He had told her only as a last resort. Now, she sat quietly, trying to assimilate it all and understand exactly how it applied to her and to her situation.
First and by far most important was the fact that Father John, right along with everyone else, believed that Rita and she were in danger.
On that score, Diana and the priest were in complete agreement, although she had difficulty accepting the idea that Davy's being unbaptized was somehow the cause of it all.
Diana's first choice of weapon to deal with the problem was a fully loaded .45 Peacemaker, but maybe a gun wasn't the only weapon she should consider using. Diana Ladd wasn't prepared to ignore anything that might prove helpful.
'When would you like to come speak to Davy?' she asked finally.
Father John's shoulders sagged with relief. He wiped his eyes, said a brief prayer of thanksgiving, and then crossed himself before turning back to face her. 'Today?' he asked.
'Would later on this afternoon be all right?'
Committed to action, she saw no point in delay. 'Yes,' she said.
'That'll be fine. I'll give you the address.'
As soon as they tried to leave the Dairy Queen, things started going wrong. The Valiant wouldn't start. The battery was dead. In a huff, Andrew Carlisle stalked around the parking lot looking for someone with jumper cables.
Then, as they drove toward the storage unit, Myrna Louise began chattering away in her typically inane manner.
'Do you ever think about them?' she asked.
'Think about whom?'
'About those women, the ones from the reservation.'
There had been times in his life when Andrew Carlisle could have sworn that his mother could read his mind. Part of her ability to do that, he discovered much later, had been related to her secretly devouring daily installments of his diary. He wondered now about the envelope in his pocket.
Had she looked at the contents? If so, had she somehow guessed his intentions? He hadn't really examined the envelope when he took it from her. It had seemed all right at first glance, but he couldn't very well drag it out now and check it again in the middle of traffic.
'No,' he said eventually. 'They're in the past, and the past is over and done with. I've got my future to think about.'
'I wonder what kind of a baby she had, a boy or a girl.'
'For Chrissakes, Mama, does it matter?' he demanded, his voice rising despite his intentions of staying calm and collected, of not letting her provoke him. 'Do we have to talk about this?'
'Don't yell at me, Andrew. I was only wondering. Maybe I wouldn't be so curious if I'd ever had any grandchildren of my own, you know.'
Well, you didn't, he thought savagely. And you're not ever going to, either, by the time I get through with you.
'Give it a rest, Mama,' he said. 'I always told you I wasn't the marrying kind.'
'You should have been. You're a smart man, Andrew, and smart men should father lots of babies. It's our only hope, you know. only hope.'
It was an old, old argument, one they'd had countless times before, but this time, under pressure, anxious to get on with the tasks at hand and worrying about whether or not the Valiant would keep on running, it was too much.
'Jesus Christ, Mama! Would you please just shut up about that?'
About that time, they arrived at the U-Stor-It-Here lot.
There, Andrew Carlisle encountered the straw that broke the camel's back. The gate was locked. Closed and locked.
Afraid to turn off the ignition, he put the Valiant in neutral, set the emergency brake, and left it running. He swore a blue streak as he headed for the small converted RV that served as an office. The door was latched with a metal padlock and bore a hand-lettered sign that said, BACK in thirty MINUTES.
Frustrated and fuming, he headed back toward the car.
He turned just in time to see the Valiant lurch forward and knock down the gate. For a second, he thought the emergency brake must have slipped, but then, in a cloud of dust, the Valiant roared into reverse.
Myrna Louise was definitely at the wheel.
'Mama!' Carlisle yelled. 'Stop!'
Instead, the Valiant charged out of the driveway and shot all the way across the street, smashing into a rubber dumpster before coming to a stop. Carlisle took off after the Valiant at a dead run. He almost caught it, too, but as he reached for the door handle, the car blasted forward and careened drunkenly away, leaving him in a cloud of dust.
As the car swerved crazily down the flat, two-lane roadway, Myrna Louise clipped a brown El Camino on one side of the street and a second dumpster on the other.
Neither one was enough to stop her.