a little so it would look as if I’d at least been in it, shaved, and went down in the lobby for the morning papers. I worked through them very carefully, starting at the front page and going back to the want ads, and there wasn’t a word about my disappearance or about the grand jury at home. I was just about to throw them aside when I saw her come out of the elevator and head for the street. She had put her hair back up in the roll at the back of her neck, the way she had done it coming down to Colston. I waited until she had been gone a few minutes, and went out the door myself.
The afternoon papers will be out in an hour or two, I thought. They’ll have something in them. I was beginning to burn with impatience, wanting to see how Buford would break the story and how well it went over with the general public.
She was sitting alone at a table in the corner. I took my tray back and sat down across from her. “There’s nothing in the papers yet,” I said.
She nodded. “There hasn’t been time.” I knew she was right. Nobody would think anything about it until I failed to show up for work this morning. Buford, for the benefit of the others, would call the jail to see if I had come in there last night with Shevlin. Then he would call the garage and learn that the car was still out. By that time Lorraine and Hurd, and anybody else who happened to drop into the office, would be buzzing. Buford would call the boat place at the foot of the lake and learn that I hadn’t come back with the boat and that the car was still parked there by the boathouse. The story would begin to spread like fire on a windy day, and the news services would probably have it by ten o’clock. I looked at my watch. It was a quarter of eleven; Buford would probably be leading a search party right now.
I was eager to get started and couldn’t even taste what I was eating. “Let’s go, Doris,” I said. “You’ve got a lot of shopping to do.”
She smiled. “All right. But Jack, I’m afraid you don’t know much about women’s clothes. Dresses and skirts have to have alterations, and we don’t have time for it now. I’ll just try to get something to travel in, and then buy other things when we get to Seattle. The clothes will be different there, anyway.”
I hadn’t thought of that, but I knew she was right. “O.K.,” I said, disappointed. “But all the other things that don’t need alterations—you’ll get those, won’t you?”
“Yes,” she said, looking at me gently. “It means a lot to you, doesn’t it?”
We went out into the swarming, sun-baked street where heat lay in wait and lunged at you just outside the air-conditioned doors. The first place was a luggage shop, where we bought her two matching bags and asked to have them delivered to the hotel. Then what she had said about alterations reminded me that I had better get the suit now so they could have it ready for tomorrow. She waited inside the men’s store while I bought it and made arrangements to have it delivered to me at the hotel no later than two the next afternoon.
“Now, you,” I said, touching her gently on the arm.
“Are you sure you want to go along?”
“Yes,” I said. I began to change my mind, however, before we’d even got through shoes and handbags. I was too alone here in this jungle of women, too conspicuous, like a chained bear at a Junior League tea. It was worse than foolish; it was stupid. I’d never blend very well into this background, and too many people would remember me.
“I hate to leave you for a minute, but I’m going to have to get out of here,” I said at last. We stood in a crowded aisle with the stream of women shoppers eddying and flowing around us. I gave her three hundred dollars. “I’ll meet you at the hotel.”
“I don’t need this much,” she protested.
“Don’t buy cheap things. Please,” I urged.
She looked up at me. “Why, Jack?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. It’s something I can’t explain. I just don’t want you to have anything second-rate or makeshift. You’ve had enough of that.”