Vince had a decision to make, and he had to make it fast. He thought of going straight and following the signs down to the public beach, but he changed his mind at the last moment and turned right onto the dirt road. There was some risk involved here, but he thought the trade-off might be worth it. He knew he could end up following the cars into some kind of a dead end, but if he tried to find Whittaker later he might not find him at all. As far as Vince was concerned he was in the middle of nowhere.
He made the turn, and within only about a couple of hundred yards he knew he’d made the right call. The car immediately in front of him slowed almost to a crawl and then turned left toward the lake, down a tiny gap in the trees that would have been nearly invisible at night and easy to overlook. Vince had been trying to hang back a discreet distance but he couldn’t stay too far back in case he lost contact with the Audi up ahead. Almost inevitably he ran up close behind the car turning in front of him. Its driver was taking forever to negotiate the tight turn and when Vince finally was able to get past him he could see why. It was a narrow dirt road, trees up close on both sides and very little clearance. Vince slowed down and watched, saw the car go over a dip in the road and disappear from view a moment later. There was absolutely no trace at all of where he was going, although Vince had to assume there was some kind of cottage down there somewhere.
Vince realized he had some catching up to do. If all of these places had the same kind of entrance he’d never find him unless he actually saw the Audi make the turn. It was already long gone, Whittaker apparently unconcerned about snagging the car’s expensive undercarriage on the bumpy road’s exposed rocks. Vince sped up, afraid he might have already blown his chance. Enough time had elapsed that Whittaker could have already reached his destination. The road was ridiculous—narrow, twisting, and rough, no straight sections longer than twenty yards—and in spite of the need to concentrate on where he was going Vince noticed at least two driveways much like the first, no trace of habitation beyond, no way of knowing if he’d already turned in.
Vince crested another hill and caught a glimpse of the Audi’s roofline, partially screened by another intervening hill. Vince hit the brakes hard, slewed to a stop. The Audi was in the middle of a laborious left turn, a carbon copy of the one the first car had made. Vince was only forty or fifty yards away but there was no sign Whittaker even knew he was there, concentrating as he was on cranking the expensive nose of the Audi around without knocking a bunch of trees down in the process. Vince thought of backing up, dismissed the idea as soon as it crossed his mind. Instead he just stayed where he was, told himself that he’d kept a low profile in Strothwood and nobody knew or cared who the hell he was anyway.
He let the Audi finish the turn and then counted off thirty seconds before rolling forward again and scanning the immediate surroundings for some kind of landmark. The other driveways he’d passed had little wooden signposts nailed to trees at the road’s edge, all with some kind of cute rustic name on them. Whittaker’s driveway was the only one that was unmarked. Apparently he guarded his privacy.
There was nothing else to see. There was a sharp bend in the driveway and all he could see was a line of trees on the other side. He knew better than to look more closely. The road itself came to an abrupt end about a hundred and fifty yards past Whittaker’s driveway, replaced by a small clearing bordered by more trees and scrub brush. It looked like someone had taken a loader or something and widened the dead end just enough to enable a car to turn around. He thought of just staying there and waiting for darkness but that kind of lassitude could cost him. As remote as it was there was a chance that some lost soul could stray all the way to the end of the road and later on remember a lone car with a solitary occupant sitting in the middle of nowhere. It would take time, but it was better to stash the car someplace far enough away that it couldn’t be connected with what he had planned for Whittaker. It was a tight fit but Vince turned the car in a slow-motion one-eighty and headed back the way he’d come.
• • •
Five hours later it was full dark and he was back, crouched in a stand of trees only a few yards from Whittaker’s place. It had taken about half an hour to find a place where he could leave his car. He couldn’t risk leaving it anywhere on the road leading to Whittaker’s cottage, so he drove all the way back to where it intersected with the road to the public beach. He looked down the hill toward the lake, saw there were a lot of vehicles parked near the beach, what looked like a lot of activity. He toyed with the idea of leaving the car among them, decided it wouldn’t work. He’d still have to wait in the car, and a man sitting alone in a car would be conspicuous.
Instead he turned left, back up the hill and away from the beach, and finally found what looked like an old fire road screened by some trees. He’d backed the car in there, then settled down for a long, boring wait until it got dark enough for him to start his walk through the woods. When the time came it was tempting to just walk back along the road but he couldn’t take the chance on being seen. Just like in Strothwood he’d be remembered, and probably these cottages belonged to the same fucking people.
Even just paralleling the road that led to the public beach wasn’t easy. Fortunately he didn’t have to go far into the woods to do that, just enough that he couldn’t be seen from the road, and he needed to be close enough that he could keep track of where the road actually was. The night was reasonably cool but within moments he was sweating with the effort of negotiating his way through brush and deadfalls and trees and trying not to make too much noise doing it.
Suddenly he heard voices behind him somewhere and he froze. The voices were getting louder, probably three or four people, talking loudly and probably a little drunk. A woman laughed at about the same time Vince saw traces of a flashlight beam come up on the road beside him. He lowered himself slowly into a crouch, turned his head just slightly left and watched the road as two women and two men followed up the flashlight beam and walked past him only a few feet away. Several feet of heavy brush separated him from the road, and while he could hear most of what they were saying there was no indication they were aware of his presence. He gave it a full two minutes and let their voices fade away down the road before he moved again.
