The Road to You

by Brant, Marilyn

  “So you came back and stayed in their place.” It wasn’t a question. I knew this was what had happened.

  He nodded.

  “It’s why I’m still in Chameleon Lake, too,” I confessed, though that wasn’t much of a secret either. Donovan had known years ago that I had aspirations of college. Heck, I’d told him my plans to escape our little town at our brothers’ graduation party. He knew then that I was just biding my time.

  “Is there anything more you want to see in Normal?” he asked. “If you want, if you think you might really consider this place for college, we could drive around for another hour or so. Pick up an application packet for you or something. Give you a chance to take a better look.”

  I studied the students milling nearby. Their Midwestern normalness—no pun intended—was almost jarring to me. It was the kind of campus that might have been of great interest to me a few years ago, but now it was too much like home. Too reminiscent of the kind of place filled with fun-loving, partying coeds that my brother might have gone to eventually, if ever he was ready to give up his passive fight against “the establishment.”

  I felt a heavy pang at what he’d lost. No doubt about it, it wasn’t different enough here to keep me from remembering my past or where I came from. I might as well just stay in Minnesota and be somewhere that would at least make my mother happy.

  “Nah,” I told Donovan, motioning him forward. “That’s okay. If I ever make it out of Chameleon Lake, I probably won’t go much further than Minneapolis. It’s not…not as easy to break away from home as I thought it’d be. Especially now.”

  “Yeah.” He pulled out of the parking space and started driving south and west.

  A couple of hours later and a hundred miles closer to St. Louis, we finally decided to stop for the night at a roadside inn near Litchfield, Illinois.

  There were a few appealing restaurants there, and the town’s oldest and most famous was The Ariston Café. I really liked the look of it, but the inn we chose a little further down the road had the advantage of being next door to a twenty-four hour diner and gas station, all owned by the same family, and we’d get a discount on our food and gas if we stayed there.

  The sign on the motel boasted, “Ultra Modern! Air Conditioned! TV in Every Room!” and, most importantly, “Vacancy” with a handwritten “1 room left” scrawled on a chalkboard by the office.

  Donovan said, “Let’s take it.”

  He produced the fake gold wedding band from his bag and shoved it at me. Though I made a show of sighing and looking irritated, I slipped it on my finger and we checked in as Mr. and Mrs. McCafferty, paying in cash. Strange how quickly such lies could become routine. Then we walked over to their family diner.

  There was nothing remarkable about our sodas or our burgers and fries but, while we were there, Donovan’s attention snagged on something unexpected.

  “Check out these placemats,” he said, pointing to the laminated, multicolored, ‘50s-era cheesy things beneath our platters.

  I slid my dish with my half-eaten burger aside and scanned the placemat. It looked like a vintage relic from the “Grease” movie’s props department.

  “Travel Mat” it read across the top. Then, “Scenic U.S. 66 Hi-Way” and, beneath that, was a line connecting the cities along the route, complete with recommended stops between Chicago, Illinois and Springfield, Missouri on the left side of the mat.

  I noticed that Bloomington-Normal was listed on there. So was Litchfield. So was St. Louis. Certain motels, attractions and diners were highlighted with short descriptions. In another section in the lower right-hand column was an additional bit of information with recommendations for the segment of the route between Springfield, Missouri and Shamrock, Texas. There was a mention of Tulsa and another of Oklahoma City.

  Donovan and I both flipped our placemats over at the same time. The travelogue continued with a new line of stops and attractions, this time including the featured places from Shamrock, Texas through to Los Angeles, California. And there were dots on the mat’s map pointing to Amarillo, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Flagstaff, Topock, San Bernardino and Pasadena.

  The information receptors in my brain were pinging wildly with connections as I read these particular city names. Finally, something that might lead to something important. A clue at last that made the remaining entries in my brother’s journal make a little more sense.

