Anna Floyd in any of their documents.”
He stuffed the slip of paper into his pocket and headed toward his cube.
I had barely found my place in the book again when Doc returned, doing his Saint Francis act with the office dog pack trailing in his wake - eight of them today. Apart from Katy the wolfhound, I spotted a collie, a German shepherd, a Norwegian elkhound, a keeshond, and Keisha’s two Saint Bernards. All friendly, easygoing creatures, individually, but when you put them all together, quite a lot of dog. More than the office needed, if you ask me; then again, I considered one Saint Bernard about half again as much dog as any reasonable person could ever need.