While the players were depicting a painting that Melody was sure she had seen in the Louvre in Paris, Fred put his hand on her bare knee. A friendly gesture. From a man who had a wife and three children. Why did men like Fred think they were irresistible to women?
When the hand started to move up her thigh, Melody could almost hear his thought process: “Women are docile; she won’t make a scene in a stadium packed with people.”
She gave him a chance to reconsider his folly. When he started to go under her skirt, it was time for action. She laid her hand on top of his fat one. A friendly gesture on her part showing that she was enjoying his attention. She felt for his chubby little finger, giving him some sensory pleasure. She got a firm grip on it.
Slowly she started to bend his finger back. For the first few inches he might have seen it as an enjoyable form of sadomasochism. But she kept going. He tolerated it longer than she thought he would. Did she have to break his finger? Suddenly he snatched his hand away and rotated his body toward Drake. He didn’t look at her during the rest of the show.
Drake didn’t have his pants completely off when the telephone rang. He made the mistake of trying to hop to the phone with them around his ankles. A spasm in his back caused him to trip and fall forward. His nose hit the top of the nightstand, and he roared in pain. He sat on the floor with his back against the bed, trembling as he waited for the almost unbearable spears shooting through his nose and back to subside.
The phone continued to ring. He’d better answer it. Was he able to talk? He fumbled for the receiver and picked it up.
“Drake.”
“Are you all right?” Melody’s voice sounded frantic.
Drake cleared his throat and tried to speak above a mumble. “Yeah, I’m okay. Just had a little accident.”
“Is somebody there?”
“No.”
“Drake, somebody went through my things while we were at the show.”
He was now fully alert. “Did they take anything?”
“No, nothing’s missing.”
“Money? Jewelry?”
“I didn’t leave any money in the room. The jewelry I have with me is worthless. Nothing was nicked. What about your room?”
Now he understood what she was driving at.
“Just a minute.”
Drake set the telephone receiver on the nightstand and crawled across the threadbare rug on his hands and knees to his suitcase. His pants were still around his ankles, but he didn’t know whether he could stand yet, anyway. The suitcase was sitting on the floor against the wall of the motel room where he had left it. It took him a few seconds to open the latches because his hands were still shaking from the pain.
The differences were subtle, but he could tell that somebody had been in his suitcase. He arranged his clothes in a certain way from habit, left over from the days when he never knew who would be spying on him. Whoever had looked inside the suitcase had taken pains to cover his tracks, but he hadn’t done quite a good enough job.
Drake crawled back to the phone. “Somebody’s been in my things.”
“I’m coming over.”
“Wait…”
A click told him that Melody had hung up. She was only three doors away, so she would be here in a few seconds. Drake didn’t want her to see him like this. He struggled to a sitting position on the bed and pulled up his pants. He didn’t have his fly zipped or his belt buckled when there was a knock on the door.
“Just a minute.”
He made it to his feet, zipped his fly after fumbling a bit, and put the tongue of the buckle through the first hole in the belt. He tried to walk to the door without limping. He opened the door and saw Melody, clad in a green bathrobe and barefoot.
“You look terrible.”
Drake realized how contorted his face was and tried to smile. “That’s become your standard greeting.”
Melody pushed past him into the room. “It doesn’t look as if you had a spat with anyone. What happened?”
“My own stupidity. I fell and hurt my back and nose.”
“Are you all right?”
“I don’t think I exacerbated anything.”
“I’ll exacerbate you if you did. Did anything get taken from your room?”
“Not that I can tell. I have one more place to look.”
Drake tried to lift the only chair in the room, thought better of that plan, and ended up dragging the chair over to the wall by the window. He carefully stood on it, trying not to let Melody see how much it hurt him to lift his leg. Maybe he had reinjured his back. He pulled a dime out of his pocket and unscrewed the screws that secured the ceiling vent. After he removed the vent, he reached up and pulled down a brown paper bag.
He handed it to Melody and replaced the vent. “Don’t touch them, but are the envelope and letter there?”
Melody looked inside the bag. “Yes, still here. Do you think that’s what whoever it was was looking for?”
“Wouldn’t doubt it. Maybe they suddenly realized that we might be able to trace them.”
“We couldn’t get a typewriter match, so it must be fingerprints. Of course our prints are all over them.”
“We won’t add any more.”
“How can we get them checked for prints without raising all kinds of alarms?”
“I’ll call Blade. There must be a local agent who can help us.” Drake went over to the phone.
“Drake, it’s three in the morning in D.C. Blade isn’t going to be happy to hear from you.”
“So what else is new? At least he’ll probably be home. Unless he’s sleeping over at his girlfriend’s.”
Drake got a long distance operator and called collect so that nobody from the motel could determine what number he had called. Blade was even grouchier than his usual self, if that were possible, but he accepted the call and listened as Drake told him what he needed. He promised to have an agent contact them the next day. Drake hung up.
“Whoever did this was a pro. Or at least a semi-pro. No forced entry. Nothing messed up-at least not very much.”
“If we were normal people, we wouldn’t have known about it-unless the thief had gotten the letter.”
“I don’t think you should sleep alone. Whoever it was may come back.”
“Is this your sneaky way of getting me into bed with you?”
“Melody, I’m serious. I’m also in no condition to do anything. Maybe we can swap our two rooms for one with two beds.”
“No.” Melody thought for a moment. “I’m not afraid. I don’t think anybody is going to risk being identified. It’s interesting that they know our room numbers. It certainly looks like an inside job. Which means that they could have taken the letter when it was on the bus with our luggage.”
“That would prove it’s an inside job. We would go directly to Casey.”
“Maybe we should, anyway.”
“Not yet. We’d have to talk to him in person. I have a feeling we’ll be seeing him soon.”
“Give me one of your razor blades. If somebody comes into my room, I’ll give him something to remember me by.”
Drake went into the bathroom and came back with the requested blade.
