G Is for Gumshoe

the jeopardy." He paused, mopping the bottom of his bowl with a folded tortilla. "You look like you've got all your ducks in a row."
    "I feel that way," I said. "Vera would disagree. She thinks I'm hopeless. Too independent, unsophisticated…"
    "What's the story on her?"
    "I've never figured it out, to tell you the truth. She's the closest thing to a friend I've got and even then, I can't claim we know each other very well. I'm gone a lot so I don't socialize much. She tends to circulate in the singles scene, which I've never been good at. I do admire her. She's smart. She's got style. She doesn't take any guff…"
    "What is this, a sales pitch?"
    I laughed, shrugging. "You asked."
    "Yeah, well she's one of those women I've never figured out."
    "In what way?"
    "Don't know. I never figured that out either. Just something about her puzzles me," he said.
    "She's a good soul."
    "No doubt." He finished cleaning his bowl without another word on the subject. It was hard to tell sometimes what he was really thinking and I didn't know nun well enough to press.

16
    We left for the hotel at six. Dietz had already cleaned up and was dressed for the occasion in casual pants, a dress shirt, patterned tie, and dark sport coat, cut western-style: broad across the shoulders, tapered at the waist. He was wearing black boots, visible where his cuffs broke, the toes polished to a hard shine. Under his sport coat, of course, he was wearing a Kevlar vest that would stop a.357 Magnum at ten feet. I'd also watched him strap on a holster that he wore behind the hip on his right-hand side, and into which he'd tucked his.45.
    I'd showered and hopped right back in my jeans, turtle-neck, and tennis shoes, intending to slip into the silk jumpsuit once I reached Vera's room. I'd tried it on quickly just before we left the house. The pants were slightly too long, but I'd bunched 'em up at the waist and that took care of it. I'd packed black pumps, panty hose, black underpants, and some odds and ends in a little overnight case. Dietz had excused me from the bulletproof vest, which would have looked absurd with spaghetti straps. The Davis was tucked in an outside pouch of my big leather handbag, which looked more like a diplomatic pouch than an evening purse. The normally bulky bag was further plumped up by the inclusion of a nightscope Dietz had asked me to carry. The scope only weighed about a pound, but it was the size of a zoom lens for a 35-millimeter camera and made me list to one side. "Why're we taking this thing?" I asked.
    "That's my latest toy. I usually keep it in the car, but I don't want to leave it in the hotel parking lot. Cost me over three thousand bucks."
    "Oh."
    Dietz took a roundabout route, saying little. Despite his assurances that Mark Messinger would be laying off me for a day or two, he seemed on edge, which made my stomach chum in response. He was focused, intense, already vigilant. He pushed the car lighter in and then reached reflexively toward his cigarettes. "Shit!" he said. He shook his head, annoyed with himself.
    He rounded a corner, downshifting. "Times like this I envy the guys who do government work," he remarked. "You'd have a squad of bodyguards. They've got unlimited manpower, access to intelligence sources, and the legal authority to kick butt…"
    I couldn't think what to say to that so I kept my mouth shut.
    We pulled into the wide brick drive in front of the hotel and Dietz got out, slipping the usual folded bill to the parking attendant with instructions to keep the car within sight. It was still light outside and the landscape was saturated with late afternoon sun. The grass was close-cropped, a dense green, the lawn bordered with pink and white impatiens and clumps of lobelia, which glowed an intense, electric blue. On the far side of the road, the surf battered at the seawall, clouding the air with the briny smell of the thundering Pacific.
    In addition to the Edgewater's sprawling main building, there were a line of bungalows at the rear of the property, each the size of the average single-family dwelling in my neighborhood. The architecture was Spanish-style, white stucco exterior, heavy beams, age-faded red tile roofs, interior courtyards. Under an archway that led to the formal gardens, a wedding party was beginning to assemble: five bridesmaids in dusty pink and a manic flower girl skipping back and forth with a basket of rose petals. Two young men in tuxedos, probably ushers, looked on,