Quill blushed. 'You mean the mail that's been stacked up on my desk for the past week? That mail?'
'That mail.'
'There was,' said Quill, ' a parking ticket. Last week. I sort of forgot about it.'
'Parking ticket?' John looked politely skeptical.
'Well, that's all Davy said it was. Actually what he said was that it was the equivalent of a parking ticket.'
John's teeth flashed white in his brown face. 'Take a look.'
The foyer seemed less welcoming than usual. The fireplace was cold and the four-foot Oriental vases flaking the registration desk were empty. Quill, never too enthusiastic about mail to begin with, paused to consider the vases. She was never entirely certain how soon the bronze spider chrysanthemums she used at Thanksgiving should be replaced by pine boughs. She usually waited until the `mums began to droop. The shipment this year hadn't lasted long, and the first week in December was too early, she'd thought, for pine, so she'd waited, and now it was practically Christmas. She kicked disconsolately at the vase.
Dina Muir, their receptionist, was yawning her way through a textbook at the front desk. She looked up.
'Whoa,' said Dina. 'You're still here? I thought you were going to lunch with the sheriff. Anything wrong?'
'Not really.'
'That's just what John said when he stomped out of the office a few minutes ago. I asked him, `Anything wrong, John?' `Not really, Dina,' he said back, when it was perfectly clear that something was really, really bugging him just like it's perfectly clear something's really, really bugging you. Is it the lunch with the sheriff?'
'Did he say anything to you?'
'John? Yep. I just told you. He said not really.'
Quill, putting off the inevitable, was glad, for once, that Dina was inclined to chatter. 'How are things?'
'Fine,' Dina said brightly.
'School going okay?'
'Yep.'
'Dissertation coming along? Are you reading a text for it?'
Dina lifted the book in her lap. `You mean this? No. I figured I'd better take a look before he got here, is all.'
'Before who got here?'
'Evan Blight. He wrote this book that's made everyone so mad.'
'You're actually reading it? The Branch of the Root?'
'Well, sure.'
Quill took the book. The cover was a painting - a bad one - of a dark tree with the kind of roots found on a banyan. The leaves were vaguely oaklike. The branches were widely spaced and symmetrical, like a Norfolk pine. The title, The Branch of the Root by Evan Blight, was metallic, in Gothic type. Inside, the typeface was small, the paragraphs dense. The chapters had subtitles like 'The Father-Spirit' and 'The Soul of the Tree.' Quill flipped to the back leaf. Evan Blight looked like Robertson Davies. Quill was conscious of a spurt of annoyance. She liked Robertson Davies a lot. She didn't want somebody who wrote a book that had caused as much trouble as The Branch of the Root to look like one of the better writers of the twentieth century. 'Can I borrow this after you've finished?'
'Sure. But I'm only halfway through and it's due back at the Cornell library next week. Mrs. Doncaster at the library here said the waiting list is two weeks for the Hemlock falls copy. You could buy your own copy. The Wal- Mart's carrying it. It's been deep-discounted to twenty bucks.'
'Twenty dollars? I'll get on the waiting list at the library.'
'That won't give you enough time. You want tot read it before he gets here, don't you?'
'Before who gets here?'
'Evan Blight.'
'Evan Blight? Evan Blight's coming to Hemlock Falls?'
'Well, sure.'
'Wow.'
John, walking into the foyer, shook his head, gave Dina a pat on the back, and opened the office door, gesturing Quill in side. 'After you, you felon, you,' he said, and shut the door in Dina's interested face.
Quill walked over to her desk and regarded the pile of mail stacked in her In-box. John settled into the leather chair behind the desk. She tugged at her hair and attempted unconcern.
'Quill. Some of this mail has been sitting here for two weeks.'
'Hmm,' Quill said. 'Anything urgent?'
'If you mean are we going to get the phones cut off, like the last time you let the mail sit, no. But there's this.' He waved a scarlet envelope at her.
Quill sank meekly into the chair in front of the desk. 'What/'
'It looks like a bench warrant.'
