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Okay, if that’s the way you want to play it. Screw you.

Olivia sat down.

“What we’re going to do this morning is take statements from Colonel Richards and Mr. Galloway,” Matt said, and then, without waiting for a reply, devoted his entire attention to the breakfast menu.

Detective Payne had just about finished his Belgian waffles with strawberries and cream, which he had ordered to accompany his chipped beef over toast with poached eggs, and glanced to see if Detective Lassiter was finished with her whole-wheat toast, when he thought he heard his name being spoken.

He looked toward the headwaiter’s table in time to see the woman behind it nod in his direction, the nod guiding a young man in a business suit toward him.

“Sergeant Payne?” the young man asked.

Matt nodded.

“My name is Roswell Bernhardt, Sergeant. I’m an attorney. Specifically, I’m Mr. Homer C. Daniels’s attorney.”

“I don’t mean to be rude, counselor, but I don’t think I should be talking to you,” Matt said.

“I understand,” Bernhardt said. “Certainly. But what I was hoping you could do is give me the name of someone in your district attorney’s office with whom I could speak.”

“I wouldn’t know what name to give you, Counselor, in the D.A.’s office. Except for that of the D.A. herself. That’s Mrs. Eileen McNamara Solomon.”

“I understood someone’s on the way here,” Bernhardt said, then added. “Sergeant Kenny told me that.”

If Kenny told this guy my name and where to find me, and that somebody’s coming, he must like him. What the hell!

“I’m going to meet someone from the D.A.’s office at the airport, Mr. Bernhardt…”

“Someone with the authority to discuss a plea bargain?”

“… at half past twelve,” Matt went on. “I don’t know who, or what authority he or she might have. But if you’d like, if you give me your card, I’ll pass it on, and tell whoever it is you’d like to speak with him/her.”

Bernhardt produced a card, gave it to Matt, thanked him profusely, and left.

“I wonder what that was all about?” Olivia asked.

“I really have no idea,” Matt said. “Are you about finished with your breakfast?”

She stood up and walked away and waited by the head-waiter’s table until he had settled the bill.

“If you’ll give me the keys to the car, please, I’ll put my luggage into it,” she said.

He wordlessly handed her the keys, then went to his room, packed, and then settled the bill. He made no attempt to rush.

When he got into the Mustang, she didn’t speak.

Jesus, she’s good-looking.

Is she going to stay pissed all day?

For good?

That seems a distinct possibility.

Well, if that bitchy, irrational behavior last night was an indicator of the future, maybe that’s not such an all-around bad thing.

" ’Tis better to have loved and lost, than not to have loved at all,” as they say.

You don’t believe that for a minute, and you know it.