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“You’re as close as I am, Chad,” Matt protested.

The Bellvue-Stratford Hotel, on South Broad Street, was nowhere near equidistant between Matt Payne’s apartment—which consisted of a bedroom, a bath not large enough for a bathtub, a kitchen separated from the dining area by a no longer functioning slid

ing partition, and a living room from which one could, if one stood on one’s toes, catch a glimpse of a small area of Rittenhouse Square, four floors below, through one of two eighteen-inch wide dormer windows—and the Nesbitt triplex on Stockton Place.

“No, it’s not,” Chad replied. “And you know it. Besides, I can’t leave Daffy and the baby alone!”

“Perish the thought! That nanny you just imported is to impress the neighbors, right? You certainly couldn’t trust her to watch the kid, could you?”

“Daffy’s right. Sometimes you are a sarcastic ass,” Chad said.

“What am I supposed to do at the Bellvue?”

“See what you can find out. See if her car’s there, for example. And call me.”

“What kind of a car?”

“Daffy, what kind of a car does Susan drive?” Matt heard Chad call, and then he came back on the line. “Oddly enough, one like yours. Only red.”

“A 911? A red 911?”

“That’s what Daffy says.”

“That’s why I asked.”

“Thanks, pal,” Chad said, and the line went dead.

Matt put the phone back in its cradle, but didn’t take his hand from it.

“Matthew, my boy,” he said aloud. “You have just been had. Again.”

Then he dialed a number from memory.

On the second ring, the phone was picked up.

“Hello,” his mother said.

“This is the son who never seems to find time to even drop by for a cup of coffee,” Matt said.

“Is it really?”

“Do you think you could throw in a doughnut?”

“If I thought the offer was genuine, I would be willing to go so far as a couple of scrambled eggs and a slice of Taylor ham. Whatever it takes. Sometime this year, I would dare to hope?”

“How about in an hour?”

“I will believe my extraordinary good fortune only when you physically appear. But I will light a candle and leave it in the window.”

“Good-bye, Mother.”

Matt returned and finished his shower and toilette, shaving while under the shower.

He dressed quickly, in a single-breasted tweed jacket; gray flannel trousers; a white, button-down-collar shirt and slipped his feet into tasseled loafers. Just before he left his bedroom, he took his Smith & Wesson Undercover Model .38 Special-caliber revolver from the bedside table, pulled up his left trouser leg, and strapped it on his ankle.

He started down the steep, narrow flight of stairs that led to the third-floor landing, then stopped and went back into his living room. He pulled open a drawer in a cabinet, took from it a key, and slipped it into his pocket.

“Be prepared,” he said aloud, quoting the motto of the Boy Scouts of America. An almost astonishing number of things he had learned as a Boy Scout had been of real use to him as a police officer. The key, so far as he knew, would open the lock of every guest room in the Bellvue-Stratford Hotel. That might come in handy.