“You want to call it off?” McCall’s voice rasped across her raw nerves.
She jumped and answered reflexively, “No! I don’t want to call it off.” She saw now that the VW had slowed almost to a crawl, and that he was staring at her, eyes the sharp, cold blue of the October skies back home in Iowa. She felt her stomach fill up with queasiness and butterflies.
“You still can, you know.” And he was himself again, at least the McCall she knew-crusty, crude and cantankerous. “Give up this crazy idea. Go on back home-to Portland or Iowa, what-the-hell-ever. Forget about the damn money-it’s only money, for God’s sake!”
“I can’t call it off. I told you-my husband-”
His fingers flexed on the steering wheel, as if what he really wanted to do was break it in half. “You sure your husband would want you doing this? Going into a Mexican jungle to meet up with armed criminals? They are armed, you know-I hope you noticed that. Does he even know-do you know-how dangerous this is? Jeez, what kind of man lets his wife-”
“He trusts me,” Ellie said tightly. “He knows I can handle it.”
“But you can’t handle it, can you?” His voice was suddenly very soft…gentle, almost. “Not alone. Not without me.”
She went utterly still, staring at him. His face looked set, hard as stone. “You promised-” Her lips felt stiff; she licked them and finished hoarsely, “You gave me your word.”
“Yeah…I know.” He said that on an exhalation as he shifted gears. The VW’s engine sputtered and slowly picked up speed.
She waited, nerves strung tight as wire, with a high-tension pulsing inside her head: You promised. You gave me your word. You promised…
It seemed a long time before he spoke again. “We should be coming close to Felipe Carillo. We’ll stop there-fill up the tanks. It’s the last chance for gas, unless we want to detour to Chetumal.” He said that in a disconcertingly normal voice, as if the tense little exchange had never happened. But Ellie had a sense of a crossroads passed…a moment of truth come and gone. Decisions made. Things settled.
It’s going to be all right, she told herself, relaxing a little. Maybe he really is a man of honor.
In any case, for better or worse, she felt certain he wouldn’t try again to talk her out of doing what she had to do.
McCall considered himself a man of his word. He’d promised a crazy woman he’d accompany her into a Yucatan jungle and pose as her husband in a meeting with armed smugglers, and if she insisted on going through with it, by God, he’d be right there with her, keeping his word. That didn’t mean he couldn’t try every way he knew of to keep her from going through with it. Backed up against a wall, all reasonable appeals having failed, he’d come up with a plan. A brilliant plan it was, too, in his opinion; devious but simple. Practically foolproof.
It was late morning when they reached the bustling jungle crossroads town of Felipe Carillo Puerto. It was too early for a full midday meal, but since McCall knew it was going to be a good long way to the next decent restaurant, he suggested they stop for a botana-Mexican for a light snack-of garnachas, which was basically fried masa patties topped with pork and chicken, onions, tomatoes and avocados. After that, on the way out of town they stopped at a gas station where a big hand-lettered sign reminded travelers: Ultimo Gas. While Ellie bought bottled water from a vending machine, McCall topped off the VW’s tanks and to make it look good, checked the oil, hoses and tire pressure.
He was hunkered down and peering into the engine in a businesslike way when Ellie came up to him, holding out a bottle of cold water. He saw her, of course; felt her in his bones, muscles, nerves…in the very pit of his stomach. But he didn’t acknowledge her presence until she said, “Are you sure this car can make it all the way to Chetumal?”
He gave an exaggerated wince. “Ssh-she’ll hear you.” He slammed the engine cover and straightened up, smiling at her as he tipped back the brim of his hat and took the bottle she offered. He was feeling amazingly good-humored.
Which seemed to befuddle her, for some reason. She gave her head a quick little shake, and in that abrupt, scratchy way of hers said, “No, no-I was just thinking-no gas also means no garages. This car’s probably about a hundred and ten in human years. What happens if we break down?”
McCall cracked the cap, twisted it open and took a long drink. “No problemo,” he said with an airy wave toward the Beetle’s front end. “That’s why I carry my tools with me wherever I go.”
