Page 118 of Sinful Crimes for the Artistically Inclined
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
PRIMI
Percy was, to Joe’s eye, even more animated as he sat over his next course. This he devoured faster than the last, with astounding appetite, letting the others carry the conversation, only throwing in the occasional humorous quip, before throwing sparkling eyes on Joe, leaning over for a private, charming word in his ear, throwing back a little more wine.
Unusual, Joe thought, considering how ill he claimed to have been. Strange that he could go from, presumably, throwing up and fever, to eating so well. Perhaps he really was on the mend? Yet, there he went again, giving a groan and clutching his stomach and leaving Joe flummoxed as to what it all meant.
It may have been Joe’s sinking feeling about Giordano that had kicked off seven hours earlier, but this time, when Percy made a break for the bathroom, Joe properly assessed him.
He didn’t walk like a man suffering bouts of intestinal spasming. He walked with a sort of purpose about him now. Like someone climbing a podium to collect a prize. He disappearedonce again through the bathroom door, and Joe threw his own napkin down and pushed his chair back.
“You can’t go in there,” Leo said immediately.
Joe paused, his chair halfway out. “I can’t go to the bathroom?”
“I mean, you can,” Leo said, watching Joe carefully, “but I wouldn’t.”
“Then I will.”
Joe made to stand, but Leo became a little more insistent. “But you shouldn’t.”
Joe smiled, testing him. “And why not?”
“He…” Leo looked to Althea, as though she had any clue what any of them were on about that night, then he settled on, “You’ll embarrass him. It’s not his natural state to have his head in a toilet.”
“I’ve seen him do worse,” said Joe, shifting, then being held back again, this time by Leo leaning urgently forward with a hand on his wrist.
“And the smell. It’s horrible in there. Please don’t. Not for a while, anyway. Wait ‘til he gets back.”
Whatever was between Percy and Leo, it was clear that Leo was protective of him, but this was something more. There was a spot of bright panic right at the back of Leo’s eyes.
“I actually just wanted a cigarette,” said Joe.
Leo glanced towards the front of the restaurant. “Just there? You’ll be just on the street right there?”
Pulling the cigarette packet free, “Is that okay with you?”
Leo unleashed a disdainful eye roll, with an accompanying wrinkle of an offended nose. “As if I care what you do.”
“Great.” Finally Joe broke away from the table, and as he had to go past the restroom, he deliberately veered in that direction, glancing over his shoulder to see Leo already half standing to stop him, before he continued towards the entrance with a new, worrying conviction.
Percy was definitely up to no good.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
PURSUIT
Outside the restaurant, Joe lit a cigarette as conspicuously as possible, then stepped from Leo’s line of sight, snuffing the thing straight back out. He traced the edge of the building, soon finding it led to the alleyway where Percy had insisted on parking the car. Even though there were better parking spots. Even though he had been too ill to drive at all a short time before that. Until he wasn’t.
The car was there, facing him, right by a few of the kitchen staff taking a cigarette break, right by… what Joe now realised must have been the window to the restaurant’s restroom. The window Percy had inspected. The window he shared some kind of interest in with Leo.
Joe became aware of an all too familiar sinking sensation.
He waited, hidden by a dumpster, determined that, as soon as the staff should leave the alley, he would climb in that window and catch Percy at whatever he was playing at this time.
The staff did leave, about two minutes later, but the moment they did, before Joe could make his move, Giordano’scar burst into life. Lights ablaze, engine roaring, it sped past Joe in a matter of seconds.
Joe watched it go with the startling conviction that one of two things must have occurred.
