Robert said, “Are you bleeding? Oh, God, don’t be injured.”
“I’m not injured,” Tom said, realizing his shoulder
did
hurt. But his focus was on the damage to his car. He turned to survey the right side where the Plymouth had hit him.
His assailant did too. On closer inspection, he might look vaguely like Tom, but he was narrower and two inches shorter. “I’m so sorry, I always do these things. You really aren’t hurt then, are you? I mean, your pants there?” He stared at the incriminating brown stain.
“It’s Pepsi Cola. I’m fine.” Tom looked around. Nobody else was in sight. It was two hundred feet to the nearest house and no one had come out; possibly no one had seen or heard the collision. Maybe all his luck wasn’t gone. He walked around the Cutlass while Robert followed him, mumbling apologies. There was serious damage to the passenger door and rocker panel below it. The frame might be bent. The front fender looked untouched, though, and only the first foot of the quarter panel was wrinkled. So if all the wheels could turn, maybe the car was drivable?
Tom turned to inspect the other vehicle. The tank that had rammed his starboard side was a 1952 Plymouth, one of that frumpy and upright series made with left-over Korean War armor plate. Its bumper hung forlornly low on the right end below a now snaggle-toothed grill, but this bruiser that had crippled his Olds looked otherwise unharmed. It was so unfair.
He wheeled on his thin-bodied, thin-haired vehicular antagonist. “We’re the only two cars at this intersection on a clear summer day. How the hell did you manage to hit me?”
“I’m…I’m making deliveries. I looked down, looked at an address. It was stupid. Oh, God, you’re going to call the cops now, aren’t you?”
Call the people who’d promised Tom he’d be absolutely safe in a dusty Arizona crossroads hamlet and had been dead wrong. The people with the “safe house” that had been anything but, where a bullet meant for him had wounded a thirteen-year-old. Not bloody likely
Tom
would call the cops. But this Robert character knew none of that. Tom challenged him, “And why not? Have you got a problem with that?”
“No, I mean yes, a problem. Look, I can get money. I can make this good if you give me a little time. It would just be a deal between us. Do you think your car can be driven? I’m sure mine can. I just want to get out of here before we’re seen.”
So did Tom. The Cutlass looked like it
might
be drivable. “Where will we go?”
“You can follow me back to my room. It’s six or eight hundred feet up this crossroad.”
He’d not said
my house
but just
my room
like any impoverished student. He drove a piece of crap. How was he going to pay?
“My car might make it that far, but then what do we do?”
Robert ran agitated fingers through strands of wispy, sweat-soaked hair. “At home I can give you maybe two hundred right now and the rest of the repair cost in a week, unless maybe I can get an advance from my boss. He might even pay for the accident since I was on company time. I’ve got another car you can use until we can get yours repaired.”
A thirty-something delivery boy dressed in outdated Sears Roebuck bargain basement duds and driving an ugly twenty-year-old Plymouth had an extra car and a boss who might cover a road accident out-of-pocket. Maybe it was true. Tom was due a break, wasn’t he? From looking at the Plymouth, the other car had to be Robert’s “good” car, didn’t it? Driving something other than his own conspicuous Cutlass could help him stay hidden.
“Let’s make sure I have this right. You live near here. You have another car to lend me. And you or your boss will pay for the repairs.”
“Yes, all of that. Please, can we move the cars now?”
Tom peered under the front of the Cutlass, looking for telltale puddles of fluid. The pavement was dry. It was the same under the Plymouth. He picked up a piece of chrome trim off the road—potential evidence of the mishap here—and threw it though the opening that minutes ago had been his front right door window. “Fair enough, we’ve got a deal. Let’s see if these cars will both start.”
Chapter Two
The Cutlass did start. There were new and strange noises, steering was difficult, and the breeze through the mangled passenger door seemed like a gale, although they crept up the hill at fifteen miles an hour. Tom’s right shoulder ached. The old Plymouth passed a modest sign that proclaimed
KESSLER INN
. Robert turned up a wide driveway cut into the dense trees and Tom followed. It was getting hard to turn the Cutlass to the left.
