The Midnight Room by Ed Gorman

Author:Ed Gorman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

The house Nicole was showing was listed at 1.4 million dollars. In a small city the size of Skylar this price gave you a clear choice, one of the sedate old homes along the three blocks of Hamilton Street or a McMansion on the far west side. Four thirty-six happened to be one of the sedate ones, but with new features such as a spa and gourmet kitchen. Steve had checked it out while parked down the block waiting for Nicole to reappear with her prospective buyers. He’d found the house listed in the newspaper he bought each morning. The nine-foot ceilings and the two-story foyer had interested him most of all. Having grown up in a small ranch-style house in a popular subdivision, this kind of architecture fascinated him.

As he sat there watching dogs, butterflies and birds exult in the blue-sky day, he found his stomach burning again. Nerves. He didn’t expect her to throw her arms around him and say, Yes, let’s run away tonight! But he hoped she would listen seriously to what he had to say. To this new source of money. Enough money to facilitate a divorce and to set himself and Nicole up in California, with more than enough to live on for three or four years if they had to.

He had to be careful not to even hint where the money was coming from. And if she loved him, as he truly believed she did, then she’d be too happy with his news to question it.

The middle-aged couple who drove the new Mercedes CL-class stepped through the front door. They were smiling and talking as Nicole locked up the house again. She wore a white linen suit—one he was familiar with in many respects—and her hair was done in a chignon, a style he especially liked on her.

They continued to chat as they made their way down the steep steps to the sidewalk, the enormous lawn making the steps seem small and fragile. The man had the respectable gray hair and poise of an executive. His wife was a little more worn with her years but had a pleasant face and intelligent eyes. His binoculars revealed all these things.

Steve drove a gray unmarked Plymouth left over from a few years ago, when the mayor had made a deal with one of his golfing buddies. The cars hadn’t been worth piss. But he was sure Nicole wouldn’t recognize it from this distance. And before she would get in her car and pull away he’d be talking to her.

Their chitchat seemed interminable to him. Impatience was one of his curses. It had led him to ruin a few cases he’d worked on over the years. His stomach flared up again and he pressed the fingers of his right hand against his belly.

And then, finally, the prospective buyers were encasing themselves in the hermetically sealed world of the big Mercedes. Everything looked better when seen through those windows. Was bad news allowed to play on its radio? Probably not.

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