“IT’S NICE WHEN someone comes along right as you’re trying to pee in the great outdoors,” I said. I had a reason for saying that. Time to quiz this girl, see if that guy in the truck meant trouble for either of us.
“Which is why I asked you to kill the lights, Mort.”
“At least the guy seemed friendly enough. Kind of a big dude. Full dark beard, bald head, might’ve been forty, forty-five. He looked pretty strong.”
“Uh-huh.”
No other reaction. Maybe my imagination had slipped into too high a gear. I gave it one last try: “He was driving a black Ram pickup. It looked fairly new.”
“Whatever.” She laid her head on my shoulder. “I’ve never been called a booby prize before.”
“There’s a first time for everything, Harp.”
“Kinda nice, actually. You noticing.” She lifted her head and gave me a look. “If you don’t mind my saying so, that is.”
“I don’t.”
“Good.” Her head came back down. “I’m a girl, Mort.”
“Noticed that.”
“What I mean is, all of this is giving me a major flirty feeling. Just flirt, though. I hope that’s okay.”
She didn’t know the guy, but I would keep him in mind all the same. Some old guy dumps her off in the middle of nowhere and keeps going east. Another guy comes along hours later, headed west, wondering if I had seen anyone else on the road out here.
Strange, but the world is full of strange and this one didn’t quite add up to two and two is four.
More like 3.9. Too close for comfort.
We reached Grange at one fifteen that night. I didn’t know we’d arrived until we were almost opposite the general store, thirty feet off the highway. A single light was on inside, nothing else. Fifty feet from the store, I could hardly make out the 76 station, utterly dark, with only one service bay. Everything was buttoned up. If I hadn’t seen that one light, we might’ve rolled right by the place.
Well, shit. I’d expected it, but it was still a letdown to see it looking so dark and deserted. Last thing I wanted to do was to push on to the next place down the line, Currant. Which might’ve been only another eight miles, but I was bushed, Currant wasn’t much bigger than Grange, and the farther I pushed this gimpy damn truck, the more likely we would spend the rest of the night in a ditch.
I stopped in the middle of the road. “Grange,” I said.
Harper turned to peer at the store over her shoulder. GRANGE GENERAL STORE was visible—barely—in faded, old-fashioned lettering across the front. Darn clever name for the place though.
“Now what?” she asked.
“I’ve got an old Frederick Forsyth paperback with me. Day of the Jackal. I could read it to you until morning.”
“Okay, go for it.”
Shit. She was onto me.
I babied the truck into a left turn and stopped beside the store, turned off the engine but left the headlights on. “We’re staying here the rest of the night,” I said. “One way or another.”
“It looks like the store is only on the first floor. But it’s a two-story building.”
“You oughta be a private investigator.”
That got me my tenth thump on the chest in the past three hours. “What that means, Mort, is it’s likely someone lives there, above the store.”
“I’m serious, you oughta be a gumshoe, get paid for all that topnotch detecting.”
“Oh, for hell’s sake. Are you gonna knock on the door, or shall I? No, wait, I’ll go. You’re gigantic and scruffy and wet—kinda scary looking, if you don’t mind my saying. I might have better luck.”
“You’re wet and scruffy too, lady.”
“I’m wet, but I am most certainly not scruffy.”
“Says you.”
“At least I don’t look like Bigfoot.”
She steeplechased over the center console and opened the passenger door. “Wait here. I’ll see what’s what.”
She grabbed her purse and got out. I opened my door and followed her. The truck seesawed in place.
She came around the front of the truck. “I said wait here, Mort. Like—out of the rain?”
“You’re a defenseless half-drowned waif, and I’m not going to let you pound on an unknown door after midnight without backup.” I hadn’t said anything more about the guy in the truck. Conversation-wise, that appeared to be a dead end. The guy wasn’t likely to be her ex-husband since he was too old and she hadn’t reacted to his description, not that it made any sense that her ex would be out here looking for her after she’d pulled a gun on some old guy who’d made a pass at her. Maybe nothing was adding up because there was nothing to add up.
“Backup?” Harper said.
“That’s private-eye speak. I can’t turn it off.”
“Cool. But how about you keep out of sight? I don’t want anyone to see you first thing and call the cops.”
“Gotcha. If someone lives here, there’s probably a door around back, not in front.”
“Kind of obvious, Mort, but thanks anyway.”
