by Theresa Weir
The man in front of her was looking at her as if he knew her inside and out. What arrogance. He knew nothing about her. And, at that moment, she decided she didn’t want to know anything about him. Let him wallow in his smug narrow-mindedness.
“You don’t look like a policeman,” she stated, implying that people weren’t always what they seemed. Her comment also let him in on her harmless deception.
At first his expression was one of surprise. That was instantly replaced by one of self-satisfaction. He’d expected deception from her. “You’re not blind.”
“What about you?” she asked, sending the conversation volleying back. “Are you who you pretend to be? I’m sensing a man out of his element.”
“Don’t use that mind-reading crap on me. I’m in my element. I couldn’t be more in my element.”
“How do you define element?” she asked, suddenly realizing just how tired she was, wishing she hadn’t started this word game.
“I’m the small-town cop who can do whatever he wants.”
His eyes were an intense Paul Newman blue, so dark they looked artificial. Contacts? No, he wasn’t the type. He wouldn’t bother with clear contacts, let alone tinted ones. “You mean you run the town?” she asked.
“If I ran the town, you wouldn’t be here.”
“Now why doesn’t that surprise me?”
“Did you ever think you might be tempting fate by pretending to be blind?”
Maybe he wasn’t such a skeptic after all.
“Are you saying you believe in fate but not in psychic ability?” she asked.
“That’s a good one.”
The other man, apparently growing restless and fearing he’d never become part of the conversation, jumped in, unintentionally defusing what was fast becoming a hostile situation. “I’m Beau.”
“My brother,” Daniel added as explanation.
Beau eagerly extended a hand, his arm straight, his posture perfect. His hand was soft but warm, his grip firm.
“Hi, Beau.” There, in front of some godforsaken train station in the middle of some godforsaken state, she’d found a good heart. And good hearts were rare. “What sign are you?” she asked.
“What?”
“Zodiac sign.”
He didn’t understand. For a moment she regretted having asked. But then she forged ahead, hoping to repair the damage. “Pisces. I’ll bet you’re a Pisces.”
“Oh, yeah,” he said, finally getting it. “I am.”
She introduced him to Premonition. It was love at first sight. Beau began to play with the dog, running a few steps away then waiting for animal to catch up. She’d never seen Premonition take to someone in such a way.
“Is it always so hot here?” Cleo asked Daniel, still unable to fully grasp the smothering heat.
“No, sometimes it’s even hotter. This yours?” Daniel asked, indicating the only bag around.
“Yes.”
He picked it up, groaning in surprise at the weight. “Guess those pyramids and crystal balls weigh a lot.”
“Actually, it’s the portal to my time machine.”
His sun-bleached eyebrows lifted and he actually smiled. “No shit.”
Enough words had fallen from his tongue for her to detect a soft burr. “What kind of accent is that?” she asked, trying for small talk as they walked in the direction of the parking area. “Not Missouri.” She didn’t care, she told herself. She hadn’t a shred of curiosity about the man.
“LA, maybe.”
“That’s not LA I ’m hearing.”
Daniel shifted her bag to his other hand. He figured she must have been picking up on the slight accent left over from his Scotland days. He’d been so hot to see the world that he’d worked his butt off to save enough money to spend his junior year of high school in Scotland. He’d always planned to go back, but then he fell in love and his life had been a downward spiral ever since. He’d never completely lost the accent, though.
“I spent some time in Scotland. The accent’s easy to pick up, hard to get rid of.” He had to give her credit. Most people didn’t notice it.
She took off her dark glasses, as if trying to see him more clearly. “It’s a long way from Scotland to Missouri.”
Green eyes were surrounded by a mass of tumbling red curls, and a sleepiness gave her face a softness he didn’t trust. Her white top was sleeveless, with a row of tiny buttons. Below her knee-length skirt were leather sandals and a rose tattoo. She was by far the most exotic thing Egypt had ever seen.
“We can’t always choose the roads we take,” he said.
