Chapter 16

Monday, June 28, 11:50 a.m.

The lunch crowd was gathering at O'Grady's, a friendly restaurant and bar popular with young people in Twin Rivers. Sam though O'Grady's was pretty sophisticated, by East Carolina standards. It was a narrow storefront place with an impressive front-to-back carved oak bar. There were cloth-covered tables all about the stone-floored interior. There were Irish flags and other paraphernalia hanging from the rough brick interior walls that bordered a long row of wooden booths, built with tall backs for maximum privacy. Streams of light poured in from the eight-foot-tall, early-19th-century windows that looked like an original feature of the venerable Old Town structure.

Sam steered Susan to a booth in the extreme rear. An attractive waitress in a long-sleeved jersey with a script "O'Grady's" emblazoned across her chest arrived immediately, ready to take their lunch order. Susan ordered a double Scotch and the waitress had the grace not to glance at the clock. Sam asked for a Carta Blanca.

Susan was still agitated. Her face was an ever-changing landscape of anxious expressions, some of them causing shocking distortions of her features. She said nothing; her eyes were cast across the room, watching the bartender as he prepared her drink.

They were served, and Susan took a healthy slug from her glass. Before the liquor could possibly have had any real effect, she visibly relaxed, arranged herself in the far inside corner of the large booth, and waited for it to do its work.

"O.K.," she said, finally. "Last Friday - 'week ago Friday -- Emma and I were having lunch near here, outside, right across the street -- there." She gestured behind her, toward the front of the restaurant. It looked as if she was indicating the bank immediately across the street. Sam assumed she meant the neighboring churchyard, not quite visible from his position.

Susan took a deep breath and continued: "Susan saw a man across the street -- over here on this side? But on down the street from here -- and she said something like 'I just saw that man yesterday at the Wal-Mart.'

"Then she explained to me that the man was one of those she'd -- played her game with. This was the first time she'd ever really told me in detail about... the game. By the time I had heard enough to be interested, I looked for the guy but he was 'way down by the far corner, crossing the street there, by the flea market. All I could see was his back.

"Anyhow. I noticed the guy was about medium height, seemed nicely dressed, and he was, like, moving well, y'know? I mean, he was walking kinda fast and was pretty light on his feet. I would of taken him for, maybe, 40-45 years old, just judging from the body language.

"I called her on it. I told her that he hadn't looked like no old dodderer to me. I asked her whether she'd expanded her game to include men in their prime, as well as the kids and the old guys.

"She said no, that this guy really was an older man, but she admitted that she'd probably miscalculated a little. She told me she thought he could be close to 60, but she said it had been an unusual experience, and that now she regretted playing the game with him."

"What else?"

"Well, first-off, I think she was a little shook about seeing him again, so soon. It had only been one day since the Wal-Mart thing, and she'd never seen the guy, anywhere, before that. She told me she'd seen him, in a car behind her, while she had been leaving the Wal-Mart. She just saw him for a minute, and she didn't get paranoid about it, she said, but now, she'd seen him in Old Town. She told me he'd looked at her from across the street -- before he turned and left."

"Was she upset by this?"

"Not... really. But between seeing him -- I guess for the third time, technically -- and my giving her grief about how he wasn't a harmless old man. Well. I think she was kinda like -- chastened. But that's not the whole story, Mr. Wicks."

Sam smiled. "You're Susan. I'm Sam. This is helping, Susan. This is helping a lot. Do you want another drink?"

"No. No, I'm getting it together now. -- Maybe a club sandwich?"

Remembering his foolish meal-free Sunday, Sam beckoned the waitress and ordered them each a club sandwich. "Keep going," he said to Susan.