by Linda Welch
I slid off and went to the south-facing window, and pulled the drapes aside. For the first time, I truly saw the beauty of the Vale. The ground beyond the meadow climbed in a grassy ridge and then rose like the inside of a gigantic green bowl. The road to Devizes snaked up the hill then dove out of sight. Two narrow lanes edged with tall trees wound all over the place. Tiny cottages and the blazing colors of their gardens stood alone or cushioned by rolling Irish-green mounds. Laundry hung limp on clothes-lines and rotary dryers. Trees clustered between the houses of a village with a tall spire rising from their midst. Closer to home, I made out swathes of wild flowers and flowering hedges edging patchwork fields. A low hum of affection washed through me in a comforting wave.
Except I didn’t feel my affection. The tiny Elemental squatted in the inn yard, facing the direction I faced, maybe seeing what I saw. It rose up on spindly legs, turned to face me, opened its mouth and squawked. Mine!
I stepped back from the window and pulled the drapes together. What am I gonna do about you, little buddy?
Royal looked over my shoulder. “It’s back. No, gone again.”
At least Royal felt the little creature. I was not going crazy.
I took a quick shower, re-braided my hair and went through my clothes while Royal messed with his laptop. I didn’t bring much, just a few mix and match items. I’m not one of those who take along a bunch of clothes in case the need for a certain item could arise, but maybe I should have planned better for this trip.
Royal went in the bathroom to shower, so I dressed and trotted downstairs to the foyer. Sally Short stood behind the desk sorting mail. She looked up with a smile as I approached.
“Does Little Barrow have a Laundromat?”
She put down the mail. “I am afraid not, dear. But give your dirties to me and I will take care of them.”
“You offer a laundry service?”
“Not officially, but we do whatever we are able to accommodate guests. It will not be any trouble.”
I dropped my gaze. “Good of you, but I don’t have much needs cleaning, except … well, personal items.”
Her smile broadened. She winked. “No matter. Give your bits and pieces to me and I will have them fresh in a jiffy.” She leaned in. “Do not fret, my love, only female hands will touch your undies.”
I felt like an idiot as I blushed. Two women should be able to mention underwear without one of them going all embarrassed. “Um. Thanks. I’ll do that.”
I got out of there quickly. Back in our room, Royal sat in the pool of sunshine I had vacated, his long copper-gold hair damp-dry over his naked shoulders.
The sun hit me full in the face as we stepped outside. The humidity had disappeared with the clouds. The temperature felt just right, tempting me to bide awhile, maybe relax at one of the tables out back of the inn instead of getting in a hot car.
I stopped with my hand on the car hood. My feeling, or the little Elemental trying to tell me something again? Should I go to the rear of the inn? I met Royal’s eyes across the roof of the car. Strange, to know we felt the same thing and I wasn’t alone in this. I waited, but didn’t feel the compulsion as before, so perhaps my enjoyment of the climate, my desire to relax in the sun, was my own.
“Mind if I tag along?” Carrie asked.
“Please don’t,” I groaned.
Her jaw dropped, then her lips snapped together. “Heaven forbid I go where I’m not wanted,” she huffed.
“We’re going to the police station in Pewsey. We have to be alert and very careful. Carrie, I’m sorry, you’re a distraction I can’t afford.”
She put her palms together at chest level as if she prayed. “Please. I promise I won’t say a word.”
I turned my eyes skyward. “You’ll come anyway, won’t you, no matter what I say.”
We got in the car.
We took our time getting to Pewsey, a pleasant drive in empty lanes. The high banks and hedges provided shade from the sun and lowered the heat a notch.
“There’s Marlene Jones coming out of the rental,” Carrie said as we drove past a row of cottages. “What’s she doing there? My goodness, she’s kissing him!” She leaned between the front seats. “That’s … what’s his name now … Kevin, Colin … Cameron, that’s it. He’s the new renter, been here a month. Fancy that! Half her age. She’s a sly one. She’ll be out on her ear if her Roger finds out.”
