'And I'll give you mine.'
It was just after two when Ellen rounded a sweeping curve on a mountain road and got her first glimpse of Belinda, West Virginia, a postcard-perfect town, nestled in a broad valley just to the east of a range of rolling foothills. Beyond the hills, the craggy Allegheny Mountains probed upward into the azure afternoon sky. It had been more than three hours since she left home, but the uninterrupted drive, with CDs by Carly Simon and Natalie Cole alternating with Lyle Lovett and Sinatra, seemed much shorter.
Throughout the trip, Rudy was very much on her mind. Not surprisingly, he had said and done all the right things to make her feel less humiliated at having opened the letter from his drawer. Now it was just a matter of sorting through her feelings for him, searching beneath the enduring warmth of their friendship for the spark of passion that, even at sixty-three, she wanted to have. Rudy loved her truly, of that she had no doubt. And he was certainly a man she could grow old with. The question she was mulling over as she swung onto Main Street was whether or not he was a man she could grow young with.
Her meeting with Police Chief Grimes wasn't scheduled for almost three hours, and except for a doughnut and the coffee she had brought in a thermos, she hadn't had a thing to eat since leaving Glenside. Her hangover was essentially gone, but the pledge she made about drinking wine in the morning would, she hoped, live on forever. She thought about driving through Belinda and into Tullis, just to check out what the place might look like, but the Belinda Diner, a classic, railroad-car eatery on the edge of town, was just too inviting to pass up. The place was nearly empty. A competent-looking, middle-aged waitress in jeans and a T was serving two elderly women in one booth and two grizzled men in another.
'Anyplace you like,' she called out cheerily.
Ellen took a copy of the Montgomery County Weekly Bugle from a rack and brought it to a booth in the corner, well away from the other patrons. She ordered the meat loaf special and turned to the police report, as she inevitably did when reading any small-town newspaper, including her own. Barking dog… Stranger lurking… Fight… Deer hit by truck… Disturbance… Drink dispenser vandalized… Patient kidnapped. Tucked in among two dozen or so police calls was a two-sentence report of the kidnapping of a hospital patient from an ambulance. Ellen found the article dealing with the crime on page I and read the skimpy account until the waitress came with her meal.
'What's this kidnapping thing all about?' Ellen asked.
The waitress shrugged. 'No one knows,' she said with a pleasant twang. 'Rumor I heard is that her doctor did it. Doc Rutledge. The patient was a doctor herself. Now she's gone an' he's vanished, too. Maybe he jes got obsessed with her — you know, couldn't live without her. So he hired a couple of thugs to snatch her, then acts like he's as surprised as the next fella.'
'And I thought I was coming into a sleepy little town. Doctor kidnaps patient. Sounds like a TV miniseries.'
'Poor Doc Rutledge. Ain't been the same since his wife died a few years back. He's a darn good doctor, though, from what I've heard. If I ever went to a doctor I jes might 'uv gone to him. So, what brings you here?'
'I… have a business appointment. This sure is a beautiful town.'
'Thank you. We think so. Your appointment here in Belinda?'
'Actually, no,' Ellen replied after pausing while deciding if any harm could come from trying to determine where Vinny Sutcher lived. 'It's in a town called Tullis.'
'Well, heck, that's jes the next town over. Parta Belinda more or less.'
Ellen consulted a pad she took from her handbag.
'Deep Woods Road,' she said, reading back the address they had gotten from the passenger manifests.
'Never heard of it,' the waitress said.
'I have,' called out one of the old men, who was sitting four or five booths away. 'Take Main Street all the way inta Tullis. Then go rot through Tullis, left onta Oak, then 'bout two mile up inta the hills. You'll be lookin' fer a gravel road on the rot. I don't b'leive it's got no sign, but some a the mailboxes at the corner say Deep Woods on 'em.'
'Thank you,' Ellen called over.
'Belinda Road is jes the continuation of Main Street into Tullis,' the waitress said. 'Go right out the parkin' lot an' jes keep on goin'. You'll see a little sign for Tullis.'
'Place don't deserve nothin' no bigger,' the eavesdropper hollered.
His tablemate and the two ladies in the booth near them hooted and whooped at his humor.
Not surprisingly, given Ellen's experience with such diners, the meat loaf was commendable and the mashed potatoes and gravy appropriately decadent. She left a decent tip and walked out into the late afternoon sun. There were still almost two hours to go before she was to meet with Grimes. From the moment the old eavesdropper gave her directions to Deep Woods Road, she was obsessed — driven by her own anger and curiosity to want even a glimpse of Vinyl Sutcher. If he was as Grimes described, it was back to the drawing board and the other passenger names for her and Rudy. If Grimes's memory was off, if she could determine that Sutcher's cinder-block head featured a flat face and distinctive scar, she was on the verge of sweet, succulent revenge. She just needed to be careful and stay in the car. All she wanted now was one look at the man or at least the place where he lived.
With the same tiny voice that had lost the battle over Rudy's letter begging her to wait until her meeting with the police chief, Ellen eased the Taurus out of the parking lot and headed for Tullis and Deep Woods Road. The directions were fairly accurate, but the mileage was off on the low side. The far end of Tullis was nearly six miles away, and Oak Street snaked upward for three miles more before she spotted the cluster of ten or eleven mailboxes, several of which had 'Deep Woods Road' painted on one side. One of the boxes had the number 100 in neat stick-ons, and beneath it the name SUTCHER. Maybe Grimes was right after all, she thought. This was hardly the place one would expect to find a world traveler, who had made at least four trips to an obscure country in West Africa over the past three years. But then, if she and Rudy were right, the trips, along with a dozen others, were strictly business.
Deep Woods Road, graded dirt and pebbles, coursed gently upward through a continuous arch of dense foliage. It was one car wide, with shallow drainage ditches on either side, and periodic spots to pull over so that an oncoming vehicle could pass. Ellen inched ahead, feeling a strange, almost perverse pleasure at operating on the edge of a situation she knew might be dangerous. Despite the mailboxes, there were no houses visible. Instead, there were dirt drives wending off into the forest on either side, most with a board nailed to a tree announcing the house number.
62… 70… 83…
Ellen slowed even more. Several dirt drives had no number. Was one of them to Sutcher's place?
90…
Her heart pounding, Ellen stopped and, using one of the unmarked drives, turned her car around. Then she carefully opened her door.
This is stupid, the tiny voice was saying. This is absolutely dumb.
She dropped the keys into the pocket of her slacks, shut the door softly, and cautiously made her way up the narrow road. Ahead the natural light was considerably brighter.
100.
The number, painted in black on a plain piece of pine board, was nailed head high on the trunk of a small birch. Just past the birch, the forest fell away, yielding to a clearing, beyond which was a spectacular vista — a broad valley streaked with rivers, stretching out to lush foothills and gray-blue mountains. In the center of the clearing was a new house, or an old one that had recently been extensively renovated — one story, modern, with large picture windows and mahogany-stained cedar siding. There were remnants of the construction still lying about. The lawn had not yet been laid, although the piping for an underground sprinkler system was piled up and ready to be installed. There was no garage, but to one side of the lawn-to-be was a gravel parking space large enough for two cars.
Despite her certainty that the property was empty, if not unoccupied, Ellen stayed in the relative safety of the forest for more than five minutes, watching. There was no movement.
Desperate now to glimpse the inside, she stepped from the shadows and moved toward the house, her pulse still hammering. The construction-in-progress notwithstanding, the place was clearly someone's home. Through the windows she could see that it was fully furnished in a manner that was quite masculine — thick leather couches and