“Tools!” She gave him a sharp, startled look across the car’s rounded roof. “Don’t tell me you’re a mechanic.” Her gaze lingered…puzzled…quizzical, and he suddenly wished he could have read her mind just then. But the only thing he saw in those golden eyes of hers that he could be certain of was surprise.
“Not me,” he said as he opened his door and got in. She did the same, and he handed her his water bottle to hold while he fired up the VW’s engine and shifted gears. “My dad was, though. I worked for him weekends and summers all through high school, so anything around the mid 1970s or earlier I’m pretty comfortable with. These modern cars, though-all the electronics, computer-controlled everything-forget it. That’s one reason I drive the Beetle. At least I know if anything goes wrong I can probably fix it.”
He heard a faint sound, quickly stifled. He glanced at Ellie and found her gazing at him, lips parted, eyes glowing with frustrated curiosity. Smiling to himself-hell, he was in a mood to be generous-he waited until he’d got them back on the highway and headed south once again before he went on in a conversational tone, “I’d have probably been a mechanic, too-I liked it well enough-but my parents had their hearts set on sending me off to college. I was their only child, you see, and they had big plans for me.” He didn’t tell her what he’d always suspected, which was that his parents’ real reason for wanting him gone had been because they’d wanted their own lives and privacy back. Or how hard it had been, sometimes, feeling like the fifth wheel, the unwanted third party tagging along on someone else’s date.
“Where did you go?” Her voice was breathless and brave. “To college, I mean.”
“Harvard.” He punched it at her and waited for her reaction.
“Harvard!”
And he laughed, because, as he’d known it would be, it was so clearly the last thing she’d expected. “Not bad, on a mechanic’s income, huh?” But when he glanced at her, the look on her face seemed more gratified than surprised.
“You’re not-you weren’t-a lawyer, were you?”
He smiled, but irony and memory were crowding in on him again, constricting his heart and making the smile feel strained and wry. “Nope,” he said, still trying to keep it light and low-key. “Business. MBA.”
“Your parents…your dad-they must have been very proud.” Her tone was pensive, only slightly ironic, and her face was turned away, toward the window. But McCall could hear the thought as clearly as if she’d spoken it. What must they think of you now?
“I imagine they would have been,” he said with gentle defiance. “Unfortunately they died in a car accident my junior year-” he continued relentlessly over her gasp of dismay and whispered “I’m sorry…” “-coming home from the beach on a Sunday evening. Somebody in a hurry tried to pass on a two-lane stretch of highway and hit them head-on. Matter of fact, it happened not far from the spot where James Dean died…”
Chapter 7
About thirty miles south of Felipe Carillo Puerto, Ellie’s broken night’s sleep began to take its toll. She was dozing off intermittently, shaking her head and fighting it as hard as she could, when McCall suddenly yelled, “Wild turkeys-look out!”
Adrenaline slammed into her like a truck. Her head jerked up and her eyes snapped open, and she managed to utter one gasped word: “Where?” as the Volkswagen braked hard, then swerved sharply to the right. For several very busy moments the VW bumped and jounced along the narrow shoulder, managing to avoid rocks, shrubs, small trees and major potholes before coming to a bone-jarring
halt, safely back on the paved road.
“Are you okay?” McCall asked. His tone was solicitous, but with a suspicious little croak of excitement.
Ellie felt a sudden urge to hit him. “I didn’t see them,” she wailed. “The turkeys! I didn’t even see them.”
McCall looked shocked. “How could you miss ’em? They were all over the road. What were you, asleep?”
“Yes! Maybe…I don’t know, I must have been. Why didn’t you wake me?”
“I thought I did.”
“No, I mean before you plowed into the middle of them.”
“How was I supposed to know you’d dozed off?” And he was laughing as he shifted gears and the VW sputtered to life once more. Ellie subsided in a disappointed if now wide-awake sulk.
A few hundred feet farther down the highway, the VW slowed…sputtered…gasped one last time…and died.
“What?” Ellie demanded, looking at McCall.
