After purchasing my shirt and evading a plethora of probing questions from the woman behind the counter, I made an exit from the hardware store. Luckily, it was closing time, six o’clock, or I probably wouldn’t have gotten out at all. Clearly, word was out that there was a strange woman in town. Suspicions were that I was connected with
American Megastar
and the unexplained helicopter flyover at the fairgrounds this morning. The woman at the hardware store wanted to know if I’d heard the
big news
about
TV network helicopters
hovering over the county fairgrounds. She gave me the evil eye when I answered no.
As I walked out the door, she whispered to the clerk dusting a display of plungers nearby, “She bought the purple Dailyians shirt. Nobody from around here would do that.”
I decided to get out of town for a while, drive to the fairgrounds, check the lay of the land, and see if I could figure out how to quietly stage a location shoot at the county fair without alerting everyone. The glow and excitement of the hometown return segments depended, at least in part, on the big hometown reveal being a surprise to the local population. In Amber’s case, there was the additional problem of the recent media frenzy surrounding her personal activities. If the paparazzi found out she was coming here, the place would be swamped and any chance of capturing our country girl in the serene and peaceful bosom of her hometown would be gone.
When I drove up to the fairgrounds gate, a man in a John Deere ball cap was padlocking it shut. I rolled down my window and leaned out. “Hi there. Any chance I can get in for a few minutes?”
The caretaker gave me a perplexed look, his thin, weathered face all mustache and baseball cap. “Afraid not this ev’nin’, ma’am. All I do’s mow the grass. Fairgrounds opens at nine tomorrow for vendors. Livestock barns open at seven for sheep and goats, but you’ve got to have an exhibitor’s pass.” He looked my rental car up and down, stroking the side of his mustache. “Don’t guess you’re here to show sheep and goats?”
“No, but thanks for the information.”
“My pleasure, ma’am.” He tipped the bill of his cap. “Have a good ev’nin’.” Waving over his shoulder, he crossed the driveway, climbed into a battered pickup truck, and puttered away, towing a trailer full of lawnmowers and weed trimmers.
I sat surveying the fairgrounds, looking up and down the tall chain-link fence, thinking about my aerial overview that morning. The place was huge—a maze of barns, decaying livestock corrals, a rodeo arena lined with rows of rusted metal bleachers, various carnival rides, and a group of old cinderblock structures that looked like leftovers from a bygone military installation.
Near an old rock building marked
Kiddie Korral
, a giant metal cowboy stood smiling at me, his faded gray eyes watching blankly as I rolled up my window, backed off the side of the gravel drive, and headed for the county road.
A Jeep pulled in as I stopped to check for traffic. The driver leaned out his window, the arm of his Hawaiian shirt catching the sunlight, his face shaded by the brim of a well-worn straw cowboy hat. I rolled down my window, something I never would have done back home in LA.
“Looks like the place is closed,” he said, pushing back his hat so that his face was visible. He had blue eyes.
Really
blue eyes, framed by thick brown lashes and strong, straight brows darker than his hair, sandy brown and slicked back in loose curls from driving with the window open. He needed a shave, but he looked good that way, sort of rugged . . .
He blinked expectantly, waiting for me to say something. I realized I was staring. “Locked up until nine a.m.,” I finally said, “unless you’ve brought sheep or goats along, that is. Then you can get in at seven.” Something about him seemed vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t decide what.
With a quick shake of his head, he snapped his fingers. “Left my sheep at home.”
The comment made me chuckle. The first time I’d felt like laughing all day. “Then you’re out of luck, cowboy.” I caught myself doing what Paula called
the eye thing
—the up and down flutter of lashes that said,
Where ya headed, big fella?
“Guess I’ll have to give up and go get some supper.” The sentence faded into a slow, one-sided grin that made his words seem like a proposal of some kind. The idea caused a little pulse to flutter in my neck. His eyes drifted downward, as if he saw it.
“It
is
supper time already, isn’t it?”
“Past time.” He raised a brow, waiting, his gaze meeting mine again. I tunneled in, momentarily losing track of the conversation.
A quick mental image flicked through my mind. Me, the cowboy in the Hawaiian shirt, dinner . . .
Whoa there, where did that come from? You are an engaged woman, Mandalay. Happily engaged. Engaged. Happily.
