I've made millions in the oil business. Five hundred-and I won't tie
you up all evening. I'll be there around six o'clock. We'll relax
together-then go out to dinner, You'll be home by ten, plenty of time to
rest up for Vegas.'
'You don't give up easily, do you?'
'That's my trademark. I'm blessed with perseverance. Down home they
call it pure mule-headed stubbornness.' Smiling, she said, 'All right.
You win. Five hundred. But you promise we'll be back by ten?'
'Word of honor,' he said.
'You haven't told me your name.'
'Plover,' he said. 'Billy James Plover.'
'Do I call you Billy James?'
'Just Billy.'
'Who recommended me?'
'I'd rather not use his name on the phone.'
'Okay. Six o'clock it is.'
'Don't you forget.'
'I'm looking forward to it,' she said.
'So am I,' Billy said.
Although Connie Davis had slept late and hadn't opened the antique shop
until after lunch, and although she'd had only one customer, it was a
good day for business. She had sold six perfectly matched
seventeenth-century Spanish chairs. Each piece was of dark oak with
bowed legs and claw feet. The arms ended in snarling demon heads,
elaborately carved gargoyles the size of oranges. The woman who
purchased the chairs had a fourteen-room apartment overlooking Fifth
Avenue and Central Park; she wanted them for the room in which she
sometimes held seances.
Later, when she was alone in the shop, Connie went to her alcove office
at the rear of the main room. She opened a can of fresh coffee,
prepared the percolator.
At the front of the room the big windows rattled noisily. Connie looked
up from the percolator to see who had come in. No one was there.
The windows were trembling from the sudden violence of the winter
weather; the wind had picked up and was gusting fiercely.
She sat down at a neatly kept Sheraton desk from the late 1780s and
dialed the number of Graham's private office phone, bypassing his
secretary. When he answered she said, 'Hello, Nick.'
'Hi, Nora.'
'If you've made any headway with your work, let me take you to dinner
tonight. I just sold the Spanish chairs, and I feel a need to
celebrate.'
'Can't do, I'm afraid. I'm going to have to work most of the night to
finish here.'
'Can't the staff work a bit of overtime?' she asked. 'They've done
their job. But you know how I am. I have to double-check and
triple-check everything.'
'I'll come help.'
'There's nothing you can help with.'