“How old was your Alfonso?”
“Ow! You hit below the belt.” Carrie settled back. “Yes, he was half my age, and oh my, didn’t he have a way about him. We met in Leicester Square. He waited tables in one of the Italian restaurants. He made me feel alive.” Her voice hushed. “He made me feel beautiful. Barry and I … well, I read in the kitchen, he sat in the living-room with the telly, strangers sharing the same house. I cooked, I cleaned, I shopped. That was my life.
“Can you believe I was happy enough? Then I met Alfonso and realized what was missing: affection, romance, appreciation. Alfonso gave me all that.” She flipped up her hands. “So I ran away with him. I died. End of story, end of my life.”
If she was trying to make me feel bad, she succeeded. I said nothing - what could I say? Certainly nothing to ease pain or erase memories.
“Looking back, I know I would have gone home eventually. Probably when my money ran out. I wanted Barry worried out of his mind, not knowing where I’d gone, what happened to me. I wanted him remorseful, mourning me, thinking of how he should have treated me better. But knowing Barry, he never saw anything wrong with our marriage.
“But life after death isn’t so bad. I’ve traveled all over the world, seen things I never would have with Barry.”
“And you come back to Little Barrow?”
“It’s my home now.”
I thought of my home, my house, my roommates, and my unfaithful canine companion. I missed them, though they would give me hell when I got back.
“I went home to see him, just the one time. He looked so old, and I’d only been dead a month. I couldn’t go back again, too painful.”
Royal cleared his throat, loudly. Oh that’s right, you can’t hear her. I wished he could. Then perhaps the dead would be as real to him as they are to me.
Passing the veterinary clinic, the gas station and Alms Houses, we came to Pewsey and wound down the hill to town. A high brick retaining wall flanked the road on one side, the Church of Saint Martin, its large graveyard and a row of cottages the other. We rounded the bend to the town proper. The road narrowed, hemmed by a miscellany of tiny shops. The police station sat opposite the Post Office just past the statue of Alfred.
The place was surrounded.
From the satellite dishes on top, the two large vans parked up the road belonged to television stations. Vehicles parked bumper-to-bumper from the police station to the top of the hill, most with their wheels on the sidewalk. A young police officer stood before the doors to the station, legs planted wide, hands behind his back, chin high, as if he didn’t see the crowd of spectators and newshounds just beyond a row of tough vinyl barriers.
“How are we gonna get in there?” I asked Royal.
He drove past the station and turned left up a dead-end road which ran past the Post Office. “I’m sure you will think of something.”
My mouth popped open. “Me? Why is it always me?”
“I have to concentrate on what I can hear in there.”
Exasperated, I shook my head.
We had to park at the end of the road and walk back down the slope. We crossed the main street and marched boldly up to the crowd and through them. Royal guided me with a hand in the small of my back, murmuring, “Excuse me. Let us through, please. Excuse me. Thank you.”
We stopped in front of the police officer. Royal smiled in his face. “May we pass, Officer?”
“And you are… ?”
“Royal Mortensen and Tiff Banks. We need to talk to someone.”
“Would this be police business, Sir?”
Royal beamed. “Yes, indeed.”
Much to my surprise, it worked, because the young guy nodded and stood aside. We entered the station.
Now what? I sent Royal an evil look as I tried to come up with a reason for being there. He innocently returned my gaze.
We went to the desk where a young, weedy-looking officer with buzzed ginger hair stood. So skinny he could hide behind a telephone pole if turned sideways, his head looked too big on his neck. His Adams apple protruded, his pale-blue eyes bulged, as did his round, squashed nose. “Special Constable Pickins, at your service,” he declared nasally.
Royal took a step back and eyed me inquiringly. You heel, I thought at him.
“I lost my wallet,” I blurted. “Must have put it down and forgot it. We went back to every store we were in, but no luck. I wondered if someone handed it in.”
Royal butted in before Pickins could answer. “Do you have a men’s room?” He wanted to get farther inside the station.
