The Way You Look Tonight (12 page)

The man looked surprised.

‘Why indeed it would, ma’am. But I—’ He suddenly closed his eyes, and his shoulders sagged.

‘Oh Lord. Where are my wits when I want ’em? You must be . . .’ He turned the register around so he could read Stella’s signature. ‘You are Miss Arnold,
right?’ His kind eyes were now filled with anxiety and self-reproach. ‘Mr Foster was
expressly
clear with me that the moment you arrived I was to direct you to him at
once
. He was most insistent. I do believe he may be here in some official capacity. Oh dear, oh dear . . .’

Stella tried to reassure him.

‘Look, it’s quite all right, I’ve only this minute checked in, haven’t I? You’ve done nothing at all wrong. Where might I find Mr Foster, please?’

But the clerk remained flustered. He gestured nervously towards the beach restaurant, visible through sliding glass doors that were firmly shut to allow the air-conditioning to keep the building
cool.

‘He’s out there right this minute, at the beach restaurant. Young guy sittin’ on his own wearing Bermudas. Changed out of his coat and tie as soon as he checked in. He’s
government issue or I’m a Frenchman. I hope we’re not in any kind of trouble here. This is a respectable hotel. I’ll have your bag taken straight to your cabin. You’re in
Conch – last one before the ocean. Oh dear oh dear.’

Nervous, disconnected sentences stuttered out like tickertape.

Agent Foster, Stella thought, as she was shown to her cabin, must have quite a forceful personality.

Despite the clerk’s agitation she decided to unpack first and freshen up. She was still wearing the navy skirt and cream blouse she’d put on in Boston that morning,
and they were both creased and grubby from the flight. Also, she noticed with some embarrassment, there were dark perspiration stains under both arms of her blouse and even down the back.

She dropped the clothes, including her underwear, into the laundry basket in the bathroom and decided to take a quick shower.

She was towelling herself dry a few minutes later when the phone on her bedside table rang. She hurried over to pick it up.

‘Stella Arnold.’

‘Agent Foster. What the
fuck
do you think you’re doing?’

‘I . . . I
beg
your pardon? I was—’

‘You were what? Taking a siesta after your arduous three-hour flight down here in first class? You were specifically told to check in with me the moment you arrived.’

Stella snatched the phone away from her ear and glared furiously at the receiver. She was tempted to slam it back down on its cradle but somehow managed to resist the impulse. Instead, she
counted to ten before returning it to her ear. By now Foster’s voice had gone up a semi-tone and he sounded angrier than ever.

‘. . . Hello? HELLO! Are you still there? Jesus Christ . . .
hello
?’

Stella took a deep breath. ‘Yes, I’m still here. Be quiet.’

‘
What?
Now see here, you have to—’

‘No, YOU have to. Be quiet, that is. To start with, I did NOT fly here first class and neither am I having a nap, although if I chose to, I certainly would. All right? As for seeking you
out the moment I got here, if it was that urgent and important, why weren’t you waiting for me in reception? Instead of sunning yourself in your Bermuda shorts out there on the beach, hmm?
Agent
Foster?’

The line popped and crackled with static before he answered, in a slightly more measured tone.

‘OK, OK . . . I can see we’ve got off on the wrong foot here. I—’

Stella decided to match his more conciliatory tone, but without giving an inch. ‘No, Agent Foster,
you
got off on the wrong foot.’ She paused for emphasis, before adding
curtly: ‘I’ll be with you in five minutes. Will you ask for some menus, please? I’m absolutely starving.’

Stella took her own time and it was closer to twenty minutes before she chose to walk outside to the hotel’s beach restaurant. Her hair was still damp from the shower and
she had only bothered to put on a little mascara and a swipe of lip-gloss. Her sunburn of a few days earlier had evolved into a healthy-looking tan.

The sun was now extremely low on the horizon, although it still radiated a surprisingly fierce heat in a way it never would this late on an English evening. But there was no sign of the reds and
pinks and yellows in the western sky that Stella had heard accompanied so many Florida sunsets. Maybe all that was a bit of an exaggeration, a self-serving myth to draw in the tourists. Currently,
the heavens were a uniform azure blue.

