with one of the other cars parked outside. How many people looked at their plates, especially on a frigid gray morning? The scissor blades might work to loosen screws as well as the prongs of an engagement ring. If not, then not.
Didi tore off the notepad's page, folded it, and put it into her pocket along with the diamond. She destroyed the next two pages, getting rid of the indentations. She put on her second sweater and her gloves, checked again on Laura's hand – blood coming up through the gauze, but there was nothing more to be done but freeze it with ice – and then Didi went outside to do things that told her she still had the instincts of a Storm Fronter.
6: Sanctuary of Wishes
Pigs were searching for a dark green van with a Georgia license plate?
Good, Mary thought. She was half dozing, her feet up on the Barcalounger and the TV on before her in the cozy little den. By the time the pigs found the van in Rocky Road's barn, she'd be long gone with Drummer.
Her stomach was full. Two ham sandwiches, a big bowl of potato salad, a cup of hot vegetable soup, a can of applesauce, and most of a bag of Oreo cookies. She had fed Drummer his formula – warmed on the stove, which he appreciated – burped him, changed his diaper, and put him to sleep. He'd gone out like a light, in the bed shared by Rocky Road and Cherry Vanilla.
Mary watched the TV through eyelids at half mast. Pigs were searching, the newscaster had said on the ten o'clock news from Iowa City, sixteen miles west of the farmhouse she'd invited herself to visit. Baskin was the name on the mailbox. Mary used to buy ice cream at Baskin-Robbins in Atlanta. Her favorite flavor was Rocky Road. He'd looked like Rocky Road, dark-haired and chunky, enough of a roll of flab around his belly to make him soft and slow and oh-so-easy. His wife was blond and petite, with rosy cheeks. Cherry Vanilla, she was. The fourteen-year- old boy was dark-haired like his father, but more wiry: Fudge Ripple, she figured he'd be if he were a flavor.
There were family pictures on the paneled walls. Smiling faces, all. They no longer smiled. In the garage were two vehicles: a brown pickup truck with a University of Iowa sticker on the rear bumper, and a dark blue Jeep Cherokee. The Cherokee was roomy and had almost a full tank of gas. All she'd have to do is move her suitcases, the baby supplies, and her Doors records from the van, and she'd be ready to roll. An added prize had been finding Rocky Road's gun cabinet. He had three rifles and a Smith Wesson.38 revolver, with plenty of ammunition for all of them. The revolver would join her own Magnum when she packed the Cherokee.
Mary had taken a shower. Had washed her hair and scrubbed her face, and carefully cleaned her wounds with a solution of rubbing alcohol and warm soapy water that had left her gasping with pain on the bathroom floor. Her forearm wound looked the nastiest, with its raw red edges and its glint of bone down in the crusted matter, and her fingers from time to time would convulse as if she were clawing the air. But it was her torn thigh that kept oozing blood and hurting like a barefoot walk on razor blades. Her knee had turned purple and had swollen up, too, and the bruises advanced all the way to her hip. Mary had packed cotton against the wounds, put bandages from the medicine cabinet on top of those, and bound her forearm and thigh with strips of torn sheets. Then she'd put on one of Rocky Road's woolen bathrobes, gotten herself a Bud from the refrigerator, and eased herself into the Barcalounger to wait out the night.
The newscast's weather segment came on. A woman with blond hair sculpted into a spray-frozen helmet stood in front of a map and pointed to a storm system growing up in northwest Canada. Should be hitting the Iowa City-Cedar Rapids area in thirty-six to forty-eight hours, she said. Good news for the ski resorts, she said, and bad news for travelers.
