Redemption

by Laurel Dewey

  Jane surveyed the parking lot for Clinton’s black SUV. She wasn’t venturing outside. Everything that was to follow depended upon perfect timing and deception.

  Kit emerged from the bathroom. “What do you think?” she asked Jane.

  Jane turned and examined Kit’s appearance. Her salt-and-pepper braid was hidden under her bouclé hat; her heavy, multicolored winter coat closed tightly around her body with dark pants peeking out underneath. A thick scarf wrapped around her neck. “Wrap the scarf more around your face and lower the hat to cover up.” Kit obliged. “Good. We need something memorable so he identifies you right away.”

  Kit fished a cherry red scarf out of her suitcase and stashed it in her jacket pocket so that it generously hung over the flap. “Will that work?”

  “Red flag. I like it!” Jane glanced out the window just in time to see Clinton’s SUV discreetly pull into the parking lot and hide behind the dumpster. “Take off your clothes. It’s showtime!”

  A round figure emerged from the Hop Sing cabin wearing the multicolored coat, bouclé hat, and red scarf. She sauntered down the parking lot so that Clinton would have a good view. Pulling the scarf away from her mouth, Jane lit a cigarette and took a deep drag. Jane pretended to act unaware of Clinton’s presence as she paraded in view of him several times before walking back inside the cabin.

  Several minutes later, Jane emerged again. This time she carried a bag of trash and ambled toward the dumpster. She discarded the trash, then walked up to the driver’s side of the SUV. Clinton sat with a generous smirk across his face. Jane moved within inches of the window and pulled down her scarf. “I’m getting a restraining order against you! If you don’t stay 100 feet from me, your ass is in jail!” Jane turned and headed back to the cabin.

  Clinton rolled down his window. “Let’s work together!” he yelled.

  Jane opened the front door of the cabin and flipped Clinton the bird before slamming the door behind her.

  Thirty minutes later, the wintry-dressed figure emerged from the Hop Sing cabin again. In her hand, she held a burning cigarette. As was the custom, she squashed the ember gently and placed the cigarette on the window ledge. The figure turned her back to Clinton and performed several perfunctory stretching moves before quickly walking around the cabin and heading toward the back road. Clinton waited a couple minutes before starting his engine and following the figure on her usual morning route.

  When she was positive that Clinton was gone, Jane quickly emerged from the cabin. The well-worn blond wig was a last-minute idea of Kit’s. Jane tossed her satchel in the front seat of the Mustang and carefully drove out of the parking lot and onto the main drag, heading north. There was no time to check out Rachel Hartly’s house; Jane couldn’t risk doubling back through town and allowing Clinton to spot her car.

  Fifteen minutes later, Jane was certain the ruse had worked. She was powering north on Highway 41 and, if all was going according to plan, Clinton was keeping 100 feet of distance behind Kit, who was leading Fredericks on the greatest bait and switch goose chase of his life.

  Jane turned on the radio and suddenly heard Bartosh’s booming voice.

  “We are a powerful, unified group of people with a common cause!”

  Jane realized she hadn’t removed the tape from her interview with Bartosh.

  “I was telling the Brotherhood Council this morning that we have to ratchet up our ministry to a new level! We will no longer seek tolerance toward us....”

  She lit a cigarette and listened to the interview with Bartosh for another twenty minutes, making a point to interject lots of sarcastic comments. Every time she heard his imperious tenor, Jane felt an odd pang of compassion for Mary Bartosh. She intimately understood Mary; it was like they were twins born of different mothers. Jane rounded a bend of highway where particulate dirt lined the asphalt. The sloppy weather looked as if it had affected another waterlogged hillside. Finally, after hearing Bartosh prattle on about the battle for Mankind’s soul, Lucifer’s stranglehold on the children, and how the Congregation members are “motivators for Jesus,” Jane turned off the tape.

  Thirty minutes later, she pulled into the infamous Shell station just off the highway. Inside, the place was empty save for the teenage girl seated behind the counter watching MTV. “Is the manager around?” Jane asked the girl.

  The girl smiled and stood up. “Is there a problem with the pump?”

  “No. My name is Jane Perry. I’m a police detective. I need to find out—”

  “What’s this?” The voice belonged to an obese, red-haired woman who surfaced from a side office. Her nametag simply read, MANAGER.