He only had to go another fifty feet or so before he got to the same road where he’d turned to follow Whittaker. He had another decision to make. His initial plan had been to stay away from anything like a road or even a walking path so he could avoid being seen. He hadn’t counted on the flashlights, realized that anybody walking in the dark out here would have a flashlight on so they wouldn’t get run over by somebody.
Anybody but him. He had a small Maglite clipped to his belt but he had no intention of using it unless he had to. He’d see an approaching flashlight or the lights of a car long before they saw him, probably long enough to duck into the brush and out of sight. If the trip down the hill had been any indication trying to get to Whittaker’s cottage through the woods would take too long.
That, and he was sick of bushwhacking. His eyes were accustomed to the darkness now and staying on the road made it easy. The tree cover was thick on both sides, the dirt road itself uneven and hilly. He did what he’d done earlier, started counting the gaps in the tree line on his left. A car had passed him once, coming back toward the main road, but its lights and engine note had given him enough warning to get into the trees at the side of the road. He remembered at the last moment to watch it pass, suddenly worried that for whatever reason Whittaker might be on the way back out. He was lucky. His eyes might have been adjusted to the darkness but given the split second of its passing it would have been hard for him to distinguish Whittaker’s Audi from a lot of other sedans with the same approximate silhouette. He caught a break, this vehicle unmistakably a big SUV of some kind. He stayed where he was for a few moments, made sure that the approach of another car hadn’t been masked by the engine noise of the first. There was nothing, but he waited anyway and listened again. He di
dn’t want to suddenly pop out of the trees in front of someone who’d decided to go for an evening walk. The thought prompted him to check the time and he squinted at the luminous dial of his watch. 10:40 pm.
He could hear faint music and what sounded like laughter, remembered how sound could carry on a summer night near the water. It had been a long time since he’d heard sounds like that. He only hoped that what he heard wasn’t coming from Whittaker’s place. He’d taken a necessary risk in waiting for nightfall. There’d been a few hours when he didn’t have eyes on Whittaker, time for any number of people to join him at the cottage. Vince had made an assumption, one that could render his prolonged stalk a waste of time.
There wasn’t anything he could do about it, so he gingerly stepped back on the road. He saw a light in the distance and it startled him until he realized it was shining through the trees on the left, down toward the lake, not on the road itself. He’d counted six driveways so far, and the sounds ahead were building in volume and he knew the odds of finding Whittaker alone had turned against him.
He kept going anyway. Whittaker’s cottage was the last one on the road and it had become obvious to Vince that he’d blown it. There were enough voices intermingled with the music to indicate a large party or gathering of some kind, not that it mattered anymore. Vince had thought he’d done his homework, spent enough time shadowing Whittaker and the others to build some kind of profile and get at least a superficial idea of their tendencies and where they were vulnerable. With Whittaker it looked like he’d missed badly. Vince had built up a picture of him as a solitary drinker, a lone wolf who marked his pathetically limited territory with perfunctory and predictable stops at office, courthouse, a couple of bars and a nondescript, neglected house in a nondescript neighborhood. All of those places had been far too exposed and too public for what Vince wanted to do. The relative isolation of the cottage had been unexpected, a gift, but at least for tonight it looked like a nonstarter.
That idea died hard, and there was an outside chance that somehow the party would end at some point and that people would leave. Vince crossed the road for a better angle and did a cursory check of the cars. He couldn’t see a bonfire but he could smell one, probably farther down toward the lake, and there was enough light spilling from the cottage windows that he could see people moving back and forth both inside and outside. The vehicles for the most part were late model sedans and SUVs. There were a lot of them, and from what he could see and hear there was a lot of drinking going on. Vince remembered it was a Friday night so a lot of people probably weren’t going anywhere soon.
Vince was about to write it off and turn away when he saw it. The little car was parked near the end of the driveway, dwarfed by a Cadillac SUV in front and a late model sedan behind it and closer to the road. In its own way it was as distinctive as Whittaker’s Audi, and Vince knew who it belonged to.
Vince started back the way he came. A lot of things would have to go right for this to work. He had to get back to his own car before the little Mazda left, if it left at all. On the plus side there was only one road out of the lake.
Maybe the night wasn’t a total loss after all.
34
A blaring car horn jolted Frank awake. He’d fallen asleep on the couch again, the only way he could eventually coax himself into sleep, but the horn was close and it overpowered the sound of the talk show on television. The horn kept going, intermittent bursts of a few seconds at a time. Whoever was doing it had to be sitting right in his driveway.
Frank finally lurched to his feet and went to the door, instinctively cracking it open only slightly until he could see what he was dealing with. Then he saw the Miata, its headlight beams refracted in a fine shroud of dust from his driveway. In the sudden quiet after Angie stopped sounding the horn Frank could hear a car accelerating away into the distance.