Her gaze went from Daniel to Beau and then back.
Daniel knew what she was doing-milking him for information so that later she could amaze people by saying things like, “I see bagpipes…I see a kilt.” And everybody would be so impressed with her extrasensory powers. Everybody but him, that is. He should just feed her back a bunch of bullshit.
Daniel had expected Beau to like Cleo, because Beau liked everybody. But the dog was a surprise. Daniel didn’t know Beau liked animals so much. They’d had a dog when they were kids, but then most kids had dogs. It didn’t necessarily mean they were crazy about them.
Beau lowered the tailgate of the truck, and Daniel heaved Cleo’s suitcase in, sliding it across the bed. Beau scrambled in after the suitcase.
“Sure you want to ride back there?” Daniel asked. “You don’t have to.”
Beau plopped down with his back to the cab’s sliding window, then patted one leg. The dog jumped gracefully into the truck, collapsing on Beau’s lap.
Daniel slammed the tailgate shut. “Okay, but when you get tired of it, let me know.”
People usually reacted to Beau in one of two ways. The most common was embarrassment. They would look at him, then look away, deciding to ignore Beau and talk in an intense way to Daniel, fast and desperate, with a kind of pleading in their eyes. And then there were the people who treated Beau like a baby. That irritated Daniel almost as much as the people who ignored him. Because Beau wasn’t a baby. He had more on the ball than a lot of people. Hell, he had more on the ball than Daniel. Beau was happy and kind-and what people didn’t get was that Beau was perceptive, a lot more perceptive than most.
Cleo had treated him as an equal. She’d taken his hand. She’d looked him in the eye, never shying away. In that moment, Daniel had decided he might have to cut her a little slack. But then he had to remind himself that he hadn’t picked her up to sweet-talk her.
“I know all about you,” he announced as he eased behind the wheel. She snapped her seatbelt into place and looked up at him with those big, sleepy eyes of hers.
“But then I guess you would already know that, because you can read my mind, right?”
“It doesn’t take a mind reader to pick up on hostility. Why don’t you just say what you’ve been wanting to say for the last five minutes?”
He started the truck, gave Beau and the dog a final check, then pulled away from the curb, heading in the direction of Egypt. “I know how you took credit for finding that kidnapped child in California when it was really the police who did the work.”
She gave him a strange, self-satisfied smile, as if he’d said exactly what she’d wanted to hear.
“Guess you pretty much have me figured out. But what you’re forgetting is that people need to believe in something. They need to believe that magic stones keep them safe and that cards tell the future. That they have control. Because the alternative, that life is random and nobody is in control, is just not acceptable.”
“So are you saying you consider yourself an opportunist rather than a con artist?”
“You could say that.” She crossed her arms over her chest, scooted down in the seat, and closed her eyes.
End of conversation.
Ten minutes later, she was asleep, breathing through her mouth-or maybe she was just a damn good actress.
Something hit the windshield, drawing Daniel’s attention back to the roa
d. Rain.
It came on fast. By the time Daniel pulled over and stopped, rain was pouring down, creating a deafening roar inside the cab of the truck.
With the rapid cognizance of someone who’d spent a lot of time watching her back, his passenger awoke. She looked around, quickly grasping the situation.
Before Daniel could jump from the truck, she threw open her door. “Come on!” she shouted. At the same time, Beau and the dog scrambled out of the back. Cleo scooted over. They jumped in, with Beau slamming the door behind them.
The dog shook, spraying water against the inside of the windshield. “Premonition. Sit. Sit.” With both arms around him, Cleo forced him into temporary submission.
Smashed against the passenger door, Beau giggled.
Daniel squeezed his arm past the dog and flipped the defrost to full blast. While waiting for the fogged-up window to clear, he tried to wipe some of the water from the inside of the glass.
“Here.”
Cleo fished in a bag that looked like a small version of a backpack and handed him a tissue. He took it, swiped at the window, then tossed the wet, mangled mess to the floor. He flicked on the wipers then reached for the gearshift, finding a knee instead. Her leg was wedged against the lever.
