It was more than a moment. More like ten moments.

“What party are you trying to reach, sir?”

Uh-oh.

“Dr. Robert Pendleton.”

“Thank you. One moment.”

Ten more moments. Long ones.

“I’m sorry, sir. Dr. Pendleton has checked out.”

Swell.

“Uuuhh… when?”

“This morning, sir.”

While I was showering, filling my face, and lounging over the spring training reports, Neal thought.

“Did he leave a forwarding address?”

“One moment.”

Did he leave a forwarding address? Your basic desperation effort.

“I’m sorry, sir. Dr. Pendleton left no forwarding address. Would you like to leave a message in case he calls in?”

“No, thank you, and thanks for your help.”

“Have a nice day.”

“Right.”

Neal poured another cup of coffee in the time it took to call himself an asshole. All right, think, he told himself. Pendleton’s checked out. Why? Maybe money. Hotels are expensive and he’s found himself a pad somewhere. Or maybe AgriTech kept bugging him, so he changed hotels. Or maybe the party is over and he’s on his way back to Raleigh. That’s the best maybe, but you can’t afford to count on it. So back to work.

Pendleton isn’t a pro, so chances are he won’t think about covering his traces. He probably doesn’t know that anyone is on his trail. And there’s only one place to pick up his trail.

Neal hustled to get dressed. He put on a powder blue button-down shirt, khaki slacks, and black loafers, slipped on a red-and-blue rep tie but left the knot open, and dumped half the stuff out of his canvas shoulder bag, leaving enough in to give it some weight. Sticking his airline ticket jacket into the pocket of his all-purpose, guaranteed-not-to-wrinkle blue blazer and shoving a ten-dollar bill in his pants pocket, he hoofed it to the elevator, which seemed to take forever to get there. He figured he was ten minutes away from his only shot at tracking Pendleton and he didn’t know if he had the ten minutes.