Nancy drives her Buick on the same route they’d gone the other day when they were looking at the scenery, and then again last night when she picked Danny up at three o’clock in the morning. Her bicycle is poking out of the open trunk, rattling around behind them.
Danny isn’t talking. He’s fidgeting in his seat, just as he was at home.
So much for our nice evening drive as a couple, Nancy thinks.
“Pull over here,” Danny says. “Let me call Jerry, just to make sure it’s okay if we swing by.”
“You said he’s a night owl.”
“He is. I just want to make sure he’s there.”
Nancy eases the car into the gravel driveway of a bait shop, and she parks near the pay phone. She turns off the engine. There’s no telling how long Danny will be.
Danny hops out and looks around. The shop is closed. There are signs in the windows written in Magic Marker advertising fresh worms and inexpensive fishing lures, but the store itself is dark. The neon Budweiser sign is turned off. The parking lot is lit only from a single streetlight. There are no other cars in the lot. Danny looks up and down the road and sees no headlights. He listens and hears only crickets and the rustling of tree leaves.
He dials the number of Nancy Small.
“Hello,” the woman says after two rings.
“Take Route 17 east,” Danny says.
“What?” she says. “Wait. I want to talk to my husband.”
Danny continues giving directions, telling her to leave the money by the railroad tracks where he had Nancy pick him up the other night. But the woman can’t keep up and asks him to repeat what he said.
“Wait a minute,” she says, her voice panicked. “I’m not getting this.”