Jessie held up her hand. “It’s okay,” she said soothingly. “We would have just gotten to L.A. a lot sooner if you’d let me behind the wheel.”
“Or ended up in traffic court.” She paused. “Are you trying to distract me? You glanced in that rearview mirror twice.”
She grinned. “I should have known you’d notice. I didn’t think I should worry you. There just appear to be a lot of utility trucks out this morning. But that one got off at the last exit.”
“Jessie, since it involves my life and well-being, I do think I should worry, don’t you?”
“I stand corrected. In your bad books, but not as deep shit as Lynch. That cover it?”
“That covers it.”
“Well, we can get over that.” She looked back down at her iPad. “Still no reference to Night Watch on any of these blogs. We need to ask him questions about why he was that secretive. For some reason, he buried his association with them very deep…”
After parking on a Figuroa lot, Kendra and Jessie strode through the Dyle Pacific Building’s cavernous lobby. It featured three large fountains continuously exchanging short bursts of water that leaped with the intensity of salmon leaping upstream to spawn.
They took the elevator to the nineteenth floor, which was occupied entirely by Dyle’s offices. A young man in an elegant brown suit and horn-rimmed glasses lorded over the reception desk, slightly elevated from the rest of the room.
He smiled. “May I help you?”
“We’re here to see Ted Dyle,” Kendra said.
“Your name?”
“Kendra Michaels.”
He checked the screen. “I don’t see an appointment for you.”
“No appointment. Tell him we have a mutual friend. Dr. Charles Waldridge.”
“Mr. Dyle is an extremely busy man. There’s no way he can possibly see you unless you have a—”
“Kendra Michaels. Dr. Charles Waldridge. Say those two names to him, and I’ll wait right here.”
The receptionist didn’t like it, but he nodded and spoke into his headset. After a minute or so, he looked up at Kendra and Jessie. “Mr. Dyle may be able to fit you in. If you’ll have a seat…”
Kendra and Jessie sat in the minimalist waiting area on padded cubes with no backs.
Fifteen minutes passed. Then thirty. Then an hour. Finally, the receptionist leaned toward them. “I’m very sorry. Mr. Dyle will be unable to see you today.”
Jessie stood. “You’re joking.”
Kendra joined her at the reception desk looking toward the hall of offices. “Where is he? Which direction?”
“It won’t do any good.”
“I’ll find out that for myself.”
The receptionist said quickly, “He’s left the building.”
Jessie looked around. “How? The stairs? That’s nineteen floors. He must really not to have wanted to see us.”
“He has a private elevator. I recommend that you call his assistant next time. I can’t guarantee that he’ll see you, but at least you won’t waste your time.”
Jessie’s gaze narrowed on his face. “You didn’t receive a call telling you that he was unable to see us after an hour’s wait. It just came out of the blue. You were told when you contacted him to keep us here for an hour while he left his offices and made his getaway.”
“Getaway? Ridiculous. Mr. Dyle is an important businessman, not a hoodlum.” But he did not meet her eyes and tapped his headset and turned slightly away. His body language signaled the end of his involvement with them in no uncertain terms.
It was obvious that they weren’t going to get anywhere here. Kendra whirled and headed for the elevator. “Great,” she said. “Total waste of time. The only thing we learned was that he definitely doesn’t want to talk to us about Waldridge. You said you were having trouble finding his home address. It looks like you’re going to have to dig deeper. We can’t let Dyle skip out on us like—”
“Later.” Jessie was looking at her phone as she nudged Kendra onto the elevator and pressed the button. “He may not be first on our agenda right now.”
There was something in Jessie’s tone that caused her gaze to fly to her face. Jessie’s usually impassive expression was still in place, but her eyes were glittering. Excitement? “Later?” Kendra repeated. “You have somewhere else to be?”
“We both do.” She was still looking down at her phone. “We’ll talk outside.” She glanced around as they exited the elevator. “There may be prying eyes and ears here.”
Once outside, they walked toward the parking lot in a direction that took them past Pershing Square, an outdoor park outfitted with brightly colored sculptures.
“So where are we going?”
“Back to the car.”
“I noticed that. Then where?”
Jessie raised her phone and showed Kendra the screen. “Here.”
Kendra looked at her phone. There was a still shot of a man in a half-empty apartment. She looked closer. Could it be…? She stopped, her eyes widening. “Biers?” she said. “This looks like Dr. Hayden Biers.”
“That’s because it is. Keep moving. We have to get there before he flies the coop.”