Desert Heat (21 page)

“I hope you don’t mind,” the driver said apogetically. “This is a truck stop. It’s called the Triple T, and it’s the last decent place for a long ways. I usually stop here for a slice of deep-dish apple pie and to get my thermos filled. Care for a cup of coffee?”

Weak with relief, Angie Kellogg burst out laughing. “I’d love a cup of coffee.”

When she climbed down from the cab, the desert air was chilly on her bare arms. She shivered and Dayton Smith noticed. “Don’t have a jacket or sweater?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I left all my clothes back at the hotel.”

Smith climbed back into the cab, rummaged and the seat, and emerged holding a blue nylon jacket with the United Van Lines logo and Dayton Smith’s name emblazoned on the front.

“Here,” he said, “put this on. It may be five sizes too big, but it’ll be warm.”

Inside the truck stop, they were ushered into front section reserved for professional drivers. Several of the other truckers seemed to recognize Dayton Smith. Seeing Angie with him, they greeted him with knowing winks and conspiratorial nods, all of which made Dayton blush to the roots of his receding hair-line.

“Where are you going, really?” he asked.

Angie had been thinking about the map she had looked at in her room hours earlier. The vague outlines of a plan were beginning to take shape in her head.

“How far is Bisbee from here?”

Smith shrugged his shoulders. “A hundred miles, give or take. What’s in Bisbee?”

The waitress brought coffee. Dayton and Angie sat for a few moments, studying each other across the counter top. For her part, Angie was evaluating Dayton Smith according to the only scale she knew—the scale of how to get men to do what she wanted. There was money in her bag, but she never even considered offering to pay him with that. Angie was accustomed to dealing with the world with only one form of currency—her body. Old habits are hard to break.

She figured Dayton Smith would be easy pickings. Men like him were usually duck soup in the hands of a real professional. They usually wanted whores to do the things their uptight wives at home wouldn’t agree to on a bet, and Angie Kellogg didn’t mind kinky up to a point. She knew instinctively, that there was no way Dayton Smith would be as physically mean to her as Tony Vargas had been, but there was always a certain risk with strait-laced, upright men. They could be unpredictable at times. More than one prostitute had had her brains bashed in by fine, upstanding men caught in the throes of unreasoning remorse after happily screwing their brains out.

Then, too, there was always the possibility t Dayton Smith wasn’t at all what he seemed. Maybe he was really a cutthroat in guise, one who would strangle her with his bare hands and disappear with the contents of beach bag.

“Why Bisbee?” he prodded a second time.

Angie fought her way out of her reverie. “I’ve friends there,” she said. “They’d probably me stay with them.”

“Call ‘em up,” Dayton Smith said. “Have ‘em meet us in Benson. That’s on my way and only fifty miles or so from Bisbee.”

“I can’t call,” she lied. “They don’t have a phone.”

“Oh,” he said.

His pie came, topped with a scoop of vanilla cream. He cleaned his plate enthusiastically while the gold band on his wedding ring winked at Angie in the warm fluorescent light. “You’re sure you’re not hungry?” he asked. I’d he glad to buy if you’re short of cash.”

“I’m not hungry,” she said. “Thanks.” When he finished eating and after the waitress brought his filled thermos, they headed out into the parking lot. There were dozens of other trucks scattered throughout the lot, and Angie realized at once that now was the time to act. If Dayton Smith went bad on her afterward, at least here she’d have a chance to call for help.

He took her hand and helped her up into the tall cab where she settled in the middle of the seat instead of staying on the far side. When Dayton climbed into the cab beside her, she didn’t move away. Instead, she reached out and put one suggestive hand on his upper thigh.

“Would you give me a ride to Bisbee, even if it’s out of your way?” she asked. “I could make it worth your while.”

He reached down and took her hand. Firmly, he removed it from his leg and placed it back in her lap. “Move on over,” he ordered. “You’re in the way of the gearshift.”

For the first time in all the years since she left home, Angie Kellogg felt herself blushing. His turn down had made her feel like the two-bit whore she was.

“You mean you don’t want me?” she asked incredulously. “I’m good. I’m real good.”

Dayton Smith slammed the truck into gear. “I’ll just bet you are,” he muttered.

“Let me out then,” she squawked at him.

