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Plevin had said Anne had included all her hotel room numbers on the itinerary she’d given him. She was in the habit of reserving certain rooms, corner suites on the third floor. It was a kind of good-luck totem. He’d arranged for Cooke to occupy suites with connecting doors.
“I don’t get it,” the artist had replied. “If she’s having an affair, why would she give you so much information?”
“It’s a blind, a double play. She knows my feelings about professional detectives, so she thinks I won’t send anyone to check up on her. It’s supposed to reassure me she’s faithful. That’s what made me suspicious in the first place.”
Cooke was conflicted about his opinion of Plevin. He didn’t like the man, that was certain. At the same time he admired him for having built an empire from the ground up, while disapproving of his borderline business methods. Stir into that mix Cooke’s personal envy for his youthful success, and for the ease with which Plevin was able to think in the abstract.
“I’m sorry,” Lola said. “I didn’t quite get that.”
He flinched and turned her off. He hadn’t realized he’d spoken his thoughts aloud. Some detective he was.
CHAPTER 7
THE RAIN CAME bang on schedule, and with a bang. The sky turned black as a cast-iron skillet and even the windshield wipers connected to the miraculous Toyota couldn’t keep up with the downpour. An hour east of Columbia, Cooke pulled over onto the shoulder behind a line of cars and trucks whose drivers had already made that move. He sat gripping the wheel tightly while the car rocked on its chassis, whipped by a forty-mile-an-hour gale. At least, he thought, Anne would have been forced to wait it out, too, unless her head start allowed her to outrun the deluge.
“Idiot!” He’d forgotten the little green dot. It had stopped moving. She was as stranded as he was.
Aloud, he asked for information on the storm in Missouri.
Technology complied. In a flash he knew the exact wind velocity, the track of the storm, and National Weather Service warnings, complete with an estimate on when it would clear the area. The entire state was under a tornado watch. So now he had to worry about twisters.
For twenty minutes he listened to weather reports on the radio; they were monotonously pessimistic. Now and then the rain slackened briefly. During those intervals he memorized the bumper and window stickers attached to the pickup parked in front of him, diverted himself by rearranging the letters to form interesting sentences, wondered what kind of person would stick a decal on his back window showing a man peeing on the Chevrolet emblem. Why should the owner care if somewhere in the world someone wasn’t driving a Ford?
At last the rain let up enough for the vehicles to resume moving; but electric signs warned everyone to reduce speed, and for once it seemed everyone was in a mood to obey. As an orange sliver of sun appeared beneath the overcast, it became clear that Anne would put in somewhere for the night rather than drive all the way to Kansas City in a state of fatigue.
Well, the green dot continued to keep him informed, even when Anne pulled off at rest stations.
Which made him more acutely aware of the pressure on his bladder that had been mounting since his unscheduled stop.
He drove five miles before one of the blue rest-stop signs appeared, by which time he was hunched over the wheel, as if he could get there faster by pushing the car manually.
At the stop, he saw that he wasn’t the only one in distress. He waited ten minutes at the end of a line of men fidgeting restlessly before he got into the bathroom, then in another line waiting for a urinal or a stall to become vacant. A little later he strolled out, practically whistling, but restrained himself at the sight of the longer line at the women’s.
It was dark now. He and Anne Plevin had been driving for ten hours. The next time the blinker stopped moving, he was sure she was putting in for the night.
The signal got stronger the closer he got to its source, beeping louder and more rapidly. A sign informed him that there was lodging at the next exit. He took it, and the invention of Todd Plevin’s in-house magician led him straight through a complex of hotels and motels to a sprawling, castlelike affair with a copper shield-shaped sign in front embedded in pink mortar. Its name was engraved on the shield:HAWTHORN ARMS. Not a chain he recognized; probably not a chain at all. Bright tulips, immaculately kept, flourished in oval beds lined with painted stones. The impression was one of palatial understatement, if such a combination was possible. How did she find these places, on the spur of the moment?
He turned into the asphalt driveway. Dennis Cooke and Anne Plevin were about to spend their first night under the same roof.
CHAPTER 8
“THE HAWTHORN?” TODD Plevin might have been sitting next to him in the front seat, his voice was that clear. “Yes. She stayed there once before, when she got a late start. Give me five minutes to make your reservation. Treat yourself to room service. You won’t need to shadow her too close tonight. Even she’s not clever enough to arrange a tryst on such short notice; unless he’s local, which is unlikely. Just be sure to get up early and be waiting in your car when she checks out.”
He waited ten minutes. He wanted to give her time to finish checking in. There was no solid reason to believe she’d recognize him, but he wasn’t about to tempt fate.
He’d circled the lot, spotted her car parked in the valet section, and found a space on the opposite side of the building.
A doorman in a royal blue uniform let him into the lobby with a touch to his visor. It was large, with a vaulted roof, deep leather chairs, spiny dwarf trees in copper pots (hawthorns, he guessed), and a blue carpet that felt like moss under his feet. A tiny blonde in a silk blouse greeted him from behind the desk. His name struck an immediate chord. Smiling, she handed him his key card and asked if he needed help with his luggage. He was carrying only a small overnighter. He didn’t want a bellman to overexert himself.
It was a fourth-floor suite; a relief. Despite Plevin’s assurances that he needn’t be too attentive that night, Cooke was afraid he’d book him on the third—Anne’s preferred choice—from force of habit. All he needed to blow the whole deal was to run into her when he stepped off the elevator.
He hadn’t mentioned his fears to Plevin. It was just a gut feeling, after all, not enough to risk being fired. His employer had the clout to force him to return his advance and the Corolla.
His suite was as luxurious as the lobby, with bowls of fresh flowers and a bottle of ritzy sparkling water. He sat down to open it and surf through three or four hundred channels on the sixty-inch plasma TV. The cushy suede love seat found every ache in his shoulders and caressed it with the skill of a Swedish masseuse.
After a while the whizzing images made his eyes burn. He turned off the set, put his head back against the cushion, and closed his eyes. When he opened them it was past midnight.
He was hungry as a wolf. He hadn’t eaten, really eaten, since breakfast. Snacking on the road didn’t count. But the directory on the writing desk told him room service closed at eleven. The bar was open, however, until two. Maybe they served nachos.
