Men’s eyes followed her across the dance floor, and more than a few women’s as well. Jeri didn’t notice, didn’t care.
Back at the table she said, “You’re stiff, Morry.” Her tongue was starting to go.
“It’s probably the wig.”
“So…take id off.”
“And cause a riot?”
“You won.” She looked around. “Idz dark. No one here’d care if you kill mayors or anything.”
So I took the silly thing off, stuffed it like a dead Pekingese back against the wall. I gave it a hard look and said, “Down. Stay.” Jeri laughed.
A slow dance started up. Jeri dragged me back to the floor, then clung to me like a starfish to an oyster with her cheek pressed firmly against my chest, hair on her head tickling my chin.
She looked up at me with luminous eyes. “‘S nice, huh?”
“Very.”
I could feel her breasts. They were solid, like the rest of her, but yielding under the pressure between us. She was warm. The pressure increased, and the yielding. Her hands moved on my back. None of which computed with what she’d said that first day in Reno, the day we’d met.
Partway through her fifth daiquiri I had to hold her up on the dance floor, sort of carry her around, holding her against me.
“We oughta go soon,” I said.
“Yeeowww,” she murmured, almost a purr. I hadn’t had much in the way of conversation out of her in the past twenty minutes.
“Let’s go, Jer.”
“O-yeah, les’go, uh-huh. Bag-oo da ‘ot’l.”
Not a good sign. I recovered the Pekingese, Jeri’s purse, and guided her out the door to the car.
I got on 17 and headed south, toward the glare of lights that was Myrtle Beach, one very drunk Geraldine DiFrazzia, PI, beside me with her head resting on my shoulder.
Her face tilted up at me. “Iz Kella ver’ pridye?”
“What?”
She struggled to speak. “Is Kelya ver’ priddy?”
“Kayla? Yeah, she is.”
“Priddyer ‘n me?”
“C’mon, Jeri.”
“Iz, izn’ she?” Her head lolled. “You god ’er, you do’n wan’ me.”
I didn’t know what to say. Maybe nothing would have mattered. It wasn’t likely she would remember any of this in the morning. But it mattered to me.
I was formulating a half-assed reply meant to clarify the situation when she began to snore.
Just as well.
I settled back, drove the car.
* * *
I had an attendant at the Meridian park the Mustang and leave the keys at the front desk. Jeri stumbled along as I helped her into the elevator and up to our floor. The activity woke her up some. I steered her toward her room.
“No,” she said suddenly. “Your room, Morry.” How she was able to tell one room from another, I didn’t know. I didn’t think she could see walls at that point.
She wouldn’t have it any other way, however, so I opened my door and half-carried her inside.
I plopped her down on the bed.
“Oof!” she said, landing on her back, then she struggled to sit up. I helped her. She started to unbutton her shirt, then gave up. “You do id,” she said.
I unbuttoned it, not without misgivings. She took it off, flapping one arm to free herself, then said, “Bra,” looking at me with ten-pound eyelids.
“You sure?”
“Uhdo id.”
I unhooked it. It was one of those ultra-sheer numbers that offered support but didn’t hide much. She shrugged it off. She had wonderful breasts, firm, capped with dark, medium-sized nipples.
She rubbed them absently, then slowly toppled onto her left side and passed out, snoring so faintly it was barely audible.
“Jeri?”
No answer.
I lifted her feet onto the bed. She was solid and muscular, but she’d lost that etched and steely look I’d seen in her gym. She was catlike, a lynx, slack now, but with an underlying readiness—a much different type than Kayla, but every bit as sexy.
I pondered my next move. She probably needed a shower. I know I did. But I was damned if I was going to give her one and have her wake up in the middle of it and rip my heart out—or wake up the next morning, see how clean she was, put two and two together, and rip my heart out, an organ I have valued highly over the years.
I removed her sandals, then stripped off her pants. She wore dark-blue bikini panties, no lace. I left those right where they were. I pulled back the covers on one side of the bed, rolled her over, then covered her. I hung up her shirt and folded her slacks over the back of a chair. I left, after rummaging in her purse for the key to her room—one of those cards with a magnetic strip.
In her room, I phoned home again. Still no answer. I didn’t like that one bit, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. I took a long shower, hot then cool, toweled myself dry, then grabbed the TV remote and went to bed. I caught the last of the news—sports—and Leno’s monologue. No mention of those murderous ne’er-do-wells, Mortimer or Dallas Angel. We’d fallen off the national radar screen, disappeared beneath a fresh layer of murk. Scandals, a roller-skating dog, weird medical findings, the latest problems with Obamacare, and a bungled bank robbery had eclipsed us, thank God.
I turned off the tube and settled into the sheets. Visions of Jeri in the next room toyed with the more impressionable regions of my brain, then I sank down into a deep, dreamless sleep.
* * *
The rain came at 2:05 that morning, a sudden rattling against the window that jerked me awake. It sounded like tiny stones at first, distinct hits, then a barrage, escalating to a low continuous roar of wind and water that