“I’ll go back and find someone else, someone who does want me. I’m going to Bisbee, dam-m i t, and I’m going there tonight.”

“Settle down,” he barked. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t take you, did I? Hell, girl, you don’t have to fuck me just to get a ride. It’s not that far, only fifty miles or so out of my way.”

Angie Kellogg wasn’t used to openhanded kindness. She blinked in surprise. “You mean you’ll take me for nothing?”

“Not for nothing,” he countered. “I like your company, and you look like you could a little help. I’ve got a daughter of my own who’s about your age. So sit back and relax. Next stop is Bisbee, okay?”

Grateful and mystified both, Angie Kellogg settled back into the seat while the huge truck rumbled swiftly through the starlit desert night.

“What’s your name?” Dayton Smith asked eventually.

“Tammy Sue Ferris,” Angie said without sing a beat.

“Well, Tammy Sue,” Dayton Smith said, set-g back into the driver’s seat. “Tell me where you’re from.”

“California.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-three.”

His face had an otherworldly glow in the greenish reflected light from the dashboard. As Angie answered his question, she felt almost as though he weren’t real, as though she was talking to some kind of ghost.

“And what do you do for a living?”

Somehow she no longer felt like lying. “Do you really want to know?”

“Yes.”

“I’m a whore,” she said unexpectedly, surprising herself. “I have been for ten years.” If she thought her answer would shock him, it didn’t.

“And this Tony character was your pimp?”

“More or less,” she replied. “Tony doesn’t fit into any definite categories.”

“You’re away from him now,” Dayton Smith said forcefully. “Stay that way. Get a job, get married, have children. In other words, have a real life.”

“I don’t know how,” she said in a small voice. “I don’t know how to do anything else.”

“I wasn’t born driving this truck, honey,” he told her. “I took lessons, got myself a license. That’s what you’re gonna have to do, too. Go back to school and learn typing or shorthand or whatever it is they teach girls nowadays. Maybe even computers, but at twenty-three, you’ve got your whole life to live. Don’t screw it up.”

After that, they didn’t talk much more. At o’clock, Dayton Smith helped Tammy Sue Farris check into the last available room in Bisbee’s Copper Queen Hotel. When she stepped away from the desk, Dayton was standing halfway across the lobby with both hands stuffed in his hip pockets. He smiled at her.

“You’ll do fine,” he said. “I’m sure of it.” He reached out, took one of her hands in both his, and shook it warmly. “You be careful the people you meet and keep the jacket. You need it worse than I do. If you ever turn in Dallas give me a call. I’m in the book. The wife and I would like to have you over for dinner. She cooks a mean fried chicken.” With that, Dayton Smith turned and shambled out the door, leaving Angie Kellogg alone. Riding up to the third floor in the creaking elevator, she found herself wiping tears her eyes. Dayton Smith was probably the nicest man she had ever met, but she couldn’t uderstand why watching him walk out the door and down the steps had made her cry.

FIFTEEN

The long, polished hardwood hallway of Greenway School still smelled exactly the way Joanna remembered it—dusty and lightly perfumed with hints of sweaty-haired children and overripe sack-lunch fruit. Worried about her daughter, Joanna walked swiftly toward the principal’s office. As far as Joanna knew, this was the first time Jennifer Brady had been sent to the office for even the smallest infraction.

Nina Evans, the five-foot-nothing fireplug of a woman who was the school principal, met Joanna in the hallway. “I’m glad I was finally able to locate you,” Mrs. Evans said irritably “I didn’t expect to find you at work today.”

School principals had never been high on Joanna’s list of favorite people, and Nina Evans was no exception. Joanna found herself bridling at the apparent rebuke in the woman’s tone of voice.

“What seems to be the problem?” Joann asked.

“Oh, you know how children are,” Nina sins said quickly. “I’m sure the boys didn’t mean any harm.”

“Which boys?”

“Jeffrey Block and Gordon Smith. According to what I’ve been able to learn, they evidently started it. Regardless of provocation, though, I simply can’t allow students to resort violence. That’s no way to teach problem-solving. It’s a short step from that kind of youthful behavior to starting wars.”

Joanna was in no mood to hear an educational lecture on the political correctness of violence. “What provocation?” she asked.

