time.
She comes over to the car, a little out of breath. “Into stalking, are we?”
“You knew I was there?” I ask.
She nods. “I'm a trained investigator. And I have a slimeball detector that can locate leering, drooling men up to a mile away.”
Seeing Laurie is jarring, in a good way. For two weeks I have kept myself in a plastic bubble, not letting real life enter. Now I see Laurie, and I'm incredibly glad that she is a part of that real life. I am stunned by the realization of how much I have missed her.
Laurie leans in and gives me a light kiss on the cheek, then pats Tara's head. “Come on in,” she says, and Tara and I do just that.
Laurie gives Tara some dog biscuits that she has in the house for her neighbor's dogs, then showers and changes. Tara then jumps up on the couch to take a nap, and Laurie and I go over to Charlie's for dinner.
We order a couple of burgers and fries, though we have to get separate orders of fries. I want mine very, very crisp, but cooks seem to have a resistance to making them that way. I have come to ordering them “burned beyond recognition, so that their own french fry mothers wouldn't know who they are,” but it never seems to help.
We also get bottles of Amstel Light, and toast to Willie's freedom. The discussion then turns to other cases, future clients, other work issues. Laurie does most of the talking, while I do most of the staring.
She finally notices and asks me why it is that I'm staring, and when I don't respond immediately, she figures it out.
“Oh, come on, Andy.”
“What?” I innocently inquire.
“You can't expect us to just get back together, as if nothing had happened.”
“I can't? No, of course I can't. Can I?”
“No, you can't. I know you went to law school, Andy, but did you ever go to grammar school? Because you're acting like you're there now.”
“All I'm suggesting is that we slowly, very slowly, see if we can rebuild the nonbusiness portion of our relationship.” I'm crawling now. “Which I screwed up by acting like the idiot that I am.”
“That's a little more like it,” she says, weakening slightly.
“Also, I can't remember if I've mentioned this previously, but I'm really rich.”
“That's much more like it,” she says, weakening greatly.
“I'm a multimillionaire, desperately in need of a woman to shower with gifts.”
She nods, feeling my pain. “And I'm a woman who believes in second chances,” she says.
I lean across the table and kiss her, and she responds. As Jackie Gleason would say, “How sweet it is.” Unfortunately, the moment is broken by a guy who comes over with a camera, unusual since Charlie's is not exactly a tourist trap. The guy has seen me on TV in connection with the Miller case, and he asks me to take a picture with him. Laurie agrees to take the picture, and the guy leaves happy. Ah, stardom.
We go back to Laurie's, but I don't think that I'll try anything sexual; it seems like that would be rushing things. Fortunately, Laurie disagrees, and she tries something very sexual. Not only does she try it, but it works. Really well.
It works so well that it leaves me exhausted, but even though we've agreed that I'm staying over, I can't go right to sleep, because Tara has to be walked. We go outside for what I hope will be a short walk, but which I extend because she's enjoying the smells of this new neighborhood so much.
I'm feeling good, make that great, about the turn of events with Laurie, and I sort of relive the day in my mind. It's when I'm thinking about our evening at Charlie's, about the guy wanting the picture, that it hits me, and I take Tara back to Laurie's at a full run.
We rush into the house and I head straight for the bedroom, where Laurie is sound asleep. I try to wake her, which is no easy task. When I exhaust a woman, I exhaust a woman.
I finally get her coherent enough to respond. “What the hell do you want?”
“Laurie, it's about the picture.”
I think the intense tone of my voice pulls her out of her sleep. “What picture?”
“My father's picture, the one of the four men.”
“What about it?” she asks.
“There's somebody not in it.”
“Who?”
“The person that took it,” I say.
I'M CARRYING A PAPER BAGAND waiting outside Vince Sanders's office when he arrives at nine-thirty in the morning. He had left a surprisingly warm message on my answering machine while I was away, congratulating and thanking me for my work in finding Denise's real killer.
“Oh, shit,” he says when he sees me. “What the hell are you doing here?” Obviously he doesn't retain warmth real well.
“I need your help,” I say.
“Forget it. I'm too busy.”
I hold up the bag. “I brought you a dozen, fish-free jelly donuts.”
He looks at the bag, then opens the door and motions me in. “Make my home your home.”
We enter and he proceeds to eat three donuts and drink two cups of coffee in about a minute and a half. The time is not completely unenlightening, however. He explains to me that the way to prevent jelly from dripping out of a donut is to bite into the hole on the side through which the jelly had been inserted. Brilliant, but not what I came here to learn.
Vince can tell that I'm anxious to get down to business, so he pauses midway through the fourth donut to ask me what I need.
“I want to go through copies of your newspaper for the week of June fourteenth, nineteen sixty-five. I assume you have it on microfilm.”
“Microfilm?” He laughs. “Nowadays that would be like having it on parchment. It's all computerized.”
I nod. “All the better.”
“What are you looking for?”
“The night Julie McGregor was killed, my father, Markham, Brownfield, and Mike Anthony were at some kind of future leaders conference in Manhattan. I want to know who else was there.”
He looks doubtful. “So what are you doing here? In case you forgot, this is a Jersey paper. We wouldn't have covered it.”
“I'm betting you did.”
Within five minutes, Vince and I are going through the old papers. He finds the article almost immediately, and instantly understands why I am sitting in his office.
“Jesus Christ,” he says.
I jump out of my chair and go over to his computer screen. The article is there, and the headline jumps out:
PHILIP GANT NAMED A FUTURE LEADER OF AMERICA
I can't say this is exactly what I expected, but it does give me an even healthier respect for my own hunches. The potential implications of this are stunning, and my mouth opens in amazement. It is the only mouth in the room that isn't filled with jelly donut.
Vince looks to me for confirmation. “Gant was a part of this?”
I shrug. “I can't be sure.”
“But you think he might be?” Vince is a reporter, and he's sensing a beauty of a story.
I nod. “I think he might be.”
Vince takes a final swallow; he wants to be able to clearly enunciate this point. “If he is, I get the story first. We clear on that?”
“Crystal,” I say.
I meet up with Laurie back at the office. She's been tracking this on her own, and I'm not surprised to hear
