The Shadow Hunter

she couldn’t see Halle Berry hanging out in this neighborhood, and Bogart was dead.
    “Gotcha, Howard,” she whispered. “You’ve been a naughty, naughty boy.”
    She replaced the robe, then spent a little more time in the bedroom. When she was done, she left the bungalow via the rear door. She drove around the block, parked across the street, rolled down the window, and slunk low in her seat, getting comfortable. She intended to wait awhile and see if Howard and Amanda showed up. Travis had said Howard went out nearly every evening to drive his new car. There was a good chance this address was his nightly destination.
    There was no longer any serious doubt in her mind that Howard was the owner of the house, but the issue was too important to restsolely on a monogram. If Howard was indeed the HB in question, she would know three things with certainty: the house was still his, he was cheating on Kris, and he was the owner of the mysterious Trendline. And if Trendline could be tied to Western Regional Resources—well, she would have all her ducks neatly in a row.
    She almost hoped it didn’t work out that way. Kris had been hurt badly enough already. It would be better for her if neither Trendline nor Amanda Gilbert had any connection with her husband. But Abby wasn’t betting on it. The world was not kind.

24
    The production meeting for the six o’clock news broke up shortly after 5 P.M. Kris left in a rush, stuffing her yellow legal pad into her carrying case, and boarded the elevator with Amanda Gilbert. The two of them rode to ground level together.
    “Another day, another nightmare,” Amanda observed.
    Kris smiled. “At least no more pint-size pachyderms came into the world at the last minute.”
    “Still a madhouse. Looks like we won’t have time for that heart-to-heart we talked about.”
    Kris was surprised Amanda even remembered their conversation. Surprised—and touched. She had never imagined Amanda as the type to worry about feelings and personal crises. “Maybe after the show,” Kris offered, just to have something to say.
    Amanda shook her head. “No can do. I’ve got a…an engagement.”
    “A date? Is that what you started to say?”
    Amanda looked away, embarrassed. This was Kris’s second surprise. She had never imagined that Amanda could be capable of embarrassment on any topic.
    “You do have a date, don’t you? You, the workaholic?” Kris gave her a playful punch on the arm. “Who is he?”
    “I’d rather not talk about it.”
    “You’ll talk. This is big stuff. I want to hear all the details.”
    The elevator doors opened. Amanda got out first, in a hurry to leave. “Can’t oblige you now. I’ve got a show to get on the air.”
    “Tomorrow, then.” Kris stopped her at the door to the newsroom. “You tell me the secrets of your love life, and I’ll tell you mine, okay?” She shrugged. “Who knows, maybe we have more in common than we know.”
    Amanda pushed open the door. “Stranger things have happened.”
    “Is it a deal?”
    “Sure. Deal. Now I’ve gotta run.” She vanished through the doorway,
    Kris headed down the hall to her office, smiling. Her marriage was falling apart, but her executive producer had found a boyfriend. Maybe there was a cosmic balance to the universe, as her New Age friends said.
    Her office was a large sun-streaked room cluttered with award certificates and statuettes, mementos from other stations where she’d worked, and framed snapshots of herself and Howard in happier times. Ellen, her personal assistant, was typing at her desktop computer. She glanced up when Kris entered. “Hey, boss lady.”
    “Hey. Stopped by to pick up my outfit.”
    “Linda dropped it off an hour ago.” Ellen nodded toward the door to Kris’s dressing room, adjacent to the office. “It’s a new one, very snazzy.”
    Kris found her outfit hanging in the closet. It was a periwinkle blue suit with a cream-colored blouse, a good choice. That particular shade of blue always looked good on camera. Having been in the business for years, Kris knew what worked and what didn’t. Solid colors were good; patterns, especially small, complicatedpatterns, were bad. Off-white tones were good; solid whites were bad.
    She changed into the suit, checked herself out in the fulllength mirror, and decided she looked quite elegant except for her flat-soled sneakers. Since she was always behind a desk while on the air, no viewer would ever see her footwear.
    To