“I don’t know.” Frowning, he tried turning the ignition key. The starter coughed and growled like a bad-tempered tiger. “Feels like we just ran out of gas, but that’s…”
“We can’t be out of gas. We just filled up,” Ellie said, flatly stating the obvious. And after a moment, “Maybe something happened when we were bouncing around back there.”
“Maybe,” McCall grunted as he opened his door and stepped out of the car. “Come on, help me get it out of the road.”
With both of them pushing on the doorjambs and McCall steering one-handed, they managed to maneuver the VW more or less onto the shoulder. McCall opened the hood and took out a serious-looking metal toolbox which he carried around to the back of the Bug.
“I thought you said you could fix it,” Ellie said when she saw him standing there, scowling at the open engine compartment and absently swatting at mosquitos.
“Gotta find the problem first. Might be a ruptured fuel line…maybe the pump. If it’s the pump…only thing I can think of is to flag somebody down and hitch a ride to Los Limones, see if we can order a part. Car this old…I don’t know. Probably have to come from Merida…someplace with some good-sized salvage yards. Maybe take two…three days-”
He broke off, primarily because his audience had deserted him. And secondly because he suddenly had a sinking feeling in his stomach. Because Ellie was just then crawling into the Beetle’s front seat, where she had no business being. That was not good. Not good at all.
His worst fears were confirmed when she sang out happily, “Hey, I think I’ve found the problem.”
“What the hell do you mean, you found the problem?” McCall stalked around to the open passenger-side door just as she was squirming out from under the dash, looking flushed and radiant-and so damned delicious she’d have made his mouth water if he hadn’t been frustrated enough to spit nails.
“This is what-a ’58, ’59? Must be, because only the really old VWs had it. It was because they didn’t have fuel gauges then. There’s this little switch down here, see? So you can manually switch over to the reserve tank. Or, you can also shut it all the way off. That’s what happened-you must’ve hit it with your knee when we were bouncing all over the place back there. Try it now.”
Damn. He didn’t know whether to admire her or shoot her.
Mentally gnashing his teeth and silently using up every swearword he knew, McCall stomped around to the driver’s side and got in. He turned the key, and, of course, after only the usual amount of pumping, begging and growling, the engine fired.
“Don’t forget your toolbox,” Ellie said in a tone that tried too hard not to be smug.
“How come you know so much about a car that’s probably twenty years older than you are?” he grudgingly asked when he had his tools stowed and they were on their way again. “I never even thought of that fuel switch.” Well, okay, he was a liar. May that be the least of the sins I commit this week, he thought.
“I’m not that young,” Ellie cried, which in McCall’s opinion only proved she was. It had been his experience that only very young women objected to having their ages underestimated. “For heaven’s sake, I have a doctor’s-” She clamped it off there as a look of dismay flashed across her face, then looked away out the window and finished with a testy, “Just because I’m short, don’t underestimate me.”
“I’d never make that mistake,” McCall said fervently, meaning it-and also mightily intrigued by what she’d been about to say. A doctor’s…what? Permission slip? “But seriously-how come you knew about that switch?”
She flashed him a uniquely feminine look, lashes lowered, pleased with herself again. “Old VWs are very popular with us Save-the-Whales types, you know.” Practically purring with satisfaction, she gave her head a toss, and he was so distracted by the way the wind played with her cinnamon curls he allowed the VW to wander briefly onto the shoulder again. “I once rode all the way from Portland to the tip of Baja in one that was probably older than this. It was a convertible. Hardly anything was left of the top and you could see the road going by through the floorboards. There aren’t too many service stations in some parts of Baja, either, so you’d better know some basic auto mechanics.”
“And you do?” Just my luck, he thought sourly. Of all the women in this world, he had to hook up with Tillie Tune-up. “They teach you that back on the farm?”
“Well, it’s something you just sort of learn, actually, when you grow up on a farm. At least we-my brother and I-did. My mom made sure of that. At least the basics-things like how to change your own oil and tires and stuff.”
“Your mom?” He snapped her a look, thinking about his own fifties-style mother with her bright red nail polish and soft hands, leaning in admiring feminine helplessness over her mechanic husband’s shoulder while he checked the oil in her car. Ellie, he suddenly noticed, had almost boyish hands, freckled as her face, with short, unpolished nails. “Not your dad?”
