If it had been a man’s voice, Tess would have shrieked. She managed to avoid that, but she still whirled around so quickly that she stumbled a little. The woman standing in the coat alcove—a skinny breath of a thing, no more than five feet three—blinked in surprise and took a step back. “Whoa, easy.”
“You startled me,” Tess said.
“I see I did.” The woman’s tiny, perfect oval of a face was surrounded by a cloud of teased black hair. A pencil peeked from it. She had piquant blue eyes that didn’t quite match. A Picasso girl, Tess thought. “I was in the office. Are you the Expedition lady or the Honda lady?”
“Expedition.”
“Have ID?”
“Yes, two pieces, but only one with my picture on it. My passport. The other stuff was in my purse. My other purse. I thought that was what you might have.”
“No, sorry. Maybe you stashed it under the seat, or something? We only look in the glove compartments, and of course we can’t even do that if the car is locked. Yours wasn’t, and your phone number was on the insurance card. But probably you know that. Maybe you’ll find your purse at home.” Neal’s voice suggested that this wasn’t likely. “One photo ID will be okay if it looks like you, I guess.”
Neal led Tess to a door at the back of the coat area, then down a narrow curving corridor that skirted the main room. There were more band photos on the walls. At one point they passed through a fume of chlorine that stung Tess’s eyes and tender throat.
“If you think the johns smell now, you should be here when the joint is going full tilt,” Neal said, then added, “Oh, I forgot—you were.”
Tess made no comment.
At the end of the hallway was a door marked OFFICE STAFF ONLY. The room beyond was large, pleasant, and filled with morning sunshine. A framed picture of Barack Obama hung on the wall, above a bumper sticker bearing the YES WE CAN slogan. Tess couldn’t see her cab—the building was in the way—but she could see its shadow.
That’s good. Stay right there and get your ten bucks. And if I don’t come out, don’t come in. Just call the police.
Neal went to the desk in the corner and sat down. “Let’s see your ID.”
Tess opened her purse, fumbled past the .38, and brought out her passport and her Authors Guild card. Neal gave the passport photo only a cursory glance, but when she saw the Guild card, her eyes widened. “You’re the Willow Grove lady!”
Tess smiled gamely. It hurt her lips. “Guilty as charged.” Her voice sounded foggy, as though she were getting over a bad cold.
“My gran loves those books!”
“Many grans do,” Tess said. “When the affection finally filters down to the next generation—the one not currently living on fixed incomes—I’m going to buy myself a château in France.”
Sometimes this earned her a smile. Not from Ms. Neal, however. “I hope that didn’t happen here.” She wasn’t more specific and didn’t have to be. Tess knew what she was talking about, and Betsy Neal knew she knew.
Tess thought of revisiting the story she’d already told Patsy—the beeping smoke detector alarm, the cat under her feet, the collision with the newel post—and didn’t bother. This woman had a look of daytime efficiency about her and probably visited The Stagger Inn as infrequently as possible during its hours of operation, but she was clearly under no illusions about what sometimes happened here when the hour grew late and the guests grew drunk. She was, after all, the one who came in early on Saturday mornings to make the courtesy calls. She had probably heard her share of morning-after stories featuring midnight stumbles, slips in the shower, etc., etc.
“Not here,” Tess said. “Don’t worry.”
“Not even in the parking lot? If you ran into trouble there, I’ll have to have Mr. Rumble talk with the security staff. Mr. Rumble’s the boss, and security’s supposed to check the video monitors regularly on busy nights.”
“It happened after I left.”
I really do have to make the report anonymously now, if I mean to report it at all. Because I’m lying, and she’ll remember.
If she meant to report it at all? Of course she did. Right?
“I’m very sorry.” Neal paused, seeming to debate with herself. Then she said, “I don’t mean to offend you, but you probably don’t have any business in a place like this to begin with. It didn’t turn out so well for you, and if it got into the papers… well, my gran would be very disappointed.”
Tess agreed. And because she could embellish convincingly (it was the talent that paid the bills, after all), she did. “A bad boyfriend is sharper than a serpent’s tooth. I think the Bible says that. Or maybe it’s Dr. Phil. In any case, I’ve broken up with him.”
“A lot of women say that, then weaken. And a guy who does it once—”
“Will do it again. Yes, I know, I was very foolish. If you don’t have my purse, what property of mine do you have?”