By the time he got to the corner of the house and looked down the road there was only the glare of brake lights as the car slowed suddenly and disappeared around the turn. It was impossible to tell who or what it was. He turned away and went back to where Angie was sitting in the Miata. She was staring straight ahead, her hands still gripping the wheel. She didn’t look up until he opened the door for her.
“What was that all about?”
She looked up at him, eyes wide.
“I don’t know. I was on the way back from the lake and he came up behind me. I thought he was going to run me off the road. He was right up on my bumper.”
“Could you see anything?”
“No.” She shook her head. “His lights were so bright I couldn’t see anything else. I could hardly see the road.”
“You’d better come in.”
He put out his hand and she reluctantly let go of the steering wheel, let him pull her up out of the seat. She was wearing only a tank top and shorts and she nearly stumbled into him as she stood up. They were very close for a moment and he could smell alcohol on her breath. He could feel her hand trembling in his. Reaction was setting in and the alcohol wouldn’t have helped. He helped her up the stairs and into the house, gently steering her into the living room.
“I’ll be alright, Frank,” she said, “I just need a few minutes.”
“Sure,” he guided her onto the sofa and then sat in the armchair near the window. “Tell me what happened. Again.”
“I was on my way home from–it was supposed to be sort of a wake for Greg but when I got there it looked to me like it was just another excuse to get pissed. Most of the people are real estate agents and lawyers and they all knew Greg, but I’d known him longer. And they’re walking around saying how sorry they are and then they just start talking about something else. Some of them were even talking about how they were going to split up Greg’s listings. They didn’t have the nerve to say that to me but I could actually hear people talking about it. Finally I just got fed up with all the bullshit and I left.”
She studied him for a few moments, maybe trying to gauge if he was actually listening. She nodded once, just an infinitesimal movement, more to herself than to him. Frank didn’t say anything, just waited.
“Just a couple of minutes after I turned onto the road back to town,” she said finally, “I saw headlights coming up behind me. I was afraid it might be a state trooper so I slowed down a little, didn’t want to get pulled over because I’d been drinking. But he came up right behind me and stayed there, had his high beams on and I couldn’t see anything. A cop wouldn’t do that.”
Frank suddenly thought of Wheelock, but that was too much even for him. Wheelock was still on disability anyway, might never get off it. As far as Frank knew Wheelock wouldn’t be driving anywhere for a while.
“There were all kinds of places he could have passed me,” she said, “but he stayed right up on my bumper. I couldn’t outrun him and I was scared what would happen if I tried. Your place is on the way back and it was the only thing I could think of.”
She was reliving it all over again, on the verge of tears. Frank sat awkwardly in the chair, not wanting to go over to her, afraid of what would happen or how she might interpret it. They’d had their differences at the end but none of them had been in bed.
“It’s okay, Angie, You did the only thing you could do.”
“I don’t understand, Frank. Why would someone do that? It’s crazy.”
“Angie, you didn’t do anything wrong.” He had to choose his words carefully, for a couple of reasons. “It was late at night, you’re driving a little car with the top down so it’s obvious you’re alone and it’s obvious you’re a woman.”
Very obvious, he thought, even to me, as fucked up as I am. She seemed to read his mind, glanced down at what she was wearing.
“A woman,” she said, her voice brittle and challenging, “dressed like a hooker.”
He wasn’t going to fall for it. Maybe he was too accustomed to verbally fencing with Adrienne.
“No,” he said evenly, “you were dressed like a woman coming back fro
m a party at the beach. I think that some yahoo came up on you and decided to – hell, I don’t know. You know what they’re like.”
“He could have killed me!” she said.
For the first time there was anger in her voice instead of fear. That was a good sign.
“Yeah, he could have,” Frank agreed, “but I doubt if that ever occurred to him. We’re not talking about a rocket scientist here.”
“No, I guess we’re not,” she said.
There was an awkward silence.
“I should be going,” she said finally, “I’m sorry I barged in on you, Frank – but I’m glad you were here.”
“So am I, but you’re not going anywhere.”
She looked at him, surprised.
“You’re over the limit, Angie, and as you can see,” he swept a negligent hand at the scotch bottle that he’d left on the coffee table, “so am I. No way I’m going to let you drive home and I shouldn’t drive you home either.”
A small smile played across her lips. She was starting to say something when Frank held up his hand.
“You know damn well,” he smiled, “there’s a spare bedroom upstairs.”
• • •
It was, predictably enough, a long night. It had taken a few minutes to get her settled in. At least he didn’t have to show her where everything was. He was still embarrassed for her to see how far he’d let things go, but he’d been through that already and the only good thing that had come out of the open house fiasco was that he’d finally cleaned things up a bit. There wasn’t a choice anyway. She’d been the one who’d shown up on the doorstep and driving for either one of them was out of the question. When they’d been together his life had been together as well, or at least he thought it was, and the condition of the house had reflected that. That had changed in the last year or so, and he’d managed to get upstairs on some pretext and hurriedly change the sheets on the bed in the spare room and clean up the bathroom a bit.
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