The woman jerked the sheet up to her neck and scooted against the headboard like a squirrel backing off hot pavement. Nick immediately took off his glasses—a precaution he had learned to take long ago when approaching the very young or the very nervous, and this woman was definitely in the second category. It was probably unnerving enough for her to find a strange man standing in her bedroom at eleven o’clock at night—it might be better if the stranger wasn’t ogling her with eyes the size of softballs.

“Rose, I’d like you to meet Dr. Nick Polchak. Nick, this is Rose.”

Nick began to extend his hand and cross the room, but quickly thought better of it. He was blind without his glasses, and he imagined himself stumbling into a dresser or nightstand—or even worse, onto the bed.

Rose looked at her husband. “Are you sick? Did you send for a doctor?”

“I’m not that kind of doctor,” Nick said. “I’m a forensic entomologist. I study the insects that inhabit—”

“Nick. Don’t. ”

He stopped. “I’m a college professor.”

“Nick is a friend of Alena’s,” Gunner said. “I told you about him— he’s the one who went up there with me last night.”

Rose tossed the covers aside and reached for her robe. “Well, why didn’t you say so? Do you boys want coffee?”

“Thanks,” Nick said. “That would be great.” When Rose slipped by him in the doorway he said, “Sorry for the intrusion, Rose.”

She patted him on the arm. “One man in my bed and another one waiting at the door—it’s just another night at the Wendorf house. Relax, Nick—any friend of Alena’s is a friend of ours. You boys talk—I’ll get the coffee.”

Nick slipped his glasses back on and looked at Gunner. “I like her.”

“Me too. What’s on your mind?”

“I want you to help me break into the library.”

“What?”

“Will you do it?”

“Why would you want to break into the library? Agnes can let us in tomorrow morning.”

“This can’t wait until tomorrow—and I don’t want Agnes to know.”

“Why not?”

“She lied to me, Gunner. I asked her for grave registries for the area around Endor, and she told me they weren’t there. I happen to know they are—I just found out this afternoon.”

“Maybe she was just mistaken.”

“I asked her to double-check. She said she knows every book in the library, and after fifty years as head librarian I’m sure she does. It was no mistake, Gunner—she was lying.”

“But why would Agnes lie?”

“There’s something she doesn’t want me to know.”

“What?”