I thought, now that God had gotten through to me, maybe he’d send a tow truck that just happened to be cruising in the vicinity. He could, of course. He could send one that just happened to have on hand a nice hot mocha latte for me too.
But he doesn’t tend to work that way.
He had, however, provided me with legs that could still walk. So, after going back to check the odometer on the limo and deciding that the campground was probably closer than the paved road down there somewhere, I grabbed my purse, locked the limo again, and started walking.
The road was uphill here. I kept to the middle, dodging the rivulets etching the dirt and gravel. I heard a peculiar sound. I stopped. The sound stopped. I whirled, half-expecting to find someone – something – following me.
No, nothing following. Just the squish-squish, squish-squish of my own shoes. A heel squish with an echoing toe squish.
I squished on. Dusk filtered through the trees and clotted into shadows. Darkness followed, creeping out of the woods and enveloping me.
More noises emanated from the wet woods now that the hammer of rain no longer hid them. Rustles. Squeaks. Thumps. Thuds. Bumps. Thunks. Who knew there could be so many variations in noise? What was in these woods? I tried to envision small, harmless creatures innocently bumbling around in the brush. Squirrels. Raccoons. Lizards. But they immediately morphed into something more ominous. Killer squirrels. Rabid raccoons. Mutant lizards. From there my mind leaped to larger-toothed creatures. Cougar? Bear? A crash bigger than all before stopped me in my tracks. Bigfoot?
There are no monsters bigger than those hiding in our minds, are there?
A tabloid title reared up in front of my eyes: Encounter in the Wilderness! Bigfoot Hitched a Ride in Her Limo!
Which was preferable to the one that popped up next: Vanished Victim Identified by Cinnamon Sunrise Coloring on Hairs Found on Isolated Road!
I wrestled up a Psalm: In God I have put my trust; I will not be afraid.
Okay, Lord, I won’t be afraid. At least I’ll try not to be afraid. Keep me safe, will you, from whatever may be out there? Keep me safe from my own wild imagination! That big noise was probably just an old branch breaking off and falling, right?
Something I’d read once about survival in the wilderness wandered into my mind: Try not to look like food.
Did I look like food? Well, surely not very appetizing food, in my muddy state. But if some wilderness creature was really hungry. . .
I walked and walked, determinedly trying not to look as if I were far down on the food chain. Down into a canyon and up the other side. Leftover raindrops plop-plopped from branches to earth. Wet shoes rubbed a blister on my heel. If there was a sky up there, it was lost in darkness and a shroud of clouds. No stars, no moon.
Darkness that deepened to dungeon dark. I stumbled off the road and had to pick myself up out of the ditch. Locked-in-a-closet dark. Inside-of-a-whale dark.
I will not be afraid. You’re here, aren’t you, Lord?
I sang a song. Well, I huffed it, since my breath was a little short for singing. A new praise song we’d learned a few weeks ago popped into my head, wonderfully appropriate in this bottom-of-the-well darkness. Walking in the light that needs no sun, walking in the light that needs no moon. . .
Lights angled into the trees overhead. A new light from God? No, he’d already made the sun and moon, a job over and done with. The campground? No, wrong direction. Headlights from a car coming up a different fork of the road! Probably the fork I should have taken instead of the one that shunted me over to Blue Creek. And somehow in my walking I’d gotten back over here onto Bob’s preferred road.
I hesitated, instincts wavering. The basic instinct, the one born of all those warnings I’d both received and given about strangers in cars, told me to run and hide. A vehicle crammed with murderers, rapists, or terrorists! Although the terrorists might be disappointed, because there was only me to terrorize, and I was a little short on nuclear secrets.
But another instinct told me to jump out and wave like a maniac, that this was my only chance for rescue tonight.
While I wavered, the headlights rounded a bend and targeted me. After so much darkness, I had to duck my head and cover my eyes against the light.
“Hey!” a woman’s voice yelled. The sedan pulled up beside me. “You lost? We are! We’re trying to find a family reunion at a campground.”
“You have one of Bob’s maps?”
“How’d you know?”
Just a lucky guess. “I was up there earlier, but I took some wrong turns coming down. My vehicle got stuck.”
“You’re one of the family?”
“No, just an acquaintance.” Although I felt as if by now I was surely qualified for honorary redneck membership.
“You want a ride to the campground, if we can find it?”
Well, yes, now that you mention it, I did want a ride. I hastily jumped to the back door of the sedan and yanked it open. The dome light showed two women in front, two kids in back. I figured they might be frightened of a strange figure emerging out of the night, but the boy just looked at my muddy chauffeur’s uniform and soggy cap and said, “Hey, cool.”
