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Page 20
But how would she identify Josiah Pierce?
She spotted him immediately. He looked as she imagined he might with a name like that: small, thin-boned, with a sharp-featured face and a receding hairline. He was dressed in a white shirt and dark trousers.
And he was staring right at her.
As the wave of people pushed her forward, he approached her without hesitation. "Miss Walker?" he called.
"Yes." She stepped from the surging crowd and waited. Although she was of only moderate height, she found herself looking down on him. "You must be Mr. Pierce."
He nodded. She offered her hand and he took it, holding it at an odd angle in his papery, cool fingers, as though unsure what to do with it. He raised it toward his lips.
Instinctively, Mariah began to draw it back. His grip grew stronger, and he shook her hand in a curt, businesslike manner. Then he smiled, revealing a mouth full of large, yellowing teeth. "Please, come this way," he said, his voice as nasal as if he'd used his gnarled fingers to pinch his pointed equine nose.
"I appreciate your meeting me," she lied, walking beside him. She realized he was taller than he'd first appeared, but he bent forward at the shoulders as though in pain. "Angela said you spoke with her last evening about your screenplay."
"Yes. You and I will talk about it over coffee before we go downtown. An early supper as well, if you wish. I have been fold that airline food is not especially palatable."
Told? That indicated to Mariah that this stooped scarecrow of a man had never been on a plane himself, adding to his seeming strangeness.
He took a large white handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose. "I beg your pardon," he apologized. "I believe I am catching the agueI mean, a cold."
Despite the stuffy quality of his voice, there was something about it that appealed to Mariah. She was used to hearing actors try out new accents and tried to place Josiah Pierce's faint lilt. A touch of Irish? More British, perhaps. In any event, his choice of words and their syntax was charming, nearly old world.

 
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