“Kathy ever say anything about him?”
“She was supposed to announce she was screwing some rich guy, maybe for money?”
“How long did this go on?”
“Most likely until she left, a few months later. Up and out without so much as a see-you-later, the woman who owned the diner said. No one knew where she took off to.”
“But you did? Or at least who she went with?”
“No. I never did connect her leaving to Mr. Fairbairn.”
“You never tried to find out?”
“She was gone; we were here. End of story.”
“Did she ever say where she was from?”
Linda Coombs paused, looking down the ruts at the tiny Ford I’d driven up in.
“That ain’t yours, is it?”
“It’s a rental.”
“How much?”
“Fifty bucks, with taxes.” I didn’t tell her that was a day rate, worried she’d think I was an idiot.
It didn’t work. “I’ll need a total of fifty before I say anything more.”
I handed her a ten and another twenty. “Where was she from?”
“She never said direct, but she implied it was the same kind of rinky-dink town as Whitaker Springs, except hers was up somewhere on the Mississippi River, in Minnesota or Wisconsin. Biggest thing in town was a statue of an Indian, Chief Runamuck, or Whackamock, or some damned thing. They lit it up all to hell at dusk. Folks came up to it most nights, leastways in the summer, because they didn’t have anything else to do.” She laughed. “We ever build such a thing around here, folks will go to that nights, too.”
I called Leo’s cell phone.
“Are you at home?” I asked. An electric bass thumped in his background.
“Of course.” His voice was barely audible above the bass.
“That noise?”
“Ma and her friends.”
I checked my watch. It was ten o’clock. “They’re doing mornings now?”
“Mrs. Roshiska bought a shoe box full of videos after bingo. They started at one in the morning. I’ve been in here all night.”
The electric bass thumped faster.
“You’re in your office?”
“Ma had the guy who’s doing the basement put in a door. A thick door. It didn’t help.” He dropped his voice. “Did you hear that?”
“All I can hear is bass.”
“There it is again. Hear it?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Things, hitting my new door.”
“Leo, you need to get some sleep.”
“Ma says I can’t come out once they’ve started exercising.”
“But it’s been nine hours.”
“They take breaks, for vodka.”
“Go see Endora at the Newberry. Have lunch in the park across the street.”
“I told you: Ma says once they start up, I have to stay in until they’re done.” His voice dropped again. He was struggling for control. “I’m afraid.”
“Of what?”
“Of the future.”
“You need to sleep. But first, I need you to do something for me.”
“Anything. Anything, so long as it keeps me from wondering what Ma, the other ladies, Mrs. Roshiska, leaning on her walker…”
I told him to find a town in Wisconsin or Minnesota, near the Mississippi River, that had a statue of an Indian chief. “Womack, or someone like that.”
“I’ll do it, right now. Just please, please, stay on the line. I need someone to talk to.”
I couldn’t hear him tapping on his keyboard, for the pounding of the bass, but he was back on the line in two minutes. “Chief Winnemac. Hadlow, Minnesota. Just west of the Mississippi River.”
He begged me to stay on the line, but there was no time.
CHAPTER 38.
Things went smoothly, for much of the rest of the day.
My one-way flight to Minneapolis got in at seven fifteen, right on time. I rented a tiny, squared-off Chevrolet, cheap, from Swifty’s Rent-a-Car, just off the airport grounds. I’d never heard of Swifty’s, and the car looked like a delivery van left too long in a dryer, but the price was right, thirty a day. For most of the forty miles southeast to Hadlow, things were fine.
Then, at dusk, I came up on a man driving a pickup truck with its headlights off. He was pulling a stake trailer, also unlit, filled with pigs.
The man and the pigs seemed content to move along at fifteen miles an hour. I was not. I was in a hurry to find a place to stay in Hadlow, have dinner, and be set to start prowling what I hoped was Sweetie Fairbairn’s hometown first thing the next morning.
I put on my turn signal and pulled out on the left, to pass.
The farmer, without signaling, chose that exact moment to turn left.
As did his trailer. As did his pigs.
I T-boned the moron, slammed right into the side of his truck. The impact sent me off the road, upright, down into a ditch.
His truck also managed to stay upright, down in the ditch, ahead of me. Not so his trailer. Not so his pigs.
The trailer had twisted over, onto its side, splintering its stubby wood fence. Amid great squeals of terror, or perhaps enthusiasm, the pigs exited and took off across the field.
“Son of a bitch,” the livestock owner shouted and started to run after his pigs.
“Son of a bitch,” I echoed, thoroughly caught up in the drama of the moment.
After two hundred yards, the man realized the futility of chasing his bacon across the field, and he came back. Furious.
“Didn’t you see I was turning?” he demanded.
“Didn’t you see I was already in the other lane, with my lights on, about to pass you?”
So it went for another minute or two, until we both got on our cell phones. He called a friend of his who had a brother. They each had tow trucks. I called Swifty’s Rent-a-Car.
“You waived our insurance,” the unruffled female voice said around the gum she was chewing. “It’s your responsibility to have our vehicle towed to our nearest service center. They’ll provide an estimate of repairs.”
“Where are your service centers?”
“There’s only the one, at the airport in Minneapolis where you rented the car.”
I told her getting towed there would cost a fortune.
“You should have thought of that before you declined our insurance.” I heard her type on her computer. “Meanwhile,” she said, “we’ve placed a ten-thousand-dollar charge on your credit card. That will be reversed once the car has been repaired, at your, or your insurance company’s, expense. Thank you for using Swifty’s Rent-a-Car.”
I was about to wish her good luck, because my credit card has a five-hundred-dollar limit, when I remembered I’d given the Swifty’s agent Koros’s plastic to use for a security imprint.
It didn’t matter. The gum-chewing Swifty girl had already hung up on me.
The two tow trucks came. The driver of the one that pulled my Chevy up from the ditch asked me where I was headed.
“Hadlow,” I said.
“Good enough. Ralph’s got a service station there. He can look at your car.”
“It’s a rental,” I said, without knowing why.
“Even better. Rental companies take care of everything. They’ll get you a new car delivered pronto.”
“I used Swifty’s Rent-a-Car.”
“Never heard of them.”
“They’re cheap,” I said, finding no comfort in that at all.
We clattered southeast along two-lane blacktop in almost total darkness for forty-five minutes. Then, topping a hill, I saw a round yellow light, disembodied and hovering, high in the distance.
“Do you see that?” I asked, leaning closer to the windshield.
He laughed. “UFO?”
“What is it?”
“Chief Winnemac,” he said, “or at least his big cement head. The rest of him is obscured by the tree line.”