a flight to Nice.
He took a cab to Sur la Mer, a seaside hotel, and checked in as Devon Billingham.
“Just the one night?” the clerk asked.
“Wish I could stay,” Teddy said ruefully. “I’m meeting a friend of mine. Floyd Maitland. Has he checked in yet?”
The desk clerk consulted his computer. “Two days ago.”
“I don’t suppose you could tell me the room number.”
The clerk smiled. “It is not done.”
“I understand. May I leave him a note?”
“But of course.”
Teddy took a piece of note paper, scrawled: Floyd. I’m here. Call me. Devon. He folded it up, wrote Floyd Maitland on it, and gave it to the desk clerk. “Can you see that he gets it?”
“Yes, of course.”
As he turned to go, Teddy could see the desk clerk putting his note in box 432.
52.
FLOYD MAITLAND LEANED back in his beach chair and stroked his luxurious moustache. Floyd loved the beach, though it was hard to maintain his image there. He couldn’t wear his Stetson with a bathing suit. On the other hand, he could enjoy tall, cool mixed drinks with little umbrellas in them. In a Texas barroom, he wouldn’t be caught dead drinking anything but straight bourbon.
The blond waitress, in the skimpy bikini that Maitland liked, padded by in the sand. He waved to her. She nodded at him, but stopped to take the order of two young Frenchmen in beach chairs. He could see her laughing and flirting with them.
He bawled her out when she took his order. Some nerve. She was supposed to be bending over him and giggling in that flimsy top.
He had another wicked frozen concoction.
By the time Maitland left the beach he was quite loaded, which wasn’t fair somehow. He knew exactly how much bourbon he could drink. These mixed drinks snuck up on a fellow.
Maitland went back to his room, hopped in the shower to wash away the sand, and dressed for dinner. It took a little longer than if he hadn’t been drinking all afternoon, but a half hour later he was fully decked out in a denim shirt, blue jeans, and cowboy boots, a casual ensemble that cost more than the monthly salary of one of his farmhands. He put on his Stetson hat and looked in the full-length mirror. He cut a dashing figure, if he did say so himself. He hoped that the little brunette he’d been talking to the night before would be in the bar. Of course, in the bar he’d have to go back to bourbon. How would that mix?
There was a knock on the door.
Maitland frowned. He hadn’t called room service. Surely he would remember that. Perhaps it was the little brunette. He’d given her his room number. No, it would be the bellboy with some annoying message or other.
Maitland crossed the room, not staggering, but very aware of where he was putting his feet. He opened the door and gawked.
Staring back at him was . . .
Floyd Maitland!
It was like looking in a mirror.
What the hell?
“Take off your hat.”
Maitland blinked stupidly. “What?”
“Take off your hat,” the man said, raising his own Stetson.
Maitland blindly mimicked him, raising his hat.
Before Maitland had a chance to realize what was happening, his doppelgänger aimed a gun at his head. It was an automatic. It had a long barrel. A silencer.
Maitland had time to think, That’s not my gun, before it shot him in the head.
53.
TEDDY STEPPED INTO Maitland’s room and closed the door. Maitland had done him the favor of falling over backward so Teddy didn’t have to move the body to do so.
Teddy grabbed a DO NOT DISTURB sign off the inside knob, opened the door, slipped it on the outside knob, and retrieved the duffel bag he’d left in the hallway. This time he closed and locked the door.
Teddy grabbed a towel from the bathroom and slipped it under Maitland’s head. He dug into the duffel bag and came out with a plastic bag about the size of a wastepaper basket liner. He slipped it around Maitland’s head and sealed it with a twist tie.
Maitland’s Stetson had fallen on the rug. Teddy picked it up and examined it. The hat was old and weather-beaten, clearly the man’s favorite. Maitland would take pride in the fact that it was worn, proof that despite his wealth and habits he wasn’t all hat and no cattle.
Teddy searched the body. Maitland’s wallet was in the hip pocket of his jeans. It contained a driver’s license, several credit cards, and various other cards, including