She could see at least a dozen tables set out on the soft, white sand. Most were empty, although one or two had seated couples, sipping beers and cocktails and waiting patiently for the free
light-show to begin. But all the tables had glowing hurricane-lanterns above them, their aluminium casings painted in jolly greens and reds and attached to hooks screwed into the tops of tall,
thick bamboo poles that had been driven deep into the sand. The flickering lanterns were beginning to sway in the strengthening evening breeze.

The hotel had its own inlet and dock cut into the southern half of the beach, and as she watched, a speedboat nosed its way carefully into the little harbour, its outboard burbling quietly on
low revs. She saw a slim, tanned woman in a yellow bikini emerge on deck from the cabin and throw a mooring rope ashore in one practised movement. A waiting attendant deftly caught it and quickly
tied it off onto a metal cleat.

There were a few other motor boats rocking gently at their moorings; maybe they were for hire. Stella made a mental note to find out: if she got a chance it would be fun to go out on a fishing
trip, and certainly a lot cooler than staying ashore. It was still oppressively humid, although down here by the water the breeze felt a little fresher.

Agent Foster was sitting at the table nearest to the ocean. It had to be him, she decided; he was the only solitary diner there and she could see two absurdly large menus in the shape of
lobsters had been placed on both sides of the table. But he wasn’t wearing Bermuda shorts; he was in khaki chinos and a white cotton shirt. He must have gone in to change after she’d
mocked him earlier.

She was in white too; she’d put on the simple lace dress that Sylvia had given her the morning she left Bancroft Road.

‘Unless they’re sending you to Alaska you’ll need something smart and summery,’ the younger woman had told her. ‘This is a bit on the short side but you’ve
got terrific legs, so you can carry it off.’

Stella was finding it difficult to walk on the soft, shifting sand so she slipped off her sandals and carried them in one hand as she made her way across to the table.

She couldn’t see Foster’s face because he was reading a paperback, holding it high to catch the last of the sun’s rays behind him. The book completely obscured his features.
The novel, she noticed as she drew closer, was
A Tale of Two Cities.
For some reason it surprised her that an FBI man should be reading Dickens.

‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,’ she called when she was a few feet away from him.

He lowered the book.

‘It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,’ he replied.

No crew-cut. A short-back-and-sides, rather, and although his brown hair had been combed back from his forehead it was sneakily trying to tumble back down into a fringe above his right eye. He
looked, she thought, more English public schoolboy than American agent and he couldn’t be all that much older than her. Thirty, at most.

‘I always forget the next part,’ she confessed, holding out her hand. ‘Something about it being the spring of hope and the winter of despair. I’m Stella Arnold. How
d’you do?’

‘Lee Foster.’ He stood up, took her hand in his own and gave it a quick shake. ‘Yes, that bit comes after the stuff about the season of light and darkness, blah-blah. But to be
honest I reckon Dickens was squeezing the lemon pretty dry in that opening, anyway. He’d done the job with his best of times, worst of times line. He should’ve left it there.’

He hesitated. ‘Look, Miss Arnold . . . I’m sorry I was so, well, terse on the house phone just now. I had a long flight from LA and a truly annoying message from C. Farris Bryant
waiting for me when I landed in Miami.’

Stella sat down opposite him, unwilling to let it go just yet.

‘You weren’t terse, you were extremely rude,’ she said flatly. ‘I’m supposed to be here to help, not to be insulted . . . Bryant’s the state governor,
isn’t he?’

He nodded. ‘Yup. And he’s in a real fix, thanks to these killings.’

He put both hands into his trouser pockets and leaned back in his chair, staring at her. She realised that he was sizing her up, and she folded her own hands in her lap and waited.

‘Now look here, Miss Arnold.’

‘It’s Stella.’

He hesitated, and then said, with quiet emphasis: ‘I’ll stick to Miss Arnold, if that’s all right with you. I don’t believe we’re going to know each other long
enough to get on first-name terms. Anyway . . .’ He removed his hands from his pockets and folded his arms on the table in front of him. His body language could not have been clearer: he was
shutting her out.

‘Anyway . . . here’s the thing. I have no real idea why Washington sent you down here but to speak plainly, you’re in my way, Miss Arnold. Hoover’s drafted me in to
oversee this investigation because I have a track record on this kind of stuff. I catch repeat killers. I’m good at it. I’ve been in California wrapping up my third multiple murder case
and J. Edgar hauled my sorry ass across the continent to handle this one.’

