When he put the key to the door, she pulled it open.
She was wearing a negligee and a garter belt.
“I probably shouldn’t admit this you weren’t coming.”
The Monroe Suite The Willard Hotel Washington, D.C. 5:15 A.M., June 5, 1941
When Canidy came out of the bathroom, Sue-Ellen was sitting up in the bed. She was even at first light a fine-looking female. Ladylike. To look at her, the fact that she was a married woman; that she had gone after him, rather than the other way around; and that she had been both so passionate and so delightfully, so wickedly inventive in the bed seemed hardly credible.
“Sorry I have to run,” he said. “When am I going to see you again?”
“You’re not Sue-Ellen Chambers said, pleasantly but firmly.
He found his trousers and put them on. He looked across the room at her. “Was I that much of a disappointment?”
“Not at all,” she said, and chuckled. “You were all I thought you would be, and more.”
“But?” he said. “I like to quit when I’m ahead,” she said, matter-offactly. There was nothing of the magnolia blossom about her now, he she said. “But I was afraid thought. She was, under the drawl, about as soft as stainless steel. She had seen what she wanted, and taken it, and now it was time to make an end to the scene. Sueellen was a tough cookie. Still, though she might want to stop him right here, he wasn’t willing to quit so easily.
He turned away from her to zip his fly. “Because you’re married?” he asked, without turning around. “Is that it?”
“Obviously,” she said.
“That didn’t seem to be a consideration last night.”
“Don’t be nasty,” she said.
“I’m crushedi” he said wryly. “And a little curious.”
“I can’t take the chance of getting involved,” she said. “I could easily get involved with you.”
“Guilty,” he said. He slipped his feet into his shoes.
“Every once in a while,” she said, “I do this. The conditions have to be right. I have to be alone, in circumstances that are in no way suspicious. And there has to be a suitable man.”
“I’m pleased that you found me suitable,” he said, hoping that the sudden anger he felt didn’t show in his voice.
“Very suitable,” she said. “You struck me as someone who wouldn’t make trouble for either of us when I explained the circumstances. Someone who wouldn’t, for example, try to telephone me.
“I really would like to see you again.”
“Don’t ruin everything now,” she said, and there was steel in her voice.
“OK.” he said. He looked around for his cummerbund, and couldn’t find it.
She read his mind. “You left it in the other room,” she said. “When you first got here.”
He remembered. She had been so anxious to get at him that she had dropped to her knees the moment she had closed the door. The cummerbund had been in the way.
“Oh,”he said. “Thank you.”
” Good-bye, Dick Canidy,” she said.
He inclined his head toward her, sort of a bow, but said nothing. He went out of the bedroom, closing the door after him.
The driveway gate in the wall of the house on Q Street was closed, and the key for it was not on the key ring Cynthia Chenowith had given him. But there was a key to the walk gate, so he got out of the station wagon and entered the property that way.
He was almost through Whittaker’s private parlk and at the driveway gate when a motion caught his eye.
Chesley Haywood Whittaker, in a silk dressing gown, was walking quickly across the cobblestones between the garage and the kitchen.
Canidy ducked behind a tree so that he wouldin’t be seen.
Sonofabitch, Chesty is screwing Cynthia Chenowith. Why else could he have been in the garage… at five-thirty in the morning… where she had an apartment?
He thought that over a moment. The first thing that came to his mind was that Chesty Whittaker was a dirty old man, demanding sexual services in repayment for the bills he was paying. But he knew Chesty Whittaker better than that. Chesty wasn’t the one who’d started whatever was going on.