She gave a light, gurgling laugh, full of amused affection. “My dad’s a newspaper columnist-Mike Lanagan, maybe you’ve heard of him? I don’t know, maybe he knew something about fixing cars once, but these days the most complicated piece of equipment he deals with is his new all-in-one-printer-scanner-fax machine.”
“Mike Lanagan.” McCall never knew how he kept his face blank, his voice neutral, utterly without inflection. Because it had suddenly dawned on him. Jeez. Mike Lanagan. Newspaper columnist. No wonder that name sounded so familiar. He took his time lighting a cigarette, and by the time he’d finished that task he was able to say in a normal, no more than mildly interested tone, “Newsweek, right?”
“Right!” She turned her head to beam at him, like a little girl delighted that he’d correctly answered her riddle.
McCall stared resolutely at the road ahead, not trusting himself to look at her. He cleared his throat and said carefully, “I thought he was based in Chicago. Doesn’t he also write for one of their big dailies?”
“Yeah, he does. When my brother and I were growing up he used to spend a lot of time in Chicago, but nowadays, with modems and stuff, he mostly works at home. Which is nice for my mom. Dad, too, I guess. He’s writing a book-nobody’s allowed to know what’s in it except Mom, but supposedly it’s about his early days as a journalist in Chicago, and how he and Mom met…”
“Yeah? How did they meet? A Chicago journalist and an Iowa farmer…”
“Are you sure you’re interested? It’s kind of a long story.”
McCall waved a hand at the ribbon of road walled in by jungle ahead of them and said dryly, “We’ve got a long way to go.” That’s the ticket, he thought. Keep her talking. Then maybe she won’t notice how rattled you are.
“It’s a pretty exciting story, actually,” said Ellie, shifting around in her seat in an eager, preparatory way. “First, Dad almost got killed by some hit men, because of this story he was working on. So he thought he’d better get out of Chicago for a while, but then he got lost in a thunderstorm and drove his car into a ditch, and that’s how he wound up in my mom’s
barn…”
It probably was an exciting story, but McCall barely heard it. He just kept hearing the name Mike Lanagan, over and over again in his mind. Jeez, he thought, of all the women in the world I pick to get mixed up with…first Goody Two-Shoes, then Tillie Tune-up, and now…Mike Lanagan’s daughter.
Lucy came in for lunch red-cheeked and blowing on her hands. “Whoo-that storm’s coming in fast,” she said to her husband, who was sitting at the kitchen table waiting for her. “You know, I think it might even snow. I sure hope it doesn’t. Hope it holds off until after tomorrow, at least. Makes it so tough for the trick-’r-treaters.” She paused, noticing the manila file folder. “What’s that you’ve got?”
Mike shoved it forward a few inches with a forefinger, then brought it back. “It’s that file I was looking for-the one on Quinn McCall.”
“Quinn McCall? Who’s-”
“I told you I remembered a McCall. Did a whole series of columns on him a few years back. Seven, to be exact.” He tilted his head and made a small, appreciative sound. “He’s not a man you forget.”
Lucy had picked up the file and was flipping through it. She looked up, frowning and skeptical. “Oh, Mike, you can’t think Ellie’s McCall is this same person. Out of all the McCalls there must be in this world? That would be just too…I mean, coincidences like that don’t happen, except in books.”
Mike’s smile was wry. “No, actually, they don’t happen in books, at least not fiction, because people wouldn’t believe it. The fact is, they happen in real life all the time. The difference is, if it’s true, people have to believe it. Then they say, in awe, ‘My goodness, isn’t it a small world!”’
“Gwen always believed in Providence,” Lucy mused. Her smile, as she gazed at the man she’d been happily married to for…oh, so many years, was perhaps a tad misty. “You know she always said it was Providence made you take refuge in my barn-”
“-the very day your hired man quit,” Mike chimed in with her, laughing. “I know, I know.”
The Seduction of Goody Two-Shoes Page 11
