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.