She headed toward the back and Mr. Obvious trailed along. We rounded the building, leaving the beam of the headlights. It was dark back there. Huge oak trees blotted out the sky, or would have if the sky hadn’t already been blotted out. We squished through a puddle the size of Lake Erie. Cold water ran down my back, my front, into my eyes. I couldn’t hear anything but rain hammering on wet leaves, the soggy ground, and the roof of a vintage Buick that looked, when I lit it up with my cell phone, as if it had hit a deer or two sometime in the distant past because the front-end dents had rusted.
Harper was about to bang on the door when I stopped her and pointed. “Doorbell,” I said.
“You oughta be a private dick,” she responded.
Damn, she picked things up fast. Including the lingo and, possibly, a bit of innuendo which didn’t go unnoticed.
She rang the bell. I heard it go off inside. And again.
And again.
And again.
Finally, she pounded on the door.
“Okay, enough,” I said. “No one’s around.”
And, of course, two seconds later a light came on in a room above us, faintly illuminating the backyard, the wet girl, and the guy who’d just said no one was around.
A window above us slid up a few inches. “Yeah, who’s down there?” a woman’s voice called down. Older woman, sounded like.
Harper backed away and looked up into the rain. She sputtered and said, “Our truck broke down. Is there any place around here where we can stay the night?”
“Who’re you, child?”
“My name’s Harper. I’m here with my husband.”
News to me.
Harper shot me a look. “Let me do the talking. It’ll be better that way.”
Yeah, maybe. But still, I would have to let Lucy know she was a divorcée or I was a bigamist.
“What’s his name?” the woman called down.
“Tell her I’m John,” I whispered to Harper. “If she hears the name Mortimer Angel she might freak.”
“John,” she called up.
“John Harper?”
“No, I’m Harper.”
“Hold on. I’ll come down. I can’t hear you so good.”
It took two minutes while Harper and I treaded water, then the door opened and a woman in a baggy nightdress and bathrobe peered out at us.
“You two’re almighty wet,” she said.
Harper turned to me and said quietly, “Do not tell her she oughta be a private detective or I’ll clobber you.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Harper smiled at the woman. “Yes, we are. I’m sorry. Our truck pretty much broke down. I was hoping you could tell us where we might be able to stay the night.”
“Nowhere around here,” the woman said. “’Cept right here. I got a room upstairs you can use, down the hall from mine.”
“Olson. Olivia Olson. Dimwit runs the gas station for me calls me Double-O-Seven, of all the fool things. Come in, get out of that rain. And let’s get you out of those wet clothes, for heaven’s sake. I’ll stuff ’em in the dryer for you so they’ll be dry by morning.”
Harper shot me a huge grin, then she ducked inside.
I hung back. Double-O looked to be in her seventies, five-three, hundred sixty pounds, hair gray and worn long. She waved me in, but I said, “Truck’s headlights are still on. I gotta turn ’em off. Be right back.”
I slogged back to the truck, giving Harper and Olivia plenty of time to work things out.
Let’s get you out of those wet clothes.
Sometimes you hear the train before you see it. The woman’s comment circled around in my head like an angry hornet, stinger out and ready. I wondered if I could walk as far as Currant by morning. Only eight miles.
I could feel some sort of karma thing gearing up.
Shitfire.
I looked toward the highway, thinking about that big Ram pickup. I got in the rental, started the engine, then pulled it around to the back of the house out of sight of the highway in the slowest, iffiest left turn I’ve ever made. The ground sloped a little to the left, which might be the only reason the truck didn’t capsize.
I grabbed my duffel bag and killed the lights. As I walked to the house, I saw a light moving through the rain to the west. I stood out of sight at a corner of the building and watched as a black pickup came trolling by at fifteen miles an hour. It stopped dead for ten seconds in the road opposite the store right where my truck had been moments before. I couldn’t see anything inside the truck but I felt eyes searching the darkness.
Finally, it pulled away, headed east toward Ely.
I couldn’t tell if it was the same truck I’d seen earlier, but it was similar. I didn’t like that at all.
I hurried to the rear of the house. Olivia had left the back door cracked open half an inch. I went in and shut the door, water pouring off my clothes as if I’d fallen in a lake. The room was more mud-room than anything else. Washer, dryer, a deep sink, cupboards, an odor of laundry soap. A door led into what was probably the back of the store. Up a flight of wooden stairs, I heard women’s voices.
