“That didn’t happen,” he said. “Well, it probably did, but I never observed it.”
“I was embroidering, Pablo. Improving on the truth. The rest of it was straightforward enough. They’re in the house for whatever it was, half an hour, an hour, and then there’s another kiss and hug and a little canoodling as he gets in the van and drives off, and don’t tell me it didn’t happen, or that you didn’t see it, okay? I wanted to leave no doubt in his mind, and since you’re the only person who can swear you didn’t see it—”
“I get the point.”
“Well, good. Then you followed in close pursuit, and took your opportunity when it presented itself, bringing the proceedings to a satisfactory and permanent conclusion. You see what I did, Pablo? Lots of details early on, enough to sink the hook, and then nothing specific—no name, no location, no details on what you did or how you did it.”
“That was really clever of you.”
“That’s what I thought,” she said. “Turns out we were both wrong.”
“How do you figure that?”
“What I did,” she said, “is I drew him a blueprint. And what he did, the son of a bitch, is he followed it.”
“I GUESS HE was all excited,” he told Julia. “His rival was out of the picture, and his wife didn’t even know it, and he decided to celebrate his victory. So what he did, he left his office early and went home.”
“To Baker’s Bluff?”
“That’s right. He figured his wife would be home, waiting for her boyfriend, and instead of a man in a van she’d get a husband in a Mercedes.”
“It doesn’t rhyme,” she said.
“Not many things rhyme with husband. Or Mercedes, as far as that goes.”
“Hades, ladies, Rosie O’Grady’s. Nothing useful. Does he have children from a prior marriage? He could be a daddy in a Caddy, if you could get him to trade in the Mercedes. I’m sorry, I’m not letting you finish.”
“You’re not the only one. What he did, he drove home, got there around three in the afternoon. And he parked across the street, because he was on the early side, and he thought he’d give her a little time to wonder what happened to her lover.”
“And then what? ‘Ha ha, guess who’s not coming over?’”
“That would have been really stupid,” he said, “although I’d say it’s not out of the question. But we’ll never know what he would have done, because while he was waiting, you’ll never guess what happened.”
“The garage door opened.”
“Good guess.”
“And she backed out? No, somebody came in. Was he alive? The Marlboro Man?”
“The garage door went up,” he said, “just as a white van turned into the driveway.”
“Omigod. You smacked him twice with a hammer. He must have had a head made of cast iron.”
“And then—”
“To say nothing of his sex drive,” she went on, “and her irresistible animal magnetism, drawing him back from the brink of death. I’m sorry, I keep interrupting. What happened next? The garage door closed?”
He shook his head. “The door of the house opened,” he said, “and she came out, Melania, and the two of them met. And no, it wasn’t the Marlboro Man.”
“She gets around, this lady.”
“She does. The two of them met somewhere between his van and her door, and they talked, and Todd sat in his car and watched. And then they went into the house and the door closed, and a little later the garage door closed, too, and nothing happened for three quarters of an hour.”
“Nothing happened?”
“Well, nothing you could see from a Mercedes-Benz parked across the street. But he could certainly use his imagination.”
“And he waited there, like a good detective. Even if he didn’t have a fedora.”
“What he probably missed more was a wide-mouthed jar. Yes, he waited, and then the door opened and they walked out together, and I gather it was all he could do to stay where he was.”
“And she didn’t spot him? I mean, she’d recognize the car, wouldn’t she?”
“Only if she looked at it, and she only had eyes for the guy.”
“Who was not the Marlboro Man.”
“No, but he was definitely her type.”
“In that he had a Y chromosome?”
“Big, broad-shouldered, muscular. The two of them put on a little kiss-kiss show for the husband, and then Melania went back into the house and the guy got in his van and drove off.”
“And the husband followed him.”
“Tried to. Lost him almost immediately.”
“But I suppose he got the license plate number.”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?”
“He didn’t?”
“Dot said he thinks there was a seven in it, but she may have made that up.”