  Jane introduced herself and regarded the woman with the kind of attitude she reserved for bums and drug addicts. “You keep videotapes of the pumps outside?”

  “Yeah,” the woman answered warily. The teenager turned the TV on mute and gawked at Jane with an admiring stare.

  “Would you still have them from December 25?”

  “Hell, probably not.” She eyed Jane up and down. “Oakhurst don’t have a lot of detectives—”

  “I’m not with Oakhurst PD. I work independently.” Jane pulled out her wallet and showed the woman her official identification.

  “Colorado?”

  “Yeah,” Jane said, snapping her wallet shut. “Can you check to see if you still have that Christmas Day videotape?”

  “What’s this got to do with?” The woman’s tone was unnecessarily confrontational.

  Jane wasn’t sure how much information she wanted to spill. “It’s a side investigation for that missing Oakhurst girl.”

  The teenager promptly moved closer. “Charlotte?” she asked with great interest.

  “You know her?” Jane replied.

  “No. But I look at her poster every day,” the girl said, sliding a display of chewing gum off the counter to reveal Charlotte’s well-worn flyer taped onto the glass.

  “You finish stockin’ the soda?” the woman asked the girl with a brusque tone.

  “Not yet, Mom,” the kid responded in a deflated manner.

  “Well, get to it!” the woman said, angrily gesturing to the back of the store. “I don’t pay you five bucks an hour to sit on your ass and watch MTV!”

  The girl stole one final lingering look at Jane. Jane returned the kid’s glance with a sympathetic smile before turning back to the abrasive woman. “Can you check to see if you still have the tape?”

  “I’m sure it’s copied over,” she said, not budging. “And anyway, I’d have to get me written approval from the police department’fore I let you see anything.”

  “Written approval?” Jane’s tone went up a notch. “I’m trying to find a missing kid. All I want to do is review the tape. I’ve shown you my ID—”

  “And you’re not from Oakhurst. Bring me back some written approval on Oakhurst’s PD’s letterhead and I’ll see if we still have the tape!” The woman waddled her broad beam back into her office.

  Jane stood dumbfounded. Another great example of one more egoinflated minion wielding their sliver of power. She turned and saw the teenager across the store staring at her with a sorrowful look. Jane waved good-bye to the kid and walked outside. She lit a cigarette and headed toward her car when she glanced north on the highway. About 1,000 feet up the road on the left-hand side, the word “bird” caught her attention. It was part of another word on a bright red neon sign. Jane drove onto the highway to get a closer look. It quickly became clear: The Hummingbird Motor Lodge. Jane pulled over to the side of the road and riffled through her satchel to find the faxed copy of receipts Lou presented to the Sheriff’s department. There were two receipts from The Hummingbird Motor Lodge, both from the dining room. They were time-stamped five hours apart and were both for sodas. Jane slid the fax back into her satchel and took a drag. Casually, she turned to the Lodge—your run-of-the-mill, two star motel—and stared at the flickering white hummingbird on the red neon sign. Her eyes traveled to the parking lot and the s
parse collection of vehicles. The baby blue motorcycle easily stood out of the pack.

  Jane turned off the engine. She flashed on an idea and checked her jacket pocket to make sure she still had her handy prop. Looking in the rearview mirror, Jane adjusted the blond wig and solidified her next con....

  Kit snuck a glance backward. Clinton trolled his SUV 100 feet behind her on the road behind The Bonanza Cabins. With the agreed-upon battle strategy in mind, Kit took a purposeful, sharp turn to the right and diverged into the muddy conifer forest. As expected, Clinton sped up to monitor her actions. The glaring red scarf tucked into Kit’s coat pocket acted as the perfect beacon to keep her in Clinton’s sight. When Kit was sure Clinton could easily observe her, she ducked behind a waist-high pile of deadwood and dug into the dirt. She took a moment to stand up, peer around with a false sense of apprehension, and then bend down again to repeat the identical maneuver. After ten minutes of this ruse, Kit secretly removed a small mason jar from her coat pocket with a rolled up paper inside and placed it in the hole. It took five minutes to pack the dirt back into the hole. Kit made sure the area was easy to find by disturbing the ground. She gave a bogus worried look around the spate of trees before walking deeper into the forest....

