“Jobs like this are handed out to junior detectives,” Matt said. “I am a very junior detective. Before I was promoted to do things like search bank records, I spent a lot of time investigating recovered stolen motor vehicles. That is the bottom rung of my profession, like Chad going into grocery stores and begging them to buy two more cases of Nesbitt’s World Famous Tomato Soup.”
That earned him another smile.
“I have trouble really believing you’re a cop.”
“So do a lot of people,” Matt said. He decided it was time to change the subject. “I am of course delighted to see you. If I had known you were coming, I would have had champagne on ice. But I am just a little curious.”
“I have to talk to you,” Susan said.
“I may be a junior detective, but I am a brilliant junior detective, so let me demonstrate my Sherlock Holmes-like deductive skills: There has been a change in plans, and your mother’s kind invitation to break bread has to be withdrawn.”
“I wish it was that simple,” she said. “I need a big favor from you.”
“I suppose I could let you have a couple of bucks until payday. Presuming you have some sort of collateral.”
“Aren’t you ever serious?”
“Only when there is no possible alternative. How may I assist you, fair lady?”
“You can let my parents think we were out until very late listening to Dixieland jazz.”
“But we weren’t, were we? Your words, which broke my heart, are burned in my memory: ‘I’m sure you’re a very nice fellow, but I’m just not interested. Okay?’ I cried myself to sleep that night.”
She shook her head in amazed disbelief.
“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, Susan, since I am a Boy Scout and we are sworn not to lie to girls’ mothers. You call your mother, and tell her we’re going to have dinner in town. That way, I don’t have to lie to your mommy, or eat alone.”
“I meant it when I said I’m just not interested,” Susan said. “There’s somebody else.”
And would his name, perchance, be on the FBI’s Most Wanted List?
“Really?”
“You’re not making this easy for me, are you?”
“Well, my father’s lawyer didn’t call your father, demanding to know what you had done with the family virgin.”
“I’m sorry about that, I really am.”
“You can’t imagine how humiliating that was, to walk into my home and have my mommy and daddy waiting for me, wringing their hands, looking at me with sad eyes, to ask what terrible things I had done with your daddy’s precious baby. That pissed me off, just a smidgen.”
“I said I was sorry.”
“Tell me about ‘someone else.’ ”
“You don’t know him.”
I hope to rectify that situation in the very near future.
“That’s what this whole thing was all about,” Susan went on. “My parents don’t like him, can’t stand him.”
I can’t imagine why not. What is this bullshit, anyway?
“And he didn’t want me to go to Daffy’s party,” Susan said, and met Matt’s eyes. “And we fought about that. So he came to Philadelphia, and when I left the party he was waiting for me in the lobby of the Bellvue. And we went to my room. And had a fight. And made up. And I didn’t call my mother, the way she expected me to, and when s
he called the hotel—I knew it had to be her, who else would call me at half past two?—she was the last person in the world I wanted to talk to—how could I, with him there?—so I didn’t answer the phone. And that started everything else that happened. Mother called Daffy—”
“You were in your room the whole time?”