The Quickie

The blue Tiffany shopping bag.

I stopped dead-still, and stayed silent as I watched him head toward the doorway.

Chapter 99

CARRY-ON? TIFFANY BAG? Where was Paul going? What the hell was happening now? Did I really want to know?

Yes! I needed to find out, I decided, as I watched him flag a taxi.

His cab was pulling out when I whistled and caught the next one pulling in.

"At the risk of sounding clichéd," I told the orange-turbaned driver. "Follow that cab."

So we did. Up to Midtown Manhattan. Then through the Midtown Tu

When our cabs reached the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, I called Paul's cell.

"Hey, Paul. What's up?" I said when he answered after a couple of ring-a-dings.

"Lauren," Paul said. "How was your sleepover?" I could actually see him through the rear window of the taxi in front of me, holding his cell to his ear.

"Terrific," I said. "Listen, Paul. I'm bored out of my mind. I was thinking of heading down to see you for lunch today. What do you say? That be okay?"

Here it is, Paul. Your moment of truth.

"Can't, babe," Paul said. "You know Mondays are impossible. We got six earnings reports coming in that have to be crunched and recrunched. I can see my boss from my desk right now. He's knocking back beta-blockers with his venti. If I get out of here by eight tonight, I'll be lucky. I'm sorry. I'll make it up to you, promise. How are you feeling?"

The green sign we were speeding under said " LaGuardia Airport." I had to hold my hand over the mouthpiece on my cell in order to muffle a sob.

"Just fine, Paul," I said after a second. "Don't worry about me. See you tonight." If not sooner, babe!

At the airport, I had to flash my badge and NYPD ID in order to get past the security checkpoint without a ticket. Then I stayed well back in the torrent of people as I followed Paul down the departures concourse, past the regiments of newsstands and gift shops and open bars.

He stopped suddenly, about a hundred feet ahead of me. He sat down at Gate 32.

Keeping my distance by a bank of pay phones, I felt like an ulcer exploded open in my stomach when I saw his destination.

Washington , DC .

Chapter 100

IT COST ME $175 to snag a last-minute seat on Paul's flight. What was I saying? It cost Paul $175. Excellent.

Watching from a restaurant across the departure concourse, I literally flinched as Paul was checking in for the business-class boarding call.

That was because the attendant at the counter did something more than a little odd after he handed Paul his ticket stub.

He punched Paul's fist playfully – as if they were old pals! What was that all about?

I snatched a discarded newspaper from the boarding area to shield my face as I passed through the front cabin, but I needn't have bothered. A glance showed me that he was engrossed in conversation with the man on his right – another frequent flier, I supposed.

If there was a good thing to say about my second-to-last, back-row seat in coach, it was that there was no way for Paul and me to bump into each other during the flight. Oh, and it had a handy barf bag. One that I made use of promptly after takeoff.

Pregnancy and motion sickness and watching your world go up in apocalyptic flames – really bad combination.

"Sorry," I said to my thoroughly disturbed female executive neighbor, who was on the phone. "Baby on the way. Morning has broken."

The really tricky part came when we landed in Washington. Paul, along with the rest of the corporate-class dweebs, got off first. So I really had to hightail it out to the arrival gate in order to see which way he'd gone.

But by the time I'd made it to the taxi line on the street, there was no sign of him.

Damn it, damn it, damn it! What a waste this whole trip down here had been.

I was doubling back, heading up the escalator, when I saw him coming out of the men's room. He'd changed into jeans and a nice blue sweater – and he wasn't wearing his glasses anymore.

What kept me from screaming his name right then and there, I don't know. His ass was so busted it was unreal.

Instead, I just double-timed it back down the stairs and continued to trail my deceitful husband.

I needed to know firsthand just how deep he'd sunk the blade into my back.

Paul went directly past the taxi line through the sliding glass doors into the street. The doors were closing when I saw him do something that made me stop in my tracks and just stare.

He opened the passenger door of a shiny black Range Rover that was idling at the curb.

I decided to run then.

By the time I'd made it ten feet outside, the sleek luxury SUV was already moving, tires shrieking as it cut off a minibus and shot into the left lane.

My eyes strained to get the license plate number as I ran across the exhaust-stained pavement after it.

It was a DC plate starting with 99.

I gave up on the rest of the plate number and tried to get a quick look at the driver. I wanted to see who, or more specifically what gender, the person was who had just picked up my husband.

But the windows were tinted. I discovered that little fact about the same moment that I tripped over a golf bag and gave the hallowed ground of our nation's capital an enthusiastic, chest-bumping high-five.

Chapter 101

NOT EXACTLY SURE where to start looking for Paul, I decided to pay Roger Zampella, the contact detective listed in the FBI report, a visit.

I'd never met Roger face-to-face, of course. He turned out to be a large, well-dressed African American with a smile brighter than the polished buckles of his polka-dot suspenders.

When I called him from the airport, he'd immediately invited me over to his squad room at the Metro DC Second District Station on Idaho Avenue. I arrived to catch him just begi

"You don't mind if I eat while we talk, do you, Detective?" he said, flipping his silk pink-and-green repp tie over his shoulder. He tucked a napkin into the white collar of his two-tone baby blue banker's shirt before upending a brown lunch bag onto his desk with a flourish.

A small apple slid out, along with a Quaker oatmeal bar about the size of a used bar of soap.

He cleared his throat.

"My wife," he explained as he tore open the bar's wrapper with his teeth, "just saw the results of my latest cholesterol test. I got an F-minus. You said on the phone you wanted to talk to me about a robbery? I should have told you, I'm in Homicide now."

"It's actually from nearly five years ago," I said. "I was wondering if you could recall anything about it. The case number was three-seven-three-four-five. An armed robbery at the Sheraton Crystal City Hotel in Arlington, Virginia, across the river from the capital. The perpetrator -"

"Left some blood," Detective Zampella said without any hesitation. "The ticket-broker thing. I remember it."

"You have a good memory," I said.

"You never forget the open ones, unfortunately," he said.

"You said something about a ticket broker?"

Zampella sniffed at the oatmeal bar before he took a dainty squirrel nibble.

"The Sheraton, this is the one out near Reagan National Airport, was hosting the a