  The inside of the Hummingbird’s dining room smelled musty. The sign above the bar read, A PROUD PART OF THE VALLEY SINCE 1944. From the looks of it, Jane figured the owners hadn’t redecorated or dusted since they opened the joint.

  “We don’t start serving for another hour.”

  Jane turned to find a sweet-faced girl in her early twenties approaching. There was a deafening vacancy to the place that Jane hoped would work to her advantage. “Is the manager here?” Jane asked in a cloying manner.

  “Uh, no. He and his wife are still on vacation. They’ll be back in two days—”

  “Oh, shoot,” Jane replied. Score one in her favor, she thought.

  “Is there something I can do for you?” the girl asked.

  Jane withdrew the press pass she took from Buddy the day before. “I’m with the Fresno Bee.” Jane carefully covered up Buddy’s name, flashing the pass in front of the girl’s excited eyes. “I interviewed one of your employees last week when I was doing a human interest story about the classic lodges in the Valley. His name is Lou Peters. Works maintenance?”

  “I wouldn’t know. I’m just temping during the Christmas break. You’re featuring this Lodge in the Bee?”

  Jane wasn’t sure if the girl thought the idea was absurd or intriguing. “That’s the plan. But Mr. Peters said I could come up and mosey around to infuse the story with a more ‘been there’ feeling. You know what I mean?”

  “Absolutely!” The girl replied, not having a clue what Jane meant.

  “You think I could walk around and drink up the atmosphere?” Jane asked, her tone so sugary-sweet she thought she’d choke.

  “Sure!” The girl said, happy to feel that she had a modicum of power to allow Jane roaming privileges.

  Jane meandered around the empty dining room as the girl disappeared into the kitchen. She walked past the wooden bar with its swivel seats, each engraved with a series of hummingbirds across the backrest. Jane felt her gut tug. It was her personal form of radar; an indication that she was close to something significant. She surveyed the back of the bar. It was seriously disorganized. Stacks of newspapers sat precariously next to the cash register, next to a metal stake loaded thick with paid table checks, next to pitchers of water, next to a garbage can piled high with debris. She turned to face the dining room and contemplate her next move when the fresh-faced girl walked back into the dining room carrying a stack of red tablecloths.

  “Drinking in our atmosphere?” she said with a happy cadence.

  “You betcha!” Jane responded. “I’m just gonna mosey around the motel.”

  “Have fun!” the girl exclaimed as she shook open one of the tablecloths.

  Jane’s eyes locked on the tablecloth. It was shiny and vinyl and looked like a red leather jacket from a distance. She flashed on Rachel’s guesthouse and the shiny red material she couldn’t identify from outside the house. She recalled a specific black-and-white design that bordered the material; something tiny and repetitive. The girl spread the cloth on the table and walked to the next station. Jane moved closer and identified the pattern as interlocking hummingbirds. It seemed that Lou broke at least one commandment: Thou shall not steal.

  Outside, Jane rounded the dining room and crept around the corner. Lou’s inimitable baby blue motorcycle with the white dove decal on the rear fender was still there. She strolled near the motorcycle, getting a closer look before sauntering down the walkway. Jane approached a narrow cement entryway, where she located a single door with a placard that read: EMPLOYEES ONLY. She pressed her ear to the metal door and, after hearing no one, turned the knob and walked inside....

  Kit took a sip of herbal tea and stared out the window of The Circle 9 Diner. It had been an hour since she’d spied on Clinton as he hungrily took her bait and dug up the mason jar with the handwritten note inside. Kit waited for what she hoped would be his stunned reaction to the words. She wasn’t disappointed as he read the note.

  Jasper,

  Thank you for agreeing to help me. I trust you will find this message so that we can move forward. Please meet me in this same spot tomorrow between ten a.m. and noon. We will proceed from there. So I know you got this message, please remove it and leave the mason jar in plain view.

  Jane

  Clinton looked as if he’d just uncovered the map to the Holy Grail. Kit observed him slide the note back into the jar, secure the lid, and return it to the hole. After replacing the dirt and tamping the soil, Clinton arranged the loose deadwood into a ridiculous pattern that resembled an arrow pointing at the freshly dug ground.

