After half an hour during which there’d been no activity to monitor, coming or going, he could see the truth in Jake Dagger’s observation. Another identical half hour confirmed it, but by then he’d come to realize that coping with boredom was the second hardest part of a stakeout.
Needing to pee was worse.
He found a gas station, topped up the Subaru’s tank, bought a wide-mouthed glass jar of a fruit-flavored iced tea, and visited the restroom. After he’d done what he’d come there to do, he uncapped the iced tea, poured it down the sink, and returned to the car carrying the empty jar, ready to cope with problems that apparently never troubled Jake “Iron Bladder” Dagger.
He didn’t need the GPS to get him back to the Overmont house. He found it on his own, and as he made the turn onto Robin’s Nest Drive, he saw a car heading off to the west. That was nothing remarkable, cars did that sort of thing, although there’d been precious little traffic on Robin’s Nest Drive during the hour he’d spent staked out there. But out of the corner of his eye he caught the Overmont garage door descending the final couple of feet, and put two and two together.
There was, he realized, a little more to this stakeout business than he’d thought.
Up ahead, the car he’d seen was making a right turn. Keller clapped his fedora on his head and leaned on the gas pedal.
Once he’d caught up with her, following Melania Overmont turned out to be surprisingly easy. She was driving a big silver Lexus, not a hard car to distinguish from its fellows, and if she took her marriage vows as seriously as she took the Baker’s Bluff traffic regulations, then the client had nothing to worry about. She kept the Lexus well under the posted speed limit, came to a full stop at stop signs, and did all this without giving any indication that she’d noticed a white Subaru in her rearview mirror.
Piece of cake, Keller thought.
If it was Melania Overmont. He got close enough to determine that the driver was a woman with shoulder-length blonde hair, but Dot hadn’t provided a description, and for all he knew he might be following a cleaning woman, dispatched on an errand for her employer.
That seemed a little more likely when the Lexus braked at the entrance to a strip mall, waited courteously for an oncoming car to pass, and then turned left into the mall, pulling into a space in front of Pioneer Super Food Mart. Keller waited for a break in traffic, then followed her in and eased the Subaru into a space three slots to the left of the Lexus.
He killed the engine and waited for her to get out of the car. Instead she backed out of her spot.
He’d been made, he thought. She’d pulled in just to see if he’d follow her, and when he did she’d identified him, and now she’d shake him the way nobody shook Jake Dagger, and—
Instead, she maneuvered the car to and fro, and tucked it into the parking space immediately next to his.
Huh?
Why on earth would she do that? Because she’d spotted him? No, that didn’t make any sense at all. She’d parked her car in a perfectly good space, and now she’d forsaken it for this space, the only distinguishing characteristic of which was that it was right next to Keller’s Subaru. What could she possibly—
Oh.
The first space, he saw, was reserved for handicapped parking. You could get a ticket if you parked there without the requisite sticker.
If Keller had brought a newspaper along he’d pretend to read it, but he didn’t have anything, not even the Jake Dagger book. He sat very still and watched out of the corner of his eye as she got out of the Lexus. She never looked in his direction, and once she’d closed her door and headed for the market entrance he gave her his full attention.
Well, she wasn’t a cleaning woman, unless she’d somehow reported to work in tight white jeans and a scoop-necked blue blouse, with rings on her fingers and, for all he knew, bells on her toes. She was a good-looking woman, no question, and you could see why Todd Overmont might think she was cheating on him, because there was something about her that suggested she’d be capable of it.
Nothing he could define, really. Nothing he could put his finger on...
He sat behind the wheel, took his hat off, put his hat back on again. Should he enter the market and confirm that she was there? It’s not as though he’ll be expected to file a report: 2:38 pm. Subject entered Pioneer Super Food Mart. 2:41 pm. Subject took two boxes of breakfast cereal from shelf, compared ingredients, put one box back and added other to cart. 2:45 pm. Subject opened egg carton to make sure all of its contents were unbroken...
He stayed where he was, wondering why it was taking so long, and found out when she finally emerged, trailing a gawky teenager who was pushing a cart. He followed her to the car, and Keller watched as she opened the lid of the trunk and stood aside to let the boy stow bag after bag of groceries in it.
Couldn’t be more innocent, he thought. Woman’s a housewife doing what housewives do.
And now the last bag was in the trunk, and the lid closed, and Mrs. Overmont was reaching into her purse. She drew out a dollar, hesitated for a moment, then added another dollar.
Was that a generous tip? A skimpy one? Keller, who carried his own groceries whenever he did the shopping, had no real frame of reference. The kid hadn’t had to carry anything, all he’d done was push a cart twenty or thirty yards from the door to where she’d parked her car. Moving her groceries a bag at a time from the cart to the trunk was hardly heavy labor, and the total time involved was what, five minutes? It seemed to Keller that a single dollar would have been plenty, but then you had to weigh in the fact that she was a rich woman driving an expensive car, and maybe that was enough to bump the tip to the two-dollar level.
As if it mattered. Keller shook his head, marveling at his own propensity to overthink everything, and then Melania Overmont did something unusual. She looked around, to the left and to the right, as if to assure herself that she was not being observed.
If she’d turned all the way around she’d have seen Keller. But she didn’t, and he went on watching her, because that little move of hers was definitively furtive, and he had to wonder why. All she was doing was tipping the kid, and what did she care who saw her give him a couple of bucks?
And he watched, playing close attention, as she held out the two dollars in her left hand. The boy held out a hand to take the money, and Melania extended her other hand, her right hand, and reached for the boy’s crotch.
Keller stared.
And went on staring, because this wasn’t going to be a quick grope and goodbye. She’d stepped closer to the kid, so that he couldn’t see what she was doing with her hand, but it didn’t take a genius to figure it out. All he had to do was watch the boy’s face, as it ran the gamut of emotions from surprise to shock to excitement to what could only be satisfaction.
“A hand job, Pablo?”
“I guess that’s the term.”
“In a strip mall? In front of a supermarket? In the middle of Illinois?”
“And then she put the two dollars in his hand,” he said, “and closed his fingers around it. And kissed her own fingers, and patted him on the check.”
“And got in her car and drove away. I trust you followed her.”
“Straight back to her house. She had to put away her groceries.”
“And wash her hands,” Dot said. “And she’s there now?”
“She’d have to be. She hasn’t gone anywhere. She left the garage door up while she dealt with her bags of groceries, but it’s down now, and as far as I can tell she’s still in the house.”
“And you’re parked across the street. Well, I guess the thing to do is sit tight.”