Pickins kept a polite smile on his face. “Not for public use, Sir. The public toilets are next door on the left. I’m surprised you didn’t see them.”
“We came from the other direction. We are new to Pewsey and did not know you have public conveniences.”
Pickins didn’t budge. “You do now. If you want to pop along there, I can help the young lady.”
“I can wait,” Royal said. He wandered back to the east wall and looked at some posters.
So I was on my own. Thanks very much. But I didn’t dare glare at him. I looked sideways at Carrie. She put pinched thumb and forefinger together and zipped them over her lips.
“If you’d describe the item, I can look in our Lost and Found Box.” The constable emphasized the name like he spoke of something impressive.
They had a lost and found box, like in secondary school? I made a square shape with the fingers of both hands. “It’s around so big and - ”
“You mean your purse,” Pickins said, with an oh-you-Americans smile.
I frowned. “No, I mean my wallet. Little leather thing; you keep money in it. I don’t carry a purse.”
“In England, we call it a purse, for notes and coins. What you call a purse, ladies here call a handbag.”
His condescending tone irked me. “I don’t care what your ladies call their stuff, what I carry is a wallet. No coins, just notes.” I had an inspiration. “Like a guy uses.”
“Problem, Constable Pickins?” said a familiar voice, and Darnel Fowler came through the doorway at the rear of the room.
Constable Darnel Fowler.
“Johnny didn’t mention Fowler’s a cop.”
“You didn’t know?” from Carrie.
I glared at her - fine informant she made.
“A police officer mows down a teen, leaves the scene and does not report it,” Royal mused.
“He panicked and drove away. Nobody saw what happened so he kept quiet,” I suggested.
His chin jutted aggressively as he gritted his teeth. “We are going to nail the bastard.”
Royal was well and truly riled. Good cops despise crooked cops.
I brought my shoulders up. “How? We can hardly go to the police.”
“I will think of something. We will think of something.”
I silently nodded at the windscreen.
Royal signaled to merge at a roundabout. “Definitely a bomb.”
“What?”
“What?” from Carrie.
“The Land Rover was rigged.” He glanced at me and away, eyes still cloudy. “They think the explosives were rigged to blow when it made a ninety-degree turn.”
We were almost to Little Barrow. I stared at the hedgerows whipping past, but in my mind’s eye saw the dark lane and the Land Rover’s lights blazing from where it parked past the church. It came at us on a more or less straight path.
“It did deliberately try to run us down, didn’t it?”
“I do not doubt it.”
“You didn’t tell me any of this!” Carrie exclaimed.
“Then be quiet and listen.”
Then the Land Rover took that sharp turn. I flared my eyes. “Clarke drove to the church. Whichever direction he came from, he made plenty of ninety-degree turns on these country roads.”
Royal’s eyes met mine. Before he could speak I jabbed my finger at the windscreen. “Car!” The narrow lanes intimidated me, I did not like him taking his eyes off the road.
“There is not.”
“Frightened the life out of me.” Carrie fanned her bosom with one hand then clapped it to her mouth. “Did you hear me? Frightened the life out of me? Ooh, I am a silly cow.”
I poked Royal’s shoulder by way of emphasis. “How do you know when you’re not looking at the road?”
Royal shook his head slightly, eyes crinkling as he looked ahead and directed our conversation back to the topic at hand. “The bomb was put in place after he parked in the lane. He left the Land Rover long enough for someone to mount the explosives.”
I closed my eyes and ran the fingers of both hands over my scalp. “So whoever hired him to kill us didn’t want him alive to tell the tale. Royal, we’re in the middle of something nasty.”
“You must be fond of understatement,” Carrie pointed out.
I twisted toward Royal as much as the seatbelt allowed. “Why did someone try to kill us? What did we do?”
I thought some more and he let me. I put my thoughts into words as we drove into Little Barrow. “We asked about the Nortons and someone searched our room. We went to Peter Cooper’s office. Someone caught onto us.”