Reality hit me like a blast of cold water. Come to think of it, what was this guy doing hanging around the fairgrounds after hours? If he was a local, would he be asking
me
if the fairgrounds were closed? Wouldn’t he know the place was locked up overnight?
I quickly ricocheted from intrigued and titillated to suspicious, which was probably a safer reaction for my engaged self to be having. He registered the change in body language, apparently, and retreated into his truck, his face disappearing among the shadows as he rested his hand loosely on the gearshift. “Guess I’ll come back in the morning.”
“Don’t forget your sheep,” I said.
Or, perhaps, your camera equipment. Any chance you have scopes and a collection of long range lenses hidden in that Jeep?
“Yes, ma’am.” In the shadows, he grinned again, his teeth an even white line—not the orthodontically perfect kind—just crooked enough to be natural. “Thanks for the advice.” He didn’t have the same accent as the rest of the locals. His was a cross between
Big Easy
and
southern comfort
. Casual, yet proper, soft on the ear. Nice to listen to. The next thing I knew, I was leaning closer, hesitating again.
“I hear the café in town is pretty good.”
Stop that, Mandalay. This is the enemy. Maybe.
“I don’t know if they’re open in the evenings, though. Anyway, good luck.”
“You too.” Sticking his hand out the window, he waved as he drifted onward toward the fairgrounds gate. He took his time there, slowly turning around. I wondered if he was scoping out the place or watching me, trying to figure out who I was and what I was up to. Just in case he was, I turned away from town and followed the fairgrounds road into the hills, glancing at my map and plotting a loop through the countryside. The drive would do me good. It would give me time to think, to clear my head of random thoughts of cowboys and cafés and concentrate instead on getting an entire production crew into the fairgrounds without causing a commotion that would spoil the big reveal at the rodeo.
Unfortunately, while plotting my next move, I lost track of the road, and before I knew it, I was driving some asphalt-and-gravel path that wasn’t on the map.
It’ll go back to town eventually
, I told myself.
It’s headed in the right direction
.
The cell phone rang, and when I picked it up, Ursula was on the other end, sounding far away in the static.
“Mandee-lay. How izz your trip?” As usual, the first few words of Ursula-speak were like a foreign language. My mind rushed to translate.
“Good. Fine. I booked hotel rooms in town and scouted a couple of locales.” The phone fuzzed out momentarily and came back. “I’ll go to the fairgrounds tomorrow.”
“Very goot, Mandee-lay. The crew will fly in on Saturday morningk. They will film Am-beer landingk at the airport and then bring her to you in time to shoot background before her big reveal duringk ro-day-o. In the interim, we would not want anyone to discern that she is comingk, or that she is finalist, this izz clear?”
Crystal
. Thank goodness Ursula hadn’t seen the banner that had been hanging over Main Street until the rain washed it away. “Yes. I think the phone’s going out of range. I’m out near the fairgrounds right now.”
“There is one more thing I must tell you.” Ursula went right on talking, certain, no doubt, that the phone wouldn’t dare cut out until she was finished giving orders. “When Am-beer arrives, you must watch closely her efforts to contact people there. In her hotel today, there was left at the desk a communiqué from a recording company in Austin. If she were to exit
American Megastar
to engage with a tiny unknown company, this would reflect badly on us. If you find such to be true, you will let me know immediately.”
A little ache started right between my eyes, like Chinese water torture. I didn’t even want to know how Ursula had managed to see Amber’s hotel messages. Surely Amber wouldn’t be stupid enough to openly negotiate with a recording company just days before the announcement of the Final Five. This had to be yet more of Ursula’s paranoia. “Is it possible that this company just contacted her out of the blue? Do we have proof of any ongoing dialogue?”
“Not at this time. This could be nothingk, of course.”
I rubbed the thrumming in my forehead. What now? What other possible nugget of insanity could be heaped into the alreadyteetering Amber basket?
“Be watchful when Am-beer arrives. Marta will email the final travel schedules to you tomorrow.” As usual, Ursula was through dumping and ready to have the conversation over with. She was probably headed out to some lavish dinner with one of the many vendors who serviced the production company and periodically stroked Ursula’s ego with expensive perks. “Have a good eveningk, Mandee . . .” The words faded into static, and I drove with the phone pressed to my ear for a mile or so, wondering if she would come back. Finally, I set the phone down and concluded two things—Ursula had hung up, and judging by the setting sun, I wasn’t headed in the right direction anymore. I’d passed through more than one fork in the road, so there was no possibility of backtracking. Essentially, I was lost in the middle of nowhere.
