The Maid's Diary(23)
Jon scoots out of the booth. Pressing his phone against his shirt, he hurriedly weaves through the crowd, making for the quieter lobby area outside the pub. He puts the phone back to his ear.
“Sorry, love. I should’ve called. Just as Henry left the pub, some of the guys from work came in. They’re all talking about the new development. One of the environmental assessors is with them. I figured I should connect with him, build some contacts. He’s still here. Could be a late one. You okay with that? I can come home now if—”
“No. No—I—it’s fine. How’d it go with Henry?”
Jon says it went fine. Daisy presses and he says he will explain at home. He tells her not to wait up. But before he can kill the call, Mia enters the lobby.
“Jon, I really do need to be up early,” Mia says quietly. “Thank you for everything. It was a lovely evening.” She walks past him, out the hotel doors, and into the autumn night.
Jon ends his call, pockets his phone, and rushes to the doors. “Mia!” he calls after her.
She stops on the sidewalk, turns. Streetlight glints on her hair. She looks at him expectantly.
Suddenly he feels awkward. He slides his hands into his pant pockets.
“I—good night,” he says. “Thanks.”
They stand there for a moment. Facing each other. Man and woman. A chemistry crackling between them. They’re on a knife’s edge—either they act on their desire, turn it into something. Or walk away. Jon does not act.
Mia comes quickly forward. She puts her mouth near his ear and whispers, “Bye, JonJon Rittenberg. I’m pleased to have met you. Finally. In the flesh. After all these years.” She gives him a feather of a kiss on the cheek, turns, and walks away.
“Fuck,” he mumbles under his breath as he stands in the cool night, watching her go—the seductive sway of her hips. Those high, sexy heels. The swish of her long hair on her back. He’s hard with lust. He’s sweating, breathing heavily. She disappears around the corner of a building, and is gone.
He swallows, slowly becoming conscious of the city sounds. Of reality. And he says a silent thanks to whatever gods rule the universe, because he’s just been saved from making a terrible mistake. He turns and reenters the pub. He did the right thing, holding back. This knowledge gives him a little burst of self-satisfaction. But as he returns to his table to collect the bill, he sees a napkin with a smudge of deep-red lipstick. It’s a Schr?dinger’s-type conundrum, he thinks. He simultaneously wants and does not want to see Mia Reiter again.
Jon considers folding the napkin and sliding it into his pocket. But he leaves it and goes up to the bar to settle his tab.
“The lady paid already,” the bartender says as Jon fishes in his wallet for his credit card.
He glances up from his wallet. “I was going to settle for the earlier steak meals and whiskies as well,” he says.
“Like I said, she settled it.”
“The whole thing—the two steak meals and drinks?”
“Whole thing.”
He starts to leave, stops. “Did she pay by credit card—leave an address or anything?”
“Nice try, buddy. She paid cash.”
THE PHOTOGRAPHER
Jon Rittenberg appears to have no idea he’s being watched from a vehicle across the street as he converses with the brunette outside the hotel entrance.
The watcher in the car raises his camera and aims his telephoto lens out the open window. He adjusts focus to ensure that he’s capturing the name of the hotel above the entrance as well as Rittenberg and the woman.
Click. Click. Click.
The brunette steps forward and kisses Rittenberg on the cheek. The photographer clicks again.
The brunette turns and starts down the sidewalk, moving with the flair and sophisticated ease so often displayed by women on the streets of Milan. Or Paris. The photographer smiles as he watches Rittenberg watching her go.
Instead of following the brunette, Rittenberg reenters the hotel lobby.
The watcher clicks again, capturing Rittenberg’s entrance.
The photographer lowers his camera, wondering if things might have ended very differently tonight if Rittenberg had gone after the brunette. She appeared to be leaving him an opening. He didn’t take it.
MAL
November 1, 2019. Friday.
It’s late afternoon when Mal and Benoit gather with the rest of their major crimes unit. Seated around a boardroom table in the incident room with them are two other investigators, Arnav Patel and Jack Duff; admin officer Lula Griffith; and Gavin Oliver, an affiant who deals with search warrant applications and case documentation. While her core team is small, Mal has at her disposal the forensic ident unit, uniformed officers from various PDs, analysts, and tech support. She can ramp up or down at a moment’s notice.
As the lead investigator Mal sits at the head of the table with a laptop in front of her, a monitor behind her. The room is overly warm, and someone has brought pizza. The scent of pepperoni, garlic, and melting cheese is cloying. Mal is keen to get out of here and back into the field.
“Okay, we don’t have conclusive evidence that we’re dealing with a homicide, but we’re working on the assumption we are. So let’s move fast here.” She hits a key on her computer. An image of the Glass House fills the screen behind her.