She caught the headlights of the Expedition in the outside mirror of William’s rented Chevy. Salvo had replaced the plates earlier in the day and had been outside waiting for Lorraine when she left.
The Duchin Room’s lights were low, a competent trio working through the theme song to Titanic. The small dance floor was crowded with white-haired couples. A few trophy wives went through the motions. Thankfully, this crowd would not distract Salvo. He was inclined toward the pom-pom set.
As William searched for a table, he suggested the dance floor, but she declined, wanting another drink in him first. Business before pleasure.
Halfway through their drinks, a table opened up near the band, and they crammed onto a bench side by side. She warmed him up with some affectionate touching, laying her hand on his arm, pressing her leg against his. With the first strains of a slow song, she looked out at the dance floor and said, “So?”
As the two of them stood, she saw Salvo lay a bill on the bar and move toward the dance floor. She appreciated Salvo’s ability to stay with the plan.
William was a decent dancer. As he pulled her to him, she let him feel all of her, let him know where she was going with this. His arms now surrounded her and his hands gently brushed her backside. She broke free, spun him around, and pressed herself up against him. As she did so, her hands slipped into his pockets. He tensed with the contact, as she continued to playfully slip her hands in and out of his pockets. She gently urged him closer to a post at the edge of the dance floor and, as Salvo appeared there, released a ring of keys into his outstretched hand, William none the wiser.
Salvo entered the men’s room, surprised by the appointments: marble wainscoting, gleaming brass fixtures, lead-cut mirrors, linen hand towels, classical music, oil paintings on the walls.
He closed himself into a stall and worked quickly to take a wax impression of what proved to be an unusual, complicated key.
He arrived back at the Duchin Room in the middle of an up-tempo “Girl from Ipanema.” Lorraine and the pilot were still on the dance floor. She caught his eye and pointed to the floor. Salvo dropped the keys by the post, made a final loop through the bar as if hunting for a friend, and left.
It took William forty-five minutes to notice his keys were missing. The discovery came as he went to pay the check.
“Shit,” he said, patting his pants frantically, explaining his loss.
“I’ll bet it’s my fault,” Lorraine said, allowing another of her provoking laughs. “Your pockets,” she added, wishing she could force herself to blush. “The slow dance.”
They searched the dance floor between songs, interrupted by a waitress. The key chain had been turned in to the bartender.
She accepted a ride back to the Christiania, where they’d started.
“I’m coming off a complicated relationship,” she explained from the passenger’s seat. “I’ve flirted tonight and I’m sure I came on a little too strong, and I apologize for that. I’m here for the wine auction tomorrow. I may or may not stay a day or two more. And if I do stay, I’d like to see you again. And this time with no excuses or apologies. But tonight… I need to collect myself and not do something self-destructive. Is this making any sense or are you about to scream?”
“A little of both,” he said.
“I hope it matters to you that I like you. I hope it matters that if I stay after the auction it will be to see you.”
“We’re scheduled out Sunday morning,” he said. “Back to L.A.”
“Oh.”
“So, if you’d like to reconsider, I can be very forgiving.”
She answered with a kiss, knowing she’d just cost him his job. She slid out of the car without another word.
13
You can pick up the room-service stuff,” Summer Sumner told the woman who’d answered the direct-dial.
Her father had abandoned her after his egg whites with salmon, off to a meeting, though he’d booked a tennis court for the two of them at eleven A.M. She’d had a Belgian waffle with mixed berries, orange juice, and green tea. She felt bloated.
The suite was gi-normous, two bedrooms that shared a living room, a balcony with views of the outdoor skating rink and Dollar Mountain-“the kiddy hill.” She didn’t care one bit about getting rid of the dirty dishes and the rolling cart; it was the room-service boy that interested her. She was crushed when, as it turned out, an older guy with a Russian accent retrieved the breakfast cart.
She waited five minutes and ordered wheat toast, no butter, and another cup of green tea. Fifteen minutes later, a knock on the door drew her to the peephole.
She held the door for him. “Put it anywhere.”
He might have been the same bellboy she’d seen the day before: about her height and skinny. It looked like his mother cut his hair. He was either her age or a couple years older, which would work just fine. He had an honest face, shy blue eyes, and his Adam’s apple bobbed as he spoke.
“Sign here, please.”
“You delivered our breakfast too.”
“Yeah.” He was fighting to remain professional. “Is there anything else I can get you?”
“When do you get off work?”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
“I’m pulling a double. Seven A.M. to three, and three to eleven tonight. Why?”
“Why do you think?” she asked.
He placed the tray on the coffee table.
“Are there any hot springs in the area?” she asked. It was a loaded question: she’d read in the town paper, the Mountain Express, about the hot springs being a magnet for teenagers.
“I… ah… yeah. There are.”
“Could you take me?” she proposed.
“Me?”
She made a point of looking around the room. “Yeah.”
“I suppose.”
“You suppose or you could?” she asked.
“I suppose I could. But not until eight. A friend can cover for me. And… like… I don’t have my suit or anything, and I live about-”
“Who said anything about suits?”
“Ah…” He’d turned beet-red.
She had him exactly where she wanted him.
“I’ve got to get out of this hotel,” she said. “This place is totally driving me crazy. I’m like a prisoner.”
“I could definitely take you,” he said. “Are you meeting someone there or-”
“Dude? No. It’s just us, you and me, right? Unless you want to invite some friends along. But I don’t bite or anything. It sorta sucks, hanging around here. And my dad’s got some private tasting and dinner thing tonight to do with the wine auction, and obviously I’m not invited since the drinking age is twenty-one, which might lead you to ask why he brought me on this trip in the first place since I can’t do anything he has planned. And the obvious answer would be how stupid it was for him to bring me along and how I did not want to come, but, then again, he is seriously stupid, or can be, and therefore here I am.”
“I’m not supposed to interact with guests.” He just threw it out there.
“Yeah? So?” she asked.
His eyes ticked furiously back and forth. He was cute enough but immature.
“So, I’ll meet you just after eight in the medical-building parking lot. It’s over by the inn. You know where that is?”
“I’ll find it.”
“If you’re not there by quarter after, I’m gone,” he said.
I doubt that, she thought. “Oh, I’ll be there,” she said, smiling.
14
But if it’s vinegar,” Fiona said, standing on a small stepladder in the glare of fluorescent lights, her camera mounted on a tripod and aimed straight down, “then why would anyone bid anything for it?”
Walt had set her up in the Command Center, a room laid out like a college lecture hall that sat fifty. There were half a dozen flat screens suspended from the ceiling and an electronic white board. He carefully rotated the first of the three bottles exactly as Remy had instructed. It, along with the others, remained cradled in gray foam. The initials, etched into the glass below the label, came into view: