The guy paying for takeout at the cashier’s station in the restaurant in Rockford, Illinois, was one surprise too many.
Long experience had taught Rebecca Tillman to be flexible, not in matters of principle but in regard to the inevitable surprises, big and small, that this world of mysteries produced. Miracles and miseries were equally rare, but the ordinary unforeseen developments more often than not threw sand rather than oil in the gears of your carefully constructed life plan.
One day earlier, she wouldn’t have imagined any circumstances in which she would be behind the wheel of Robbie Stassen’s ’61 Buick station wagon, accompanied by her daughter Jolie, driving nine hours before stopping for the night in Rockford, Illinois, she the wife of a black sheriff now in a town where one of the founders back in the nineteenth century had been a slave named Lewis Lemon.
The three-story motor inn provided quality accommodations, the clean and spacious rooms opening off an interior corridor instead of directly on to the parking lot. Rather than use a credit card, she had paid cash, as Luther advised, although it had been necessary to provide a driver’s license as identification.
A windowed corridor on the ground floor connected the inn with the reception area, off which the front desk, bar, and restaurant were located. In the restaurant, as the hostess picked up two menus and prepared to escort the Tillmans to a booth, Jolie gripped her mother’s arm hard enough to hurt. Startled, Rebecca looked at her daughter. With her eyes and a nod, Jolie indicated a man in his early twenties who stood not six feet away, fingering money out of his wallet to pay the cashier for two bags of takeout.
As they followed the hostess to their table, Rebecca said, “What was that about? I’m gonna have a bruise.”
“I’ve seen him before,” Jolie said.
“What—he’s a celebrity or something?”
“I saw him this morning in the bank, before we left town.”
Rebecca glanced back as the man picked up the takeout and exited the restaurant. “He’s no one I know.”
At their booth, as Rebecca and Jolie sat across from each other, the hostess said, “Your waitress will be with you shortly.”
When they were alone, Jolie said, “He kept looking at me this morning in the bank.”
“Honey, boys are always staring at you. But even as lovely as you are, he won’t have driven nine hours just to get another look.”
Always more mature than others her age, now seventeen, Jolie no longer had any tolerance for being treated like a child. She cocked her head and narrowed her eyes and furrowed her brow. “Mother, don’t patronize me.”
“I’m sorry, dear. I didn’t mean to.”
“You’ve been all mysterious with me about this weird trip in that ridiculous car, and I’ve stifled myself and not asked, though I’ve been dying to know if this has something to do with Cora and the Veblen Hotel and all of that horrific shit.”
“Don’t use that word, dear.”
“Sorry. All that horrific crap. Anyway, if I do say so myself, I’ve been an entertaining travel companion under the circumstances.”
“You’ve been a delight every mile of the way.”
Jolie looked dubious. “There could be an element of sarcasm in that, but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.”
“Thank you, dear.”
“The thing is, I saw him in the bank. He was filling out a deposit slip or pretending to fill one out.”
They had stopped in the bank to withdraw four thousand dollars from savings, because Luther didn’t want them using credit cards during this “little exercise,” as he called it.
“Maybe he saw you with all that money,” Jolie suggested.
In the interest of discretion, Rebecca had not made the withdrawal at a cashier’s window. The assistant manager accommodated her at his desk, where no other customers could have heard the transaction. “Jolie, the money was given to me in a plain envelope. Nobody could have seen it.” During a fuel stop, she had distributed the cash among her handbag, three jacket pockets, and a fanny pack. “Besides, you said he was staring at you, and you weren’t with me when I got the money. You spent the whole time at that brochure rack, looking through retirement-plan options. I hope you’re not expecting to retire right out of high school.”
“Maybe I’ll create a hugely successful app and be as rich as Croesus by twenty-one and thereafter live in sybaritic splendor.”
Reviewing the menu, Rebecca said, “I’ve heard people say that all my life, but I still have no idea who Croesus was.”
“King of Lydia from five-sixty to five-forty-six B.C. He was stinking rich.”
“There was a country named Lydia?”
“A kingdom in West Asia Minor.”
“They didn’t teach that in school when I was a girl.”
“They don’t teach it now, Mother. Or anything useful. Certainly no ancient history or real history. Anything worth knowing, I’ve had to learn on my own, pretty much since fourth grade.”
The waitress arrived to take their drink order and to recommend the halibut.
After ordering, Jolie said, “Anyway, that guy didn’t have to see what was in your envelope to know what was in it.”
Rebecca sighed. “Couldn’t it just be that the man in the bank and the man getting takeout resemble each other a little?”
“Please, Mother, don’t sigh me a sigh. Am I a howling hysteric given to flamboyant flights of fantasy?”
“Nice alliteration. No, you’re not. But—”
“The guy in the bank looked exactly like this guy, and it’s no coincidence that each had the same tattoo around his left wrist.”
Rebecca put down her menu. “A tattoo of what?”
“A creepy snake eating its own tail.”
“Why didn’t you mention the tattoo sooner?”
“I wanted to see if I might be believed before I needed to produce the irrefutable piece of evidence. I don’t lie, Mom.”
“I know you don’t, sweetheart. You never have.”
Jolie said, “A guy doing surveillance from a car has to eat takeout. Two big bags mean he’s got a partner.”
“Maybe you’ll end up a cop like your father.”
“Not a chance. We’re living in the age of the new Jacobins and all their thuggish violence. Bad time to be in law enforcement.”
“The Jacobins. That was during the French Revolution.”
“Way to go, Mom. So now what do we do?”
What, indeed? Rebecca thought. “Your father will be calling me at nine o’clock. He’ll know what to do. Meanwhile, we might as well have dinner.”
“Super. I saw their cheeseburger coming in. It looked killer. And on the menu here, it says they’ll do fries extra-crispy if you ask. We who are about to die—stuff our faces!”
“Don’t joke about death, Jolie.”
Wide-eyed with feigned astonishment, Jolie said, “But, Mother, there’s nothing else that’s even half as important to joke about.”