“Everything okay, ma’am?”
“Peachy,” she said. “It’s just that I didn’t plan on coming back here this morning.”
“Few do,” the cabbie said. He was sucking on a toothpick, which made a slow and philosophical journey from one side of his mouth to the other. “They got your keys, I suppose? Left em with the bartender?”
“Oh, no trouble there,” she said brightly. “But they’re holding other property for me—the lady who called wouldn’t say what, and I can’t for the life of me think what it could be.” Good God, I sound like one of my old lady detectives.
The cabbie rolled his toothpick back to its starting point. It was his only reply.
“I’ll pay you an extra ten dollars to wait until I come out,” Tess said, nodding at the roadhouse. “I want to make sure my car starts.”
“No problem-o,” the cabbie said.
And if I scream because he’s in there, waiting for me, come on the run, okay?
But she wouldn’t have said that even if she could have done so without sounding absolutely bonkers. The cabdriver was fat, fifty, and wheezy. He’d be no match for the giant if this was a setup… which in a horror movie, it would be.
Lured back, Tess thought dismally. Lured back by a phone call from the giant’s girlfriend, who’s just as crazy as he is.
Foolish, paranoid idea, but the walk to The Stagger Inn’s door seemed long, and the hard-packed dirt made her walking shoes seem very loud: clump-clud-clump. The parking lot that had been a sea of cars last night was now deserted save for four automotive islands, one of which was her Expedition. It was at the very back of the lot—sure, he would not have wanted to be observed putting it there—and she could see the left front tire. It was a plain old blackwall that didn’t match the other three, but otherwise it looked fine. He had changed her tire. Of course he had. How else could he have moved it away from his… his…
His recreational facility. His kill-zone. He drove it down here, parked, walked back to the deserted store, and then off he went in his old F-150. Good thing I didn’t come to sooner; he’d have found me wandering around in a daze and I wouldn’t be here now.
She looked back over her shoulder. In one of the movies she now could not stop thinking about, she surely would have seen the cab speeding away (leaving me to my fate), but it was still right there. She lifted a hand to the driver, and he lifted his in return. She was fine. Her car was here and the giant wasn’t. The giant was at his house (his lair), quite possibly still sleeping off the previous evening’s exertions.
The sign on the door said WE ARE CLOSED. Tess knocked and got no response. She tried the knob and when it turned, sinister movie plots returned to her mind. The really stupid plots where the knob always turns and the heroine calls out (in a tremulous voice), “Is anybody there?” Everyone knows she’s crazy to go in, but she does anyway.
Tess looked back at the cab again, saw it was still right there, reminded herself that she was carrying a loaded gun in her spare purse, and went in anyway.
– 24 –
She entered a foyer that ran the length of the building on the parking lot side. The walls were decorated with publicity stills: bands in leather, bands in jeans, an all-girl band in miniskirts. An auxiliary bar stretched out beyond the coatracks; no stools, just a rail where you could have a drink while you waited for someone or because the bar inside was too packed. A single red sign glowed above the ranked bottles: BUDWEISER.
You like Bud, Bud likes you, Tess thought.
She took off her dark glasses so she could walk without stumbling into something and crossed the foyer to peep into the main room. It was vast and redolent of beer. There was a disco ball, now dark and still. The wooden floor reminded her of the roller-skating rink where she and her girlfriends had all but lived during the summer between eighth grade and high school. The instruments were still up on the bandstand, suggesting that The Zombie Bakers would be back tonight for another heaping bowl of rock n roll.
“Hello?” Her voice echoed.
“I’m right here,” a voice replied softly from behind her.
– 25 –
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.”