She had been a freshman in college when he'd taken her deep-sea fishing for ten days in Baja, California. She'd flown to Los Angeles, and spent the night in his beach house in Malibu, and then driven, in the yellow convertible, to Baja. A wonderful ten days. And he knew why she wanted the convertible.
She had wondered what his wife, and her half-brothers and -sisters thought about her, and finally realized they were in the same position she was. Stanford Former Wells III, chairman of the board of Wells Newspapers, Inc., did what he damned well pleased. They were just lucky that what he damned well pleased to do was almost invariably kind, and thoughtful, and ethical.
Maybe that was easier if you had inherited that kind of money, and maybe he wouldn't have been so kind, thoughtful, or ethical if he was a life insurance salesman or an automobile dealer,but he wasn't. He had inherited seventeen newspapers and three radio stations from his father, and turned that into thirty-one newspapers, four television stations, and four (larger) radio stations.
The only thing that Louise could discover that her father had done wrong was, as a married man, impregnate a woman to whom he was not married. He had sownher seed in a forbidden field. But even then, he had done the decent thing. He had not abandoned his wife and children for the greener fields of a much younger woman, and he had not abandonedher. He could very easily have made "appropriate financial arrangements" and never shown his face.
She loved and admired her father, and if people didn't understand that, fuck 'em.
Louise found a place to park the yellow convertible, and then walked to the Waikiki Diner. There were no cars in the parking lot that looked like unmarked police cars, which meant that he had either come in his own car, or that he wasn't here yet.
She pushed open the door to the Waikiki Diner and stepped inside. It was larger inside than it looked to be from the outside. It was shaped like an L. The shorter leg, which was what she had seen from the street, held a counter, with padded seats on stools, and one row of banquettes against the wall. Beside the door, which was at the juncture of the legs, was the cashier's glass counter and a bar with a couple of stools, but obviously primarily a service bar. The longer leg was also wider, and was a dining room. There were probably forty tables in there, Louise judged, plus banquettes against the walls.
He wasn't in there.
She thought: Captain Richard C. "Dutch" Moffitt, commanding officer of the Philadelphia Police Department 's Highway Patrol, has not yet found time to grace the Waikiki Diner with his patronage.
"Help you, doll?" a waitress asked. She was slight, had orange hair, too much makeup, and was pushing sixty.
"I'm supposed to meet someone here," Louise said.
"Why'ncha take a table?" the waitress asked, and led Louise into the dining room. Louise saw that one of the banquettes against the wall, in a position where she could see the door beside the cash register, was empty, and she slipped into it. The waitress went thirty feet farther before she realized that she wasn't being followed.
Then she turned and, obviously miffed, laid an enormous menu in front of Louise.
"You want a cocktail or something while you're waiting?" she asked.
"Coffee, please, black," Louise said.
She didn't want alcohol to cloud her reasoning any more
than it was already clouded.
She looked around the dining room. It was arguably, she decided, the ugliest dining room she had ever been in. Fake Tiffany lamps, with enormous rotating fans hanging from them, in turn hung from plastic replicas of wooden ceiling beams. The banquettes were upholstered in diamond-embossed purple vinyl. The wall across the room was a really awful mural of lasses in flowing dresses and lads in what looked like diapers dancing around what was probably supposed to be the Parthenon.
The coffee was delivered in a thick china mug decorated with a pair of leaning palm trees and the legend,"Waikiki Diner Roosevelt Blvd. Phila Penna."
Captain Richard C. "Dutch" Moffitt came in as Louise had removed, in shock and surprise, the scalding hot mug from her burned lips.
He had no sooner come through the door by the cashier than a small, slight man with a large mustache, wearing a tight, prominently pinstriped suit, came up to him and offered his hand, his smile revealing a lot of goldwork.
Dutch smiled back at him, revealing his own mouthful of large, white, even teeth. And then he saw Louise, and the smile brightened, and his eyebrows rose and he headed toward the table.
"Hello," Dutch said to her, sliding into the chair facing her.
"Hi!" Louise said.
"This is our host," Dutch said, nodding at the mustached man. "Teddy Galanapoulos."
"A pleasure, I'm sure. Any friend of Captain Moffitt's"
"Hello," Louise said. There was a slight Greek accent, and the gowned lasses and the lads in diapers dancing around the Parthenon were now explained.
"You're beautiful," Dutch said.