I followed a trail of water up, enhancing it with more of my own. I found the womenfolk in a hallway. I also learned that Harper had solved the initial confusion about our names. I was Jonathan Harper and my wife was Angel Harper. “Angel” had a dippy smile on her pretty face under sopping hair, legs a mile long before they reached her skirt, nipples showing dark and prominent through a dripping translucent tank top.
Terrific.
Olivia smiled at me. “I was just telling Angel here that if you’ll get outta them clothes, I’ll run ’em downstairs to the dryer and get that going. This’ll be your room for the night.” She stood by an open door. “Belonged to my boy, Bobbie, before he up and joined the Marines twenty-six years ago, but I keep the place clean and neat as a pin all the same.”
I peeked into the room past Olivia. One bed. This was going to take some kind of creative finesse. Maybe I could fake a heart attack.
“Thank you so much, Olivia,” Harper/Angel said. “I can’t tell you how much. You are so kind.”
“Not a problem, dear. It gets kinda lonely ’round here what with Bobbie gone and my Rupert passed away these nine years. It’s late so I expect you’ll want to sleep in a bit. Don’t you worry none about me. Take as long as you want in the morning.”
“What do we owe you?” I asked.
Olivia gave me a shocked look that turned a bit sour. “Not a thing, John. I’m happy to do this for you.”
Time for me to shut up and let the women talk.
“Thank you so much again,” Harper said, reaching out to hold Olivia’s hands. “You are truly an angel.”
“You’re the angel, Angel,” Olivia said, chuckling.
“Oh … yes. I guess I am,” Harper said.
“If you’ll hand me those wet clothes out the door here when you’re ready, I’ll get that dryer going. Sheets on the bed are clean. Make yourselves at home. Oh, bathroom’s that door, right there. You can use the shower if you want it. Kitchen’s down the hall that-away, just past my room. There’s food in the fridge and cupboards so don’t be shy if you’re hungry or thirsty.”
“How will we get around?” I asked. “You’ll have our clothes.”
She eyed the duffel bag in my hand. “Got no clothes in there?”
“No. It’s full of work-related things.”
She pressed her lips together, gave me a look. “Been a long time since the sight of a naked man shocked me or revved my engine, but if you’re worried, I’m a real sound sleeper. I’ll be up at six, open the store at seven. I didn’t get this old by being a featherbrained shrinking violet.”
“Good to know,” I said. “But—”
“But nuthin’, John.” She touched my arm. “I keep it warm in the house. Do what you gotta do and stop worryin’ so much.”
“Okay, thanks. We’ll do that. Is there a phone I can use tonight or tomorrow? In case something comes up.”
Harper arched an eyebrow and tilted her head at me. I had second thoughts about the phrasing of that comment—too late to take it back though.
“Got a phone in my room and in the kitchen,” Olivia said. “There’s a phone downstairs in the store, different number. You can use the one in the kitchen if you need it.”
“I really don’t think we will,” Harper said. “But thanks for the offer. We’ll get out of these soggy doggone clothes right away so you can get back to bed.” She took my hand and pulled me into the room. Yanked me, actually.
“I’ll wait right here,” Olivia said. As Harper shut the door, I saw Olivia fold her arms across her chest.
“Well, shit, Harper,” I said through my teeth. “What the hell are we gonna do now?”
“Strip,” she said, kicking off one of her shoes.
“No.”
“Yes.” She kicked off the other shoe.
“No. I mean it.”
“She’s waiting, Mort,” Harper whispered. “How long does it take to get clothes off? You gonna tell her you and I can’t get naked even though we’re married?”
“Is your phone in your purse?”
“Why?”
“Why do you think? See if you can get a signal.”
“For chrissake, Mort.” She glanced at the door. “All this hubbub wouldn’t be because you’re having interesting thoughts about me, would it? Because if you are, you can just put them right out of—”
“I’m not. Cell phone, girl. We haven’t tried for a signal in the past two hours and yours has more battery left.”
She dug her phone out of her purse, turned it on, then called out to Olivia, “It’ll be another minute or two, Olivia. One of John’s shoelaces is in a big wet knot. I’m trying to untie it.”
“No hurry, dear.”
“No signal,” Harper whispered to me. “And we’re out of time, so strip.” She pulled her tank top up and off.
Shitfire. Her breasts were medium-small and shapely, and I was a pig for noticing. And admiring.