  With my fingertip, I traced a few pen-and-ink sketches interspersed around the placemat, most likely to add decoration and to further entice potential tourists to visit: A St. Louis riverboat, Meramec Caverns, the Ozarks (all of those were on the Missouri side of the mat), a peculiar Blue Whale attraction somewhere in Catoosa, Oklahoma, the Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo, a steam train near Flagstaff and gold mines by another city in Arizona called Oatman.

  I opened Gideon’s journal, already knowing what I would find but just wanting visual confirmation. All of the cities mentioned within the journal’s pages were listed somewhere on the placemat. Somewhere on Route 66. Not to mention that both of the postcards Gideon had sent Amy Lynn—one from Amarillo and the other from Flagstaff—were also places that could be found on the classic 2,451-mile westward journey.

  Donovan verbalized what we were both thinking. “Where they were driving wasn’t random.” He ran his index finger along the highway, tapping the spot where the road met the ocean. “I don’t know why—maybe it had something to do with what they’d learned in Crescent Cove or found in Ben’s car—but, for some reason, it looks like they were following Route 66 toward California.”

  We both immediately went into investigative mode.

  I flipped to the back of the journal and read Gideon’s Pasadena page. But aside from the “M + 3, D + 7” code and the date (July 3, 1976, which really meant October 10, 1976), there were only a couple of phrases there (Sunset ranger? One shield?) and I didn’t understand their significance. The previous San Bernardino page was of no help either. It seemed Gideon had set things up so it would be necessary to figure out his journal clues chronologically.

  Meanwhile, Donovan began reading—with audible murmurs. He not only read the details on the placemat, but he expanded his search to take in the jauntily framed pictures on the walls and the decorative objects surrounding us.

  I realized I hadn’t really seen anything in the little restaurant that I’d looked at so far. I’d been tired when we sat down. Hungry. Unobservant. There were only a handful of other patrons in the joint, and none in the booths nearest ours, so we slipped out of our seats and studied our surroundings more carefully.

  “Look at this.” He pointed to a large Route 66 map tacked up on the wall opposite our booth. “There are dates showing the development, history and the decline of the ‘Mother Road,’ as they sometimes call it.” Of particular interest to us was not the year the route was built (way back in 1926) or the famous novels, like Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, that had featured tales taking place along its winding path, but the driving lines that showed the changes in the route. Some of them very recent.

  “The original road began in Chicago and went to L.A.,” I said, reading a blurb at the side of the map, “but things changed, even as recently as last year.”

  I showed Donovan the latest modifications to the route, trimming the eastern edge, so that the starting point of Route 66 was now in Normal, Illinois. Prior changes from 1974 had the western end of the road listed as Topock, Arizona. “So many people are now taking the faster, wider and better-paved four-lane Interstates, bypassing these little towns, that many parts of the route have fallen into disrepair. And it says here that the U.S. Government decommissioned the Chicago to Normal segment in 1977. That’s probably why we didn’t see anything on I-55 about Route 66 until after we passed through Bloomington-Normal.”

  “But Jeremy and Gideon were traveling in 1976, so the road was still mostly drivable, at least through to Arizona, although most people would have used the Interstates even then,” he said. “I’m gett
ing the sense that they didn’t. That they took the original route.”

  I was getting that same sense.

  My eyes were at last fully opening up to all of the Route 66 paraphernalia around us. It was more than just the placemats and the map. It was Perry Como singing “Get Your Kicks on Route 66” over the speaker near the cash register. It was the faded Route 66 design on the coffee mugs. It was all of the 1950s kitsch throughout the café, complete with that billboard-like scripting and certain pastel shades, which had colored that particular decade…a time when the route was in its modern heyday.

  Times had changed since then. It was a part of American life that was romantic to think about—like Betsy did with her crazy love of poodle skirts, drive-ins and sock hops—but even the memories of that era were dying. Who wore poodle skirts anymore? Bell-bottom pants and tie-dyed shirts were in fashion. Fast-food restaurants had been new back in the Fifties, but these days they were tired old chains.

