Touch-Me-Not by Cynthia Riggs

finishing our quilt by the deadline, people, we simply must concentrate. Mid-June is only a few weeks away.”
    “What do you girls have in common besides this group?” asked Casper.
    “Women,” said Jim.
    “Church? Health club? Bars?”
    For the next hour, the group was quiet. Needles clicked. Through the double doors separating the reading room from the main library, came the sound of library patrons conversing softly. Outdoors, a car started up. Children’s voices drifted over from the playground across the road.
    A few minutes before six, Casper looked at his watch. “My wife is picking me up early today. Want a ride, Jim?” He folded up his anemone, wrapped tissue paper around it, and packed it and his needles into his briefcase. “She should be here any minute.”
    “Great, Casper. Thanks.” Jim tucked his coral into a green cloth bag marked THINK GREEN .
    “Good night, all. See you tomorrow,” said Casper.
    “Night,” said Jim, and waved.
    “Please, don’t think anyone is pointing a finger at you, Casper. Or you, either, Jim,” said Fran.
    Casper nodded.
    “Good night,” said Jim.
    “Bye.”
    “Night.”
    “See you.”
    The door closed behind the two men, and the women continued to work.
    After awhile, Jessica set down her knitting. “Well, what do you think?”
    “What do you mean?” asked Maron.
    “ Is it Casper? Or Jim?”
    “Good grief, no,” said Cherry.
    “Well, why not?” asked Jessica.
    “We’re all members of this group,” said Maron. “That’s the connection. The caller knows who all of us are.”
    “Much too obvious,” said Reverend Judy. “Besides, Jim and Casper are both too, well, normal.”
    “Mathematical knitters? Like, normal ?” said Maron.
    Reverend Judy laughed. “Point well taken.”
    “Girls! Please!” said Fran.
    Jessica laid her arm along the back of the couch. “Then how do we rule them out?”
    “Thanks for the ride,” Jim said to Casper once they were outside the library. “Damned uncomfortable in there.” He sat on the top step and Casper leaned on the railing. “What’s with Fran?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “She claims she was student advisor on how to deal with stalkers, yet she keeps avoiding the subject.”
    “She’s preoccupied with the quilt deadline. Feels responsible, since it was her idea in the first place.”
    It was six, a bright May evening. Bees hummed in the lilacs by the door, planted by the Friends of the Library. A breeze wafted the fragrance around them.
    Jim said nothing.
    Casper unhooked his glasses from his ears and breathed on the lenses. “Four women in our group are getting obscene phone calls.” He polished the lenses with his handkerchief and hooked his glasses back on. “I know all four.” He bent down and pulled up a stem of grass that was growing beside the steps and stuck the end in his mouth.
    “We both know all four,” said Jim.
    “How old is your daughter?”
    “Sixteen,” said Jim, smiling. “Lily. Apple of my eye.” Jim fished his wallet out of his back pocket and flipped it open to a photo gallery of his daughter. “We were married ten years before she was born.”
    Casper studied the pictures. “She has your wife’s looks, fortunately. Shame to lose her mother like that.”
    “It’s tough,” said Jim, looking away from the photos.
    “She have brains to match the looks?”
    “Honor roll. Straight A ’s.” Jim put his wallet away.
    “What would you do if she got calls from some guy—”
    “I’d kill the bastard. I swear to God, I’d kill him.” Jim smacked a fist into the palm of his hand.
    Casper nodded. “Same here. My daughter’s only two, but I can’t imagine how I’d feel.” He crossed his ankles. “The caller knows who the women are. The four youngest. He isn’t bothering Fran Bacon, who’s in her sixties, or Reverend Judy, who’s in her fifties.”
    “Or Victoria Trumbull’s granddaughter.” Jim clasped his hands between his knees and gazed at the bees