Things were moving fast. Too fast. I was going to tell all of this to Lucy, of course, every last detail, and I knew it wasn’t going to bother her in the least because I know her. She was going to laugh and tell me I’m a dork—or worse—but wet or not, I wasn’t about to give up my clothes. Well, I would take off my shoes, socks, and shirt, but that’s all.
“Mort?”
“This is a bad idea, Harp.” I took off my shirt.
She laughed quietly. “I think it’s pretty funny.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
“And harmless. I mean really, Mort, what do you think’s gonna happen if we get out of these clothes?” She pulled her running skirt down and off. She didn’t have a thing on underneath, pubic hair neatly trimmed to half an inch in a narrow V.
Sonofabitch.
“No panties?” I said.
“That would be so weird. And uncomfortable. Panties and a liner?”
I shook my head. “The things I don’t know.”
Olivia called out, “I got you a couple of towels here. I’ll just hand them in, if that’s okay.”
“Yes, please,” Harper said.
The door opened six inches and a pudgy hand held out two towels. “If you’ve about got those clothes ready …”
“Give us another twenty seconds, Olivia,” Harper said. “And thank you so much for the towels.”
I could’ve kissed Olivia because I was thinking about staging a fight with my topless and bottomless wife and going out to sleep in the tilt-o-truck. The towels might be a game changer. Still, I hesitated.
“Mort?” Harper stood a foot away, hands on her hips. “I know we haven’t known each other very long, but we can do this. I mean, you can; I already have. I really don’t want to leave here and she’s expecting wet clothes. If you don’t get your clothes off right now, I’ll take ’em off you myself. All of them. I’ll give you two seconds, then look out.”
I heard a faint snicker. I glanced up and Hammer and Spade were in a dim corner of the room, poking each other in the ribs. I hadn’t seen those two clowns in months, but they often showed up when girls removed their clothes or things were about to get interesting.
I took off shoes and socks, tossed my wallet and keys on the bed, undid my belt, shucked off my pants and stood there for a few seconds in soggy underwear, then grabbed a towel. “Turn around, Harp.”
She squinted at me. “Are you serious? Hard to believe, because …” She raised her eyebrows and smiled at me.
Aw shit, no. “Why?”
“Because those little red hearts on your boxers are so darn cute. I can’t imagine why you think—”
“Turn around or I’ll have to hurt you,” I said. “That serious enough for you?”
I guess the threat didn’t take because she stood there naked as an egg and smiled for five long seconds before turning around. “This isn’t going to lead to anything, Boy Scout. We’ll talk about it later. Pretty soon, actually.”
Yes, we would—but damn, she had no tan lines, trim waist, and a solid shapely rear end. Hate to say any of that mattered, but … Okay, enough of that.
I stripped off my underwear and wrapped the towel around my waist. I gave it a tuck, which held but didn’t feel secure. A bigger towel would’ve helped.
“Okay,” I said.
Harper grabbed everything in a dripping bundle and opened the door. “Here you go, Olivia. Sorry it took so long. And thank you for being so nice and understanding about all of this.”
“Not a problem, child. It’s good to be of use to folks.” She glanced at the soggy stuff in her arms. “Hearts, how adorable. You two make such a lovely couple.” She turned and left.
Harper shut the door and spun around. She tried to stifle a laugh, but a little chirp squeaked out. “Adorable.”
“Go ahead and laugh. I just grab what I grab from my dresser. So I got the ones with hearts that Lucy bought me. I wasn’t expecting anything like this.”
“I can tell.”
So there we were. I wore a towel; she wore a smile. I wondered if she was going to wrap a towel around herself, or if I would have to pluck out one of my eyes like it says in the Bible, which, I have to say, would hurt like a son of a bitch. I’m not religious enough to actually do that, and my eyes weren’t actually offending me—but still.
She wrapped the towel around her waist, didn’t do the girl thing where it covers both top and bottom. It’s not as if I haven’t seen breasts before; in fact, I’ve seen a whale of a lot of them, big and small, in the past two years, but it still made me somewhat nervous.
Harper sat on the bed. “Mort?”
“What!”
“Oh, my, that came out a bit sharp.”
“Did it?”
“Kind of. You should keep your voice down. Let me try to explain something here. That okay with you?”
“I wish you would.”
“We didn’t plan this, we didn’t set it up, so we’re not at fault. There is no blame here. You’re still a nice guy, I’m not going to take any sort of advantage of you, and I’ll bet you aren’t about to take advantage of me, so quit whining.”