He jerked his hand away. “You wanna shift?” he asked.
“Sure. Ready?” She put it into first gear.
He let out the clutch, checked for traffic, then pulled back onto the two-lane road.
The truck’s engine hummed higher; he put in the clutch. It took her a moment, but she found second gear. By that time, they’d lost some momentum. The engine lugged, then gradually smoothed out as the truck gained speed.
They finally made it to third, and Daniel pressed the gas pedal until they were cruising at a good clip over the wet pavement.
Daniel noticed that her bare, wet arm was stuck to his. And her hair, her long, curly hair, was stuck to him too. It had been wild when she’d stepped off the train, but now it was corkscrewing around her face. Tendrils reached out and grabbed him.
“What are you looking at?” she asked.
“Your hair. It’s doing weird shit.”
She managed to pull some strands from his arm.
“I have all the C. S. Lewis books,” Beau announced out of nowhere.
“Oh? I love his books,” Cleo said. “Especially The Chronicles of Narnia.”
“I’m waiting for a new one,” Beau said. “I’ve been waiting for a long time. I’ll bet the next one is going to be really good too.”
Daniel elbowed her, hoping she wouldn’t tell Beau that Lewis wouldn’t be coming up with any new masterpieces. He shot her a look of warning that said, Beau doesn’t take death well.
“You might have a long wait,” was all she said.
“I can’t read very good,” Beau told her. “But Daniel can. He can read like crazy. He’s always reading stuff. Like the paper. And cereal boxes. Sometimes at breakfast I’ll ask him, ‘Daniel, what’s that word?’ And he knows it. He always knows. Even if he doesn’t know it, he can say it. That’s because of phonics. They tried to teach me phonics, but I just couldn’t get it. That’s when Daniel said that some people were made for reading and some for listening. So he’s the reader and I’m the listener.”
“And the talker,” Daniel said. “Don’t forget that.”
Beau laughed, getting the joke. “And the talker.”
All three laughed until Premonition decided to shake again. Then they all three screamed.
An hour after leaving Clear Lake, they arrived at their destination.
Egypt, Missouri, didn’t live up to its exotic name. It looked like a million other cookie-cutter towns that stretched from sea to shining sea. It was pure Middle America, with tree-lined streets and two-story bungalows built at a time when wood was thought to be an inexhaustible resource. Driving into Egypt was a little like rolling back the clock several years. It was a place where Cleo could imagine women gave Tupperware parties and sold Avon door to door.
She’d always thought of Missouri as hilly, but Egypt was flat. The town fathers had taken advantage of the lack of contour and laid out the community in a grid, with everything of importance, such as the four-story courthouse made of stone that had darkened over the years, smack dab in the center of the square.
Along with the old-fashioned feel, there was a strange, carnivalesque atmosphere-a consequence of the campaign signs, complete with publicity photos that were everywhere. Clusters of them stood in yards; nearly every storefront window boasted at least one. Most of them seemed to be promoting the same handsome, smiling man.
Re-elect Mayor Burton Campbell. Burton Campbell for mayor.
“Important guy,” Cleo commented.
“He’s running unopposed,” Daniel said. “The prick just likes having his name plastered all over town. Will you?” he asked, indicating the gearshift.
It was more of a command than a request, but she obliged just to keep the peace.
“I call him Burt the Flirt. He’s also the only dentist in town, so if you have a cavity you want filled, I’m sure he’ll oblige.”
What an ass Daniel Sinclair is. “If I need a cavity filled, I’ll wait till I get out of here.”
She peered through the streaked windshield down the empty, glistening street. “Doesn’t look like there’s a lot for a policeman to do in this town.”
“I keep busy.”
“Yeah?” she asked, not believing him.
“Getting cats out of trees. Parking meter violations. Breaking up the occasional keg party. Stuff like that.”
“Sounds exciting.”
