“You say the water is poisoned? How could that happen?”
“Are you saying you don’t know?” He started shouting. “Fucking hell, how could you not know?”
“You didn’t say anything when you left.”
“I didn’t know then! Haven’t you had the radio on? The TV? You didn’t hear them blasting warnings through the neighborhood?”
“Please don’t yell at me,” Lindsay said. “I’ve been reading, and I was in the basement doing laundry.”
“If Bipsie was thirsty, you should have given her some of the bottled! I can’t believe this! Jane’ll be devastated. Does Jane know?”
There was nothing at the other end of the line.
“Lindsay? Lindsay!”
After several seconds, she said, “Oh no.”
THIRTY-FOUR
CAL Weaver had to decide whether to follow Dwayne or the man who’d given Dwayne the cash. He went with the latter. Cal knew who Dwayne was. He needed to find out more about the other guy, because there was obviously something fishy about meeting someone in an alley for a payoff.
The two men talked for about five minutes, some of their exchange appearing heated. At one point, Dwayne angrily jabbed his finger at the man’s chest. His friend didn’t much care for that, brushing his hand away and pointing in return. But nodding followed; an agreement of some kind seemed to have been reached.
Dwayne shoved the money deep into the front pocket of his jeans.
Dwayne came out onto the sidewalk first and headed back to his pickup truck. The other man held back about ninety seconds, then emerged. He went in the other direction.
Cal sat in the car, watched.
The man crossed the street half a block up and got into an old junker of a Ford Aerostar van. A two-tone, blue and rust. The van pulled out into the street, exhaust belching out the back, at which point Cal checked his mirror and moved into traffic.
He reached over to the glove box, popped it open, and grabbed a notepad. With a pen from his pocket, he scribbled down the license plate number. He still had a friend or two with the police-if not in Promise Falls, then elsewhere-who could run a plate for him.
The man made a stop near the park by the falls. Cal, who’d kept the car radio tuned to the news all day, had heard there was free water being given out there. He wasn’t interested in facing the crowds-he’d live on beer and OJ for the next few days if he had to. But his new friend clearly wanted to take advantage of the offer. He left the van running in the middle of the street as he ran over for a case. When he returned to the van, he slid open the side door and tossed the pack of twenty-four bottles of water inside.
Once back behind the wheel, he headed north, then took a turn east that led in the direction of an industrial area, and beyond that, the now-mothballed Five Mountains amusement park.
Cal kept a couple of cars between the van and himself. The Aerostar wasn’t taking a circuitous route. If it had been, Cal would have guessed the driver suspected he was being followed.
The van’s left turn signal came on, then the brake lights. Cal and two cars ahead of him had to slow to a stop while the driver waited for oncoming traffic to clear. Once it had, he turned into an industrial park. The other cars, and Cal, moved forward. He glanced left as the van drove on between two large warehouse-sized buildings.
Oncoming traffic was thin, so Cal executed a swift U-turn, then sped back to where the van had turned off. He rolled onto the gravel shoulder and came to a stop. The van slipped into a spot between some other cars. The driver got out and went into a business directly in front of where he’d parked.
Cal turned in.
He drove down slowly between the two buildings, slowly enough that he could read the sign in the window of the place the driver had gone into without actually hitting the brakes.
SUPERFAST PRINTING, it said. Orders large and small. Business cards, letterhead, envelopes. Some work, the window sign promised, could be done while one waited.
Was the driver a customer, or an employee?
Cal parked the car and walked back to the storefront, but when he tried the door, it was locked.
He made a visor of his hand and peered through the glass door. A counter separated the waiting area from where the work was done. Cal could see several high-end, oversized copying machines, several desks with computers, and stacks of packages wrapped in plain brown paper. The place went back a long way, maybe sixty feet, and there was what looked like a garage door on the back wall.
Near that door, the man Cal had seen give money to Dwayne was moving some packages. He looked up, saw Cal, and waved him away. Shouted something that sounded like “Closed!”
So Cal knocked.
The man shook his head, stopped what he was doing, and walked all the way to the front. He unlocked the door and opened it a foot.
“We’re closed,” he said. He was wearing a small name tag that read HARRY.
“Sorry,” Cal said. “I just saw you go in, so I thought you were open.”
“It’s Saturday of a holiday weekend,” Harry said. “So we’re closed.”
“But you’re working,” Cal said amiably. “Listen, have you got, like, ten seconds to help me out? My company’s moving to a new location soon, so we’re going to need all new cards, letterhead, invoices, the whole nine yards. I was wondering what something like that would run me.”
Harry seemed to be weighing whether it would be easier to just help Cal out or close the door in his face.
“Fine,” he said, opening the door wider. “Ten seconds.”
Harry took a position behind the chest-high counter as Cal approached and rested his elbows on it.
“Did you get your earlier stationery with us?” Harry asked. “If so, it should all be in the computer. We just change the address and print it all out. It saves you a little, because we don’t have to do any designing for you, but most of the cost is in the actual printing.”
“No, it wasn’t done here.”
“Well, like I said, it doesn’t make that much difference anyway,” Harry told him. “How much you need? Five hundred of everything? A thousand? Two thousand? Gets a bit cheaper as the numbers go up. And then, maybe you need more invoices than business cards, or letterhead. We can accommodate what you need.”
“Five hundred of everything would be what? Invoices, letterhead, envelopes, business cards.”
Harry did some scribbling on a notepad. “You’re looking at around four fifty.”
“How long’s it take? I could wait for it.”
Harry shook his head. “Not for an order like that. You’re looking at about a week or-”
Two loud metallic bangs echoed out from the back. Someone had pounded on the metal garage door.
“What’s that?” Cal asked. “Just about gave me a heart attack.”
“Delivery,” he said.
“Everybody’s working on Saturday,” Cal remarked.
“Why don’t you come back on Tuesday? We open at nine.”
Another bang on the door, louder this time.
“Hang on,” Harry said, and bolted for the back of the shop. He punched a big red button on the wall and the garage door began to rise.
There was a pickup truck backed up to the door. Cal recognized it immediately as his brother-in-law’s.
As Cal turned to look out the front window, he heard the truck pull in, the garage door slide back down. Then hurried footsteps as Harry returned to the counter.
“Sorry, mister, but you really need to come back on-”
“That’s fine, no problem. I’ll do that,” Cal said, turning long enough to offer up a smile of thanks. He headed for the door.
• • •
Cal made the decision not to follow Dwayne at this point. From the industrial park he went back to his hotel, packed up his things, and checked out. By the time he got back to Dwayne and Celeste’s house, Dwayne’s pickup was there, backed up tight to the garage. Crystal was at the living room window, looking out.