I studied their map under the dome light, recognized Bob’s squiggles, and pointed in what I thought was the right direction. Along the way I gave them a condensed version of my predicament.
And then, there we were, at the campground! In spite of the rain, the campfire still blazed, and a sturdy handful of people in rain gear clustered around it. Lights shone in the motor homes and travel trailers, and a couple of generators rumbled. Civilization! I was out of the belly of the whale. The woman driving the car jumped out.
“Hey, Bob, don’t give up your day job for map-making!” she yelled.
“You’re here, aren’t you?”
“Only thanks to her.” She jerked her thumb at me as I climbed out of the rear seat.
Bob looked at me in amazement. “What’re you doing here?”
“Wrong turn.”
“Where’s the limo?”
“Limo?” the woman repeated. “Who in their right mind would bring a limo up here?”
Good question.
I pointed back the way we’d come and described where I thought the limo was stuck. I barely had time to warm my hands at the fire and drink half a cup of coffee someone thrust at me before Bob had organized a brigade of 4-wheel drives and big guys to drive them. I rode in Bob’s king cab and, with no more than a couple of wrong turns, we were soon plowing down Limo Lane.
Bob’s headlights hit the limo, rear bumper jammed deep in the mud. “Wow, when you get something stuck, you get it stuck.” He sounded admiring.
One of the pickups had a winch mounted on front, and before I had time to worry that my limo might wind up yanked to pieces in the rescue process, it was out.
Thank you, Lord. Thank you for 4-wheel drives and winches and guys who know how to use them!
Two pickups accompanied me down to the main paved road, tooted me off with horns that sounded like braying donkeys with head colds, and from there I made it safely on home.
I pulled into the driveway and dropped my head to the wheel, too exhausted to do more than that for the moment. But not too exhausted to give thanks for what God had done for me tonight, something far more important than rescuing me from a mudhole. He’d rescued me from a spiritual wrong turn, rescued me from miring down in the crowd of flawed humans instead of looking beyond to the solid rock that was him. Given me a real map.
I hadn’t looked at my watch for a long time, but I supposed it must be midnight or after. So I was surprised when India’s Harley roared up right next to me.
I got out as she dismounted and pulled off her helmet. “What in the world are you doing riding around at this time of night?” I asked.
“Checking to make sure the lights work okay?”
“You just wanted an excuse to ride around in the dark on your new bike!”
Guilt tinged her smile. “Well, yeah, I did.”
“Didn’t you get caught in the rain?”
“What rain?”
“You mean it didn’t—” Oh, hey, Lord, c’mon, you didn’t pull that deluge out there just for me, did you? “Never mind.”
I looked at my watch. Not midnight, only a little past ten. Time flies when you’re having fun?
“How come you look like you’ve been mud wrestling?” India eyed the mud-caked limo. “The limo too. And you both came out losers?”
No, not a loser. Tonight I was definitely a winner! With mud as my gold star. Thanks again, God. I owe you one.
“You look like you need hot coffee. Come on over after you get a shower. I’ve got something to tell you.” She looked from me to the limo again. “And you must have something to tell me.”
I put the uniform under the shower to sluice off the mud, then did the same to myself. Phreddie complained about a lack of the attention to which royalty was entitled, and I opened a can of tuna for him. I wrapped a towel around my wet head and took Phreddie with me when I ran over to India’s. A few raindrops were falling, the storm that had stalled over Blue Creek Road perhaps churning on into Vigland now.
I settled on India’s sofa, my hands wrapped around the comforting warmth of the coffee cup. Phreddie wandered over to bat at the silver studs on India’s jacket, tossed on a chair. “Okay, what do you have to tell me?” I asked.
“You first. What’s with you and the mud?”
What to say? I had a limousine job that took me into a wooded wilderness. I got the limo stuck in the mud. I had an imaginary confrontation with a hitchhiking Bigfoot. Some guys with 4-wheel drives rescued me.
I’d also had an . . . what was that fancy word? Epiphany! I’d had an epiphany from God.
Yet somehow I doubted that simply telling India what had become so clear to me tonight . . . that she was judging God by the flaws of her ex-husband, that Fitz was judging God by the hypocritical actions of some Christians he’d known, that I was losing my way looking at the imperfections of people rather than the holiness of God . . . would also make it clear to her.
Lord, If I drag her out in the woods, will you bring another rainstorm, another mudhole, to open her eyes? Do it Lord, would you, please? Well, maybe not the storm and the mudhole, but help her somehow to look beyond the flaws of people and look to you. And include Fitz in there too.
