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EIGHTEEN
We’re going to have to check out of the hotel,” Olivia said, almost as soon as they got into the Mustang. "We never should have gone in there in the first place.”
“The alternative would seem to be sleeping on the beach,” Matt said.
“The alternative was any of the motels we saw when we turned off the interstate into Daphne.”
“Every time I stay in a motel off an interstate, I am invariably denied sleep by the sounds of unbridled passion, a crying baby, or a barking dog-often all of the above-coming from the next cubicle. What’s wrong with where we are?”
“An assistant D.A. is coming tomorrow,” she said. “I don’t want him going back to Philadelphia and saying, ‘When I got down there, Payne has got his squeeze in a plush hotel.’ ”
“I hadn’t thought about that,” Matt confessed. “And the cold fact seems to be that I do seem to have my squeeze in a plush hotel. You’re right, we better get out of there before our shameful secret becomes public knowledge. But in the morning. Not tonight.”
Matt looked at Olivia, expecting a smile. She was not smiling.
“Is that how you think of me, as your squeeze?”
“That was your term, Mother, not mine.”
Neither said anything else for the next ten minutes, until they were off four-lane U.S. 98 and driving through Fairhope.
“Hey, look at that!” Matt said, cheerfully, pointing. “Trattoria.”
“What?” she asked.
“I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if that was an Italian restaurant, ” he said. “It doesn’t sound Polish. How about it, squeeze? A little linguini, a nice bottle of red, maybe even candles romantically flickering in a bottle covered with dripping wax?”
“Don’t ever call me that again,” she said, coldly.
“Sorry,” Matt said. “I was about to add, ‘Then we can go to the hotel and fool around.’ Does that interest you at all, Detective Lassiter?”
“Just go to the hotel, please.”
“You want to tell me what I’ve done wrong?”
“From your perspective, probably nothing.”
“And from yours?”
“I’ve been thinking.”
“About what?”
“Us.”
“What about ‘us’? This afternoon-Christ, from the time I first laid eyes on you-I thought ‘us’ was nice and dared to think the feeling was reciprocal.”
“It’s happening too fast,” she said. “And you’re dangerous.”
“How the hell am I dangerous?”
“You don’t think, that’s your problem,” she said.
“Give me a for example, Mother.”
“You never should have talked to the doer without permission. ”
“Were you there when I said, ‘I can’t talk to you without your lawyer being present’ or words to that effect?”
