Free A Bobwhite Killing by Jan Dunlap

then.
    Just like I was unprepared right now as the memory of that summer flooded over me, filling me with a yearning I couldn’t begin to describe.
    “Are you going to stand there all evening with your mouth open catching flies, or are we going to dinner?” Bernie called back to me from the other side of the hotel’s entrance drive.
    Only then did I realize I was frozen in the path of the hotel’s sliding doors. Shana, standing on the far curb with Bernie, also looked back at me, smiling, and I kicked myself in the head for so easily losing my sense of time and place, not to mention control of my libido. A whiff of White Shoulders lingered with me in the doorway, and I shook my head to clear it.
    How about some focus, here, buddy? I asked myself. You want to help Shana, then get a grip, because the last thing she needs is a mutton-headed sixteen-year-old following her around.
    A scream of brakes rounded the corner of the hotel as a news van headed straight for Shana and Bernie.
    I was wrong.
    The last thing Shana needed was an unexpected visit from the media.
    Then I realized that the cameraman hanging out the window on the passenger side of the van wasn’t aiming his camera at Shana.
    He was aiming it at me.
     

Chapter Twelve
     
    “Turn away!” Shana shouted at me, but it was too late. The van roared off, the cameraman grinning as he waved good-bye.
    I crossed the driveway to Shana and Bernie. “This is not a good thing, is it?”
    “Not unless you don’t mind having your personal life totally and completely appropriated by the media,” Shana replied, a quiet resentment lacing her voice. “When I married Jack, he warned me that our marriage was going to be a bonanza for gossip-mongers, so I’ve spent the last five years ducking the press as much as possible so we could have a real marriage, and not an unending media event.” She glanced in the direction of the disappearing van. “I’m afraid to even think about what’s going to be leading the news on television tonight.”
    It took a second or two for me to catch Shana’s meaning, but when I did, it wasn’t pretty.
    “Let me guess,” I said. “Jack’s murder is going to be at the top of the hour, with more details to follow. Details like you,” I pointed at Shana, and then curved my finger toward my chest. “And me.”
    Shana nodded slowly in affirmation.
    “Oh boy!” Bernie said, linking her arms through Shana’s right elbow and my left. She turned us toward the street and started pulling us along. “I’m having dinner with two celebrities! Wait till I tell the girls back home. They’ll be so jealous.”
    Jealous?
    Oh, man.
    I almost stumbled over my own feet. What if my face did show up on the evening news as the lovelier-than-ever Shana O’Keefe’s brand-new companion? And what if Luce, the woman I loved, saw it?
    Luce, the woman to whom I hadn’t mentioned Shana O’Keefe.
    “I think I just lost my appetite,” I muttered.
    “Nonsense,” Bernie said. “What you need is a good meal to fortify you for the night ahead. We’re going owling after dinner, aren’t we? I know I’m looking forward to some evening walking. If we have to stick around till tomorrow like the sheriff asked, I don’t see why we can’t just pick up what was on our original weekend birding plan for tonight anyway.” She gave Shana’s arm an extra pat with her hand. “I know it’s been an awful day for you, honey, but I can’t think of a better way to get your mind off your troubles than to go birding.”
    And with that remark, our self-appointed mother hen hustled us across the two-lane road that separated the hotel from the restaurant and then ushered us into the old A&W drive-in. As soon as we walked in, Tom called to us from a table at the far end of the diner. I noted that Renee and Mac were seated with another couple from our birding group at the table next to ours and that everyone seemed fairly engrossed in reading through the menu.
    Which, to be