“More like Atlantic City,” Roger said.
“Exactly! Skipped college for a shot at showbiz. Failed miserably. Married three times, no kids. Loves dogs.”
“Little dogs… yappy little dogs she dresses like dolls.”
“Perfect!” Fiona finished off the glass of wine. “See? You’re good at this.”
For a moment, there was something between them, something she found dangerous and seductive at the same time. But the feeling threatened her as much as excited her, and it ruined the moment for her.
“You okay?” he asked.
Just then, there was a commotion at the entrance on the far side of the tent. A woman charged through the crowd, stopping only a few feet from them.
Walt signaled the volunteer hostess and pursued the crasher himself. He reached out for the rushing woman’s arm but missed.
The woman was dressed casually, and inappropriately for this crowd, in department-store jeans, a green polo, and brown Keens.
Intrigued by what the woman might want with Remy, he gave her some distance. He knew he stuck out in his uniform, but no one seemed to notice him.
Coming within earshot, Walt was disappointed that the confrontation between the crasher and Remy lasted only seconds. Remy had rebuked her immediately, turning his back on her. But she was determined, pulling a pen out of the purse slung over her shoulder and scribbling something on a cocktail napkin. Interrupting Remy a second time, she pressed the napkin into his unwilling hand.
“Call me,” she said.
Remy leaned in close to her and apparently said something disagreeable. Her head jerking back as if slapped, she turned and hurried out an opening in the tent’s wall, a move Walt had not seen coming.
He tried to catch up with her but became tangled in the crowd. One didn’t push around members of this set. He politely squeezed his way through the throng, making for the opening. He was several steps past one couple before stopping abruptly to get a better look at the woman’s face. Ignoring the hair and makeup, the outfit that made her look like a copper-topped battery, he realized she reminded him of someone. It took him a few seconds too many to wonder if she wasn’t the woman in the Hailey crosswalk, the woman caught on the traffic cam. The camera was too high up the pole and too far away to get a decent shot at any face, and yet…
His moment of hesitation cost him.
He caught Brandon’s eye, hand-signaling him over other people’s heads to get going out of the tent.
Brandon, who’d seen Walt pursuing the party crasher, took off.
Then Walt looked back for the woman in the copper top.
Gone.
Not for the first time in his life, he cursed his short stature. In a sea of six-footers, he was forced to lift up to his toes and crane his neck. The Duracell battery and her man were moving away from Walt but in no particular hurry. He took a step in that direction, then heard Brandon speaking in his right ear bud.
“She’s getting into a car, Sheriff. What do you want me to do?”
Grabbing the handset clipped to his epaulet, he answered, “Wave her down and stop her, if you can.”
“No way.”
“Get the plate, then. Take down the registration.”
“Ten-four,” Brandon mumbled.
Walt glanced back toward his quarry as another volunteer hostess blew into a microphone and began making introductions. Walt again lifted to his toes, searching for Miss Duracell.
Not seeing her or her escort, Walt hurried back out of the tent. He caught up to Brandon, describing the woman’s copper outfit as the two jogged over to the sea of parked SUVs.
The couple was nowhere to be found.
“How’s that possible?” a winded Brandon asked.
“Professionals,” Walt answered, a sense of dread overcoming him.
He’d had her within arm’s reach.
18
Summer was having doubts. Her plan had seemed pretty simple at first, but its execution required a commitment she wasn’t sure she could make. “Easier said than done,” her father would have lectured. Oddly enough, just thinking of him, whether he was right or not, steeled her to her purpose.
She’d left a note on the coffee table in the suite’s living room: Dad, found a friend. Going out. Back by midnight.
She assumed the last bit would piss him off, since her curfew was eleven P.M. She had no intention of missing her curfew, but she didn’t want him knowing that. He’d get in well past eleven, but she just wanted to give him a little heartburn before checking her room and finding her asleep.
The events of the next few hours were critical to her bigger plan. Her mother, with her many business dealings, had taught Summer how to use strategy. The prize went to the best planner, the one with the foresight to lay the necessary groundwork. To cinch the deal, to make the relationship stick, you had to get the other person to take the bait without knowing what he was swallowing.
She would leave him this message tonight, then obey the rules, and by tomorrow night it would become routine. He’d automatically grant her an extension on her curfew in expectation that she’d never need it. Then…
“Hey, dude,” she said, sliding into the passenger’s seat of Kevin’s beater Subaru. The contents of the laundry bag she carried clattered. He looked over at it, curious.
“Whaddya got?” he asked.
She opened the bag, revealing little liquor bottles from the mini-bar in the room. “Goodies.”
“For real?” he said.
“Including four cold beers.”
“Sweet.”
She pulled the rearview mirror her direction to inspect herself. She then pushed it back into place.
“Seat belt,” he ordered.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“You want to get stopped? The cops here… well… I happen to know they’re sweeping for seat belts right now.”
“You’ve got the inside track, do you?”
She clipped the seat belt at her waist, then leaned forward against the shoulder strap, trying to emphasize her chest. She wanted his attention in all the right places, wanted him to be thinking ahead. His cooperation was key to her plan.
“I actually do… have the inside track,” he said. “My uncle is the county sheriff.”
“No way.”
“Way.”
“So are you cool with this?” She nodded at the laundry bag.
“As long as it’s not open in the car.”
“You’re going to drink with me, though,” she said, as if fact.
“If I get too loaded, I can borrow a friend’s bike and ride home,” he said.
She liked that.
“A planner,” she let slip.
“What…?”
“You’re a planner.”
“Yeah, I guess so… sometimes.”
“You either are or you aren’t.”
“You?”
“I’d put a check in that box, yeah,” she said. “But I’m no type A… not hardly.”
“You’ve got a real thing about your father, don’t you?”
“My mother’s dead,” she said.
The engine sounded rough when their voices weren’t covering it, an unfamiliar rhythm under the hood like someone clapping out of time. The silence between Summer and Kevin stretched out uncomfortably.
“My dad killed himself,” Kevin said, catching his reflection in the windshield, proud that he could look so emotionless.
“Whoa!”
“At least, I’m pretty sure that’s what happened. No one’ll say. Mom lost, like, a million pounds after he died and, I don’t know, changed. My uncle and grandpa are pissed off at each other most of the time, mainly, I think, because of what happened to Dad. It was ruled accidental, but I’m pretty sure he did it, and that my uncle covered for him, and that the only reason he did that was because Grandpa made him.”
“That’s seriously random.”