She thought that over. At length she said, “If he thinks he deserves a refund—”
“No, he’s satisfied I did my job.”
“But she’s still got a lover, so he’s still got a problem. Don’t tell me he wants you to solve it.”
“He wants someone to solve it. I’m not sure he cares who it is. But he only knows one number to call, and he called it.”
“And got Dot. And what does she want?”
“What she wanted,” he said, “was to confirm that as far as I was concerned we were done. She’d tell him something—too risky to go back, the agent’s already booked through September, di dah di dah di dah. In other words thanks but no thanks, and anyway your wife’s the problem, and if big brawny guys stop showing up in vans, she’ll make do with skinny kids pushing grocery carts.”
“Because she’s a whore, and he should either leave her or live with it.”
“Exactly.”
“So you told her yes, go ahead and tell him that.” She looked at him. “Except you didn’t, did you?”
“I probably should have,” he admitted.
“But you didn’t.”
“I didn’t, no.”
“You’re going back,” she said.
“Not right away. I want to spend the rest of this week right here, and come Sunday I want to take Jenny to the zoo.”
“To make sure the alligator is still dead. And Monday you go back to Chicago?”
“Monday or Tuesday. There’s no big rush.”
“And you’ll go through all that again? Waiting for the new Marlboro Man to show up so you can follow him?” Her eyes narrowed. “No,” she said. “You won’t have to do that, will you?”
“Not this time.”
“So you can leave the fedora home. That’s good, I wouldn’t want anything to happen to it. I don’t suppose you’ll need the jar, either. What happened to the jar?”
“I left it in the rental car.”
“Well, if the next person they give it to is a detective, I’m sure he’ll appreciate it. You don’t have to do a stakeout this time because you know who it is, don’t you? But how can you know?”
“From the husband’s description,” he said.
“Big, broad-shouldered, and muscular.”
“Plus a detail Dot almost didn’t mention, because she didn’t realize the significance. He was wearing boots.”
“So?”
“Western-style boots,” he said. “And a cowboy hat.”
IT WAS TUESDAY afternoon when he boarded the City of New Orleans, and no great surprise when Ainslie greeted him by name and gratefully accepted the customary twenty dollars. This time Keller had remembered to check his bag, but had held onto both his iPhone and the Pablo phone, along with something to read. He’d thought it might feel strange to be back on the train again, but all it felt was familiar, as if this was something he did all the time. Which, in a sense, it was.
He drank a cup of coffee, he looked out the window, he read for a while. He went to the diner and found something to order on the menu he’d long since memorized; back in his roomette, he had brief conversations with Julia and Jenny on t
he iPhone, and with Dot on the Pablo phone, and around ten he summoned Ainslie to make up the bed.
He slept deeply, and when he came back from breakfast Ainslie told him they were running late. “We were right on schedule,” he reported. “Got into Homewood at twenty minutes of eight, which made us a couple of minutes early, and then they held us there with no explanation, and now it looks like we’ll be an hour late getting to Chicago. I just hope you don’t have an early appointment.”
“No, I’m in no rush,” he said.
“Well, I’m glad to hear that, Mr. Edwards. I can now tell you the delay had nothing to do with this train. There was a southbound freight train way up ahead of us, not even on our track as it was heading south and we were heading north—”
“So it’s good it was on the other track.”
“Yes sir, you’re right about that. But don’t you know a fool in a white van went around the barrier? Now he’s dead, and the man driving that freight train’s got a few bad weeks in front of him, plus the nightmares he’s sure to be having. And all of us in another train entirely are an hour late getting to Chicago.”
“He wasn’t wearing a cowboy hat, was he?”
“How’s that, Mr. Edwards?”
“Oh, it’s nothing, Ainslie. Just thinking out loud.”
HE PICKED UP his suitcase at Baggage Claim, caught a cab to O’Hare. Hertz had a car ready for him, and it was a Subaru like the one he’d had before. That did make it easier, it saved the hour or so you spent flicking on the lights when you were trying to signal a left turn. And he knew how to adjust the seat to his liking, and cope with the GPS.
