Killer Summer by Ridley Pearson Read Free Book Online

it to her advantage. “I have to live with myself in the morning.” She looked him directly in the eye.
    “I’d love the company,” he said. “But I won’t push you.”
    “You just did.”
    “I’m William. No strings, I promise.”
    “But it’s the strings,” she said softly, “that make it interesting. Why brush and saddle the horse if you’re not going to ride it?” She paused. “Do you like to ride, William?”
    “Fly,” he said without missing a beat. “There’s an unclaimed stool at the piano. Yours if you want it.”
    “I want it,” said Lorraine. She caught the waiter’s attention. “Leave it open,” she said, following William to the piano.
    “Put it on my tab, Gina,” William instructed.
    Lorraine glanced over her shoulder catching a glimpse of Salvo. He was sipping a seven-dollar beer at the bar, looking bored.
    She ate a big meal: lamb shank with rosemary mashed potatoes and asparagus. Cantell insisted men liked women who ate well. She wanted William to like her.
    They skipped dessert for snifters of Grand Marnier.
    “Is there dancing?” she asked, knowing the answer. “And I don’t mean rock. Something more . . . You know, standards, that sort of thing?”
    “The Duchin Room . . .”
    “Do you like to dance, William?”
    “Let’s find out,” he said, leaning toward her slightly so the heady scent of alcohol and oranges carried from his breath.
    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.
     
     
     
    S alvo 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.
     
     
     
    I t 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