Ms. Neal turned in her swivel chair (the sun licked across her face, momentarily highlighting those unusual blue eyes), opened one of her file cabinets, and brought out Tom the Tomtom. Tess was delighted to see her old traveling buddy. It didn’t make things all better, but it was a step in the right direction.
“We’re not supposed to remove anything from patrons’ cars, just get the address and the phone number if we can, then lock it up, but I didn’t like to leave this. Thieves don’t mind breaking a window to get a particularly tasty item, and it was sitting right there on your dashboard.”
“Thank you.” Tess felt tears springing into her eyes behind her dark glasses and willed them back. “That was very thoughtful.”
Betsy Neal smiled, which transformed her stern Ms. Taking Care of Business face to radiant in an instant. “Very welcome. And when that boyfriend of yours comes crawling back, asking for a second chance, think of my gran and all your other loyal readers and tell him no way Jose.” She considered. “But do it with the chain on your door. Because a bad boyfriend really is sharper than a serpent’s tooth.”
“That’s good advice. Listen, I have to go. I told the cab to wait while I made sure I was really going to get my car.”
And that might have been all—it really might have been—but then Neal asked, with becoming diffidence, if Tess would mind signing an autograph for her grandmother. Tess told her of course not, and in spite of all that had happened, watched with real amusement as Neal found a piece of business stationery and used a ruler to tear off the Stagger Inn logo at the top before handing it across the desk.
“Make it ‘To Mary, a true fan.’ Can you do that?”
Tess could. And as she was adding the date, a fresh confabulation came to mind. “A man helped me when my boyfriend and I were… you know, tussling. If not for him, I might have been hurt a lot worse.” Yes! Raped, even! “I’d like to thank him, but I don’t know his name.”
“I doubt if I could do you much good there. I’m just the office help.”
“But you’re local, right?”
“Yes…”
“I met him at the little store down the road.”
“The Gas & Dash?”
“I think that’s the name. It’s where my boyfriend and I had our argument. It was about the car. I didn’t want to drive and I wouldn’t let him. We were arguing about it all the time we walked down the road… staggered down the road… staggered down Stagg Road…”
Neal smiled as people do when they’ve heard a joke many times before.
“Anyway, this guy came along in an old blue pickup truck with that plastic stuff for rust around the headlights—”
“Bondo?”
“I think that’s what it’s called.” Knowing damn well that was what it was called. Her father had supported the company almost single-handed. “Anyway, I remember thinking when he got out that he wasn’t really riding in that truck, he was wearing it.”
When she handed the signed sheet of paper back across the desk, she saw that Betsy Neal was now actually grinning. “Oh my God, I might actually know who he was.”
“Really?”
“Was he big or was he real big?”
“Real big,” Tess said. She felt a peculiar watchful happiness that seemed located not in her head but in the center of her chest. It was the way she felt when the strings of some outlandish plot actually started to come together, pulling tight like the top of a nicely crafted tote-bag. She always felt both surprised and not surprised when this happened. There was no satisfaction like it.
“Did you happen to notice if he was wearing a ring on his little finger? Red stone?”
“Yes! Like a ruby! Only too big to be real. And a brown hat—”
Neal was nodding. “With white splatters on it. He’s been wearing the damn thing for ten years. That’s Big Driver you’re talking about. I don’t know where he lives, but he’s local, either Colewich or Nestor Falls. I see him around—supermarket, hardware store, Walmart, places like that. And once you see him, you don’t forget him. His real name is Al Something-Polish. You know, one of those hard-to-pronounce names. Strelkowicz, Stancowitz, something like that. I bet I could find him in the phone book, because he and his brother own a trucking company. Hawkline, I think it’s called. Or maybe Eagle Line. Something with a bird in it, anyway. Want me to look him up?”
“No, thanks,” Tess said pleasantly. “You’ve been helpful enough, and my cabdriver’s waiting.”
“Okay. Just do yourself a favor and stay away from that boyfriend of yours. And stay away from The Stagger. Of course, if you tell anyone I said that, I’ll have to find you and kill you.”
“Fair enough,” Tess said, smiling. “I’d deserve it.” At the doorway, she turned back. “A favor?”
“If I can.”
“If you happen to see Al Something-Polish around town, don’t mention that you talked to me.” She smiled more widely. It hurt her lips, but she did it. “I want to surprise him. Give him a little gift, or something.”