Not that he really needed the GPS. He’d driven the route too recently to have forgotten it. Still, he set the thing, and let the woman’s voice give him a heads-up half a mile before each turn. It was reassuring to know that, should his mind wander, she was there to keep him on the right track.
He drove straight to the Super 8, where they had a room for Mr. Miller. It was a different room from last time, still on the ground floor but at the opposite end of the building, but it ceased being different when he opened the door to a unit that was identical to the one he’d had before. Which was inevitable, he supposed, because it was a Super 8 Motel, and the units were pretty much identical all over the country. It certainly stood to reason that two rooms in a particular motel would be indistinguishable one from the other. The same layout, the same furnishings, the same configuration in the bathroom, the same notice about throwing the towels on the floor to save water, or whatever their reason was for wanting you to do it. He was fairly certain global warming came into the picture somewhere.
Still, it gave him a turn.
IF YOU DIDN’T mind getting your picture taken, you could buy just about anything at Walmart.
They had security cameras all over the place, both inside and outside the enormous store, and that was almost reason enough for Keller to go someplace else. But where could you go without leaving a photographic record? There were security cameras in his motel, and in its parking lot. More Americans had starring roles on closed-circuit TV than appeared in YouTube videos, and from what he’d read it was even worse in England, where an unrecorded moment outside one’s own home had become a rare thing indeed.
But an unsolved crime, here or in the UK, was less of a rarity, so Keller wasn’t sure the cameras made all that much of a difference. And the footage—did you even call it that when it was digital?—well, whatever you called it, they’d need a reason to look at it, wouldn’t they? Something that lingered in a clerk’s memory, something recorded that triggered suspicions.
Say you wheeled your cart to the checkout counter, and the only item in it was a wicked-looking Bowie knife with a nine-inch blade. Say the clerk pointed out that they had whetstones in Aisle Fourteen, and you said you figured it was sharp enough as it was, and you were only planning to use it once.
“A gun would be better,” you could add, “if it weren’t for that darned waiting period.”
Keller, wheeling his cart, chose a print, matted and framed, of two kittens worrying a ball of yarn. Two aisles over he found picture hooks, and a three-foot coil of picture-hanging wire.
Next stop, hammers. The one he picked struck him as identical to the one he’d found in the Marlboro Man’s van, and felt very much the same in his hand. The same weight, the same good balance, the same black rubber easy-grip handle.
“That’s so sweet!” the checkout clerk said, holding the print at arm’s length. “For your daughter’s room?”
“My niece,” Keller said.
“Well, I know she’ll love it.”
She gave him two shopping bags—the framed print got one all to itself—and he carried them to the car. Half a mile away he parked at a strip mall, and added the picture hooks and the wire to the bag with the print, depositing the lot in a trash can.
He drove off with the hammer on the seat beside him.
Why had he bothered to correct the woman? Why insist the picture was for his niece and not his daughter?
Because, he thought, he didn’t have a niece. He had a daughter, and was more comfortable leaving her out of it. And he could picture Julia’s face if he’d tried hanging the kitten print in Jenny’s room. She’d be happier with a dead alligator.
It occurred to him that the discarded picture wire would have been easy to fashion into a garrote. But that would have been the last thing he’d want for the scenario he had in mind. A garrote, simple enough to prepare, nevertheless required preparation. You didn’t have a sudden flare-up of fury and reach for a piece of picture wire. You needed time, and you probably needed a certain degree of professionalism in the bargain—to make it, in the first place, and then to employ it effectively. The garrote was not the weapon of an amateur.
At a stoplight, he reached over and rested a hand on the hammer.
His only tool, he thought. Now to go find himself a nail.
SOMETHING MADE HIM drive by the Overmont house. He didn’t park, and barely slowed down, and all he saw was the house itself. The garage door was closed, as it always seemed to be unless someone was on the way in or out, and there were no cars parked in the driveway or on the street nearby.
