“Yes.” She looked up at him solemnly. He smiled as beatifically as an angel. When he looked at her that way, she couldn’t deny him anything—not when they were teenagers, not when they were married, not now, not ever.
Stacey Wallace Minton, the judge’s proper, straitlaced daughter, immediately dropped to her knees in front of him, hastily opened his fly, and took him into her hungry mouth.
“Miz Gaither, ma’am? Miz Gaither? You in there?”
Alex had been dozing. Roused by the knocking on her door, which had been repaired, she woke up to find that she was sprawled on top of the bedspread, stiff and cold. Her eyes were swollen from crying.
“What do you want?” Her voice amounted to little more than a croak. “Go away.”
“Is your phone off the hook, ma’am?”
“Damn.” She swung her feet to the side of the bed. Her clothes were wrinkled and bunched around her. She shook them back into place as she walked to the window and pulled aside the drape. The motel’s night clerk was standing at the door.
“I too
k the phone off the hook so I wouldn’t be disturbed,” she told him through the window.
He peered in at her, obviously glad to see that she was still alive. “Sorry to bother you then, ma’am, but there’s this guy trying to get in touch with you. He’s been arguin’ with me, saying you couldn’t be talking on your phone for this long.”
“What guy?”
“Happer or Harris or something,” he mumbled, consulting the slip of paper he’d brought with him. He held it closer to the light over her door. “Can’t quite make out my writin’ here… spellin’ ain’t so good.”
“Harper? Greg Harper?”
“I reckon that’s it, yes, ma’am.”
Alex dropped the drape back into place, slid the chain lock free, and opened the door. “Did he say what he wanted?”
“Sure did. Said for me to tell you that you was to be in Austin tomorrow morning for a ten o’clock meeting.”
Alex stared at the clerk, stupefied. “You must have gotten the message wrong. Ten o’clock tomorrow morning?”
“That’s what he said, and I didn’t git it wrong, ’cause I wrote it down right here.” He showed her the slip of paper with the message scrawled in pencil. “The man’s been callin’ you all afternoon and was p.o.’d ’cause he couldn’t git you. Finally, he said he was goin’ out for the evenin’ and for me to come to your room and hand-deliver the message, which I done. So, good night.”
“Wait!”
“Look, I’m s’posed to be tending the switchboard.”
“Did he say what kind of meeting this was, why it was so urgent?”
“Naw, only that you’re s’posed to be there.”
He stood there expectantly. With mumbled thanks, she pressed a dollar bill into his hand, and he loped off in the direction of the lobby.
Thoughtfully, Alex closed her door and reread the message. It made no sense. It wasn’t like Greg to be so cryptic. It wasn’t like him to call meetings that were virtually impossible to make, either.
When the bafflement began to wear off, the enormity of her dilemma set in. She had to be in Austin by ten o’clock in the morning. It was already dark. If she left now, she would have to drive most of the night, and would arrive in Austin in the wee hours.
If she waited until morning, she would have to leave dreadfully early and then be on a deadline to get there in time. Either choice was wretched, and she wasn’t mentally or emotionally fit to make a decision.
Then, an idea occurred to her. Before she could talk herself out of it, she placed a telephone call.
“Sheriff’s department.”
“Sheriff Lambert, please.”
“He’s not here. Can anybody else help?”