“I’m thinking that’s not going to catch on.”
“Yeah? I was hoping to go national by October. Tours down under, weight loss guaranteed.”
“If I were you, I’d rethink it.” Lucy glanced in the rearview mirror. “There might be someone following us.”
I turned and looked. A mile or so back, swimming in and out of the heat mirages, was a vague dark dot.
“How long’s it been back there?”
“Ever since the interstate.”
“We’re doing seventy. There’s nowhere to turn off. If that’s fast enough for them, they’d stay behind us.”
“Just sayin’,” she said. “I’ll keep an eye on it.”
“You do that, Honey Bunch.”
She slapped my thigh, then rubbed it. She looked over at me. “Hey, I gotta do something to keep myself awake.”
“Do what you gotta. I’m gonna catch a nap.”
She looked ahead at Shanna’s car, a mile and a half away. “Borroloola, huh? At least the name’s catchy.”
Twenty miles later, Lucy said, “Uh-oh.”
I’d been dozing off, drugged by the heat.
“Uh-oh?” I sat up straighter.
She pointed. “Got a few buildings coming up ahead. She’s turning off.”
“How’s our gas situation?”
“Little over half a tank.”
“Probably good enough. Let’s see what this place is.”
Lucy took it down to fifty-five. The buildings began to take shape. The smaller one was Arlene’s Diner, a dried-up place of peeling clapboards. I didn’t get a good look at it because I had to sink down below the level of the windows as we got near, but the roof looked like it could use work. Lucy pulled off the highway. I kept out of sight so Shanna would think the girl in the car was alone. Trouble is, I didn’t think that all the way through.
“There’s a motel here, too,” Lucy informed me. “Midnight Rider Motel.”
“Spiffy name.”
“Suits the place. You oughta see it. It’s only got four rooms. It probably has dead bodies decaying in the floorboards. And there’s a little house trailer behind the diner that looks like total scurvy crap.”
“Where’s Shanna’s car?” I was curled up beneath the dash, squashed between the shifter and the passenger door. They ought to design Mustangs with more leg room for times like this.
“Parked in front of the door to the diner. She’s not in the car, so she’s inside, eating or using the restroom, speaking of which.”
“Pull off. Park away from her car, far as you can. Did she see you taking her picture back in Vegas at Jo-X’s?”
“I don’t think so. I was just some no-name girl, and she was staring at his house like it was on fire. She never looked at me.”
“Okay, go in, see what’s what.”
“If I can get some food, you want anything?”
“Yeah, beer and a restroom would be great.”
She laughed, eased the car to a stop. No shade anywhere around, which figured. The sun was blazing straight down on my head. I should’ve had her put the top up, but I need stuff to hit me between the eyes before it makes an impact.
“Don’t wander off,” my smart-ass assistant said as she got out and headed for the diner.
Hundred nine degrees, me hugging the floor wondering if I was going to die there, end up rendered into a blob of tallow.
Three minutes.
Five. Five is a long time at a hundred nine fuckin’ degrees.
Then footsteps on gravel. They stopped. I looked up. A huge guy in grimy coveralls was looking down at me.
“Whatcha doin’ down there, dude?” he asked. He had a black beard as dense as a bramble thicket, inch and a half long, eyes that looked like two narrow-set bullet holes.
My impression was that this was not the brightest flame in the candelabra, but I’m often wrong about that. “Got a cramp in my calf,” I said.
“Yeah, those suck. You oughta get out, walk around. And drink more water.”
He left. A minute later a diesel engine snorted to life. I raised my head far enough to see a big rig pass by thirty feet away with a huge backhoe on a flatbed trailer, headed for the highway. I caught a glimpse of Buddie’s Excavating printed on the driver’s-side door.
Another three minutes and Lucy was back. She stood outside the car and handed me a bottle of cold water and a plastic bag.
“Damn,” I said. “They were out of beer?” I was still on the floor, sun blasting down.
“Alcohol’s bad for you in heat like this. I was afraid you were gonna die out here. Drink up.”
I did. Opened the bag and found two more bottles of water, two Snickers bars, Oh Henry, Mars bar, Twix. “No beer, but these’re good for you?”
“It’s all the waitress girl in there had at the register.”
“Girl, huh?”
“Probably midtwenties. I didn’t know what you’d like so I got a selection. And that girl, Shanna—she’s like, wow—tall and beautiful and . . . you know . . .”
“A little bit busty.”
“Totally. About to fly out of that halter she’s wearing. And her hair was long and red, so if you say she’s blond, then she was wearing a pretty good wig. Anyway, she was getting a sandwich to go, so I couldn’t order anything and have us keep up with her, so I got what I could.”
“You forgot the restroom.”
“No, I went.” She grinned, then said, “Okay, that’s not fair. I could drive you around back. There’s a shed back there you could maybe pee behind.”
Well, hell. Things were approaching critical. “Do it,” I said.
She got in the car, jumped back out. “Ow, ow, ow! Son of a bitch, that seat is hot!”
“I coulda told you that, Sweetheart.”
“Well, why didn’t you?”
“Heatstroke?”
She poured cold water on the seat, then got in, ignoring the wet, and drove around behind the diner. As I ducked behind a wooden shed that offered all the privacy I was going to get, Lucy said, “She just got in her car. She’s leaving. Better