“Nobody saw us at Cooper’s. I would have known.”
“Then maybe… . Shit! I don’t know what’s going on.”
We drove down the side of The Hart and Garter, parked, and went through the back entrance to the inn.
To give her her due, Carrie had not once tried to come to our room, so I did her the favor of taking her to the bar and dropping her off there. Then I tromped up the stairs on Royal’s heels, anxious and depressed. A cloud mass obscuring the sun didn’t lighten my mood. We had not found the Nortons. Persons unknown were trying to kill us. We couldn’t help Johnny, at least not in a direct way.
Royal opened the door to our room. I squeezed past him and flopped in the chair. As I sat there, my anxiety expanded. Perhaps whoever searched our room was not local, as I presumed, but from outside the village, as far away as another dimension. Maybe it was the prelude to something much worse.
They tried to kill us. They used explosives. My voice came out raspy. “Royal, can you look around, make sure… .”
Some nasty Gelpha planted a bomb in my house and another in Royal’s apartment. Royal’s heightened senses detected the detonator’s click as it activated; his speed got him from his living room before the bomb exploded. I almost lost him. He alerted Clarion PD, who sent the bomb squad to my house in record time. They found a similar device in my kitchen.
So, yeah, I’m a little paranoid.
Royal knew what I wanted of him. Far from dismissing the notion, he nodded seriously and went through the room and bathroom, checking every place which could hide an explosive device, while I sat frozen to the seat.
He came from the bathroom looking worried, and went to the bed. “Tiff, I want you to do exactly as I say.”
I nodded. A lump came up my throat and wedged there.
“Come here.”
I eased from the chair, hardly daring to breathe as I crept over the floor to the bed.
“Now take off all your clothes and do it slowly, very slowly.”
What? Hunched over, my fingers were on the buttons of my shirt. His lip lifted in a tiny tweak. My hands dropped as I straightened. He gave me an eyebrow.
So that was his game.
Grinning, I lunged at him. But he wasn’t there anymore.
I spun on my heel. Wearing a stupid smile, he stood with his back to the door. I tore across the room at him.
He moved again, a vague blur off t
o my left.
Now he stood against the east window. I growled out a chuckle, and launched myself at him. Blink, and he’d gone.
I turned very slowly, and he sat precariously balanced on the headboard, one knee over the other, chin on knuckled hand like Rodin’s The Thinker, only with clothes on.
I swallowed a laugh and tried to look mad. “Get down here, asshole!”
“Come and get me.” He dropped off the headboard and hit the mattress. His big mistake, because you can’t zip away when you are hanging onto a jiggling mattress for dear life. I jumped him.
When I had my knees either side of his waist, he wrapped me in arms like steel bands and brought me down on his chest. “Got you.”
Before I could open my mouth, he said, “Feel better now?”
Yeah, I did. Darting around the room after him leached away the tension.
I laid my cheek on his chest, admitting nothing.
“You will not try to hurt me if I let you up, will you?”
“Don’t let me up,” I murmured. “I want to stay here awhile.
“Fine by me.”
His arms relaxed. I let a minute go by, then sat up. As I gazed in his eyes, I placed my palms flat on his chest and performed an oh-so-slow grind. His eyes darkened and he swallowed so hard his Adam’s apple bobbled. I leaned over, and as his breath quickened, grabbed the crystal vase and dumped a mess of tepid water and lavender sprigs in his face.
After a silent moment, he spat out a piece of lavender, eyes glinting, mouth wide in a big white smile. I should have known water and lavender would not discourage him.
We had missed lunch. Royal suggested we have an early supper at The Ugly Duck. “A different clientele. Let us see what they have to say about the drama at the crossroads.”
Sounded like a good idea to me. I put the vase with salvaged lavender and fresh water on the windowsill, and winced at the damp pillows and sheets. “Why don’t you head over, soften them up. I’m going to give my laundry to Sally and ask her for a change of linen.”