He drove off, wondering what he had hoped to see. “I told him what he ought to do was get out of town,” Dot had reported earlier. “Take his wife, fly off for a few fun-filled days in Las Vegas or Cancún or, hell, I don’t know. Where do people like that go?”
“People like what?”
“Nymphomaniacs,” she said, “and the morons who love them. I’d love to get them both out of town, but I’m not counting on it.”
“Just so he quits playing detective.”
“Oh, there’ll be no more of that,” she said. “No more leaving the office early, no more surprise visits.”
That was something.
THERE WERE TWO white vans parked at the Wet Spot, and his first thought was that they were both here, Cowboy Hat and Tom Cruise. The vans weren’t parked side by side, and he saw right away that both were parked much nearer to the building than the original group of three had been, but it took a closer look than that to establish that these weren’t the vehicles he was looking for.
Both bore lettering on their doors, one proclaiming itself the property of a boiler repair firm, the other showing a pink pig wearing a top hat and carrying a cane. It might have been interesting to speculate as to what the Pig About Town was selling, and there was a phone number under the logo that he could have called, but they weren’t the vans he was looking for, and that was really as much as he needed to know.
What was the other place?
The Spotted Tiger, and he couldn’t remember what street it was on. He could go into the Wet Spot and ask, and somebody would be sure to know, but maybe the GPS would tell him.
He tried, and it did. Spotted Tiger Restaurant, 3304 Quincy Avenue. The sounded right, Quincy, and anyway, how right did it have to sound? I mean, how many Spotted Tigers were there likely
to be?
FROM THE OUTSIDE, the Spotted Tiger looked a lot like the Wet Spot. No white vans, though, which surprised Keller. You’d think they’d have one or two parked there, even if they weren’t the one he was looking for.
He went inside, just to make sure, and it was the right kind of crowd, too, a roomful of rednecks raising their voices to make themselves heard over a jukebox on which Marty Robbins was singing about the West Texas town of El Paso. Keller ordered a beer and looked around the room, while his mind tried to think of words to rhyme with El Paso. He right away came up with lasso, and that was as far as he got.
He saw a lot of men wearing boots, and even a Stetson or two, but he didn’t see Tom Cruise’s stunt double, and neither did he see the Marlboro Man’s near-twin.
He had a sip of beer. Well, he’d confirmed it. Their vans weren’t here and neither were they, and one sip was as much beer as he wanted to put in his system. He’d put a twenty on the bar, and now he scooped up enough of his change to leave an appropriate tip, and realized that he was thinking about eels, and how he’d read somewhere that all the eels in the world were born in the same spot, and they then went their separate ways, returning to wherever their parents had come from, and then when their lives had run their natural course, they somehow knew to swim back halfway across the world to where they’d been hatched. Where they would spawn and, with what Keller imagined was a great sense of relief, expire.
Was that even true? Never mind how he knew it, because he didn’t really know it, he’d just heard it or read it somewhere. Was it really every eel, or just a particular species? And how could anyone know for sure? Even if they tagged the mama and papa eels, so they knew they’d all gone to the same place, how would they know which little elvers had which parents?
But that, he realized, was the least of it. What was baffling was why this particular thought came to his mind just now, when he had no reason to think of eels or elvers or their ancestral home in the Sargasso Sea.
Oh.
El Paso, lasso, and Sargasso.
He’d thought he’d forgotten all about Marty Robbins and the damn song, but evidently he hadn’t, and there it was, running around in his mind even when his mind was turned off. The song had long since ended, he’d only heard the last half-minute of it, and a couple of songs had played since to which he’d paid no attention. Well, no conscious attention, because God knows what his mind was capable of when he wasn’t tuned in. A couple of songs, and he didn’t even know what they were, and right now Johnny Cash was telling everybody how he walked the line, and all of a sudden it seemed important to find out what the songwriter had rhymed with El Paso. It couldn’t be Sargasso, could it? Lasso was possible, in that kind of Old West song, but—