Twist Read Free Page B

and angles had intrigued a college art class almost as much as the rest of her. That was all too apparent with the male students, which always amused Bonnie.
    No doubt the man following her was similarly aroused, but he didn’t amuse her. He scared her in a subtle way that made her body seem drugged.
    She was sure he wanted her to see him, wanted her fear to grow. For some reason, he was nurturing her dread.
    She glanced back over her shoulder, and there he was.
    He stood now about a hundred feet behind her on the crowded sidewalk, statue still, and stared from beneath the shadowed arc of his ball-cap bill. It was odd how she couldn’t see his eyes but felt them on her.
    Her fear expanded, and with it her anger.
    You want me to be afraid, you bastard!
    She spun on her heel and walked directly toward him. Cope with your fears by facing them. He seemed to smile—she couldn’t be sure—as he leisurely entered a nearby deli.
    Without hesitation she followed him into the deli.
    It wasn’t much cooler in there than outside.
    A gondola with steel trays of heated food ran down the middle of the deli. Shelves of packaged food were along one side wall. A series of glass-door coolers ran along the opposite wall, stacked with bottled and canned drinks and dairy products. Beyond the coolers, more shelves of groceries. People were milling about at the counter and among the shelves and coolers. A few of them were carrying wire baskets.
    Bonnie looked around for the blue ball cap and didn’t see it. Didn’t see the bastard. She went to the back of the deli and walked along the heads of the aisles, pausing to stare down each one.
    He was gone. Somehow he was gone.
    Had he been the product of her imagination? A mirage, maybe, from the heat.
    Probably he wanted her to think that. Actually, he might have slipped back outside when she had her back momentarily turned and she was striding along the cooler aisle. He’d had time to manage that. Just.
    Charging back out onto the sidewalk, Bonnie bumped into a woman hard enough to make her stagger.
    “I’m sorry, too,” the woman snarled
    Everybody was irritable. The weather.
    A male voice behind Bonnie said, “Bump into me, sweetheart.”
    She turned and saw a boy about sixteen leering at her. He wilted and backed away as she glared at him; then he walked past her and over by the curb without glancing back at her.
    If only they were all so easy to discourage.
    A dry breeze was blowing, turning the city into a convection oven. Bonnie wished to hell it would rain at least enough to cool down all the damned steel and concrete in the city. She looked up at the sky, not expecting to see a cloud. There were two small ones. They looked as dry as cotton.
    Bonnie was only a few blocks from her apartment. She walked them uneasily, unable to keep her head still, trying to catch another glimpse of the man who’d been dogging her.
    But she knew she wouldn’t see him. He was through with her for now. She hoped.

    Sal Vitali and Harold Mishkin sat in Sal’s car and watched for Joan Plunket to emerge with her not-so-secret lover, Foster Oaks, from their room at the Blue Sparrow Motel in New Jersey. They both knew the couple would emerge soon. They must.
    The detectives knew that Bob Plunket, Joan’s husband, was right now in a Manhattan hotel room with his own not-so-secret lover, his fellow accountant Laura Loodner. Laura Loodner’s husband, a jeweler named Marty, knew nothing and loved only his cat.
    It was Bob Plunket who’d hired Q&A to get the goods on his wife, Joan.
    It was Sal and Harold’s job to keep track of this marital mess. The case involved a lot of staking out, spending time in the car as they were doing now, watching and waiting. Sal hated this part of detective work. He usually drove the car. Harold usually drove him crazy.
    Like this evening, as the two men sat in Sal’s old Taurus in the Blue Sparrow parking lot and watched and watched the door to room 256. It was a maroon