The other three stared at her.
“Tour guide?” Savannah echoed blankly.
“When we were in Matty’s office that time, Sam was looking at the pictures on his wall. They were taken in Mexico, in Chichén Itzá. Matty said he’d hired a private guide to see the ruins there.” With a hint of smugness, her gaze moved slowly from one face to the next. “I’ve been to Cancún, and to Chichén Itzá. The trip takes somewhere around two hours each way. Allowing for another hour, minimum, at the ruins, Matty and his guide would have been together for five hours at the least.” Her eyes held Sam’s. “Unless Matty’s private guide was an idiot, he’d be the one to say yea or nay to a picture of Matty.”
Sam studied her for a minute, then arched a pleased eyebrow. “Not bad, Suse. Not bad at all.”
Jared thought it was brilliant. “Could be what you need,” he told Savannah, who was grinning.
“I’dloveit. It would be the kind of slip up that would drive the Cat nuts.” She looked at Sam.
“I’ll put someone to work on it first thing in the morning.”
Susan beamed. “There. Now that we’ve solved your case, Savvy, we can eat.” Tipping her head, she crooked a finger at the busboy. “We’re ready for our main course. If you’d be so good as to pass that message along…”
***
Jared and Savannah returned to Providence just in time for Jared to change into jeans and go on the air. Savannah sat with him in the sound booth for a while. She was comfortable there now, knew when she could talk and when she couldn’t. While the music played, they talked quietly—about Susan and Sam, about the difficulty Savannah was having with one of the other lawyers in the division, about the office building in Honolulu that Jared had just sold and the high rise he was buying into in Seattle.
At times they simply listened to the music. Watching Jared during those times, Savannah grew convinced that he was a true romantic. He felt the words. The subtle changes in his features suggested that he could put himself into a song as easily as she could, and that knowledge only enhanced her feelings for him. He was a sensitive man. His manner toward her proved it. She loved him deeply for that.
It was nearly two in the morning when he woke her up. She was sitting on the floor and had fallen asleep against his leg. Fearing that she would end up cramped and sore if she stayed that way much longer, he sent her upstairs to bed.
At two-thirty the first call came. A light went off on the telephone console signaling his private line. Having just started a new song, he reached for the receiver.
“Hello?”
At first there was silence.
“Hello?” he said again.
A woman’s voice came on then, quiet, almost timid. “Jared?”
He didn’t recognize the voice, which puzzled him. The list of people with access to that number was short. “Speaking.”
Again there was silence. Had the call come in on any one of the station’s other lines, he would have been tempted to hang up. But this was his private line, so he waited.
Finally, the same quiet, hesitant voice came again. “I just wanted to thank you. You’ve given me strength.”
Jared searched his brain for a flicker of familiarity but found none. “I’m glad.” Gently he asked, “Who is this?”
“I’ve been listening for almost as long as you’ve been in town. The nights are so long. If you hadn’t been here…”
Still gently but more puzzled than ever, he asked, “Who is this?”
There was a long pause, then a small click.
Replacing the receiver, Jared put both elbows on the table before him and his chin in his hands. Several things about the call bothered him, first and foremost that it had been on his private line. Besides that, he had been disturbed by the woman’s near-whisper. There had been a tightness to it. He wondered why.
When it came time to move into the next song, he brought the mike close. “You’re listening to 95.3 WCIC Providence,” he said in a low, lyrically husky drawl. “That was George Strait, and this is Jared Snow, keepin’ you company through the darkest hours of the day. The graveyard shift they call it; I can understand why. It can be long and lonely when you’re sittin’ by yourself. So listen in. I’ll play you the best I’ve got, a little country in the city at WCIC Providence, kickin’ off a string of six with Earl Thomas Conley. Jared Snow, here, in the heart of the night, think bright so I’ll know you’re there.…”
He wasn’t sure what he wanted to say, but hoped he said it anyway. Knowing he could do no more, he returned to the contracts he had been reading before the call had come in.
Earl Thomas Conley segued to the Eagles, who segued to Juice Newton, who segued to the Desert Rose Band. Then the button on the telephone console lit up again.
He had an odd premonition as he reached for the phone, even hesitated a minute, wondering whether he should just let it ring. But that would be harder than answering. “Hello?”
“I’m sorry I hung up,” the woman said softly, quickly. “I shouldn’t be calling, but I have to talk to someone, and the rest of the world is asleep.”
