Westlake, Donald E - Sara and Jack 01 by Trust Me on This (v1.1) Page B

goddamn unlikely.
                 All
right. Here’s the page with the money quote about potato chips, which would be
the page immediately after the one with the appointment and the car. Switching
on the gooseneck lamp on her desk space, Sara held the notepad angled up so the
light flooded onto the potato chip quote. Leaning in close, eyes low to the
edge of the pad, she tried to look across the page, hoping to see the indentations pressed there by her having written on
the page above it. That sometimes worked, though it was much easier when the
next page hadn’t already been written on. Staring, squinting, Sara could see
that there were such identations, but she couldn’t read them.
                 Well,
sometimes it helped to stroke a pencil very lighdy back and forth over the page,
the indentations coming up paler than the rest. Sara tried that, and again she
could see the evidence of lines, but they were just too slight, and too
fragmented by the potato chip quote, to be legible.
                 Combine
the two methods? Holding the page, now grayed by pencil lines, up in the glare
of the gooseneck lamp, Sara peered close again, and this time it began to come
clear. “Dade” first, the word “Dade,” that being the county shown on the
license plate, Dade County meaning Miami . Then the words “Buick Riviera .” Harder was the scrawl “dk blu,” meaning
dark blue, the color of the murdered man’s car. Hardest of all was the license
plate number. It began with “2,” but the next two numbers baffled her until she
realized they were as simple as they looked, that they were both the number
“7.” And the letters? The first was “Z,” just as she’d thought. Then “R.” And
at last one she simply couldn’t be sure about, “G” or “Q” or “O.”
                 Well,
I’ve got it, she thought, looking at the numbers and letters written on a page
from the Galaxy's notepad, the one
she kept on this desk. 277-ZR(G/Q/0). And now what do I do with it? Returning
her own notebook to the shoulder bag under her chair, it occurred to her that
almost anyone could have come over here sometime while she was in the reference
section or the ladies, and tom that page out.
                 Had someone done that? Or had she
absent- mindedly thrown it away herself, noticing only the appointment with Mr.
Harsch on that page? Which was more improbable?
                 Well, why would anyone throw that page
away? She’d already reported the murder, hadn’t she?
                 Hadn’t
she?
                 She
was working on that question, thinking about Monday’s taciturn guard and gazing
at the license plate numbers she’d just written, when her telephone’s white
light began to flash, and she thought, with a sudden thrill of fear, I'm being watched! She almost didn’t
want to answer, but of course that was silly. Holding her breath, she reached
out, picked up the phone, said, “Hello?” in a small and guarded voice, and
Jack’s voice in her ear said, “A special treat.”
                 Relief
made her limp, boneless. “Oh, yes?” she said.
                 “Because
you’re such a good girl,” his practically cheerful voice told her, “you are
being invited to a barbecue tomorrow.”
                 “I
am?”
                 “Binx
Radwell and his wife are throwing it,” Jack said, with just the most delicate
added emphasis on the word “wife”; to suggest this was to be a respectable
outing.
                “Well, that sounds like fun,” she
said. “Thank you.”
                 “Binx
said I should invite you,” he said, spoiling it a bit, “so thank him.”
                 “I
will, then.”
                 “Pick
you up at noon tomorrow?”
                 “Fine.
See you then.”
                 She
hung up, obscurely