before she missed her departure. That would give him several days to spend with the lovely Mary before he had to worry about anyone missing her.
He looked up and forced a gentle smile on his face, saying, âIâd love to meet you somewhere Friday evening.â
TEN
It was early evening and Patty Levine sat on the floor of her Jacksonville condo watching a Rodney Yee DVD and trying to master one of the more advanced yoga poses involving balancing on her hands with her torso lifted off the blue mat on top of the light carpet. She breathed in through her mouth and out through her nose, trying to fill her belly with air as well as her diaphragm. She cleared her mind and did everything Rodney said to, and still she felt like shit.
Patty plopped down onto the mat, placing her right foot across her left leg, and twisted her whole upper body, catching her reflection in the mirror of the open closet door in the hallway. She had no idea why she was so critical of herself. She generally didnât care what others thought and her parents were perfectly reasonable about most aspects of her life. It wasnât until she had gotten serious about gymnastics and started to compete at a high level that she expected more and more of herself. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail and although it wasnât the most glamorous look, she liked her blond hair. But sheâd always been self-conscious about her wide-set eyes and the scar at the bridge of her nose sheâd received falling off a balance beam her senior year in high school. She bared her teeth to her image in the mirror and, despite most of them being straight and white, all she focused on was her left incisor, which turned slightly outward. She shook her head in disgust and followed the next move on the DVD. That Rodney Yee could really spread his legs.
She muttered, âThis is bullshit,â knowing it had a lot more to do with her own choices in life than with anything Mr. Yee was telling her on the DVD she had picked up at Target for $19.95. She could remember a time, before she started to compete nationally in gymnastics, when she had enjoyed all kinds of exercise and stretching. Now it seemed like one more thing to cram into her already busy day. But she knew the real issue, the core of her problem tonight, was her back pain and her desire to refrain from using one of the assortment of painkillers she had stashed in her bathroom medicine cabinet. Sheâd let her normal prescription run out but couldnât bring herself to dispose of the random pills sheâd acquired over the years. Soon those would be exhausted too. That was why she was forced to do yoga in an effort to relieve lower back pain that had been building since midmorning.
The frantic pace she had kept with Stallings all day didnât help her in any way either. Theyâd hit a dozen different places where Leah Tischler might have been seen. The only person whoâd been of any help was Liz Dubeck, the manager of one of the downtown motels. Patty could tell Liz was attracted to Stallingsâs good looks and charming manner. That wasnât anything unusual. What surprised Patty was Stallingsâs interest in the pretty motel manager. Sure, he didnât say anything and avoided any questions about her after they left the motel, but Patty knew her partner as well as anyone and this was the first time since his separation heâd shown any interest at all in another woman.
Patty twisted and crossed her legs in an effort to stretch out the middle of her back. There was definitely an improvement, but she could feel the constant throbbing still coming from lower down her back. If sheâd known this would be the result when she was thirteen and practicing one hundred backflips a day, she might not have had the enthusiasm that didnât wane until her second year at the University of Florida. But that was her nature. She threw herself into anything she undertook.
The fact