  Driving across the country in a big convertible had been a great family adventure once, but we’d suffered through long gas lines in recent years and people didn’t have the patience for that kind of travel. Who wouldn’t just fly if you had to go so far? Or, if you drove, wouldn’t you take the best and fastest roads?

  And who had time for bizarre attractions like a Blue Whale or a Cadillac Ranch? After all, we had so much entertainment right in our own homes. Four television stations! How many people would really get their kicks by doing any of that old-fashioned stuff nowadays?

  When I asked this question of Donovan, he just shrugged. “Maybe our brothers were sentimental about the past. Or they liked that old ‘Route 66’ TV show and wanted to be like the main characters—those two guys on it. I don’t know.”

  It was possible that Jeremy had been intrigued with the old Martin Milner TV series, but I couldn’t remember my brother paying much attention to it, even in reruns. Who knew the truth, though? Maybe he’d liked it more than I realized. Or maybe he and his best friend had had a particular reason for following the original route. Something that had to do with the trouble they’d gotten into in Wisconsin two years ago...and we just didn’t know what that was yet.

  The only thing I knew for sure was that we were following Gideon and Jeremy’s trail down a fading patch of pavement that was quickly becoming outdated and abandoned.

  It was an odd thing, really—not only had our brothers disappeared, but the road they’d been traveling down was experiencing the same fate. Fading from view right beneath our wheels.

  St. Louis, Missouri ~ Monday, June 19

  OVER THE next few days, Donovan and I slipped into an easy routine—one of driving, collecting details and following hunches that pushed us toward the next location.

  Well, more accurately, I was following hunches. Donovan, despite his default setting as our resident skeptic, was following me.

  “We know they were in Normal on July 6, 1976 and that they got to St. Louis a few days later on Friday the ninth,” I told Donovan as he was chowing down a double scoop of chocolate frozen custard at Ted Drewes—a local spot that had been a recommended stop on the placemat.

  I swirled the custard in my single strawberry cup and flipped through the next several pages of the journal. “Thing is, they were here for a while and I have no idea what they were doing. They don’t get to the next city—Joplin—until Sunday the twenty-fifth. That’s more than two weeks that are unaccounted for…unless they were just hanging out here. But why?”

  “Maybe they were laying low like Amy Lynn said,” Donovan suggested, around a mouth full of frozen custard. “Waiting to see if they were being followed. Or listening for news reports to find out if they were wanted in connection with the Bonner Mill explosion. I don’t remember hearing about it in Virginia at the time, but maybe the blast made the regional news.”

  “Hmm. Maybe.”

  I didn’t remember hearing about the Bonner Mill incident either, and I’d been living a lot closer to it. I was pretty sure somebody somewhere capped the story on that pretty fast. Based on what we’d found at the library near there, coverage had been minimal even in Crescent Cove and Ashburn Falls.

  “Where would they be able to stay in St. Louis for so long, though? Gideon didn’t have any friends here that I knew about. Amy Lynn didn’t mention that they were going to meet someone. Do you and Jeremy know anyone in Missouri?”

  He shook his head and ate some more chocolate custard.

  I looked at the Route 66 placemat we’d snitched from that diner in Litchfield and scanned for any lodging recommendations that were listed in the St. Louis area. The only place mentioned was a motel called Coral Court.

  “That’s an infamous motel,” Donovan said when I pointed it out to him. “It’s a motor court but also known as a ‘No Tell Motel.’ I knew a few guys from the Army that stayed there once. Had special rates so you could rent a room for as little as four hours.” He raised a brow. “And there was a well-known kidnapping case back in the Fifties where one of the murderers hid out there anonymously for a couple of days.”

  I opened my mouth to suggest staying there for a night so we could check it out, but Donovan anticipated me.

  “No.”

  “Oh, c’mon. Gideon doesn’t give us any clues that I can figure out about where they stayed when they were here. This sounds just like the kind of place that—”

  “That your dad would kill me if I took you to,” he interrupted. “Absolutely not, Aurora.” He shook his head for added emphasis and pitched his empty custard cup in the trash.