“That towel could cover a little more of you, Harp.” Okay, that might be considered a whine.
“Think so?”
“I know so. I’ve seen it done before.”
She canted her head to one side and gave me a long evaluative look. Which turned into a knowing smile.
Uh-oh. “What?” I asked.
“Methinks the gentleman doth protest too much.”
That stopped me. “I thought that quote pertained to a lady, not a gentleman. Is that Macbeth?
“Hamlet. And it fits you perfectly. I have a feeling you aren’t as distressed as all this moaning would suggest.”
“I’m not?”
“It doesn’t really bother you seeing me like this, does it? The truth, Mort.”
Well, shit. Right then I knew I would have to suck it up and quit whining. This was right out of the PI manual, the chapter on unforeseen encounters with naked women. But I was going to tell Lucy about all of this as soon as I got my hands on a phone.
“Well, no. Not a lot.” To prove it I gave her a good long look. She had dark brown nipples, a flat belly, gorgeous legs, no sign of modesty, so the hell with it.
“See,” she said. “We really can do this. It doesn’t have to be a big huge deal.”
“Got it. But that towel could cover more of you. Just sayin’.”
She gave an exasperated sigh, stood up and removed the towel. “These towels aren’t very big, Mort. They were just to get us dry, not to cover up. Who knows—they might be the biggest ones she has. So observe—watch how this works. If I wrap it the short way around me like this to try to cover everything, it barely comes together on top, not enough to tuck so it won’t stay up. If I wrap it the long way around—like this—I can tuck it, but it won’t cover both my boobs and my pussy. So tell me what you want to see, or don’t want to see, and I’ll do it whichever way you like.”
There was that word again. It had shaken me up when Lucy used it an hour after we met, not far out of Tonopah. I thought I’d gotten used to it, but apparently not. It was startling every time it popped up.
“Nice demo, Harp. I’m convinced. I’ll let you decide if you want to wrap it high or low.”
“Great. Let’s go with this.” She wrapped it around her waist then sat on the bed again. “Sometime later you can tell me why you think I’m supposed to be embarrassed, and I’ll tell you why I’m not. I feel like we’re friends. And if we are, this isn’t really so terrible, is it?”
“Guess not.”
“We’re not going to do anything that we would regret later, but”—she grinned—“this is entertaining, isn’t it? I mean, I’m not bored. How about you?”
I had to smile. “Not very.”
“Good.” She patted the bed. “Which side do you want to sleep on? Either side’s fine by me.”
I gave the bed a good look for the first time and knew right away it wasn’t a king or a queen. “Is that a twin or a double? Not that it matters.”
From below, I heard the dryer start up. Then Olivia’s footsteps came up the stairs and went padding down the hall. Seconds later, a door shut with a faint thud and the house was ours.
Harper glanced at the bed. “It’s a double. Or a full, which is the same thing, and why doesn’t it matter?”
“Because I’ve got dibs on that easy chair in the corner. The bed’s all yours.”
“That is not an easy chair. That is a straight-backed wooden library-kind-of chair that might as well be a bed of nails or an antique medieval torture device.”
“It’s one thing for us to be hanging around in towels, Harper. But it’s an entirely different thing to share a bed.”
“You think something naughty might happen?”
“I know it wouldn’t.”
“So do I.”
“Even so, it’s not a good idea.”
She sighed again. “Let’s figure it out later. Right now I’m starving. Olivia said it’s okay if we find something to eat in the kitchen, which is a fabulous idea. We can leave her some money to cover it. How about it?”
“Think she’s asleep already?”
She listened for a moment. “I’m pretty sure I hear snoring. Although,” she went on, “Olivia did say the sight of a naked man hadn’t shocked her in a very long time, and that she wasn’t a shrinking violet. That might’ve been an unconscious invitation. She would be totally fine with you in a towel. Probably even better without it.”
“You’re a riot, kiddo.”
“You think I’m kidding? I know how to read between the lines.” She stood up and patted my cheek. “She would be delighted. Let’s go.”
My towel wouldn’t maintain a tuck and I didn’t want to hold it all night with one hand. I opened a closet door, hoping Olivia’s son Bobbie would have something in there I could wear. But Bobbie had been gone for twenty-six years and the closet was full of dresses that would fit Olivia and look positively dreadful on me.
“Mort?” Harper stood in the doorway and looked back at me.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming.”
She grinned. “Are you? That’s like … wow.”
Shit. English is a brutal damn language.