I picked up my Corolla from the Union National parking lot and headed home, ravenous. There hadn’t been enough food in that salad to keep an anorexic rabbit alive.

I almost felt like driving back to the restaurant and ordering a steak. But I didn’t have a paycheck in my hot little hand yet, I reminded myself. So instead, I stopped off at the first eatery that I came across, a bastion of haute cuisine called Tommy’s Taco Stand.

I ordered the beef burrito and a Coke, and I practically jumped over the counter to fix it, I was that hungry.

As I waited what seemed like an agonizingly long time for the guy behind the counter to get my food, my mind kept drifting back to the sight of Sam’s hand sliding into Andrew’s pocket. I know I should’ve been doing cartwheels of joy about my new job, but all I could think of was Sam sitting with Andrew in my fantasy house in Malibu in my fantasy hot tub with my fantasy strawberries dipped in chocolate.

At last, my burrito came, and I tore into it like the starving woman that I was. I didn’t even bother to take a seat at Tommy’s outdoor wooden picnic table. I just stood at the curb gobbling down the burrito at the speed of light.

So there I was, my mouth full to capacity, burrito grease dribbling down my chin, when I happened to glance up at the cars at the stoplight. Suddenly the burrito turned to cement in my mouth. There, sitting at the light in his black BMW convertible, watching in disbelief as I stuffed my face, was Andrew Ferguson.

Then the light turned green, and he sped away.

It’s at times like this that you have to look on the bright side. I mean, some day, when I’m in my eighties and taking a memoir-writing class, at least I’ll have something to write about when the teacher asks us for an essay on “My Most Humiliating Moment.”

Chapter 11

An hour later, I was sitting across from Lt. Luke Clemmons, trying not to stare at his cowlick and the way it jutted out from his scalp like a hairy question mark.

I finally managed to avert my gaze to his desk. It was immaculate. Not a hint of clutter anywhere. The papers in his In Box were precisely stacked, as if they they’d just come out of their wrapper. His stapler sat on his desk in perfect alignment with his paper clips, his pencil sharpener, and a mug of freshly sharpened pencils.

Clearly, the good lieutenant had a bit of an obsessive-compulsive disorder.

“Thank you for coming, Ms. Austen,” he said, moving his stapler a millimeter to the right. “I just want to ask you a few questions.”

“Of course.”

“No need to be nervous.”