Jane adjusted the pace of her eating to the rhythm of whatever scene was playing out with the three men, who had by now focused exclusively on the grandmother, mother, and two young girls.
The targets, if that’s what they were, appeared unaware that they were the objects of scrutiny. In a time when the multitudes of the earth seemed to be dividing rapidly into just two categories, prey and predators, it was remarkable how unattuned the gazelles could be to the gathering leopards all around them.
The family of four ordered dessert, and when it was served, the three watchful men stopped talking. They quickly finished the latest round of beers, dropped a meager tip on the table, and went to the cashier’s station to pay, as if they had simultaneously recalled some important business for which they were late.
Jane turned to the window.
The three soon appeared in the parking lot and went to an old flat-black Jeep Cherokee. No brightwork at all. Tinted windows. They huddled next to the Jeep, talking, and someone inside put down a window to join the discussion. Jane could not see who had opened the window, and then it rolled up. The three men got aboard and closed the doors, at least four of them now in consultation behind the tinted glass.
Maybe someone started the Cherokee’s engine, but the vehicle didn’t move.
Jane asked for her check. When it came, she gave the waitress cash, including a thirty percent tip, and said, “I’ll just sit here a few minutes digesting, if you don’t mind.”
“Honey, you lay down right there and take a nap if you’re of a mind to.”
By the time the two women and the girls received their check, the Jeep still waited outside.
Jane went to a small reception area between the cashier’s station and the front entrance.
The older woman appeared first, offering the cashier a credit card. Her daughter and granddaughters joined her as she finished the transaction and put away the plastic.
As they moved toward the front entrance, Jane stepped between them and the door. “Excuse me. But did you notice those three men drinking beer?”
The older woman blinked at her. “I’m sorry—what?”
“They’re driving an SUV. They’re waiting outside. I think it would be good if I walked with you to your car.”
The grandmother looked at her daughter. “Did you see them, Sandra?”
Sandra frowned. “I saw them, but so what? They only had a couple beers.”
“They were watching you,” Jane said.
“I didn’t see them watching us. What does that mean, anyway—watching? They were full of oats, goofing each other, that’s all.”
“They were watching you,” Jane insisted. “And there’s something not right about them.”
“Not right—how?”
“They’re nasty business. They’re bad boys on the prowl.”
“Are they really?”
“I know their type.”
Too late, Jane recognized Sandra’s indignation, the glitter of moral disdain in her eyes. “Their type? You mean Mexicans?”
“That’s not what this is about.”
“Isn’t it?” Sandra asked, as if she knew the answer and did not need to hear it.
“One of them might have been Mexican,” Jane said. “The second one, I don’t know what. The third one was as white-bread as Richie Cunningham. It’s an equal-opportunity crew.”
“Holly, Lauren.” Sandra brought her two children closer to her, as though the threat stood here before them rather than outside. To Jane, she said, “What’s this Richie business supposed to mean?”
“Happy Days,” the grandmother explained, pleased with her knowledge of trivia. “Ron Howard played Richie Cunningham.”
“But what snarky thing does it really mean?” Sandra wondered.
Jane dared not claim she was an FBI agent, thereby giving them reason to remember what they might have seen on the news. Besides, any assertion that she possessed authority would result in a demand to see her badge.
“Look, it costs you nothing to let me walk with you. You’ve got these girls to think about.”
Sandra raised her voice, for the first time attracting the cashier’s attention. “And if those men were trouble, what could you do, anyway—call them names?”
“I’m licensed to carry.” Against her better judgment, Jane pulled back her sport coat to reveal the holstered pistol.
“This is bad,” the grandmother said, “this is very bad. You can’t just shoot Mexicans for drinking beer.”
“You get away from us with that,” Sandra said, as if the pistol were a critical mass of plutonium. “Girls, we’re going.”
The cashier appeared about to step out from behind the counter, and Jane relented.
Sandra guided Holly and Lauren toward the door, as her mother counseled Jane. “Young lady, maybe you need help. There are fine therapists who could help. Hate isn’t the answer to anything.”
The cashier asked, “Is something wrong?”
“A small misunderstanding,” Jane assured her, and she followed the women and children outside, into the cool crisp air and chrome sunlight and eastward-reaching shadows of this late afternoon in Flagstaff.
Sandra hastened her daughters toward a parking area reserved for larger vehicles that were not commercial trucks, the grandmother hurrying behind them and glancing back as if Jane might be at her heels and transformed now into a hound with sulfurous breath. The first motor home in the line was theirs, and they boarded on the starboard side.
The flat-black Jeep Cherokee drove out of the parking lot and toward the truck-stop exit, but then pulled to the side of those lanes and stopped.
If Jane hadn’t been America’s most wanted, if she’d possessed some genuine authority, if there hadn’t been at least four in that old Cherokee, and if the likelihood wasn’t a hundred percent that one or all of the four would have weapons, she would have trusted her intuition and would have put her career at risk. She would have run the fifty or sixty yards to the damn Jeep and would have gotten the driver out of it and put him on the ground and held him on suspicion of intent. But that was a game of ifs-and-would-haves, none of it germane to what was here and now.
The motor home came toward Jane, grandmother riding shotgun, Sandra visible up there behind the wheel, chin lifted in a pose of moral triumph, as if she were piloting a tent-revival bus on a cross-country crusade for Jesus and had just prevailed in a moment of demonic temptation. She drove past, turned south, away from the restaurant, and headed toward the truck-stop exit.
Jane ran to her Ford Escape, opened the driver’s door, and looked south in time to see the motor home follow the exit road that led to the eastbound lanes of Interstate 40. As the big RV reached the bottom of that long stretch of blacktop and took the ramp to the interstate, the Jeep Cherokee followed at a discreet distance.
“ ‘But what snarky thing does it really mean?’ ” Jane hissed, getting behind the wheel of her car and pulling shut the door. “Shit, shit, triple shit.”
She keyed the ignition. The car wouldn’t start.