Mary reached over beside her chair and picked up the road atlas she'd found in Fudge Ripple's room, there on his desk next to his geography homework papers. It was opened to the map of the United States, showing the major interstate highways. I-80 would be the most direct route to San Francisco and Freestone, taking her through Iowa, Nebraska, curving up into Wyoming and down again into Utah, through Nevada and finally into northern California. If she kept her speed at sixty-five and the weather wasn't too bad, she could make Freestone in another couple of days. When she left here depended on how she felt in the morning, but she wasn't planning on spending another night in a dead man's house. The telephone had rung five times since she'd herded them into the barn at six o'clock, and that made her nervous. Rocky Road might be the mayor or the preacher around here, or Cherry Vanilla might be the belle of the farm-life social set. You never knew. So it was best to clear out as soon as her bones could take the highway again.
She was weary, and she ached. Growing old, she thought. Giving in to pain and getting weak.
Ten years ago she could have strangled Bedelia Morse with one hand. Should've beat her to death with a piece of wood, she thought. Or shot her with the Magnum and then run the van over the other bitch. But things had been moving so fast, and she'd known she was torn up and she was deep-down scared she was going to pass out before she and Drummer could get away. She'd figured the pitbulls were going to finish Laura Clayborne off, but now she was wishing she'd been certain.
I panicked, she thought. I panicked and left them both alive.
But their car was gone. The dogs had done a number on Laura, at least as bad as the damage done to herself. Should have killed her, Mary fretted. Should have run over her with the van before I left. No, no; Laura Clayborne was finished. If she was still alive, she was gasping in a hospital bed somewhere. Suffer, she thought. I hope you suffer good and long for trying to steal my baby.
But she was growing old. She knew it. Growing old, getting panicked, and leaving loose strings.
Mary slowly and painfully got out of the lounger and limped back to check on Drummer. He was sleeping soundly on the bed, cuddled up in a clean blue blanket, the pacifier clenched in his mouth, and his cherub face scraped from friction with the floorboard. She stood there, watching him sleep, and she could feel fresh blood oozing down her thigh but she didn't mind. He was a beautiful boy. An angel, sent from heaven as a gift for Jack. He was so very beautiful, and he was hers.
'I love you,' Mary whispered in the quiet.
Jack was going to love him, too. She knew he would.
Mary picked up her bloody jeans from the floor and reached into a pocket. She brought out the clipping from the Sierra Club newsletter, now stained with spots of gore. Then she limped back to the den, and the telephone there. She found a phone book, got the area code she needed, and dialed directory assistance in northern California. 'Freestone,' she told the operator. 'I'd like the number of Keith Cavanaugh.' She had to spell the last name.
It was rattled off by one of those computer voices that sound human. Mary wrote the number down on a sheet of yellow notepad paper. Then Mary dialed directory assistance a second time. 'Freestone. I'd like the number of Nick Hudley.'
It joined the first phone number on the sheet. A third call: 'Freestone. Dean Walker.'
'The number you have requested is not available at this time,' the computer voice said.
Mary hung up, and put a question mark beside Dean Walker's name. An unlisted number? Did the man not have a phone? She sat in a chair next to the phone, her leg really hurting again. She stared at Keith Cavanaugh's number. Did she dare to dial it? What would happen if she recognized Jack's voice? Or what if she dialed both numbers and neither voice was Jack's? Then that would leave Dean Walker, wouldn't it? She picked up the receiver again; her fingers did their clutching dance, and she had to put the phone down for a minute until the spasms had ceased.
Then she dialed the area code and the number of Keith Cavanaugh.
One ring. Two. Three. Mary's throat had dried up. Her heart was pounding. What would she say? What could she say? Four rings. Five. And on and on, without an answer.
She hung up. It was a little after nine o'clock in Freestone. Not too late to be calling, after all these years. She dialed Nick Hudley's number.
After four rings, Mary heard the phone click as it was being picked up. Her stomach had knotted with tension.
'Hello?' A woman's voice. Hard to say how old.
'Hi. Is Nick Hudley there, please?'
'No, I'm sorry. Nick's at the council meeting. Can I take a message?'
'Um…' She was thinking furiously. 'I'm a friend of Nick's,' she said. 'I haven't seen him for a long time.'
