reason to be. No, she thought, maybe not.
She stopped walking and watched as he got into his car and drove off. He was wearing a jacket this time. It was at least as warm as it had been the other times she’d watched him head off to lunch, and previously he’d always gone in shirtsleeves, so what would Sherlock make of that?
A lunch date with someone from outside the company. A business associate? A golf or tennis partner? Or, just possibly, a lady friend?
If she had a car she could follow him. If someone had just left a key in their ignition—
Oh, please. What were the odds of that? No point in looking, and couldn’t she come up with a better way?
She got out her phone, punched in numbers, found a way around voicemail. To the woman who answered she said, “Is Graham Weider there? I missed him? I was afraid of that. I’ve got something he needs for his meeting and I was supposed to drop it at the restaurant, but I can’t remember…Yes, of course, that’s it. Thanks, thanks so much, you’ve been very helpful. And could you please not tell him I had to call? He’ll think I’m an idiot.”
It took fifteen minutes of hard pedaling to get her to the Cattle Baron, a strip mall steak house that didn’t look very baronial from the outside. Was she dressed for it? Could she leave her bike and expect it to be there later? And, after all that bicycling, did she smell?
She brushed the questions aside and entered the restaurant. She spotted Weider right away in a corner booth with three companions, all of them men in suits. Which made it easier, really, than if he were with a woman.
She told the maitre d’ a friend would be joining her, and he put her at a table for two. She ordered a white wine spritzer, then went straight to the restroom to freshen up and put on lipstick. She checked, and her underarms passed the sniff test. While she didn’t exactly feel like an Irish Spring commercial, neither was she likely to knock a buzzard off a slaughterhouse wagon.
She headed for her table, then did a take when she caught sight of the four men in the corner. She hesitated, then walked directly to their booth. They all looked at her, but she looked only at Weider.
“Excuse me,” she said, “but aren’t you Graham Weider?”
He hesitated, clearly not knowing who she was, and the man sitting next to him said, “If he’s not, ma’am, then I am. I’m sure I’d make just as good a Graham Weider as he ever could.”
“It’s been a few years,” she said. “And I only met you briefly, so you’re forgiven if you don’t remember my name.”
She had no idea what name she might have used when she was with him. She’d become Kim when she moved into Rita’s house, so it was simplest all around to remain Kim with Graham Weider. And it would be an easy name for him to remember. Though not, she trusted, for very long.
“Kim,” he said, as if testing a foreign word on his tongue. He had a gratifying deer-in-the-headlights look.
“I don’t want to take any more of your time,” she said, “but do you have a card? I’d love to call you and catch up.”
She gave each of them a smile, especially the one who’d volunteered to take Weider’s place. He was cute, and he’d be about as hard to get as coffee at Starbucks. How tough would it be to fuck him in the restroom and leave him dead in a stall?
Without returning to her table, she caught up with her waitress and gave her enough money to cover the drink. She’d had a phone call, she explained, and her lunch partner had to cancel, so she was going straight on to her next meeting.
Her bike was right where she’d left it. There was a hardware store right there on the strip mall, and she went in and bought a bicycle lock. Just to be on the safe side.
She didn’t really need his card. She already knew how to reach him at his office. But if she called him without having been given his number, she’d look for all the world like a stalker.
Which, come to think of it, she was.
She called him late that afternoon, caught him before he left for the day. “It’s Kim,” she said, “and I want to apologize. I never should have barged in while you were with other people. But it was such a surprise to run into you after all those years.”
“I’d like to catch up,” he said, “but I’m not sure—”
“That the phone’s the best way to do it? I feel the same way, believe me. Why don’t we have lunch tomorrow?”
“Lunch?”
“My treat,” she said. “You bought me lunch last time. So it’s my turn. But I’m new in the area. Can you suggest a place?”
The restaurant was Italian, its Mulberry Street decor of checkered tablecloths and straw-covered Chianti bottles at odds with its strip mall location. She’d allowed herself half an hour to get there and made it with seven minutes to spare. After she’d stashed Rita’s bike and locked it, she used the restroom at a convenience store, checked her makeup, freshened her lipstick. She entered the restaurant right on time, and he was at one of the three occupied tables, a cup of coffee at his elbow.
He got to his feet when he caught sight of her. He was wearing a jacket and tie, and — no surprise — a wary expression. A handsome man, she noted, and felt a little quiver of anticipatory excitement. This was going to be fun, she thought, and it would end well, too.
He had a hand extended, but instead of shaking it she gripped his forearm with both hands and leaned forward, giving him no real choice but to kiss her cheek and breathe in her scent.
“Well,” she said, and held his eyes for a moment. Then she sat down, and so did he, and he asked her if she’d like a drink. “If you’re having one,” she said.
“Just coffee for me.”
“That sounds good.”
He signaled the waiter, and he asked if she’d had trouble finding the place. She said she hadn’t, but managed to tell him she’d come by bicycle.
Then the waiter brought her coffee and refilled Graham’s cup and left them alone, and after a thoughtful silence he said, “When exactly did we—”
“It was a few years ago. I was living in New York, and you were there on business. You were with Willoughby & Kessel, and you were staying at the Sofitel.”
“That’s where I always stayed.”
“I can see why,” she said. “You had a lovely room.”
“I guess we did more than have lunch.”
“I’ll say.”
He took a sip of coffee. “I won’t pretend I recognized you,” he said, “but when I saw you I had the sense that we’d been, uh, intimate.”
“We had lunch and went back to your room. Then you had to go to a meeting, and we arranged to meet again later that day. But you didn’t show up, and left a note for me at the desk. You had to fly somewhere.”
“Oh, God,” he said. “I remember now.”
“Well, good, Graham. I thought that might trigger your memory. I figured it was either that or show you my tits.”
She thought that would get a smile. Instead his face darkened, and he reached again for his coffee cup, the way a person might reach for a real drink.
And, while she didn’t realize it yet, that pretty much explained everything.
“In those days,” he said, “I was doing a lot of drinking.”
Was he? “I guess you had a drink or two with lunch,” she said. “I don’t think it affected you.”
“Oh, it affected me.”
“Not back at the Sofitel it didn’t. Not in the performance department.”
“Sometimes it did, sometimes it didn’t. I guess that must have been a good day.”
“A very good day,” she said.