He tried and failed to attract the attention of a distant waiter before continuing.

‘So, I get here to find a goddamned
writ
from the state governor telling me I have to work with a kid who’s not even out of college. An English kid, too. I’m sorry,
but it’s all way out of the ballpark, Miss Arnold, and it’s not going to happen, OK? Anyway, I answer to J. Edgar, not C. Farris or any other fucking politician. Excuse my
French.’

He sat back, waiting for her reaction.

Stella looked at him calmly.

‘I completely understand your feelings, Mr Foster. Now, have you decided what you’d like to eat? I want to order. I told you, I’m starving.’

He hadn’t expected her to fold quite so easily and he looked surprised, and relieved.

‘Um . . . well . . . me too, I guess. I’ll have the little-neck clams with linguine. You?’

‘The same. I’ll order for us both while you make your phone call.’

He stared at her. ‘What phone call?’

She fished into her handbag and brought out the scrap of paper she’d been given that morning.

‘To this number. I was told to ring it if there was any kind of serious problem, but I rather feel you’re the one with the problem, Mr Foster, not me. So you’d better be the
one to call.’

He took the note and peered suspiciously at the digits scrawled across it. ‘I don’t recognise this, other than the Washington code. Whose number is it?’

Stella waved to a nearby waiter. ‘We’re ready to order now, thank you,’ she called. The man nodded and hurried over.

She placed their order, then smiled at the mystified agent opposite her.

‘You mentioned his name just then. I think you need to have a little chat with your boss. Have you actually spoken with him personally before? I’d have a care, if I were you. The
Attorney General told me Mr Hoover can be awfully grumpy when people call his home at dinnertime.’

He was back five minutes later, flushed and angry.

‘Great. Thanks for the ambush.’

She raised her eyebrows. ‘How so? I told you who you were calling. Anyway, why would I want to ambush you? As I said, I’m here to help you. Although I certainly didn’t ask to
come down here. I was politely, if extremely firmly,
sent
.’

‘Sure, Hoover made it clear to me you’re here on the highest authority but he didn’t deign to give me the details. What the hell is going on? You made some crack about the
Attorney General just now. Are you serious? You know Bobby Kennedy? Is he behind this? I don’t believe it.’ Foster was seething with a combination of curiosity and anger.

Stella closed her eyes and slowly pushed both hands through her hair. She’d come to America to study for her PhD. Right now she should be amongst her new friends in Massachusetts,
preparing for her studies. Not wrangling with a resentful detective down here in the near-tropical late summer swelter of the Florida Keys. Maybe she should have transferred directly to the
international departures lounge at Miami Airport after all, and bought a ticket for the next plane home. None of this was her problem.

Before she could answer, the waiter was back with their bowls of steaming clams and pasta. Stella felt slightly restored by the sight of food.

‘We’d like some wine too, please,’ she said. ‘Mr Foster . . . what would you recommend?’

‘What? Oh . . . well, a Californian Chardonnay usually hits the spot. Two glasses, please.’

‘Sure,’ the waiter answered. ‘By the way, I’d leave those clams to cool for a few minutes. The sauce is just a shade below boiling.’

When they were alone again, Stella leaned across the table towards him.

‘I’d be happy to explain all this to you, Mr Foster, but I’d appreciate it if you took that ridiculous frown off your face first. You’ve been glowering at me since I sat
down.’

For the first time he looked slightly off-balance. ‘I wasn’t aware that I was frowning,’ he said stiffly.

‘Well you are. Ah . . . that’s a little better. Now, please listen to me. None of this is complicated. I’m here because I happened to bump into Ethel Kennedy last Sunday at a
beach barbecue in Martha’s Vineyard. Her husband was there too. And JFK and Jackie, if you want to know.

‘Ethel asked me why I was in the States. I explained I’m here to take a PhD in Psychopathy at Smith. I know a
lot
about psychopaths, Mr Foster, especially the dangerous
ones. When you’ve calmed down, I expect you and I will have some interesting exchanges about them. Anyway, Mrs Kennedy got very excited and went to find her husband.