Then he smiled encouragingly and shooed them toward their door.
“Go inside and pack your stuff,” he said. “This is a two-minute job.”
“We packed already,” Patty said. “We’re good to go.”
“Really?”
“We packed early this morning. Or late last night. We wanted to be ready.”
“Have you not enjoyed your stay?”
“We’re anxious to get going. We should be somewhere else by now. That’s all. Apart from that, it’s a great place. Your friends have been very kind to us.”
“No, I’m the new guy. They’re not my friends yet. I think the last guy they used was their friend. But I think they had a falling out. So they started calling me instead. Which was great. I wanted the business. I’m an ambitious guy.”
Shorty said, “I wouldn’t want to work for them.”
“Why not?”
“I think they’re weird.”
Karel smiled.
“They’re clients on a list,” he said. “The longer the list, the better I get through the hungry months.”
“I still wouldn’t,” Shorty said.
“It’s nine quad-bikes and five cars. Guaranteed work. I can put up with a little weirdness in exchange for that.”
“Five cars?”
“As of now. Plus a ride-on lawnmower.”
“They told us one car,” Shorty said. “We saw it.”
“Which one?”
“An old pick-up truck.”
“That’s the beater they use around the property. On top of that they got Mercedes-Benz SUVs, one apiece.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Totally loaded.”
“Where are they?”
“In the barn.”
Shorty said nothing.
Patty said, “I have a question.”
Karel said, “Go ahead.”
“How long have they been here?”
“This was their first season.”
She said, “Please fix our car now.”
“That’s why I’m here,” Karel said.
He opened the Honda’s hood, with deft and practiced movements. He leaned forward and held the new black box down low, as if trying it for size. Then he backed off an inch and squinted, as if trying to get a better look. He extricated himself and stood up straight.
He said, “Actually your relay is in good shape.”
Patty said, “Then why won’t it start?”
“Must be a different problem.”
Karel put the black box with the disconnected wires back in his pocket. He shuffled around the fender and approached from a different angle.
“Try the key one more time,” he said. “I want to hear how dead it is.”
Shorty got in behind the wheel and flipped the key, on, off, on, off, click, click, click. Karel said, “OK, I get it.”
He shuffled a full 180, all the way around to the opposite fender, and he bent down again, where the battery was bolted into a skeletal cradle. He stuck his face right down and twisted his neck so he could see underneath. He brought his hand down and felt with his fingertip. Then he backed out and straightened up and stood still for a second. He glanced at the woods, and then the other way, at room twelve’s corner. He stepped out until he could see beyond it. To the barn, and the house. He came back and shooed Patty and Shorty up on their boardwalk, over toward their door, looking back all the time as he came, as if checking they were all safely out of some theoretical line of vision.
He said, quietly, “Did any of these guys work on your car?”
“Peter did,” Shorty said.
“Why?”
“He said he looked after the quad-bikes, so we asked him to take a look.”
“He doesn’t look after the quad-bikes.”
“Did he screw it up?”
Karel looked left and right.
“He cut the main positive feed coming out of the battery.”
“How? By accident?”
“Not possible by accident,” Karel said. “It’s a pure copper wire thicker than your finger. You would need a big pair of pliers with a wirecutter blade. It would take some strength. You would definitely know you were doing it. It would be an act of deliberate sabotage.”
“Peter had a pair of pliers. Yesterday morning. I saw him.”
“It’s like disconnecting the battery completely. Zero electrical activity anywhere. The vehicle is paralyzed. Which is exactly your symptom.”
“I want to see,” Shorty said.
“Me too,” Patty said.
Karel said, “Look underneath.”
They took it in turns, leaning deep over the engine bay, ducking down, twisting their necks. They saw a stiff black wire, clearly chopped in half, the ends displaced, the cut faces gleaming as fresh as new pennies. They walked back to where Karel was standing. He said, “I’m sorry, but I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t really know these guys very well. I have to assume this was their idea of a practical joke. But it’s a really stupid one. It won’t be cheap to fix. That kind of wire is almost rigid. It’s like plumbing. You have to remove a whole bunch of other components just to get near it.”
“Don’t fix it,” Patty said. “Don’t even think about it. Just get us out of here this minute. Give us a ride right now.”
“Why?”
“It wasn’t a practical joke. They’re keeping us here. They won’t let us leave. We’re like prisoners.”
“That sounds pretty weird.”
“But it’s true. They’re stringing us along. Everything they tell us is lies.”
“Like what?”
“They said we were the first guests in this room, but I don’t think we are.”
“That’s totally weird.”
“Why?”
“There were people in this room a month ago. I know that for sure, because I had to bring a tire to a guy in room nine.”
“They said you were their good friend.”
“That was the second time I ever met them.”
“They implied they had been here at least three years.”
“That’s not right. They showed up a year and a half ago. There was a big fight over a building permit.”
“They said their phone was out yesterday. But I bet it wasn’t. They just wanted to keep us here.”
“But why would they? Money?”
“We thought of that,” Shorty said. “We were about to run out. Anyone would run out sooner or later. Then what would they do?”
“This is very weird,” Karel said.
He stood there, uncertain.
“Please give us a ride,” Patty said. “Please. We have to get out of here. We’ll pay you fifty bucks.”
“What about your car?”
“We’ll leave it here. We were going to sell it anyway.”
“It wouldn’t be worth much.”
“Exactly. We don’t care what happens to it. But we’ve got to go. We have to get out. Right now, this minute. You’re our only hope. We’re prisoners here.”
She stared at him. He nodded, slowly. Then again, taking charge. He stepped back, and looked left and right, craning over both his shoulders. He glanced at his giant truck, and the dimensions of the lot, measuring it, scoping it out, and then he glanced into the room, at the neat arrangement of luggage.
“OK,” he said. “Time to arrange a jailbreak.”
“Thank you,” Patty said.
“But first I need to ask an embarrassing question.”
“What?”
“Did you pay your bill? I would get in trouble if I helped you skip out in secret. There are innkeeper laws here.”
“We paid last night,” Shorty said. “We’re good until noon.”
“OK,” Karel said. “So let’s think for a minute. We should err on the side of caution. We should assume the worst case. We don’t know how they’re going to react to this. Therefore it’s probably better if they don’t see it happening. Agreed?”
“Much better,” Patty said.