They crested a small rise and at the far end of a scraggly lawn Tom saw the big house. If you had to characterize it, he supposed it was a Victorian, based on the lavish wooden scrollwork and several porches. But there were occasional Italianate and Greek Revival embellishments and even a trace of the ubiquitous Romanesque in the brickwork. It was a comprehensive sampler of nineteenth century architectural styles, probably the fevered creation of some lumber or copper baron awash in money and devoid of taste.
Robert pulled off to the north of the house in a gravel parking strip, and Tom managed to slip in next to him as the Cutlass’s power steering went completely dead. Robert joined him as he got out of his car and watched as he opened his trunk and took out clean pants. Tom changed behind the two cars, wincing as he pulled his fly zipper shut.
“You’ve hurt your shoulder. Oh, man, I’m so sorry.”
“It’ll be fine,” Tom snapped to shut him up. It wasn’t fine. “You live here?”
“Well, yeah. Look, Beth Kessler, the owner, is only supposed to rent to students, so my staying here is kind of unofficial. When she gets the right license, she plans to make this place an upscale bed and breakfast. That’s where—”
“I know what a B&B is.” Tom studied the secluded, tree-belted property. He might be able to leave the Cutlass here completely unnoticed until Robert could get it fixed. “This looks like a pretty isolated place.”
“Oh, yeah, it’s real private. Nice and quiet, too.”
“You want to keep this accident we just had nice and quiet. Why?”
“That tattoo—are you a veteran?”
Robert was trying his patience. With an icy edge to his voice, Tom countered, “I thought I was asking the questions.”
Robert took a step back, out of left hook range. He mumbled, “It’s sort of a military draft thing. If we report the accident, I’ll have a problem.”
“You look a little old to be worrying about being drafted.”
“It involves some other people. Also, there’d be trouble with the ID I’m using.”
How about that? Two guys have a collision, and they’re both using fake driver’s licenses. Even near a college town, what were the odds? Tom reassured him, “I am a veteran, but I’m not going to hit you. I want to see the first two hundred dollars and the car you’re going to give me while they fix mine.”
“It might take a little time.”
“I don’t have much time. I guess we can still call the police and the insurance companies.” Tom was afraid to breathe. He was pushing his luck with these demands, and he tried to look angrier than he felt while he watched Robert’s face blanch.
Robert pleaded, “No. Please no. Look, you can keep my other car if I can’t get you the money.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes, as God is my witness.”
“I guess I can live with that, Robert.”
“I don’t know your name.”
“Tom Hawk.”
Robert pumped his hand eagerly. “Robert Matthews. I really appreciate us keeping this quiet.”
“Yeah. Is your other car, the one you said I can use, here?”
“Uh-huh. Beth lets me keep it in the garage. Come on.”
They walked behind the house to a three-car concrete block garage, much newer than the house but still no more recent than 1930. There were cracks in the walls, there was rust on the faded and sagging double doors, and it had needed a new roof for a long time. Robert wrestled with the first set of doors and revealed his second set of wheels. Tom had assumed the Plymouth was his work car, and he would give Tom something better to use. He was disappointed.
“Is that what I think it is?” He eyed what looked like a scale model of a fifties convertible, with a scraggly chocolate brown canvas top over a tiny faded vanilla body.
“Yes, sir. It’s a 1955 Nash Metropolitan, the only one in the county, maybe the only one in the Upper Peninsula. How about that, huh?”
Huh, indeed. The diminutive roadster was rare, but hardly desirable, let alone collectable. “Does it run?” Tom questioned doubtfully.
“Well, geez, sure it will, for a month or two. It was made in England so it’s not so good when the weather is cold.”
Cold weather accounted for three quarters of the year in Houghton, Greg had told Tom. Nine months of winter, and three months of bad skiing. “Can I get in it?” meaning,
Can I even fit in this toy?
“Go ahead. It’s not locked. Actually, the door locks don’t work.”
That probably didn’t matter, as there was a hole in the side of the canvas top where you could stick your arm through and grasp the inside door handle. Tom moved the seat full rearward—there wasn’t much travel—and squeezed in. It was freakishly small. Every surface of the little cabin seemed to touch him like he was wearing a vanilla-colored metal jumpsuit. Maybe he could drive with the top down. Regardless, he had to take this or walk.
He clambered out. “I want to keep the Cutlass in this garage until it gets repaired.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Beth might not like that. She can have a temper. “
Robert was scared of his landlady.
