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thumbing through a composition book like the ones she used to take notes in her classes.
    “Did you need something, Lester?”
    He looked up, his dark eyes intimidating even in a weathered face attached to a body stooped by age. “Just a little company. You didn’t work yesterday.”
    According to the nurses and other aides, he never called for late-night company on the nights she had off. Maybe they didn’t listen with the same amount of tolerance to his sometimes confused ramblings. She’d had a lot of practice with her mom; Lester’s dementia was less taxing to her patience than her mom’s drunken discourse had been.
    She smothered a yawn. “My best friend got married today…or yesterday, rather.” She smiled at the memory. Josette and Nitro were the perfect couple, and her friend deserved to be supremely happy; she was such a sweetheart. And Claire thought Nitro might actually turn out to be a man who could be counted on in the long run. “I took the night off to help her with last-minute preparations.”
    Lester frowned. “I never got married.”
    “I know.”
    “A hired killer doesn’t make a good husband.”
    “I’m sure you’re right,” she said, humoring him.
    He looked down at the book in his lap and then shut it. “I killed too many people. Couldn’t bring myself to marry even after I retired. What if I talked in my sleep? I’d have had to kill my own wife.”
    She didn’t know how much of what he said was truth, or how much was fantasy, but sometimes it sounded so real it was chilling. This was one of those times.
    “I don’t think you would have killed your own wife, Lester.”
    His gaze turned so cold it made her shiver. “You can’t let your emotions get in the way of a kill when you are a professional. I was a professional. The best.” Unmistakable pride laced his voice. “I would have done whatever I had to, but I didn’t want to face that kind of circumstance…so I never got married.”
    “Were you lonely?” she asked, thinking of her own future stretching out years ahead of her.
    Maybe putting up with sex was worth it to have a family, but then she’d have to deal with the vagaries of life and the risk that it could batter her kids the same way it had battered her. It didn’t seem fair to have kids in a world like the one that existed today.
    “Never got lonely. Life is too full of interesting things to see and do. You appreciate that when you see a lot of death.”
    “I imagine you do.”
    “I like having you and Queenie around now, though. She’s a firecracker.” He smiled, his expression warming about twenty degrees. “If I had known I’d meet her in a place like this, I would have moved in sooner.”
    “The feeling is obviously mutual. Queenie thinks you are a king among men.” Sweet and as bubbly as a bottle of soda pop, the other Belmont Manor resident had shown her preference for Lester from day one. Talk about opposites attracting.
    “She’s nuts. I told her about what I did, but she just thought it made me more mysterious. She even read my kill book. The working of a woman’s brain is a mystifying thing.”
    Not in the least offended, Claire laughed. “I suppose it must seem that way to you.”
    “JFK’s not as safe as he thinks he is,” Lester said, slipping back into the past.
    “I’m sure you’re right.”
    “I tried to tell Marv at the agency, but he said presidential safety wasn’t his detail. No one else in the government outside the agency knows I exist. They won’t listen to me.”
    “Who is Marv?” she asked, curious in spite of herself.
    “You know who he is. My contact with the agency. We were together in the war. He wasn’t much of a sniper, but he sure understood logistics.”
    “World War I?”
    “Yeah. You okay, Melba? You sure are asking some strange questions.”
    Every once in a while he called her Melba, and all she’d learned about the other woman was that she’d worked in some secretarial capacity for Lester a long