True-Life Adventure

we left Susanna’s. Now you run along.”
    I did, not feeling so hot.
    I headed toward the parking lot two piers down from the Pandorf boat, thinking I didn’t like the idea of Sardis walking along the Embarcadero alone. It was foggy and spooky even now, getting more so by the second. And it was practically deserted. There was only one other guy there now. You could easily step back in the shadows and hide until your victim came along if you had that sort of thing in mind. I did it, just to get the feel of it.
    The other guy— my projected victim— passed me. It was Steve Koehler.

CHAPTER 13
    Stunned, I watched him go to Pandorf Associates. I don’t know why I was so stunned, really. He was having his C.I. done and had a perfect right to be there. On the other hand, maybe he’d come to kill Sardis. There were other people on the boat, so he wouldn’t do it there. I decided to wait where I was.
    In about ten minutes they came out arm in arm. Sardis and Steve. I let them walk past me and then I followed them to the parking lot. They got in Steve’s car while I got in mine. They pulled out and turned right on the Embarcadero. So did I. That was the way to Sardis’ house, which was the only place I had to go. So, of course, I turned right.
    After a while Steve turned left. He was no longer heading toward Sardis’, but I turned left, too. I admitted to myself that I was following him. I was at loose ends and not getting anywhere with the story and didn’t know what to do next, and I was a little bit afraid for Sardis. That was why I was doing it, I said to myself. It was probably partly true, too. The fact that I am also a jealous and small-minded person who wanted to find out exactly what Sardis was doing with that jerk probably had no more than about ninety percent to do with it.
    Steve had some sort of small, light-colored car. I got a most perfunctory look at the car that tried to hit me, but I could swear it was something like Steve’s. I myself was at the wheel of a beige Toyota even as I thought this, and Sardis had a cream-colored Honda. I wondered idly if I should also look at Jacob’s, Marilyn’s, Joan’s, and Susanna’s cars. Maybe I could rule out anybody who had a big, dark car. But I decided against it. You could always borrow, steal, or rent a car if you wanted to kill somebody. You probably would, in fact. Maybe you’d even hire somebody to drive it.
    Okay, so I didn’t really have anything on Steve Koehler. But he seemed as good a suspect as anybody, and I didn’t like the idea of Sardis being with him. She was my hostess, after all, and my life was in her hands. Maybe she was conning me. Maybe she had lured Lindsay to Hawaii and bumped her off there and now she and Steve were in cahoots to… to what? I was being dumb. I was still trying to justify following an innocent citizen out on a harmless date.
    I wasn’t succeeding, but I was still following. I followed that small, light-colored car right to downtown San Francisco, where it turned into the Downtown Center Garage at Mason and O’Farrell. I put my press parking card on my dashboard, parked illegally, and waited for them.
    They came out and walked up Mason to Geary and crossed it. Then they kept walking until they got to the Pacific Plaza Hotel. I stopped following when they went in. It was getting undignified.
    And it got a lot worse. I waited for them. Of course, I didn’t think of it that way at the time. I realized it had been a long time since I’d been to the One-Act Theater Company, which is right across from the Pacific Plaza. I thought maybe I’d just have a sandwich at the Stage Door Deli and then take in the show.
    The One-Acters usually present three or four one-act plays, just as their name suggests they might, loosely related by some common theme. Tonight it was “Three Women Playwrights,” which is about as loosely related as you can get.
    The first two were pretty good, and Mittie Smith, my favorite local actress, was the star of the third, so it promised to be even better.
    But for some reason I left at intermission. I couldn’t explain it. I just had this wild urge to go outside and get some air. I stayed reasonably back in the shadows while I was getting the air, and I took in lungful after lungful. I didn’t really feel like I’d done quite enough breathing until Steve and Sardis came out of the hotel, maybe fifteen or twenty minutes later.
    So Sardis had spent a couple of hours in a hotel with Steve