  Kit smiled at the irony of the whole thing. Jasper was the name of a former, passionate lover Kit used to covertly meet forty years ago. She figured he’d be proud to have his name used for another kind of misguided tryst. The waitress brought the check as Kit debated her next move. She knew Clinton would be hovering near the forested area to catch a glimpse of “Jasper.” However, she also knew he couldn’t spend his entire time there. Most likely, he would steal away and return frequently to check the status of the note. The trick was to make sure he was occupied long enough somewhere else so Kit would have enough time to return to the forest a half-mile away from the diner and remove the note in order to give Clinton the impression that “Jasper” had discovered it. As if someone above heard her prayer, Kit glanced outside and found Clinton parking his SUV in the diner’s parking lot and immediately being corralled by Sheriff Golden into an impromptu media interview. Kit removed her hat, letting her salt-and-pepper braid fall across her chest, folded her distinctive coat over her arm, and walked right past Clinton without so much as a glance from him.

  It took Kit twenty minutes to hike back to the forest and successfully complete the deception. Her job was done, according to the detailed outline of Jane’s plan. However, Kit wasn’t ready to journey back to the cabin. She’d gotten a good serving of sleuthing and she liked the tingling aftertaste. And there was someone she really wanted to talk to....

  Jane surveyed the small space. The cramped, mustard-yellow room was barely big enough to hold the row of lockers, a center bench, a small table shoved against the wall, four folding chairs, and a coffeemaker. About the only thing that stood out in the windowless room was the trademark low-hanging red vinyl tablecloth with the interlocking hummingbird motif. Jane crossed to the bank of numbered lockers. None of them had locks securing them, and they also didn’t have nameplates to identify them. Jane glanced above the lockers and noted individual numbered plastic baskets lined up with each locker. She dragged a folding chair away from the table and stood on the seat to get a better view of the baskets. The container in the middle with the number “3” held a motorcycle helmet. Jane jumped off the chair and opened locker number three. A seven-inch squ
are mirror hung on the inside of the door with a three-inch-wide “Jesus Lives!” decal taped over the top portion of it. To Jane, it seemed like an odd location to put a decal that size since it obscured almost half of the mirror. She heard voices passing outside and felt her heart race momentarily before the sound faded into the distance. Resuming her search, Jane found a neatly folded denim shirt sitting on top of a compacted black leather bomber jacket. On top of the clothing lay a thick leather wallet. Jane looked inside and found forty-two dollars and Lou’s driver’s license. It was the same license Jane had retrieved during her Internet DMV search; the same clean-cut mug with those piercing blue eyes. She replaced the wallet and noticed a white, leather-bound Bible under the clothing. She gingerly inched it out of the locker. The cover stated that it was the “red letter” version of the King James Bible. Handwritten at the top of the cover in red ink was, MY SPECIAL WORDS. Jane carefully flipped through the pages. Throughout the various chapters, she saw long and short passages highlighted in yellow. A thought crossed Jane’s mind and she turned to Isaiah. As she expected, Lou had highlighted the entire chapter in yellow. Of course he did, she mused; Bartosh told his devotees to memorize Isaiah because of its supposed significance to the coming Armageddon. A long bookmark in the shape of a cross was tightly wedged in another section of the Bible. Jane turned to that section to find the beginning of The New Testament and the Gospel according to St. Matthew. The entire first chapter was highlighted in bright yellow. Alongside the narrow margins, Lou had written a series of exclamation points. They seemed to correspond to specific verses within chapter one.

  Jane would have gladly spent another five hours going through Lou’s Bible, but she knew it was only a matter of time before somebody walked through the door. She quickly stashed the Bible back exactly the way she found it and focused on a black backpack stuffed deep into the locker. She knew she couldn’t safely remove it without disturbing the appearance of the locker. So instead, Jane unzipped the backpack and sunk her hand into it. Feeling around, she came upon something metal and sharp. Withdrawing the object, Jane noted a portable razor. She returned the razor to the backpack. Fishing around in the bag, her fingers brushed against a small, plastic cylinder about three inches in length. Jane was just about to remove it when she heard the sound of echoing footsteps heading through the outside entryway. Her heart pounding, she pulled her hand out of the backpack, leaving it unzipped, quietly closed the locker door, and spotted the only place in the room to take refuge....