Frenzy

Qui

“You said to call you if I noticed anything unusual,” Castle said.

“So what’s unusual?”

“Maybe it’s nothing, but this man in a gray car is parked right across the street and staring over at me.”

“Has he been there long?”

“Yes and no. He seems to come and go.”

“You sure he’s looking at you?”

“Reasonably so, yes. Although I can’t see his features, I feel his eyes on me.”

Qui

“Yes. Too often for it to be my natural paranoia. And I have no idea how many times he was there before I noticed him.”

“What about Maria? Might he be observing her?”

“She’s in the office, not visible.”

“What kind of car is it?”

“I’m not sure. It’s gray. Looks like it might be a . . . well, anything. Not new but not old. A midsized, four-door sedan.”

Average, average. “Unmarked police car?”

“Not impossible, but it doesn’t smell that way.”

Qui

“Excellent question.” Castle moved over and peered around the arbor vines, across the street where traffic was ru

The car was gone.

“He left.”

“You don’t sound relieved, Winston.”

“When you live as I do, you learn to smell danger. That was danger.”

“Isn’t that from a Humphrey Bogart movie?” Isn’t your entire family from a Humphrey Bogart movie?

“You’re the one who wanted to know about anything unusual,” Castle said “And we hired you for security.”

“You hired me to help locate a marble bust. A man looking at your restaurant then driving away doesn’t seem relevant.”

“It was the way he was looking.”

“I thought you couldn’t make out his features?”

Castle sighed. “You needed to be here.”

“If he returns, call me again.”

“Then what?”

“Then I’ll come there.”

Castle made a humph! sound, stuffed his phone into his pocket, and looked across the street again.

The gray car was still gone.

The danger lingered.

Castle wasn’t reassured. He knew that Qui

Humphrey Bogart!

He adjusted his towering chef’s cap.

Almost always, people die in Bogart movies.

After breaking the co

Seated at an outdoor table at the Far Castle, Sal answered his phone quickly, before it could disturb any of the other diners.

Qui

“I’m at an outside table and did notice a car parked across the street for a while, with the driver in it. Next time I checked, he was gone. There was a group of three over there for a while, too, looking over the place, maybe searching for somebody, then they moved on.”

“What about that group?” Qui

“Nothing about them. That’s my point. People stare across the street at this restaurant all the time. Maybe they’re looking for somebody, or maybe they’re trying to make out the specials on the board in front.”

“So the guy in the gray car didn’t seem suspicious?”

“Not particularly, but maybe you should talk to Harold. If the same guy in the same car was surveying the place during Harold’s watch, too, it could be we’ve got something.”

“Winston Castle says he smells danger.”

Sal laughed. “What he smells are spices from his own kitchen. The danger is from calories.”

“Nevertheless,” Qui

“Calories can kill,” Sal said, in his hoarse smoker’s voice.

After talking to Sal, Qui

“Sorry to pull you out of a deep well,” Qui

“I saw it,” Harold said. “It caught my attention ’cause the driver never got out. I couldn’t make out what make the car was, or the plate numbers. It wasn’t new, though. I could tell that by its styling. Maybe five or six years old.”

“Anything unusual about it?”

“Maybe,” Harold said. “It sort of smelled like danger.”

When Qui

“You know anything about being a food server?” Qui

“You mean waitress?”

“If you do.”

“I waited tables at a Smokey Torrito long, long ago. Earning my way through school.”

“What the hell is a Smokey Torrito?”

“They went out of business a long time ago,” Weaver said. “I wasn’t responsible.”

Qui

59

Beth Swift closed the drapes all the way so no light from the street below could filter into the bedroom.

The drapes were heavy. She and Ben liked complete darkness when they slept. And they enjoyed almost complete silence. Only a few muffled sounds from the street made their way into the bedroom.

It was well past midnight, and almost always by this time Beth was in what she figured was REM sleep. The most valuable kind. On an ordinary night, she’d be lying untroubled next to Ben, as good as unconscious. Beth had no idea why she couldn’t sleep tonight.

Ben was certainly experiencing REM sleep. His breathing was deep and regular. So much so that she was afraid he might begin to snore.

Beth had set in her mind a final imprint of her path back to the bed. She gave the heavy drapes a final adjustment, then in total darkness and by memory returned to her side of the bed.

She lay down carefully, making sure she didn’t disturb Ben. The bed springs squeaked, but softly. It was a king-sized bed, so there was enough space between them that her weight didn’t shift the mattress beneath him.

His breathing became slightly irregular, but within a few seconds returned to its previous steady bellows sound.

Beth lay on her back and stared up toward a ceiling she couldn’t see. Complete blackness. Her husband warm beside her. A heaven with everything in place. She felt drowsier now. Easy in body and mind. She felt sleep approach like a hesitant suitor, taking its time.

That was okay. She was relaxed and comfortable and in no hurry.

It was reassuring and in its way delightful to lie staring into the unbroken darkness and listen to Ben’s breathing and her own. As if they were one being, taking turns within itself.

Gradually the muffled sounds of the city faded away. The faint, rhythmic hissing of Ben’s breathing and her own was comforting and conducive to sleep.

Idly, half asleep, Beth amused herself by attempting to fix her breathing in exactly the same rhythm as her husband’s, but she found it impossible.

She couldn’t quite make the adjustment. Ben’s inhalations and exhalations were deeper and of longer duration. The hissing of her breathing didn’t quite match his, so that—