The Unquiet - J. D. Robb [89]
She veered right onto Connecticut Avenue at Aspen Hill, but then she sailed right through Kensington, where she supposedly lived. Another lie. Twenty minutes later, they were in the District. He almost lost her at Dupont Circle. She took a sudden right on P Street, then zigzagged around O and Twentyfirst until she found a parking place on a block-long side street near the park. Snazzy neighborhood. Sixty feet away, Oliver double-parked and turned his lights out.
He’d liked watching her legs when she’d danced with Charlie. Now he liked watching them slide out of the car, knees together, ankles trim above her high-heeled sandals. Beautiful rear end, too; he enjoyed watching it poke out the backseat door while she leaned in to get something. The bowling bag? No, a white plastic bag, not especially heavy-looking, so not the horses.
While she was locking her car, her cell phone must’ve rung. She fumbled it out of her purse, and talked into it as she crossed the street to the far sidewalk, went down a ways, and turned in at the brick walk of a handsome, three-story town house, white with black shutters. What would a place like that cost? In this neighborhood, well over a million. Not bad for a physical therapist.
Juggling phone, purse, and plastic bag, she found the house key and unlocked the front door. High-pitched barking began before she got it open halfway. She sidled in crabwise, presumably to keep the dog from rushing out. Beveled sidelights lit up.
Oliver got out of his car, closing the door gently, and walked to where Krystal had parked hers. Glancing around to make sure no one was watching, he bent down and peered in first the front, then the rear windows. There—on the floor behind the driver’s side: the bowling bag. It had taken on an inimical unwholesomeness in his mind, a repository for something unsavory, either his grandfather’s horses or the tricks, so to speak, of Krystal’s “physical therapist” trade. Either way, the bag was evil.
Or it might contain a bowling ball. Anything was possible.
What to do? Nothing. He wasn’t a thief, even if she was. (And he could see the headline: Prominent Capitol Hill Lobbyist Caught Breaking into Call Girl’s Car, Stealing Sex Toys.) At least now he knew what he knew.
But he had to revise that on the five-minute drive to his house in Georgetown. Now he knew what he didn’t know.
NINE
“What? Wait, Charlie, I can’t hear you, the dog’s barking. Hold on.”
Molly put down everything but the phone, dropped to her knees, and let ecstatic Harpo jump up and lick her on the face. “Sweet boy, was I gone that long? No, the dog. The Nathansons’ poodle, Charlie, I told you I’m house-sitting—Hang on two more seconds, okay?” She got Harpo under one arm, carried him down the hall past the gated-off living room, the gated-off dining room, and into the kitchen.
“Good boy!” No messes, and he hadn’t even chewed the rug or knocked over his bowl. “No, Charlie, the dog. Okay, tell me again—what was the matter with her?”
Charlie was in high indignation mode, but under his bluster Molly thought she heard true disappointment. “Well, for one thing, she wasn’t even looking at me, never mind—”
“Yes, she was,” Molly had to interrupt, “I saw her. She was staring, she was definitely—”
“She’s got macular degeneration!”
“What?”
“Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”
“What is it?”
“It blocks your central vision, you can only see what you’re looking at on the side.”
“Oh. So you mean—”
“She was looking at the band!”
“Oh. Well, but after you introduced yourself and started talking—”
“Oh, that was fine, fine, like talking to my sister. There was nothing wrong with her, but hell, Molly, I thought—I thought—”
“I know. Gosh, I’m sorry, Charlie, it’s my fault. I could’ve sworn I saw something.”
“Yeah, well. So it’s all—do you think maybe you’re just . . . no offense, Moll, but—”
“No. No. I would tell you if I thought that, but honestly, I think she’s out there, this special person who’s—it’s not just that she’s got you on her mind, it’s that she