“Not a problem.”
Tess lingered a bit longer. “I love your eyes.”
Neal shrugged and smiled. “Thanks. They don’t quite match, do they? It used to make me self-conscious, but now…”
“Now it works for you,” Tess said. “You grew into them.”
“I guess I did. I even picked up some work modeling in my twenties. But sometimes, you know what? It’s better to grow out of things. Like a taste for bad-tempered men.”
To that there seemed to be nothing to say.
- 26 -
She made sure her Expedition would start, then tipped the cabdriver twenty instead of ten. He thanked her with feeling, then drove away toward the I-84. Tess followed, but not until she’d plugged Tom back into the cigarette lighter receptacle and powered him up.
“Hello, Tess,” Tom said. “I see we’re taking a trip.”
“Just home, Tommy-boy,” she said, and pulled out of the parking lot, very aware she was riding on a tire that had been mounted by the man who had almost killed her. Al Something-Polish. A truck-driving son of a gun. “One stop on the way.”
“I don’t know what you’re thinking, Tess, but you should be careful.”
If she had been home instead of in her car, Fritzy would have been the one to say this, and Tess would have been equally unsurprised. She had been making up voices and conversations since childhood, although at the age of eight or nine, she’d quit doing it around other people, unless it was for comic effect.
“I don’t know what I’m thinking, either,” she said, but this was not quite true.
Up ahead was the US 47 intersection, and the Gas & Dash. She signaled, turned in, and parked with the Expedition’s nose centered between the two pay phones on the side of the building. She saw the number for Royal Limousine on the dusty cinder block between them. The numbers were crooked, straggling, written by a finger that hadn’t been able to stay steady. A chill shivered its way up her back, and she wrapped her arms around herself, hugging hard. Then she got out and went to the pay phone that still worked.
The instruction card had been defaced, maybe by a drunk with a car key, but she could still read the salient information: no charge for 911 calls, just lift the handset and punch in the numbers. Easy-as-can-beezy.
She punched 9, hesitated, punched 1, then hesitated again. She visualized a piñata, and a woman poised to hit it with a stick. Soon everything inside would come tumbling out. Her friends and associates would know she had been raped. Patsy McClain would know the story about stumbling over Fritzy in the dark was a shame-driven lie… and that Tess hadn’t trusted her enough to tell the truth. But really, those weren’t the main things. She supposed she could stand up to a little public scrutiny, especially if it kept the man Betsy Neal had called Big Driver from raping and killing another woman. Tess realized that she might even be perceived as a heroine, a thing that had been impossible to even consider last night, when urinating hurt enough to make her cry and her mind kept returning to the image of her stolen panties in the center pocket of the giant’s bib overalls.
Only…
“What’s in it for me?” she asked again. She spoke very quietly, while looking at the telephone number she’d written in the dust. “What’s in that for me?”
And thought: I have a gun and I know how to use it.
She hung up the phone and went back to her car. She looked at Tom’s screen, which was showing the intersection of Stagg Road and Route 47. “I need to think about this some more,” she said.
“What’s to think about?” Tom asked. “If you were to kill him and then get caught, you’d go to jail. Raped or not.”
“That’s what I need to think about,” she said, and turned onto US 47, which would take her to I-84.
Traffic on the big highway was Saturday-morning light, and being behind the wheel of her Expedition was good. Soothing. Normal. Tom was quiet until she passed the sign reading EXIT 9 STOKE VILLAGE 2 MILES. Then he said, “Are you sure it was an accident?”
“What?” Tess jumped, startled. She had heard Tom’s words coming out of her mouth, spoken in the deeper voice she always used for the make-believe half of her make-believe conversations (it was a voice very little like Tom the Tomtom’s actual robo-voice), but it didn’t feel like her thought. “Are you saying the bastard raped me by accident?”
“No,” Tom replied. “I’m saying that if it had been up to you, you would have gone back the way you came. This way. I-84. But somebody had a better idea, didn’t they? Somebody knew a shortcut.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “Ramona Norville did.” She considered it, then shook her head. “That’s pretty far-fetched, my friend.”
To this Tom made no reply.
