He did not seem any more pleased at subsequent calls, either, even though they didn't wake him in the middle of his night. This time when she called, on Tuesday evening, he just snapped into the phone, 'She ain't here,' and slammed the phone down before she could finish her sentence.
The next morning, timing her call to catch the man before he could drop into bed, she had the same response, only more obscene. Later, she called the Green Tortoise office again, but Peter Franklin could tell her only that B.J. had a couple of days off and had dropped the last of her passengers the day before. Kate supposed she was on her way home, taking her own sweet time - which, she reflected, was understandable if the boyfriend's ill temper was a general state.
Finally, at five o'clock Wednesday evening, the rude boyfriend, instead of hanging up, growled a curse and dropped the receiver onto a hard surface. A woman's voice came on the line. Kate introduced herself and explained that she was trying to find a passenger on the trip Montero had driven five days before Christmas, saying that she did understand that passenger lists were not kept, but that the local manager had suggested his drivers might have gotten to know some of their passengers.
'You just want whatever names I have?'
'It's more than I have now.'
'Just a minute.' The phone crashed back onto the table. Kate heard retreating footsteps, heard the man's voice say, 'Wha' the fuck she want?' and, faintly, Montero answering, 'Like you said, she's looking for someone who was on one of my trips.' Bass grumbling and soprano giggling, punctuated by distant rustles and thumps, made Kate begin to wonder if they had forgotten her in the business of their reunion, but after a while the feet approached the phone again and the woman's voice came on.
'What was the date again?'
'December the twentieth.'
'Right.' There followed another silence, with faint paper noises. 'Oh yeah, that trip. There was a leak in the brake fluid that took me forever to find, and that crew was really into singing. They must've sung 'White Christmas' a thousand times. Jesus, I thought I'd go nuts. I've got two names. Got a pencil? They're Beth Perry and… I think this says Henry James - could that be right? Yeah, I think so; I remember some joke about philosophy. You want their phone numbers?' Kate said yes, please, and wrote two strings of numbers down beside each name. 'They're both students, so I took their parents' numbers, too. Students move around too much.'
'Just out of curiosity, why did you take these names down? If you don't keep track of passengers?'
'I usually have one or two names a trip, like if someone has a car for sale, or does some kind of work I might need, or a friend needs. Or' - her voice dropped - 'if it's a good-looking guy, you know?'
'And these two?'
'These two… let's see. Beth lives down here and does sewing, these sort of patchwork things. She was wearing this fantastic jacket, said she could make me one. And Henry fixes old cars. I thought he might be able to get a couple of parts my boyfriend needs for his '54 Chevy. Which reminds me, I forgot to tell him,' she noted, but Kate did not hear the end of the remark. She had been struck by a vision of a thin young woman with two inches of black roots to her blond hair, furry boots, and a knee-length coat that was a riot of color in the drab parking lot, a garment incorporating a thousand narrow strips of fabric, silks and velvets and brocades, a coat that seemed to cast warmth on everyone in its vicinity. The girl in the coat had been there at the same time as Kate and Jules, one cold day three weeks before. Suddenly, with this tangible link between the driver and herself, the whole thing seemed possible, an actual investigation rather than aimless wandering.
It was a familiar feeling, and a welcome one, this almost physical jolt when an investigation began to come together around an unexpected piece of information, and after the brief distraction of her vision, Kate focused on what else the woman might have to say.
'Do you remember a photographer?' she asked. 'A girl with a camera?'
'Everyone on these trips has a camera,' Montero said unhelpfully.
However, Kate had thought a great deal about this particular girl and her camera, and she had a description ready. 'She was about five two and looked like a sheep - not her face, but she was wearing a sheepskin jacket with the fur on the outside. She was young - maybe eighteen or so. Looked a bit Hispanic, maybe Puerto Rican. She had a truly ugly hat on, an orange knit thing that was all lumpy. Blue leggings, red high-top athletic shoes. The camera was a thirty-five millimeter with a long lens, kind of beat-up-looking, and she was running around telling people where to stand. I don't know what color hair she had, because of that hat, but I'd have thought she'd stand out in a crowd. Bossy in a ditzy kind of way.'
After a pause, Montero said in a voice gone oddly flat, 'Black.'
'Sorry?'
'Her hair was black. Is black. And she's twenty-seven, not eighteen.'
'You know her, then?' Kate felt a surge of hope out of all proportion to the actual information.
'My mother made that hat.' Her voice had traveled from flat to disapproving.
'Your mother?' Realization began to dawn, along with an awareness that her description had not been as flattering as it might have been.
'What does 'ditzy' mean?'
'Um. Well, sort of unstructured,' Kate said. 'Free-thinking. That was you, with the camera?'
'You really think that hat is ugly?'
'Oh no, not ugly, really. Just… handmade.'
There was a snorting noise, and then the woman was laughing. Kate, much relieved, joined in.
'God, it is ugly, isn't it?' Montero admitted. 'She's doing me a sweater to match, and I swear the arms are six feet long. You don't know any cold gorillas, do you?'
'I'll let you know if I meet one.'
'Anyway, was it me you were looking for?'
'It sounds like it. What I'm after is a record of the people and cars in that rest stop when you were there. Did you have that film developed?'
'Sure.'
'Do you have it there? Can you look for me and see what you caught?' Kate's voice was normal, conversational, but only years of experience kept it that way. Jules was almost certainly dead, murdered by Lavalle, but Kate could not suppress the crazy feeling that the child's life rode on this woman's answer.
'Sure. Do you want me to call you back, or do you want to hang on?'
'I'll hang on,' Kate said firmly.
'It'll be a few minutes,' Montero warned, then put the phone back onto the table.
It was more than a few minutes. Kate entertained herself by chewing a thumbnail, clicking her pen in and out, and listening to the conversation in the house in Anaheim. Montero and her boyfriend were arguing about dinner. Their voices faded and returned, drawers opened and closed, and finally Kate heard Montero shout that she was tired, too; she didn't feel like cooking; why didn't he go down and get some hamburgers; by the time he got back, she'd be finished on the phone.
The receiver was picked up just as a door slammed, and Montero was back on the line. 'Found them. Now, let's see. I took seven or eight shots there, but they're mostly of people on the bus. What are you looking for? Is this some kind of insurance thing?'
'That sort of thing. What kind of background images did you get? Cars, people?'
'Okay. First picture: In the background, there're some people going into the toilets, a couple of cars sticking out behind the bus.'
'License plates?'
'No, they're from the side.'
'Go on.'
'Um. Nothing on this one. Here's one of an old guy standing in the river fishing. Not a bad shot, either. Very evocative. Next is a picture of Beth whatsis in her coat - oh, there're some people and a car in this one. Mother and daughter, I guess, getting into a white convertible. Something foreign, I think.'
'A Saab?'
'Hey, you're right. It is a Saab. How'd you know?' It was an odd sensation, knowing that a stranger a thousand miles to the south was gazing at a picture of her and Jules.
'That's me,' she said.