Beside her, Beau coincidentally let out a huge yawn.
“Better than zipping up body bags,” Daniel said.
She’d have to agree.
The place where she was staying turned out to be a motel on the edge of town. From the outside, it looked like everything a traveler would dread. She’d stayed in some dives in her life, but even before seeing the room, she guessed the place would have to rank near the bottom. It was called The Palms, but it might as well have been called the Hyatt Regency for all the reflection the name bore to the actual place. The Palms was just past the outskirts of Egypt, the owners apparently expecting the town to expand and eventually catch up with the twelve-room eyesore. It had been new once, Cleo had to remind herself. And probably nice once, something even harder to believe.
By the time Sinclair pulled up in front of the lobby, the rain had slowed to a drizzle. Beau and Premonition bailed out, and Cleo went inside to register. The guy behind the counter had slicked-back black hair, a goatee, a lot of turquoise-and-silver jewelry, and an attitude.
She signed the guest book, got the key, and stepped outside to find that Daniel had already unloaded her suitcase and was waiting on the cracked, weed-infested sidewalk.
Cleo dangled the key with the plastic number that was almost worn off. “Six.”
Daniel Sinclair carried the suitcase to the door and put it down. “Beau and I were just talking,” he said in an unenthusiastic voice. “How would you like to eat supper with us? We could pick you up later.”
Why was he asking when it was so obvious he didn’t want her to come? Then she looked at Beau, who stood smiling and nodding, Premonition leaning heavily against his leg. There was the answer to her question.
“I don’t know.” Cleo unlocked the door and swung it open. The stench of ancient body odor hit her in the face. She swallowed and stared into the darkness, then turned back to the two men.
Daniel was silently begging her to say no. Beau was silently begging her to say yes.
She smiled. “I’d love to. Oh, and Beau, would you mind taking Premonition with you for a few hours? He could use a little exercise.”
“All right!” Beau shouted. He dropped to his knees and put his hand up so Premonition could give him a high five. Premonition, who had already known how to shake when Cleo got him from the pound, lifted one paw. Beau laughed in delight.
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“Yeah. We’re a team. We’re a team.” Beau jumped to his feet and ran for the truck, the dog close behind.
Cleo looked up to see Daniel glaring at her. “You can’t mind-read worth shit,” he said.
“Oh,” she said, smiling, “but I can.”
The motel room was like something from a Quentin Tarantino movie. Twenty dollars a night, it was the kind of place where prostitutes rendezvoused and alcoholics slept off their latest indulgence. Worse than that, everything was orange-the curtains that sagged from ceiling to floor, the threadbare chenille bedspread, the shag carpet with a trail worn from the door to the bed and from the bed to the bathroom. Cleo hated orange.
Why not a nice avocado green? Anything but orange.
Missing hooks caused the curtains to droop in an out-of-sync way. Things weren’t any better in the bathroom. The floor was made of tiny, one-inch tiles, with grout that had accumulated years of scum. The shower seemed to have been an afterthought-one of those square fiberglass jobs with a trampoline floor and metal trim that could give you a good case of tetanus if you weren’t careful.
She discovered that the toilet flushed only if you held down the lever. Actually, she was surprised to find that it flushed at all. There was a hole in the wall where the paper holder used to be. Now, a half-used roll perched precariously on the back of the tank. Beside the toilet was a plunger. A sign of things to come?
On the rust-stained sink was a drinking glass. It had the same opaque, water-stained quality as the shower curtain. She made a mental note to pick up some disposable cups.
In the mirror, under the weird glow of the flickering fluorescent light, she looked like a corpse. Her face was pasty and mottled. There were deep lavender circles under her eyes. Her lips looked gray, almost blue.
Cleo pulled at the tiny chain, turning off the light, then left the bathroom to lie fully clothed on top of the bedspread. She wasn’t yet brave enough to pull down the covers. Exhausted, she soon fell asleep and dreamed a dream she hadn’t had in years…