So for now I just left it at a sketch of the physical aspects of what had happened to me and the limo today.
“So, where’d you go this evening?” I asked.
“I rode down toward Olympia and got on I-5. I wanted to, umm. . .”
“See what the Harley could do out on the freeway?”
She didn’t say yes or no, but this smile held another hint of guilt. The speed limit is 70 out there on the freeway. I suspected anyone doing 70 was just a blur in India’s rear view mirror.
“Anyway, I got cold on the way back, so I stopped at the casino to warm up and get a cup of coffee. And who do you suppose I happened to see in there?”
“Elvis?”
“Well, sure. But, more importantly, Sloan Delaney!”
“Did he see you?”
“He was playing blackjack and concentrating so hard on the cards I doubt he’d have noticed if I waltzed by in a King Kong outfit. I watched him for close to an hour. I think he quit playing when he ran out of money. Anyway, I followed him outside—”
“He still has the Buick?”
“No, this was an old Ford pickup. Green. Beat-up. Made my old pickup look like a showroom model. I figure he must have needed money and traded the Buick on that pickup, and gotten some cash in the deal. The way it clanked and rattled, I wasn’t sure he’d make it out of the parking lot, but he did, and I followed him.”
“To where?”
“Up north to the highway that runs along Hood Canal.” She thumped her thigh in a gesture of frustration. “And then I lost him.”
“Lost him how?”
“There were several cars between me and his pickup. I was staying back a ways, so he wouldn’t spot me. And then he just disappeared. He must have turned off on a side road. It had to be one of three or four in the vicinity, but I don’t know which one. I didn’t want to go wandering down them—”
“A good thing you didn’t. If he suspected he was being followed he may have been just lying in wait for someone to show up.” Which could have been much more disastrous than my mudhole.
“Right. So what I’m thinking is that we go back up there in daylight.”
“I’m not sure I want to try to run down a killer while riding on something that has to be balanced to stay upright.”
She made a face. “Where’s your sense of adventure?”
“I think I left it up there in the woods with Bigfoot and the mutant raccoons.”
“Okay, we’ll take your Corolla. He’s never seen it. And it’s inconspicuous.”
“And then what?”
“We explore all the side roads in the vicinity where he disappeared. I don’t think there are any motels in that particular area, so he must be in a house now. We look for that old green pickup parked at one of them.”
“He could be keeping it in a garage. Or he may have suspected he was being followed and turned off on a side road to hide, not because he lived there.”
“Yeah, I suppose.” She sounded deflated.
“But, okay, suppose we go out there and do see the pickup parked somewhere. And then what?”
“I have an idea,” she said. “But I’m not sure you’ll like it.”
Put that way, I was reasonably certain I wasn’t going to like it. However— “If it doesn’t involve mud, I’ll at least listen.”
“I’m thinking, after we find out where he’s staying, we park where we can watch the road. We wait until he comes out, then slip in and search his place. We’re already reasonably sure he took something from Mary Beth’s house—”
“He surely wouldn’t still be hanging on to something that incriminates him as the killer.”
“He might. Who knows? Or he might have something about the investment scheme, or whatever it was that was going to bring Mary Beth a bundle of money. He isn’t hanging around this neck of the woods for his health. There’s some reason he’s still here.”
I had to agree with that. A reason undoubtedly connected with money from some source. This was tempting. But I shook my head. “Going into his house. . . India, we can’t do that. That’s breaking and entering.”
“Yeah, that’s what I figured you’d say.” Big sigh. Phreddie had by now dragged her leather jacket off the chair and was kneading it with his paws. “And you’re right, of course. But maybe if we didn’t have to break in, if we just sort of found a way inside. . .”
“Like what? An open door and a ‘Welcome, Ladies. Cookies in the kitchen’ note?”
India ignored that facetious comment. “Even if we didn’t go inside, if we found where Sloan is staying, we could at least tell that detective.”
I unwound the towel around my head and rubbed my damp hair. Would Detective Molino be interested? Maybe. Or would he think I was tossing a red herring his way to distract him from neighbor Tom? Which may have been what he thought when I delivered Amy to him with her information about ex-commissioner-candidate McClay.
Giving Detective Molino information that specifically connected Sloan Delaney to the murder would pull a lot more weight, I decided. If we could dodge the problem of how we acquired that information, he could get a search warrant and legally acquire whatever incriminating evidence we spotted.
That, unfortunately, brought us back to the tricky matter of breaking and entering. Perhaps morally justified, if we gave the ethics of such an action a pretzel twist. The old question of whether a good end justifies a bad means. The slippery slope that has perhaps sent many a Christian into a mudhole.