“No doubt Jennifer was feeling sensitive,” the principal continued, “and I don’t blame It’s always difficult for children to be in school after a traumatic event like this. In fact, not at all sure it was wise of you to send to school today, considering what she’s been rough.”

With her arms folded smugly across her chest, Nina Evans stood looking up at Joanna. There could be no mistaking her attitude of reproach and disapproval. The two boys may started the day’s altercation, but Nina was holding Jennifer primarily responsible. Somehow, the fight was all Jennifer’s and, through Jenny, ultimately Joanna’s.

Battling to control her temper, Joanna felt her jaws tighten and her face grow hot. “I didn’t
send
Jenny to school today,” she said firmly. “She came today of her own accord, because she wanted to. In fact, she begged me to let her. Now, tell me exactly what happened.”

Nina Evans replied with a noncommittal shrug. “At morning recess the boys were evidently teasing Jennifer and saying naughty things to her. She waited until noon and then punched them out when they were all three supposed to be on their way to the lunch-room.”

“Both of them at once?”

The principal nodded. ‘That’s what I’ve been told. Jeffrey’s parents took him over to the dispensary to have his thumb looked after, Gordon Smith’s mother picked him up about half an hour ago. Jennifer’s the only one still here. I didn’t want to send her home wit someone else without first having a chance to discuss the situation with you in person. It’s far too serious.”

“I want to see her,” Joanna said. “Where she?”

“In my office. You can go on in if you want.”

In the fifteen years since Joanna’s eighth grade graduation, the Greenway School principal’s office had altered very little. Personnel changes had occurred because elementary school principals come and go, but the same gray metal desk still sat in one corner of the room with the same old-fashioned wooden bench sitting across from it.

On the wall above the bench hung the familiar, but now much more faded, print of George Washington. The print, too, was exactly the same. Joanna remembered the cornerwise crack in the glass. She remembered how she had sat on the wooden bench herself and craned her neck to stare up at George Washington’s face on that long-ago spring afternoon when her fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Fennessy, had sentenced Joanna Lathrop to a day in the principal’s office.

Jennifer glanced up nervously as the door opened. Seeing Joanna, she dropped her eyes and stared at her shoes. “I’m sorry,” she said once.

Joanna walked across the room and sat n on the bench beside her daughter. “Tell about it,” she said quietly. “What did those boys say to you?”

For a time the child sat with her head low-and didn’t answer. Joanna watched as a fat, heavy tear squeezed out of the corner of Jennifer’s eye and coursed down her freckled cheek before dripping silently off her chin.

“Tell me,” Joanna insisted.

Jennifer bit her lower lip, a gesture Joanna recognized as being very like one of her own. “Do I have to say it?” the child whispered.

“Yes.”

“They said Daddy was a crook,” Jennifer choked out at last. “I told them they’d better take it back, but they wouldn’t, so I beat ‘em up. Daddy wasn’t even a black hat, Mom, so why would they say such a thing?”

Joanna draped one arm across Jennifer’s small shoulder and pulled the child close. Milo had told her the town was choosing up sides. Now she understood far better what he had meant. Unfortunately, some of the first stones thrown had landed squarely on Jenny.

“What happened to Daddy didn’t just hap-pen to us, you know,” Joanna said slowly, groping for words. “We’re not the only people who are trying to figure out what happened and what’s going to happen next. Everyone else is, too. Those boys were probably just repeating things they had heard at home from their own parents.”

“You mean everybody’s talking about it? About us?”

“Pretty much.”

“And they all think Daddy was a crook?”

It was hard enough for Joanna to cope with the flurry of disturbing rumors. It hurt her even more to realize that Jennifer would have deal with them at her own level as well. She swallowed the lump in her throat.

“Not everyone believes that, Jenny,” she answered quietly, “but some people do. You’ve got to try to not let it bother you.”

“But it does,” Jennifer whispered fiercely. “It really does. It made me so mad, I wanted to knock Jeffrey Block’s teeth out. All I did was hurt his thumb.”

For a moment they sat side by side without speaking. “But it isn’t true, is it?” Jennifer asked forlornly, with a trace of doubt leaking into her questioning voice.

Joanna squeezed her daughter’s shoulders and held her tight. “No,” she declared, “but up to us to prove it.”