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I do a little private work.”
    A cop . Much as she appreciated his looks and his pool skills, she hoped he wouldn’t get too nosey about her life’s story.
    * * *
    Kaitlin looked down at the letter she’d retrieved out of Leda’s advice column box. Her mouth fell open in surprise as she read it:
    Dear Leda,
    I’ve got five kids and a husband who drinks too much every now and then. That’s enough of a problem, but our next-door neighbor’s pot-bellied pig just loves our kids and wanders over to play. That’s somewhat of a problem, but I can handle it. The pig likes to sleep on our front porch, and we don’t have a light on the porch. Now that’s a problem my husband was supposed to fix but never has.
    When he gets drunk (the husband, not the pig) and comes home late at night, he stumbles over the pig. Last time he broke his nose (my husband’s nose, not the pig’s), and he’s threatened to make breakfast sausage out of that pig if it happens again. That’s the problem. The neighbor will be mad, and the kids will cry. I’d hate to have my neighbor yelling at me and the kids crying all over the place. What can I do?
    It was, as the newspaper requested, unsigned. Yet Kaitlin had only been in town for a little over a month, and she could identify the writer. Anyone in the community could. Although the situation might be considered amusing, Mrs. Baxter, the writer, was clearly upset by it. Kaitlin knew better than to dismiss the woman’s distress. I think I’d better handle this one privately, by phone. But before she called the unfortunate woman, she needed to confer with Jeremy, her resident animal expert. He might know what to do. She set it to one side.
    Leda had marked the letters she included in her column with a notation on the envelope. The others Kaitlin sorted by postal date to make certain she dealt with the oldest ones first. All the letters assured the reader they were in need of an expert advice columnist, and Leda was the one. But am I, Kaitlin wondered.
    Another letter asked whether marijuana kept in the freezer for over six months with freezer burn on the package was safe to smoke. That letter was signed by Merve, the old hippie who owned a farm just outside town. Leda had left it unanswered, and Kaitlin understood why. Merve was breaking the law, but she felt his concern merited some kind of reply. Probably another private phone call would do it although she hadn’t any idea what she would say to him. Perhaps, get rid of the stuff, Merve , would suffice.
    One of the letters held a postal date of over a month ago, yet Leda’s notation of having answered it was missing on the envelope. Kaitlin thought she knew why. It wasn’t someone seeking advice of the usual sort. One line only, it read, “Why are things being stolen at ARC?”
    Kaitlin didn’t recall anything in the news about a criminal investigation into thefts at the Aldensville Retirement Center. If items were missing, why didn’t someone report it to the police? No signature appeared at the bottom of the paper. The envelope bore a Kingston postmark.
    She read on, intrigued by the situations presented in the letters. They weren’t too different from those she’d encountered when she was a counselor at the community college. Hey, maybe this was the job for her. It combined writing with her counseling credentials. If it jump-started her work on the book, and she could keep it from her agent, she’d be better off than she was at the beginning of the summer. And the hell with Zack and his old, rich wife.
    She finally selected two of the earlier postmarked letters for reply in this week’s column. One asked how to deal with an abusive spouse, the other a bossy sister-in-law. Standard advice column inquiries, standard responses. Recently postmarked letters included more of the same—a teenager being harassed at school, a dispute over a boundary line, a barking dog, loaning money to a friend…
    And, another letter about ARC thefts. This