Until Proven Guilty - J. A. Jance [27]
We reached her car. She unlocked the door, and I opened it for her. Maxwell Cole followed us at a wary distance. He was approaching the driver’s side, jotting down the numbers from the temporary license in the back window. The Porsche was evidently brand-new.
Anne saw him out of the corner of her eye as she turned to ease her way into the leather interior. She smiled again. “Well? Are you coming or not?”
I closed the door behind her and hurried to the rider’s side. I came around behind the car, walking directly in front of Maxwell Cole, and climbed into the rider’s seat. Max was still standing there, a little to one side, when Anne fired up the powerful engine and rammed the car into reverse. He must have executed a pretty quick sidestep to be sure he was out of the way. I didn’t wave to him as we drove by, but I sure as hell wanted to.
I liked this lady, liked her instincts about people and her ability to handle them. She was a lot more than a pretty box of candy.
Anne Corley held the powerful Porsche well in check as she maneuvered the grades, curves, and angles that make Queen Anne Hill an incomprehensible maze for most outsiders. It’s a course lots of sports car drivers regard as a Grand Prix training ground. She drove with a confident skill that was careful but hardly sedate.
The fire that had made her gray eyes smolder as she approached Angela Barstogi’s grave site had been banked. When she paused at a stop sign and looked at me, they sparkled with intelligence and humor. “Where to?” she asked.
“I live downtown,” I said. “Corner of Third and Lenora. How about you?”
“I’m just visiting. I’m staying at the Four Seasons Olympic.” That put me in my place. The Four Seasons is absolutely first-class, but then so was the lady.
“Do you have to go home?” she asked after a pause. “Wife and kiddies, or major league baseball on television?”
“Wrong on all counts,” I replied. “No wife and kiddies at home. I’ve got a twelve-inch black and white that I only use to keep tabs on how the media gets things ass-backward. I don’t like baseball. I wouldn’t go to a live game, to say nothing of watching one on TV.”
“You sound like an endangered species to me,” she grinned, and we both laughed. “Then what you’re saying is that you don’t have any pressing reason to go straight home?”
“No.”
Her face darkened slightly. I might not have noticed it if my eyes hadn’t been glued to her face, drinking in her finely carved profile that could easily have graced the cover of any fashion magazine. A slight frown creased her forehead, then disappeared in far less time than it takes to tell.
“They had a huge potluck after Patty’s funeral,” she said somberly. “I couldn’t go to that, either, so whenever I attend a funeral in Patty’s honor, I always treat myself afterward. Care to join me?”
“Sure.”
“Where, then?” she asked.
How do you answer that question when you’ve just met someone and haven’t the slightest idea of their likes or dislikes?
“I don’t know. Where do you want to go?”
She looked at me and laughed. I felt stupid, inadequate, as though I had somehow failed to measure up to her expectations. “I’ll tell you what,” she said. “I’ll choose this time and you choose next time, deal?”
I nodded but I didn’t feel any better. My wires were all crossed. I was a gawky kid on his first blind date, which turns out to be with the head cheerleader. I wanted to impress her, although there was nothing to indicate she was in need of being impressed. Like someone who has always lusted after fine china, once he is faced with a Wedgwood plate, does he eat off it or put it away on a shelf? Here I was in a Porsche with the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, and I didn’t know what to say or what to do with my hands and feet. I hadn’t been that ill at ease in a long time.
She hit Lower Queen Anne, turned left at Mercer, and headed for the freeway, driving easily but purposefully. I didn’t ask where we were