“Hi, Jeremy. I was able to get away from the office a little early.” She nodded towards the guy in the V-neck. “Chuck here was kind enough to ask if he could buy me a drink, and when I told him I was expecting someone, he insisted on waiting to see if you would actually appear.” She turned to Chuck and, with a bemused look on her face, said, “See, and you thought I’d made Jeremy up.”
“No, no,” he said. “I just wanted to be sure you was okay, ya know? Place like this, lotta guys would be hittin’ on a girl like you, so I figured I’d just stay here until the boyfriend showed.”
“And now he has,” I said.
The Chuckster sat for a few seconds before he got it.
“Oh, hey, yeah,” he said, “of course. What am I thinkin’ here?” And as he got down from his stool and walked, fairly steadily, back to the bar, I climbed up into the chair next to Sandra.
“Boyfriend?” I asked.
“It seemed the easiest thing to say at the moment,” she said.
“This sort of thing happen to you a lot?”
“Occasionally,” she said, “but it’s never anything I can’t handle. Old Chuck seemed pretty harmless, so I didn’t mind letting him sit there until you arrived.”
“Hm-hmmm,” I said.
“Okay,” she smiled, “and maybe I was curious to see how you’d react.”
“See if I’d go Cro-magnon on you? Challenge Chucky to a duel with swizzle sticks.”
“Hmmm, something like that,” she said. “Anyway, you conducted yourself like a gentleman. I hope I haven’t upset you, but I didn’t feel like wasting my time this evening with yet another example of arrested adolescence. I really didn’t plan on submitting you to a test, but when Chuck came along and refused to leave, well, the opportunity was there.”
“Hey, no harm, no foul,” I told her. “Have you ordered yet?”
“No, I was waiting for you.”
At that point, a waiter wandered by, and I got his attention. Both Sandra and I ordered dinner salads and white wine.
“You stop here often?” I asked her.
“Not as much as I used to,” she said. It was getting a little louder in the place, and as she spoke, she leaned in closer to me. I noticed that she was wearing perfume, which she hadn’t had on that morning. Things were looking up. “Lately, I’ve been more inclined to go right home and have dinner in front of the television most nights. On one hand, it definitely cuts down on one’s social life. On the other hand, there’s Chuck.”
“Yeah, I see what you mean,” I said.
I glanced down and saw a small briefcase and a plastic bag with drawstrings lying on the floor next to her stool. She saw me looking at the bag and said, “Those are the low-heeled shoes I wear around the office, unless I’m meeting a client or, in your case today, someone I think is a client. Also, I wear the low heels when I walk to and from work.”
I noticed that she was wearing the high-heeled shoes from that morning. Interesting.
“If the weather’s bad, I’ll drive to work. But any day I can, like today, I take the incline down and walk across the bridge to get to the office, then reverse the process at night. I try to get as much exercise as possible.”
“It works for you,” I told her.
I got the smile again. And I also realized that she must have switched back to the high heels after arriving at the restaurant. Very interesting.
Our salads and wine arrived shortly, and we engaged in minor chit-chat while we ate. Afterwards, over a second glass of wine, I brought up the Pendleton case.
“You told me this morning that you didn’t think Terry Pendleton would have tried to fight off a mugger, but you also implied that there were other kinds of risks that he might be inclined to take. Care to elaborate?”
She took a sip of her wine and just looked at me for a minute before speaking.
“Jeremy, I’ve been thinking about this all day. I can’t imagine that what I’m going to tell you could have any connection to Terry’s death at all, but, well, if you’re going to be investigating the situation, I just think you should have a clear idea of what kind of person Terry was, that’s all.”
“Okay,” I said, “enlighten me.”
“It’s no big deal, really,” she said, “but Terry wasn’t afraid to take a chance when it came to his marriage.”
“Meaning what, specifically?” I asked.
“Meaning that he hit on me, more than once, and if he was hitting on me, he was probably hitting on other women as well.”
“You’re sure he was hitting on you?” I said.
“Jeremy,” she said, “I know when someone is coming on to me.” She moved her leg over so that it brushed up against mine. “Do you?”
Gulp.
“Yes, I do,” I managed to say. “Look, if you don’t mind my asking, how did you, uh, respond?”
“Not the way Terry wanted me to,” she said. “Life’s complicated enough without getting involved with married men, especially when, so far, I’ve never had any trouble attracting single guys.” And again with the leg. It was not an unpleasant sensation.
“Did you tell the cops this?” I asked her.
“If you mean that Detective Wykcoff, no, I didn’t. The man’s a pig.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Besides his general demeanor, you mean? Melanie overheard him telling one of the other detectives that we were all, let me see, what was it exactly? Oh, yes, now I remember. We were all tight-assed lawyers. So I chose not to volunteer information to Detective Wykcoff, particularly when I didn’t think said information was germane to his case.”
“So why me?”
“You’re not a pig,” she said. And she looked directly at me again for a moment. “In