  I snickered. “Don’t be such an old fogy. It’s not like we’re going to do anything there.”

  Seriously, it was all I could do not to shake him. He hadn’t so much as given me a little side hug since we’d been away from Chameleon Lake, even when he was pretending to be my “husband.” He probably thought if he held my hand or something I’d combust from his act of grand passion.

  Considering my mockery, I expected him to say “no” again right away, but he didn’t. He just looked at me for a very long, very uncomfortable moment with an expression that was odd and unsmiling. Too inscrutable for me to read. God, I hated that.

  “Get in the car,” he said finally.

  “Why? Where are we going?”

  “To Coral Court.”

  “We’re going to stay there?” I asked, delighted but surprised.

  “No,” he said, swiftly crushing that idea. “But if you really think it would help to see it, we should take a quick look at it.”

  The motel was located about a mile west of the city limits and, to my eye, it looked respectable enough.

  “The only really weird thing about it,” I told Donovan, “is that just the sign is coral in color. All of the units are gold. And they are very Art Deco.”

  It was set up kind of like duplex groupings. There were the rounded gold brick units with brown highlights, thick glass block window squares and private one-car garages where the guests could safely keep their vehicles. And, I supposed, their secrets.

  I knew it would have been the perfect place for Gideon and Jeremy to disappear from the world for a couple of weeks. How they paid for it, I wasn’t sure, but the rates had to be moderate and the anonymity offered was worth any extra charges.

  “Maybe they were working while they were here, too. Getting extra cash for a few days’ labor,” I suggested. “Somewhere within walking distance. Something easy, like washing dishes at a café or cleaning windows.”

  Donovan said, “It’s possible,” but I could tell he didn’t want to hazard any guesses.

  After I’d had a half hour to wander around, he made me get into his car again and he took us back into the city, where he checked us into the same kind of mom-and-pop motel we’d stayed at in Crescent Cove and in Litchfield.

  “At least one time on this trip we need to stay at a motor court,” I told him. “So we can park your obvious Firebird Trans Am in a garage for a change.”

  He laughed and s
aid with heavy sarcasm, “Yeah. When we need to hide from bad guys, we’ll do that. Until then, the lodging is my choice.”

  About an hour later, we were in the downtown area, meandering past the shops and finding ourselves walking along the section of the Mississippi River that flowed through the city.

  “The part that keeps tripping me up are Treak’s notes,” I told Donovan as we sat on a park bench near the famous Gateway Arch, our view of the St. Louis skyline obscured by the large trees and the taller city buildings near us. “Even if we can somehow translate the shorthand in those few pages, there has to be tons of stuff we’re missing. Stacks of folders that got burned up in his car at Bonner Mill. Boxes that got carted away from his apartment in Chicago. I don’t know how we’re ever going to figure out a fraction of what Treak had uncovered, even if we somehow find our brothers and they’re able to explain what they know to us.”

  Donovan shrugged. “Probably safer that way.”

  “Yeah, but what’s the point of us being here then?” I snapped. “We’d be safer at home. Not asking questions. Not traveling anywhere. And then we’d have exactly what we had before—nothing.”

  I shook my head. “We need to keep searching for anything that might lead us to our brothers or tell us why they can’t come back home. There has to be a new clue in the journal, in the decoded dates. Things that we’ll be able to see now because of the extra information Amy Lynn gave us. I just wish Gideon would’ve given us a little more to go on in the first place.”

  He exhaled slowly but didn’t speak. It was clear he didn’t want to deal yet again with my familiar rant about how we needed to keep pressing forward. Going further westward.

  On some level, despite being shaken up by the film our brothers made and despite all the proof we had challenging the presumption that our brothers were dead, I knew Donovan still believed we were better off turning all of this evidence over to the Chameleon Lake Police Department and having them lead the investigation.