“Why?”
“Why would you enjoy it?”
“And you? Why would you enjoy it more because I was along?”
When I was a kid, I went to a camp once where they had a row of small platforms scattered across a pond. Some of the platforms would float when you landed on them; others would sink immediately. You’d try to cross the pond by jumping from one platform to the next. Each leap had the potential to sink you, but you didn’t know which one would do it. Right now, the conversation had that feel.
“Why would I enjoy it more?” I echoed. Anytime you start repeating questions when you’re talking to a woman, you’re in trouble.
“Yes.”
“I imagined it would make a long drive a lot more fun. Getting kind of tired of working alone.”
“So you want me to be your surrogate Joe?”
“What? No.” I shook my head and stepped away from her. “I imagined we’d have a good time, because we usually do. Thought it would add some laughs, a little banter, turn a boring road trip into an enjoyable one.”
“I’m a source of banter, then.”
“Amy.” I looked at her hard. “What the hell is this about? We hang out together all the time, but you think it’s odd I’d ask you to go along on this?”
“I don’t want to be Sundance to your Butch,” she said. “Not just on this case, or on your little trip. In general.”
I gave a short laugh and spread my arms. “Where is this coming from? We’ve been friends for almost two years. Now you’re having some sort of identity crisis with it?”
“How many lasting relationships have you had in the last two years, Lincoln?”
I dropped my arms. “Roughly? Zero.”
She didn’t smile. “And me?”
“You’ve dated a few assholes.”
“Lasting relationships?”
“Zero.”
“Right.” She folded her arms over her chest. “Can you tell me that’s unrelated? Do you think it is, at least?”
“Probably not.”
She smiled sadly. “There ya go. And I know the story—you’re not good with relationships, and the friendship’s too important to jeopardize. But here we sit.”
“So you’re disagreeing with—”
“I’m not disagreeing with anything, and not saying anything other than that I need to think a few areas of my life over and maybe redirect them.”
“Kind of comes out of nowhere this morning.”
She laughed and shook her head. “If you think this comes out of nowhere, then your agency is really hurting for detectives right now.”
Someone pulled into the parking spot beside us. It was one of my regulars, and when he climbed out of his car, he decided it would be a good opportunity to talk sports and weather for about five minutes. I smiled and nodded my way through it. After a while, Amy dropped her sunglasses over her eyes and stood up.
“I’ll catch you inside,” I told the guy, holding a hand up to interrupt him. “Okay?”
He went in, and I turned back to Amy. She had her hand on the door handle.
“Amy . . .”
“I’ve got to get to work, and you’ve got to get to Indiana, of all places. We’ll talk when you get back, okay?”
I didn’t answer. She got in the car and pulled away, and I swore loudly and sat down on the parking block. A second later the door opened and Grace stuck her head out.
“Everything okay, boss?”
I turned to her. “Any idea what it means when your friendship starts making a thwackity thwack sound that progresses to a clankity clank?”
“Yeah,” she said. “It means you screwed up.”
“Ah,” I said, nodding. “And how to fix it?”
“Stop being scared,” she said, and she went back inside.
“You’re fired,” I told the closed door, and then I stood up and got into my truck.
______
The third time my truck dipped down a steep hill and left my stomach at the top, I got the idea that this portion of Indiana wasn’t what I’d expected. About five hours out of Cleveland, I’d passed through Bloomington and turned back to the east, heading for Nashville. The highway between the two towns was a winding two-lane, cutting through hills with a cruel sense of humor. One minute I’d be laying hard on the accelerator, coaxing the truck up a hill that made the motor grind; the next, I’d be hard on the brake, trying to keep from alarming the driver in front of me on the steep downgrade. The road twisted too much to let me take my eyes off it for long, but when I did, the views were spectacular. Hills rolled away from the highway across sprawling fields and into dense woods lit with colors so vibrant I doubted even the best camera would be able to successfully capture them.
After about thirty minutes of driving along a highway that was clearly designed by the forefathers of the roller-coaster industry, I ran into a backed-up line of traffic so long that I assumed it was the result of a car accident, or maybe some late-season road repair. It turned out to be the wait to get into Nashville. It took ten minutes just to pull onto the one main street that cut through the little town, which, ironically, was called Van Buren, while Main Street was a little offshoot to the side.
There appeared to be a construction code for the town, and it involved a lot of logs and old wood siding and shingles, everything having the look of a New England village at about the turn of the century. In case you missed the point, a number of the little shops incorporated the word “old” into their name, often underscoring it with an
The sidewalks teemed with people laden with shopping bags, and small public parking lots were filled and had waiting lines. I saw license plates from North Carolina, Florida, Arizona, and Ontario. I hadn’t gotten around to making a hotel reservation, figuring they probably didn’t fill up too often in a place like this, but now it occurred to me that could have been a mistake. I stopped at the first hotel I found, a building halfway up the hill above the town. The parking lot was jammed, so I pulled into the entrance and left my hazard lights on while I went inside and asked for a room. The question produced a smile from the receptionist.
“You don’t have a reservation?” she said.
“No.”
“It’s October.”
“So it is.”
Her smile widened. “You don’t know the area, do you?”
“Nope.”
“You want to stay in Nashville in October, you make a reservation.”
I looked around, thought about the little street I’d driven through, wondered what great draw I could have missed.
“No offense,” I said, “but what brings so many people to this town?”
“Leaves.”
“Leaves?”
“The kind on the trees,” she said.
“People come from all over the country to see leaves?”
“Drive around a little bit. Look up. You’ll be impressed. There’s shopping, too.”
“Of course there is.” I looked back out at my truck. “Well, can you tell me where the nearest hotel with a vacancy would be?”
“Bloomington, probably. That’s about thirty minutes up the road. You aren’t going to find anything closer tonight. I’m sorry.”
If staying near the town was going to be such a hassle, maybe I’d try to get in and out in a night. All I had to
