A minute or two later: “So how you doing tonight?”
She glanced the man’s way. He was in an athletic jacket with the collar turned up. He wore a baseball cap, the logo of the New York Mets. His glasses were tinted. His hair, beneath the hat, boyishly mussed. He seemed familiar. Maybe she’d seen him last night when she arrived after the long drive from West Virginia. No, from somewhere else, though probably he simply fell into that generic good-lookin’-fifty-year-old demographic. Her sister had joked they were the number one male presence on Tinder.
She sighed. But Southern born and bred, Elly Morgan was polite to her core. “Pretty good.”
“You here on business?”
“I am, yes.” Her territory included retail stores from Pennsylvania down to North Carolina. She was on the road every few weeks, and the number one rule she’d learned was never, ever ask anyone — a man especially — a question that might elongate the conversation.
“Can I ask what line?”
“Wholesale cosmetics.”
“Ah.”
She sipped wine, pulled out her phone, and studied her screen. She wished she could call Josh. But he was on an airplane. Maybe she’d try her sister.
“I’m just in town for a thing here tonight,” the Mets fan went on. “But I got around during the day. I like college towns. Pretty interesting place. There’s a Civil War memorial. Did you know that Maryland never seceded from the Union but it was the only state that officially had federal and Confederate troops?”
She didn’t. She didn’t care.
He ordered another drink.
Without looking his way, Morgan sensed he was studying her. She regretted not changing from the tight-fitting silk blouse. In the meetings she wore, as she always did, a loose jacket. She had a voluptuous figure, and she knew he was focused on her chest.
She hit a recent call button.
“Hi, this is Karen. Please leave a message.”
So, sis wasn’t going to help her out.
“Voice mail,” the man said. “Curse of existence.”
Apparently the volume was high enough so he could hear. Rude to comment. Also, she had no clue what his comment meant.
He leaned a bit closer and she felt his arm brush her elbow.
“Excuse me,” she said and turned his way.
He backed off. “Sorry. Just was going to ask if you wanted a better drink. My treat.”
Better drink?
“Wine can be so boring. You don’t look like a boring girl.”
That’s it.
“Could I get that soup to go?” she said to the bartender.
“Sure.”
The Mets Man apparently got the message. He finished his drink and paid cash. He rose, said, “Have a good night now.”
Polite Morgan nodded distantly.
He wandered off.
Stay?
No way. Sharks circle back on their prey.
In five minutes the soup had arrived. She signed the check and stood, ignoring the gaze of the man seated to her right. Was he eyeing her figure too?
She ignored him. How tiring this all was. She knew it had happened from the beginning of time, men and women, but now, still, in the #MeToo era? Did some men simply not get it?
Walking back to her wing, over sidewalks surrounded by flowering trees, she smelled the enticing aroma of the soup and she thought: Calm down, girl. You’re tired, you’re stressed from the negotiation, you miss Josh. Don’t overreact. Looking over her body was wrong, it was an assault in a way, but it wasn’t terrible. The incident hadn’t become ugly. It was one of the thousands of incidents just like it that she’d had to endure, being a woman in... No, not just in the business world, but anywhere.
She’d had to endure, being a woman. End of story. She should—
“Look, I’m sorry.”
Morgan gasped.
Mets Man had been on an intersecting sidewalk. He stepped in front of her.
She had to stop.
“I was out of line. And—”
“You’ll excuse me. I’m going to my room.” She fished her phone from her pocket. He noticed this.
He was well over six feet tall, broad-shouldered. He held up a hand. “Look. I’m not dangerous or weird.”
The jury’s still out on...
“I just find you extremely attractive. You’re my type. And I think I’m not so bad to look at myself. And there are some other things about my life that are... appealing.”
“I’m talking to management.” She turned, her heart pounding hard. When’s the right time to scream?
“Wait,” he commanded and grabbed her arm.
“The fuck are you doing?”
“Just calm down. Let’s have a drink and—”
“Are you crazy?”
He gripped her harder.
She swung a fist at his mouth and collided solidly. She was the daughter of factory workers and had put herself through college doing the same kind of labor.
“Oh, Jesus, you fucking bitch!”
Now, time to scream.
She inhaled deep. But before she could cry out he tackled her hard, driving a shoulder into her solar plexus. She fell to the ground, pain radiating from her gut to the bridge of her nose. Tears streamed.
Oh, Josh... Josh...
She grappled with the phone. Mets Man ripped it from her hand.
“Why did you do that?” he whispered. “It could have been so good. Why?”
She tried to crawl away, but the blow had virtually paralyzed her.
He seemed disgusted, as if this were all her fault. He shook his head and looked around.
For what?
No, no...
He was plucking a large rock from a garden beside the sidewalk. He walked slowly to her. Elly Morgan closed her eyes. She was numb. She could think of nothing, she could hear nothing, she could sense nothing... except the aroma of the soup, crab soup, lovely soup, spreading in a pink pool only inches from where she lay.
“What... My God. What’ve you done?”
As he looked down at the body of the young woman, her head bloody and crushed, Peter Tile was aware of a scent: Maryland crab chowder. A dish he would never eat again in his life.
“It was an accident.” His boss doffed his Mets cap and wiped his brow.
“It wasn’t an accident. You fucking killed her. And you’re still fucking holding the murder weapon.”
His boss looked down at the bloody piece of stone. He dropped the hunk of jagged granite, now rich with DNA and fingerprints. He whispered, “She was going to—”
“Stop you from raping her? The hell did you think she was going to do?”
“It just got out of hand. She was flirting.”
“I was in the bar. We both were. We were watching you. You came on too strong.”
“She hit me.” He pointed to his jaw. “I think I lost a tooth.”
Tile looked up and down the sidewalk. No one present. And no security cameras. One of the reasons Tile had picked this hotel.
Tile took a deep breath. He made a phone call.
“’Lo?”
“Head to the South Wing. Now. We’ve got a problem.”
Sixty seconds later, Eddie Von appeared. He was five-ten and stocky, muscle-stocky. His thinning black hair was combed back with sweet-smelling lotion. He was blunt in appearance and blunt in manner. His dangling hands drew naturally up into fists.
“Shit,” he grumbled. Not horrified, just thinking of how to deal with this inconvenience.
Tile: “Get her into the bushes.”
Tile and Von gripped her feet and tugged her out of sight. Tile picked up the bloody rock with an untucked tail of his dress shirt and dropped it beside the body.
“What are we going to do?” His boss wiped his brow once more. “You have to figure this out. You have to do something.”