People came and went in the corridor, none of them Beth Ann or Garner, none of them paying any attention to me. I read yesterday's market news. Few things are less interesting than yesterday's stock-market results. In a few minutes, a woman and child came out of Beth Ann's and headed for the elevator. An hour later, the two people I'd seen in the waiting room came out. And five minutes later, Beth Ann came out and headed for the elevators, her heels ringing on the floor of the corridor. I hustled down the stairs and out the front door, and was in my car by the time she appeared. There was neither opportunity nor reason for a nondescript rental car. She was paying no attention to anything, and I just needed to keep her in sight, which I did through town and onto the Mass Pike westbound and into a food/fuel service area near Charlton. At the back of the parking lot, near the Dumpster behind the food-court building, with parking spaces open all around it, was a Buick sedan I'd seen before. Beth Ann parked her cute sports car right next to it, on the side away from the Dumpster. I parked a couple of rows back.
Beth Ann got out of her car and walked around the Buick and got in the passenger side. They sat in there together for a while. The door opened on Beth Ann's side and she scrambled out. Garner got out his side. Beth Ann tried to run, and Garnet caught her and pushed her against the car. She slapped at him with both hands. He held on to her. I could hear Beth Ann screaming. I think she was screaming "help," but it was hard to be sure. Garner was trying to put his hand over her mouth to make her stop screaming. I think she bit his hand.
I put my car in gear and drove over and parked sideways behind both their cars and got out. I took hold of Garner by the back of his coat collar and pulled him away from Beth Ann.
"You are causing an embarrassing scene," I said.
He twisted and tried to hit me. I slapped his fist away. Beth Ann tried to run past us. I caught hold of her arm with my free hand and pulled her back.
"Why can't we all just get along," I said to them.
They both said variations of "Let go of me." He tried to hit me again. I let go of Beth Ann, and punched him in the solar plexus. He gasped and bent over and when I let him go, stumbled back against his car, trying to get his breath. Beth Ann had started off again. She was wearing three-inch heels and ran badly in them. I caught her in two steps and brought her back.
"You have no place to run, anyway," I said.
"He threatened me," she said, her breath heaving. "The bastard threatened to kill me."
"Did not," Garner gasped.
There was a picnic table on a small patch of grass at the corner of the parking lot.
"Let us sit over there," I said, "and talk."
"No . . ." Beth Ann said.
Garner had straightened. Still leaning against the car, he shook his head no.
"I wasn't asking," I said. "Someone has probably called the cops, and you might want to get calmed down and have a story ready when they get here."
Both of them looked horrified. It was something they'd never considered. The three of us walked across the parking lot and sat at the table. In the distance, I could hear a siren.
"You had a little sort of lovers' spat," I said. "I, in a friendly way, intervened, and now we've talked it out and no one has any complaints to register."
Both of them heard the siren, too. Neither of them said anything. Beth Ann was still flushed, but Garner was very pale.
Chapter 58
A STATE POLICE CAR pulled up in front of the restaurant building, and a big trooper got out and went in. In a moment, he came back out with two people. They talked. He nodded. They pointed toward us. He nodded. As he walked across the lot toward the picnic table, a second cruiser pulled in and parked behind his.
The big trooper stopped at our table. I recognized him. It was one of the two Staties who, at DiBella's request, had brought Animal to the state maintenance shed for me to reason with. He looked at me. I looked at him.
"DiBella's friend," the cop said.
"Sort of," I said.
"I understand there was some trouble here," the cop said, and looked at Garner and Beth Ann.
Garner gathered himself.
"I'm afraid it was just a lovers' spat, officer."
The cop looked at Beth Ann.
"You agree with that?" he said.
She smiled at him, which was pretty impressive.
"Yes. I feel like a fool," she said. "But Roy and I ... we lost our tempers at the same time."
"You?" the cop said to me.
"I happened upon them, and intervened and managed to reconcile them."
The cop looked at me and shook his head. But he didn't comment.
"Either of you wish to file any kind of complaint?" he said to the happy couple.
"No, sir," Garner said.
"We're fine," Beth Ann said.
The trooper looked at me.
"Everything's fine," I said. "You people better learn to settle your differences another way," he said. "I get another complaint and I won't be so easy about it."
He and I both knew that was a crock. He hadn't even taken their names. But he and I both knew also that idle threats work sometimes.
"It won't happen again, officer," Garner said.
"Absolutely not," Beth Ann said and smiled again at the cop.
The smile was effective. It managed to suggest somehow that she'd like to have sex with him. Which, of course, could have been true. The cop looked at me again.
"That your Mustang there?" he said.
"I'll move it at once," I said.
He nodded.
"You all have a nice day," he said.
He walked back across the parking lot and stopped next to the second cruiser. He spoke to the second cop for a few minutes, then got into his own car and both of them pulled away. The three of us at our picnic table were silent for a bit.
Then Beth Ann looked at Garner and said, "You cocksucker."
"You keep your damned mouth shut," he said to her. "Just remember what I told you, and keep your damn mouth shut."
Garner stood then and stalked away toward his car, which he couldn't drive away in because I had him blocked.
"Could you move your damned car?" he said.
Chapter 59
BEFORE I MOVED M Y CAR, I reached in and took the keys out of Beth's. When Garner was gone, I walked back to the picnic table, sat across from her, and put the keys on the table.
She didn't speak. Neither did I. We listened to the steady sound of traffic from the pike. A burly woman in pink shorts and a white T-shirt walked a very small fuzzy white dog near us. I smiled at the dog. The dog paid me no attention.
"What do you see in him?" I said after a while.
Beth Ann looked at the table and shook her head.
"He's kind of soft and dumpy," I said. "But he's very annoying."
Beth Ann shook her head again. It might have been disagreement. It might have been regret. The white dog accomplished its mission on the small plot of grass, and the burly woman took it away. She was wearing some sort of sandals with elevated soles, and she walked with a lumbering wobble. From my inside coat pocket I took a copy of the photograph I'd found in Beth Ann's freezer and placed it on the table in front of her, next to her keys. She looked down at it without any reaction for a moment. Then she said, "It was you," and turned the photo facedown on the table, and put her face into her hands and moaned. I didn't say anything. No one was near us. I sat, quietly listening to the traffic and the wind and the occasional scraps of conversation that the wind brought us from people as they walked to their cars. The cooking smell from the restaurant was strong.
"You have it too," she said finally.
"Too?" I said.
"He has a copy."
"Garner?"
"Yes."
I sat back. It wasn't that I couldn't think of questions. I thought of too many, and they were all jockeying for position. With her face still pressed into her hands, Beth Ann said, "It's not what you think."