“You’ll have to convince her.”
“Yeah, I suppose I will. Hopefully she’s in the house. First, just give me a minute here.”
Robert walked to the Plymouth, opened the back door and pulled out five or six pizza boxes. He put them in the trunk, covered them carefully with a tarp, locked the trunk and tested the lock. He was putting food in a car trunk in August?
“It’s a pretty hot day.” Tom unconsciously massaged his shoulder.
“Huh? Oh, you mean my, ah, pizzas. They’ll keep. Are you sure someone shouldn’t look at that arm?”
“I’ll be fine. Maybe we can go to your room and get me those two hundred dollars?”
“Right.”
“Maybe you should call your boss now too, and see if he’s going to help you out?”
“Yeah, I guess. I’m hoping he’ll pay because he’ll want it kept private too. He might just fire me. He doesn’t like me all that well. I
wasn’t
paying enough attention to my driving.”
Unemployed, Robert would have a hard time paying for repair of the Cutlass. Tom encouraged him. “I’m sure you’re a good employee. An accident can happen to anyone. You worry too much.”
“I suppose I do. A lot is going on. I’ve got this personal thing coming up, this person coming to see me. I’m nervous about it.”
Nervous was the word, all right. Robert feared Tom, his boss, and his landlady. It sounded like he was frightened of this soon-to-arrive visitor. One had to wonder if there was anyone he
wasn’t
afraid of.
****
Tom didn’t have the usual dread of entering an unfamiliar house and not knowing what confining spaces might lie within. This wasn’t like the widow’s little house in Houghton—this one looked huge, a mansion, and the rooms would be large.
As they reached the front door, he probed, “How big is this place? How many guests can it hold?”
“Let’s see. There are eight bedrooms including the one downstairs that Beth uses. She’s already fixed up two upstairs on the east for the B&B. Two others on the east she’s working on. But the three on the west she hasn’t re-decorated yet and she rents them long-term for now. That’s where I am. She’ll remodel them later for B&B use and I’ll have to move.”
“So it’s just you and the landlady living here?”
“There’s one more. A woman who came three or four days ago is staying in one of the finished rooms. I haven’t even met her yet. I guess she doesn’t eat breakfast. And the, ah, friend I mentioned moves into the other finished room tomorrow. This is officially student housing, but there aren’t any students. But you shouldn’t tell anyone any of this. Like I told you, Beth has some little legal problem to fix up before she can advertise as a B&B. That’s why she was willing to rent to me long-term.”
Nuts. Here was an isolated, private place, pretty ideal for Tom’s situation, but the operation wasn’t legal, so there was the risk of someone coming here and asking the residents questions.
They entered a large and well-decorated foyer, tramped up a wide staircase, and from the upstairs hall Robert turned into an unlocked bedroom. It was huge, maybe fifteen by twenty feet—a room in which Tom could be comfortable except perhaps for a single wing-back chair tucked too tightly into an alcove.
Robert’s brow was furrowed again. “Uh, maybe you could stay out in the hall for a moment while I get your money?”
“Sure.” Robert did not seem burdened with excessive imagination, and Tom thought his stash was probably under the mattress on that scarred walnut double bed. But he waited in the hall for a full minute, so the money must have been hidden deeper than that.
“This is all I have, two hundred and eleven dollars.” Robert reluctantly handed the money to Tom.
“It’ll have to do for now. You need to tell your landlady the Cutlass will be in that garage stall.”
“Oh, right. Maybe you can come with me? We can go find her now, and you can meet her.”
Tom didn’t want to meet any more people, especially a crabby old woman running a boarding house. But it was the price of getting the Cutlass with the conspicuous Arizona plates out of sight. Before he could agree, they heard a crash, and a piercing female scream rose from the floor below.
“Uh-oh, that was Beth,” Robert said, and ran for the stairs.
They found her in the dining room. Well, not all of her, but two legs and an arm sticking out from under a massive oak china cabinet that was sprawling on its back, covering her. The top of the cabinet was wedged against a wall; it had carved an ugly scar in the plaster as it descended. The bottom plate of a mover’s hand dolly protruded from under the cabinet; probably the load it took had saved her from a complete flattening.