An appropriate metaphor for my life lately.
The road turned into a couple of dirt ruts with a grass hump in the middle, and my hopes plummeted. I envisioned myself stuck in the car overnight with no food, no water, no help, and unfortunately, less than a quarter tank of gas. Not a pretty picture.
There were probably wild animals out here. Coyotes and mountain lions. Prowlers that came out after dark, searching the hills for stranded tourists and careless city girls with inadequate navigational skills. Taking out the map, I drove on, carefully checking occasional signs at dusty dirt-road intersections, where both paths seemed to wander off into the hills and disappear.
By the time I finally found my way back to Daily, the sun had gone down. The café, where I was going to treat myself to a nice relaxing supper, was closed. I settled for to-go food from the Dairy Queen and then drove through the darkened streets to the hotel, ravenously consuming soggy French fries. I was glad, at least, that I’d managed to secure lodging in Daily, rather than having to drive all the way to the nearest real town.
Turning the car into the alley behind Main Street, I reconsidered my lodging plans and the forty-mile drive to a Holiday Inn. The back alley was shadowy and silent, lit by the glow of a single flickering streetlamp and a faded neon sign over the hotel’s rear entrance. It simply said
Hotel Welcome
—like something from a Stephen King novel. Overhead, the windows were dark, the high arches reflecting the glow of the streetlight in shifting, uneven shapes. From the end of the alleyway, the gargoyles on the bank building watched me, their fang-filled mouths hanging open, as in,
Come into my parlor, my pretty . . .
A shudder ran over my shoulders as I worked up my courage, took a fortifying breath, and got out of the car. Grabbing my overnight bag, my purse, and my briefcase, I hurried to the door as fast as my Italian leather slingbacks would carry me. As I fiddled with the keys, someone or something knocked over a tin can near a stack of pallets not far away. I jumped, did a back flip with a triple twist, and landed in fighting position with my karate fists en garde—in my mind, anyway. In reality, I dropped the keys, said a bad word, broke a nail snatching up the key ring, and whimpered when I couldn’t get the key into the lock because my hand was shaking.
Calm down, Mandalay. This is ridiculous. You live in LA, for heaven’s sake.
That was exactly the problem. In LA, no matter where you went, you were always surrounded by people. Safety was mostly about learning which places to go at what times of day. Between the streetlights and the ambient glow of zillions of kilowatts of electricity flowing into homes, apartments, signs, and office buildings, LA was always well illuminated. Who knew what could happen to a lone woman here, where it was impossibly dark and there was no one to hear you scream? Ursula probably wouldn’t even report me missing. I’d be like one of those people who fall off cruise ships and three days later someone says,
Hey, Joe hasn’t been sleeping in his bed. Has anyone seen Joe?
Finally, the key slipped into the lock. I turned the knob and pushed the door open in one quick motion. After wrestling my way through with my luggage, I closed the door, untangled my belongings, and caught my breath. The hallway was quiet, shadowy in the light of a dresser lamp on an old-fashioned buffet cabinet near the staircase. The click of the door latch behind me echoed against the silence. Checking to be sure it was locked, I tiptoed forward.
“Hello?” I whispered, my voice disappearing into the darkness.
“Is anybody here?” It was probably a silly question. My new friend Donetta had told me no one else was staying in the hotel right now, and there was no night clerk on duty, hence the need for me to have my own key to the back entrance. According to her directions, my room was upstairs, to the left, at the end of the hall.
Up those long, dark stairs . . .
Straightening my shoulders, I tiptoed past a couple of closed doors and a storage room filled with Styrofoam heads wearing wigs of all shapes and colors. The heads watched me through formless white eyes as I continued toward the stairs. On the buffet cabinet, someone had left a plate of homemade cookies and a sign that said
Welcome. For emergencies, call Donetta
. A phone number was hastily scrawled beneath. I considered programming it into my cell, but on the vague theory that preparing for an emergency might actually cause one, I grabbed a couple of cookies and went upstairs. My room door was exactly where it was supposed to be, at the end of the second-story hall, behind a pink door with a brass 1 in the center and an engraved golden plate that read
Suite Beulahland
.