- 27 -
Leaving the Gas & Dash, she had planned to go online and see if she could locate a trucking company, maybe a small independent, that operated out of Colewich or one of the surrounding towns. A company with a bird name, probably hawk or eagle. It was what the Willow Grove ladies would have done; they loved their computers and were always texting each other like teenagers. Other considerations aside, it would be interesting to see if her version of amateur sleuthing worked in real life.
Driving up the I-84 exit ramp a mile and a half from her house, she decided that she would do a little research on Ramona Norville first. Who knew, she might discover that, besides presiding over Books & Brown Baggers, Ramona was president of the Chicopee Rape Prevention Society. It was even plausible. Tess’s hostess had pretty clearly been not just a lesbian but a dyke lesbian, and women of that persuasion were often not fond of men who were non -rapists.
“Many arsonists belong to their local volunteer fire departments,” Tom observed as she turned onto her street.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Tess asked.
“That you shouldn’t eliminate anyone based on their public affiliations. The Knitting Society ladies would never do that. But by all means check her out online.” Tom spoke in a be-my-guest tone that Tess hadn’t quite expected. It was mildly irritating.
“How kind of you to give me permission, Thomas,” she said.
- 28 -
But when she was in her office with her computer booted up, she only stared at the Apple welcome screen for the first five minutes, wondering if she was really thinking of finding the giant and using her gun, or if that was just the sort of fantasy to which liars-for-profit such as herself were prone. A revenge fantasy, in this case. She avoided those kinds of movies, too, but she knew they were out there; you couldn’t avoid the vibe of your culture unless you were a total recluse, and Tess wasn’t. In the revenge movies, admirably muscular fellows like Charles Bronson and Sylvester Stallone didn’t bother with the police, they got the baddies on their own. Frontier justice. Do you feel lucky, punk. She believed that even Jodie Foster, one of Yale’s more famous graduates, had made a movie of this type. Tess couldn’t quite remember the title. The Courageous Woman, maybe? It was something like that, anyway.
Her computer flipped to the word-of-the-day screen-saver. Today’s word was cormorant, which just happened to be a bird.
“When you send your goodies by Cormorant Trucking, you’ll think you’re flying,” Tess said in her deep pretending-to-be-Tom voice. Then she tapped a key and the screen-saver disappeared. She went online, but not to one of the search engines, at least not to begin with. First she went to YouTube and typed in RICHARD WIDMARK, with no idea at all why she was doing it. No conscious one, anyway.
Maybe I want to find out if the guy’s really worthy of fanship, she thought. Ramona certainly thinks so.
There were lots of clips. The top-rated one was a six-minute compilation titled HE’S BAD, HE’S REALLY BAD. Several hundred thousand people had viewed it. There were scenes from three movies, but the one that transfixed her was the first. It was black-and-white, it looked on the cheap side… but it was definitely one of those movies. Even the title told you so: Kiss of Death.
Tess watched the entire video, then returned to the Kiss of Death segment twice. Widmark played a giggling hood menacing an old lady in a wheelchair. He wanted information: “Where’s that squealin’ son of yours?” And when the old lady wouldn’t tell him: “You know what I do to squealers? I let em have it in the belly, so they can roll around for a long time, thinkin’ it over.”
He didn’t shoot the old lady in the belly, though. He tied her into her wheelchair with a lamp cord and pushed her down the stairs.
Tess exited YouTube, Binged Richard Widmark, and found what she expected, given the power of that brief clip. Although he had played in many subsequent movies, more and more often as the hero, he was best known for Kiss of Death, and the giggling, psychotic Tommy Udo.
“Big deal,” Tess said. “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”
“Meaning what?” Fritzy asked from the windowsill where he was sunning himself.
“Meaning Ramona probably fell in love with him after seeing him play a heroic sheriff or a courageous battleship commander, or something like that.”
“She must have,” Fritzy agreed, “because if you’re right about her sexual orientation, she probably doesn’t idolize men who murder old ladies in wheelchairs.”
Of course that was true. Good thinking, Fritzy .
The cat regarded Tess with a skeptical eye and said, “But maybe you’re not right about that.”
“Even if I’m not,” Tess said, “nobody roots for psycho bad guys.”
She recognized this for the stupidity it was as soon as it was out of her mouth. If people didn’t root for psychos, they wouldn’t still be making movies about the nut in the hockey mask and the burn victim with scissors for fingers. But Fritzy did her the courtesy of not laughing.
“You better not,” Tess said. “If you’re tempted, remember who fills your food dish.”
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