Hour Game

"I think it was her, but I couldn't be a hundred percent sure. If it was, she drove off in a convertible Mercedes-Benz-you know, one of the older styles, like an antique. I couldn't get the license plate, and I couldn't make out the color for sure, but it was dark, maybe a green or dark blue. So if that was her, I guess she wasn't one of the dancers. If so, she would have just stayed at the club."

"We should still be able to trace the car."

"What should I do about Kyle?"

"Seems like it's a police matter. You have the proof and you were a witness."

"Do you think I should confront him with it?"

"No! There's no telling what he might do. I'll speak with Todd tomorrow and see what he thinks. But you better start thinking about finding a new assistant."

She slowly nodded. "I guess I should have seen this coming. Kyle was always cutting things close. I caught him on the computer in the admin office the other day, and he gave me a B.S. story about buying supplies. He was probably fudging the pharmacy inventory while I was standing right there."

"He's obviously good at lying, and while he seems like the nonviolent type, those are just the ones you have to be careful about. I'll handle it first thing in the morning."

She smiled at him. "It's nice to be taken care of for a change."

He returned the smile and looked around. "They have an excellent wine cellar here. Mind if I order something extraordinary?"

"Like I said, it's nice to be taken care of."

"If memory serves me correctly, they have a 1982 Château Ducru-Beaucaillou."

"Ducru-Beaucaillou? My French is a little rusty."

"It means ‘beautiful pebble,'" he said, staring at her eyes. "Seems appropriate."

The next two hours went very quickly, and the conversation moved away from Kyle to more personal issues.

"George and I used to come here every year for our anniversary," said Sylvia as she stared out the window at the full moon hovering over them.

"Nice place to celebrate," commented King. "I actually brought Michelle here when we started our agency."

"I was laid up in the hospital so drugged up I didn't even know he'd been killed until a couple of days later."

"What were you in the hospital for?"

"Ruptured diverticulum of the colon. George performed the surgery on me. It became a little more involved once he got in there, and I had a reaction to the anesthesia and my blood pressure bottomed out. Not really a dinner topic, sorry."

"Must be stressful for a doctor to perform surgery on his wife."

"That sort of surgery was his specialty. I think he instinctively knew it might be a little more complicated than the tests showed, and he was right. George was far and away the best surgeon in the area; nationally ranked, in fact. I was in the best possible hands." She suddenly dabbed at her eyes with a napkin.

King reached over and took her hand. "I know that was all very painful for you, Sylvia. I'm really sorry you had to go through that."

She took a deep breath and wiped her eyes. "You'd think I'd get over it at some point. I keep telling myself it's part of life. In fact, whenever I autopsy a murder victim, I try to tell myself that. Death, sometimes violent, unfair death, is part of life. Without that outlook I don't think I could do my job."

He raised his glass to her. "A job you do extraordinarily well."

"Thank you, it's nice to be appreciated."

She looked at him shyly.

"What?" he said.

"I was just wondering why we stopped seeing each other."

"I was starting to wonder the same thing."

She lightly touched his hand. "Maybe we should work on that."

"Maybe we should," said King.

CHAPTER 55

KYLE WAS FURIOUS. HE'D ARRIVED at the motel room right on time, knocked, and no one had answered. He waited outside for another thirty minutes to see if she showed. She didn't. Then he decided to try knocking again. Maybe she'd fallen asleep. Maybe she was drugged out. He tried the knob. It was locked! He looked around. There were only two other cars parked in the lot, and they were far away from this section of the motel. As he was getting into his Jeep, a car pulled into the parking lot. Kyle watched as a large flabby man and a petite woman in a tiny skirt and wobbling unsteadily on four-inch heels got out and went into one of the rooms without looking at him. Kyle shook his head. Well, at least one guy was getting some tonight. He drove off.

All the way back to his apartment he thought of various ways to track down the woman and cruelly punish her for this latest sleight. Most of all he was upset about missing the five-thousand-dollar payday.