her car. Linda Coldren shut the front door.
Esme Fong started her car and left.
A thrill a second, this surveillance stuff`.
Myron settled back behind a shrub. There were lots of shrubs around here. Everywhere one looked, there were shrubs of various sizes-and shapes and purposes. Rich blue bloods must really like shrubs, Myron decided. He wondered if they had had any on the Mayflower.
His legs were beginning to cramp from all this crouching.
He straightened them out one at a time. His bad knee, the one that ended his basketball career, began to throb.
Enough. He was hot and sticky and in pain. Time to get out of here.
Then he heard a sound.
It seemed to be coming from the back door. He sighed, creaked to his feet, and circled. He found yet another comfy shrub and hid behind it. He peered out.
Jack Coldren was in the backyard with his caddie, Diane Hoffman. Jack held a golf club in his hands, but he wasn't hitting. He was talking with Diane Hoffman. Animatedly.
Diane Hoffman was talking back. Equally animated.
Neither one of them seemed very pleased. Myron could not hear them, but they were both gesturing like mad.
An argument. A rather heated argument.
Hmm.
Of course, there probably was an innocent explanation.
Caddies and players argue all the time, Myron guessed. He remembered reading how Seve Ballesteros, the Spanish former wunderkind, was always fighting with his caddie. Bound to happen. Routine stuff, a caddie and a pro having a little tiff especially during such a pressure filled tournament as the U. S. Open.
But the timing was curious.
Think about it a second. A man gets a terrifying call from a kidnapper. He hears his son scream in apparent fright or pain. Then, a couple of hours later, he is in his backyard arguing about his backswing with his caddie.
Did that make sense?
Myron decided to move closer, but there was no straight path. Shrubs again, like tackle dummies at a football practice. He'd have to move to the side of the house and circle in behind them. He made a quick bolt to his left and risked another glance. The heated argument continued.
Diane Hoflrnan tooka step closer to Jack.
Then she slapped him in the face.
The sound sliced through the night like a scythe. Myron froze. Diane Hoffman shouted something. Myron heard the word bastard, but nothing else. Diane flicked her cigarette at Jack's feet and stormed off Jack looked down, shook his head slowly, and went back inside.
Well, well, Myron thought. Must have been some trouble with that backswing.
Myron stayed behind the shrub. He heard a car start in the driveway. Diane Hoffman's, he assumed. For a moment, he wondered if she had a role in this. Obviously she had been in the house. Could she be the mysterious lookout?
He leaned back and considered the possibility. The idea was just starting to soak in and settle when Myron spotted the man.
Or at least he assumed it was a man. It was hard to tell from where he was crouched. Myron could not believe what he was seeing. He had been wrong. Dead wrong.
The perpetrator hadn't been hiding in the bushes or anything like that. Myron watched now in silence as someone dressed completely in black climbed out an upper-floor window. More specifically if memory didn't fail himChad Coldren's bedroom window.
Hello there.
Myron ducked down. Now what? He needed a plan.
Yes, a plan. Good thinking. But what plan? Did he grab the perp now? No. Better to follow him. Maybe he'd lead him back to Chad Coldren. That would be nice.
He took another peek out. The black-clad figure had scaled down a white lattice fence with entwined ivy. He jumped the last few feet. As soon as he hit the ground, he sprinted away.
Great.
Myron followed, trying to stay as far behind the figure as possible. The Hgure, however, was running. This made following silently rather difficult. But Myron kept back.
Didn't want to risk being seen. Besides, chances were good that the perpetrator had brought a car or was getting picked up by someone. These streets barely had any traftic. Myron would be bound to hear an engine.
But then what?
What would Myron do when the perp got to the car?
Run back to get his own? No, that wouldn't work. Follow a car on foot? Er, not likely. So what exactly was he going to do?
Good question.
He wished Win were here.
The perp kept running. And running. Myron was starting to suck air. Jesus, who the hell was he chasing anyway, Frank Shorter? Another quarter mile passed before the perp abruptly veered to the right and out of view. The turn was so sudden that for a moment Myron wondered if he`d been spotted. Impossible. He was too far back and his quarry had not so much as glanced over his shoulder.
Myron tried to hurry a bit, but the road was gravelly.
Running silently would be impossible. Still, he had to make up ground. He ran high atop his tiptoes, looking not unlike Baryshnikov with dysentery. He prayed nobody would see him.
He reached the turn. The name of the street was Green Acres Road. Green Acres. The old TV show theme song started in his head, like someone had pressed buttons on a jukebox. He couldn't stop it. Eddie Albert rode a tractor.
Eva Gabor opened boxes in a Manhattan penthouse. Sam Drucker waved from behind the counter of his general store. Mr. Haney pulled his suspenders with both thumbs.
Arnold the pig snorted.
Man, the humidity was definitely getting to him.
Myron wheeled to the right and looked ahead.
Nothing.
Green Acres was a short cul-de-sac with maybe five homes. Fabulous homes, or so Myron assumed. Towering shrub walls again with the shrubs lined either side of the street. Locked gates were on the driveways, the kind that worked by remote control or by pushing a combination in a keypad. Myron stopped and looked down the road.
So where was our boy?
He felt his pulse quicken. No sign of him. The only escape route was through the woods between two houses in the cul-de-sac. He must have gone in there, Myron surmised if, that is, he was trying to escape and not, say, hide in the bushes. He might, after all, have spotted Myron.
He might have decided to duck down somewhere and hide. Hide and then pounce when Myron walked by.
These were not comforting thoughts.
Now what?
He licked the sweat off his upper lip. His mouth felt terribly dry. He could almost hear himself sweat.
Suck it up, Myron, he told himself He was six-four and two hundred and twenty poimds. A big guy. He was also a black belt in tae kwon do and a well-trained fighter.
He could fend off any attack.
Unless the guy was armed.
True. Let's face it. Fight training and experience were helpful, but they did not make one bullet-proof. Not even Win. Of course, Win wouldn't have been stupid enough to get himself into this mess. Myron carried a weapon
