He breathed in sharply and called his ex-wife back.
“Sally? There’s still no answer.”
“I think she’s in danger, Scott. I really think so.”
“Why? Why this time?”
Sally’s head was filled with some perverse equation: dead dog times dead detective, divided by splintered doorjamb, multiplied to the missing photograph power. And it equals…But instead she said, “Look, a bunch of things have happened. I can’t fill you in, but-”
“Why can’t you fill me in?” Scott asked, as pedantic as ever.
“Because,” Sally spoke between gritted teeth, “every second we delay could prove-”
She didn’t finish. For a moment, the two of them were silent, the gulf between them cavernous.
“Let me speak with Hope,” Scott said abruptly.
This took Sally by surprise. “She’s right here, but-”
“Put her on.”
There was a momentary telephone fumbling before Hope picked up the line. “Scott?”
“I can’t get through, either. Not even the answering machine.”
“She doesn’t have one. She believes in making people call her back.”
“Do you think-”
“Yes, I do.”
“Should we call the police?” Scott asked.
Hope paused. “I will. I know most of the cops up there, sort of. Hell, a couple of them were high school classmates of mine. I can get one of them to drive over there and check on things.”
“Can you do this without making too much of an alarm?”
“Yes. I can simply say I can’t reach my mother and she’s elderly. They all know her, and it shouldn’t be a problem for them.”
“Okay. Do it,” Scott said. “And tell Sally I’m on my way up there. If you reach Catherine, tell her I’m going to show up there later tonight. But I’ll need directions.”
As Hope spoke, she saw that Sally was pale, her hands shaking. She had never seen Sally so scared, and this unsettled Hope almost as much as the shapeless night that engulfed them.
Catherine was the first to speak. “Are you okay, Ashley?”
And Ashley nodded, her lips dry and throat almost closed, not trusting her voice. She felt her racing heartbeat return to normal, and she said, “I’m fine. What about you?”
“A knock on the head. That’s it.”
“Should we go to the hospital?”
“No. I’m okay. Although I seem to have spilled my six-dollar cup of coffee all over myself.”
Catherine unfastened her safety belt and opened her door.
“I need a breath of air,” she said briskly.
Ashley reached over and shut off the engine. She, too, stepped out into the night. “What happened? I mean, what was that all about?”
Catherine was staring back down the road, then she turned and looked up in the direction they were traveling. “Did you see that bastard go by us?”
“No.”
“Well, I didn’t see what happened to him either. I wonder where the hell he went. I hope he spun out into the trees, or over some cliff.”
Ashley shook her head. “I was trying to keep control.”
“And a fine job you did,” Catherine said, her voice regaining a steadiness that reassured Ashley. “Indeed, NASCAR quality. Those guys have nothing on you, Ashley, if I may point out the obvious. Very dicey situation, handled expertly. We’re still here, and there’s not even a dent in my nice, almost new car.”
Ashley smiled, despite the anxiety that still echoed within her. “My father used to take me down to Lime Rock in Connecticut and book us time on the big track in his old Porsche. I learned a lot from him.”
“Well, not exactly the standard father-daughter outing, but one that has turned out to be valuable.”
Ashley took a deep breath. “Catherine, has something like that ever happened to you before?”
The older woman was standing by the side of the road, her eyes searching through the darkness. “No. I mean, sometimes when you putter around on these narrow, winding roads, some high school kid will get frustrated and zoom past on a blind turn. But that guy seemed to have something else in mind.”
They climbed back into the car and strapped themselves in. Ashley hesitated, then coughed out a few words.
“I wonder if, you know, the creep who was pursuing me…”
Catherine leaned back hard in the seat. “You think the young man that caused you to leave Boston…”
“I don’t know.”
Catherine snorted. “Ashley, dear, he doesn’t know you’re here, and he doesn’t know where I live, and it’s damn hard to find anyway out in the middle of nowhere. And it seems to me that if you go through life looking over your shoulder and assigning every bad thing that is out of the norm to this creep O’Connell, or whatever his name is, then you won’t have much of a life at all.”
Ashley nodded. She wanted to be persuaded, told herself to be persuaded, but agreement came slowly.
“Anyway, the young man professes to love you, Ashley, dear. Love. I fail to see what nearly driving us off the road has to do with love.”
Again, Ashley remained silent, although she thought she knew the answer to that question.
They drove the remainder of the trip in relative silence. There was a long gravel-and-dirt drive up to Catherine’s place. She hoarded her privacy within her four walls, while she blustered and badgered everyone in the community outside her home. Ashley stared at the dark house. It had once been a farm, dating back to the early 1800s, and Catherine liked to joke that she had updated the plumbing and the kitchen but not the ghosts. Ashley stared at the white clapboard and wished they’d remembered to leave some lights on inside.
Catherine, however, was accustomed to the dark welcome and launched herself from the car. “Damnation,” she said abruptly. “I hear the phone ringing.”
She grunted loudly and added, “Too damn late for phone calls.”
Ignoring the night, confident in her understanding of every dip and ridge on the walkway to her front door, Catherine left Ashley scrambling behind her. Catherine never locked her doors, so she burst inside, flicking on the lights as she made her way to an ancient rotary-dial phone in the living room.
“Yes? Who is it?”
“Mother?”
“Hope! How nice. But you’re calling late.”
“Mother, are you okay?”
“Yes, yes, why?”
“Is Ashley with you? Is she okay?”