David Baldacci - Hour Game

"Before we meet with Remmy, you might want to see if she'll tell you what was in her closet that was stolen."

He looked puzzled. "I thought it was just her ring and cash and stuff."

"No, there was something else. Something she wanted back so badly that she offered Junior a lot of money for its return."

Eddie gripped the wheel tighter. "What the hell could it be?"

"I'm hoping you can find out. If she'll tell anyone, I'm assuming she'll tell you."

"I'll try, Michelle, I'll give it my best shot."

He drove her home and walked her up to the door.

"When you come over to speak to Mom, drop by my place afterward, and I'll show you and Sean some of my paintings."

Michelle's face lit up. "I'd like that, Eddie, I'd like that a lot. Well, thanks for a wonderful evening. I haven't had this much fun in a long time."

He took a deep bow, and when he stood again, he handed her his plumed hat. "For you, milady." He added, "Hell, I haven't had this much fun in the last twenty years."

They stood there awkwardly, not looking at each other, for a long moment, and then Eddie put out his hand, which she immediately shook. "Well, good night," he said.

"Good night, Eddie."

As he drove off with the horse trailer behind his truck, Michelle stood there fingering his cavalry hat and staring after him.

Michelle had very infrequently allowed herself to think about a long-term relationship with a man. First had come the goal of being an Olympian, then a street cop, and then over the next decade she'd pounded her way through the intricacies and hardships of being a Secret Service agent. Those had been her expectations, her career goals, and she'd met each head-on and conquered them. Now at thirty-two, having settled down in a small town and started a new career, thoughts had begun to creep in about the possibilities of something else besides work, besides clawing her way to the pinnacle of a new career. She'd never really envisioned herself as a mother-though she had no reason to believe she couldn't be a good one-but she could see herself as someone's wife.

She stared at the swirl of dust lingering behind Eddie's departed truck.

And once again she heard Sean's warning ringing in her ears. Eddie was married, if unhappily. And so for her that was the end of it.

She went inside and spent the next hour kicking the crap out of her heavy bag.

WHILE MICHELLE WAS AT THE reenactment, King received a phone call from Sylvia Diaz at his houseboat.

"We missed you at the funeral and the reception," he said.

"Well, I didn't know the Battles, and I obviously wasn't invited to the reception. And crashing an event like that didn't seem to be a stellar idea."

"You missed some interesting developments." He explained about Remmy and Lulu Oxley but didn't mention seeing Sally Wainwright at Junior's grave. The fewer people who knew about that right now, the better, he thought.

"I need to talk to you. Are you free for dinner tonight?" she asked.

"You sound stressed. Anything wrong?"

"Sean, I think something is very wrong."

That evening King drove to a restaurant on the outskirts of Charlottesville. Sylvia hadn't wanted to meet in Wrightsburg. Her cryptic response to his question had left him full of curiosity. When they were seated at a private table in the back, he didn't waste any time. "Okay, what's going on?"

Sylvia launched into her discovery of Kyle's theft of the prescription drugs and seeing the mysterious woman at the Aphrodisiac.

King sat back, puzzled. "You didn't recognize her voice?"

"No, it was muffled by the door. Kyle obviously didn't know who she was either. And she was armed, so I didn't want to push my luck in finding out."

"No, you did the right thing. A thousand dollars a pop; that should narrow the list down."

"Obviously a wealthy woman or one with access to money."

"I thought it was only the dancers who stayed in those rooms."

"Well, I can't be sure that it wasn't one of the dancers," replied Sylvia. "From what I heard she performed some sort of striptease for him, although he became furious when it didn't end in sexual intercourse. I remember him clearly yelling at her for ‘shaking her naked ass' right in front of him and then not letting him ‘do her,' something vulgar like that. I certainly never saw that side of him at work, thank God."

"What sort of drugs are we talking?"

"Painkillers mostly, but potent ones. Some that if you circumvent the time-release component, or take too many, can give you a very dramatic shock, sometimes life-threatening."

"And you saw her leave?"

"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."