“A puppy,” Todd said, frowning a little. “Wouldn’t a grown dog be better?”
“I want a puppy,” Daisy said, already imagining the feel of the warm, wriggling little body in her arms. Okay, so it was probably transference from wanting a baby of her own, but for now a puppy would do just fine.
Todd lingered as the others were leaving, pausing on her front porch. “Are you going dancing tomorrow night?”
She thought of everything that needed to be done in the house; then she thought of the long hours she’d already put in this week. Last week at the Buffalo Club had been fun, at least until the fight started.
“I think I will. I really liked the dancing.”
“Then be careful, and have fun.”
“Thanks. I will.” She smiled and waved at him as he drove away, thanking her lucky stars she’d found such a good friend as Todd Lawrence.
TWELVE
Saturday night was always the busiest night of the week at the Buffalo Club, so Jimmy, the bartender, wasn’t sure how long Mitchell had been there before he saw him, holding a beer and leaning over a redhead with enough makeup on her face to cover the San Andreas Fault. The redhead didn’t seem impressed; she kept turning back to her friend, an equally made-up platinum blonde, as if they were trying to carry on a conversation and Mitchell was intruding.
Jimmy didn’t look at them again; the last thing he wanted was for Mitchell to notice he’d been noticed. Since Mitchell had a beer, he must have had one of the waitresses bring it to him, instead of bellying up to the bar the way he usually did. Jimmy picked up the phone under the bar, punched in the number, and said, “He’s here.”
“Well, damn,” Sykes said genially on the other end of the line. “I really need to talk to him, but I can’t get away. Oh, well, another time.”
“Sure,” said Jimmy, and hung up.
Sykes broke the connection, then quickly called two men he knew and said, “Meet me at the Buffalo Club, forty minutes. Come prepared.”
Then Sykes himself got prepared; he pulled on a baseball cap to hide his hair, boots to make himself seem taller, and stuffed a small pillow inside his shirt. In good light this effort at disguise would be obvious, but at night those small things would be enough to make it difficult to identify him if anything untoward happened at the club. Sykes didn’t plan on doing anything at the club; he just wanted to get Mitchell and take him some-place where there weren’t a couple of hundred potential witnesses, but something could always go wrong. That’s why he wasn’t driving his own car; he had borrowed one again, just in case, then replaced the license plate with one he’d taken off a car in Georgia.
Barring any unforseen occurrences, such as another brawl, their little problem with Mitchell should be taken care of tonight.
Daisy found that it took a lot of nerve to go back into a club where one had accidentally caused a brawl. There shouldn’t be too many people who actually knew the cause: herself, Chief Russo, perhaps the guy whose testicles she had smashed—though she thought he hadn’t been paying much attention to what was going on around him—and maybe one or two perceptive people who had been watching. So, five at the most. And what were the odds any of the four other people were here tonight? She should be perfectly safe; no one was going to point at her as soon as she walked in the door and shout, “That’s her!”
That’s what logic said. Logic, however, had also told her buying condoms would be no big deal, so logic obviously was not infallible.
So she sat in her car in the dark parking lot, watching couples and groups and singles enter the Buffalo Club, which was swinging. Music poured out every time the door was opened, and she could feel the heavy beat of the bass drum throb even through the walls. She was all gussied up, without the nerve to go inside.
But she was working on it; every time she gave herself a pep talk, she got a little closer to actually opening the car door. She was wearing red, the first red dress she’d ever owned in her life, and she knew she looked good. Her blond hair still swung in its simple, sophisticated style, her makeup was subtle but flattering, and the red dress would make all the tube-top wearers look low-class, which was kind of a redundancy. The dress was almost like a sundress Sandra Dee would have worn back in the early sixties, with two-inch wide straps holding it up, a scooped neckline—but not too scooped—a slim fitted waist, and a full skirt that stopped just above her knees and swung around her legs when she walked. She was wearing the taupe heels again, and the gold anklet glittered around her ankle. That and her earrings were the only jewelry she wore, making her look very cool and uncluttered.
She didn’t just look good, she looked great, and if she didn’t get out of the car and go inside, no one except herself would ever know it.
On the other hand, it might be best to let the place get completely full, to lessen the already small chance that someone might recognize her.
She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. She could feel the music, calling her to get on the dance floor and just dance. She’d loved that part of the night, loved the rhythm and feeling her body move and knowing she was doing it right, that the lessons she’d taken in college had paid off because she still knew the steps and men evidently loved dancing with someone who could do something other than stand in one place and jerk. Not that country nightclubs were much into the jerking; they were more into line dances and slow-swaying stuff—
“I’m stalling,” she announced to the car. “What’s more, I’m very good at it.”