She laughed, and I felt relieved. I couldn’t completely cross her off the suspect list, but it sounded to me like she had worked through her feelings.

I wondered if things might be awkward between us at work after her confession, and I hoped they wouldn’t be. I liked Melba. Her sunny, upbeat disposition made her fun to be around, and I would hate for her to feel embarrassed with me.

“I appreciate you telling me all this,” I said.

“No big deal,” Melba said, though her tone belied the words. “I figured somebody was bound to bring it up sooner or later, and I’d rather you heard it from me.”

It was time to move on. “Can you think of anybody else?” I didn’t want to say it, but Godfrey, I was sure, probably found a different, but willing, woman whenever he popped back into town for a visit.

“Besides Julia, the bookstore lady, and me?” Melba snorted. “The notches that man must have had on his bed. Well, there is one more that I know of. Janette Turnipseed.”

“That’s an odd name,” I said. “I don’t recall anybody by that name.”

“No reason you should,” Melba said. “She was a professor at Athena, a post-doc in the English department. She was here about six years ago. Godfrey spent three months here one fall in that writer-in-residence program they have, and apparently they had quite an affair.”

“She left after her post-doc?” I said.

“Before it was finished,” Melba replied. “Poor woman. She left at the end of the fall semester. I think I heard she went to some school out in Nebraska or Oklahoma.”

“Why did women keep falling for him? Surely they knew about his past?” I realized my questions could be insulting, but Melba seemed not to take them that way.

“He could be incredibly charming when he wanted to,” Melba said. “He’d focus those eyes on you, and suddenly you felt like the most desirable woman in the world.” She laughed. “Listen to me. I sound like a teenager. But he made me feel that way.”

“I’ll have to take your word for it,” I said wryly. “I’ve been reading his new book, and I have to say, the way he writes about women makes him seem like a misogynist.”

“That’s the weird thing,” Melba said. “I got that from his books, too, but in person he wasn’t like that. I think he truly liked women, and that was his problem. He liked them so much he couldn’t limit himself to one, or even one at a time.”

“Then I wonder why he wrote about them with such disdain?”

“Only his shrink knows for sure,” Melba said.

Diesel appeared in the doorway and ambled over to my chair. He leaped into my lap, and I tried not to wince from the impact. I grunted into the phone anyway.

“Are you okay?” Melba asked.