Flirting With Pete: A Novel Read Online Free

by all reports the man couldn’t carry on a social conversation for beans— but he knew the right questions to ask.
    That was what therapy was about, he lectured— asking the right questions. Listening, then asking questions that pointed the patient in the right direction so that he could find the answer for himself.
    Casey was quite good at that, judging from the growth of her practice. The people she knew here today were her own colleagues. She had studied with them, shared office space, attended workshops, and consulted with them. They respected her as a counselor, enough to make their referrals a significant source of her clientele. These colleagues were oblivious to any connection between her and the deceased.
    The warmth of June remained outside on the steps of the church. Inside, the sun’s rays were reduced to muted shards of color cast from the stained glass high atop the stone, and the air was comfortably cool, smelling of history as relics of the Revolutionary War did. Casey loved that smell. It gave her the sense of history that her life lacked.
    She took comfort in that as one speaker after another filed to the front of the church, but they said nothing Casey didn’t already know. Professionally, Connie Unger had been loved. His taciturnity was alternately viewed as shyness or pensiveness, his refusal to attend department parties as a sweet, social awkwardness. At some point in his career, people had taken to protecting him. Casey had often wondered whether his lack of a personal life helped that along. In the absence of friends, his colleagues felt responsible for him.
    The service ended and people began to file out of the church; like Casey, they were headed back to work. She smiled at one friend, hitched her chin at another, paused briefly on the front steps to talk with the man who had been her thesis adviser, returned a hug when a passing colleague leaned in. Then she stopped again, this time at the behest of one of her partners.
    There were five partners in the group. John Borella was the only psychiatrist. Of the other four, two were Ph.D. therapists. Casey and one other had their master’s in social work.
    “We have to meet later,” the psychiatrist said.
    Casey wasn’t concerned by the urgency in his voice. John was a chronic alarmist. “My day is tight,” she warned.
    “Stuart’s gone.”
    That gave her pause. Stuart Bell was one of the Ph.D. therapists. More important, he paid the office bills.
    “What do you mean, ‘gone’?” she asked cautiously.
    “Gone,” John repeated, speaking lower now. “His wife called me a little while ago. She came home from work last night to an empty house— empty drawers, empty closets, empty bank book. I checked his office. Same thing.”
    Casey was startled. “His files?”
    “Gone.”
    Her startled reaction grew to appalled. “ Our bank account?”
    “Empty.”
    “Aeyyyy.” She felt a touch of panic. “Okay. We’ll talk later.”
    “He has the rent money.”
    “I know.”
    “Seven months’ worth.”
    “Yes.” Casey had given Stuart a check for her share on the first of each of those seven months. They had learned the week before that the rent hadn’t been paid for any of those months. When confronted, Stuart had claimed it was a simple oversight, lost in the mounds of paperwork that had taken over so much of their time— and they understood, because they all knew how that went. He had promised to pay it in full.
    “It’s due next week,” John reminded Casey now.
    They would have to come up with the money. The alternative was eviction. But Casey couldn’t discuss eviction now. She couldn’t even think about it with Cornelius Unger watching and listening. “This isn’t the time or the place, John. Let’s talk later.”
    “Excuse me?” said a slim, gray-haired gentleman in a navy suit who had come down the steps of the church as the crowd thinned. “Miss Ellis?”
    As John moved on, Casey turned to the newcomer.
    “I’m