wrist, concentrating on the task, making more out of it than she needed to. But it only takes so long to put on a watch. Finally she said, “Where are you going?”
“I’m going to try to figure out what’s going on. I’m heading to Canborough, and then on to some place called Groverton.”
“So you’re helping Trixie,” she said quietly.
“Maybe,” I said. “And maybe not. All I want to do now is find out the truth. I’ve been suspended from work, handcuffed next to a corpse, and implicated in a murder. And”-I shrugged-“now that I don’t have a job to go to, it’s important to keep busy.”
She still wouldn’t look at me. “I used to laugh when the suggestion of you having an affair came up. The idea that someone like you, someone as nervous as you, someone whose emotions and anxieties are so close to the surface, could pull it off.” She took a tissue from the box next to her bed and appeared to be dabbing at her eyes. “Now, I don’t know anymore.”
“The lipstick,” I said.
Sarah froze, said nothing.
I couldn’t tell her that I’d already explained this to Angie. “It was when I was handcuffed,” I said. “Trixie gave me a kiss goodbye, before she ran off, with my car, leaving me there to be found by you. Maybe she thought it was the least she could do for the trouble she’d caused me.”
I knew I wasn’t being totally honest here, at least not about how I had perceived Trixie’s kiss. It had seemed like more, on her part, than a simple kiss of apology, or goodbye.
And I didn’t quite know what to make of that.
“Everything started to go wrong when you decided we should move to Oakwood,” Sarah said. “You got into that trouble, you met Trixie. If you’d never moved us out there, you never would have met her. And you wouldn’t be in this mess you’re in now, and I wouldn’t be heading in to my first day in the home section, having been humiliated in front of the entire newsroom.”
There was that.
“Yeah,” I said. “I can see how you might put it together that way. But I need to follow this through now. I can’t just sit here.”
She turned around, her eyes red, her makeup smeared. “I think I liked it better when you were home, writing your books.”
I nodded. “It’s when I’m allowed to go out into the world that I start getting into trouble,” I conceded. I thought maybe she would laugh at that, but there was nothing. I took a breath, and asked, “Do you want me to pack a bigger bag?”
Sarah bit her lip, looked out the window. She lowered her head, glanced at her watch, and said, “I’m going to be late for work.” She sniffed. “One doesn’t like to be late the first day of a new job.” She had to move right by me to get out of the room, and as she passed she reached out and touched my arm for just a moment. “Be careful,” she said.
I listened to her go down the stairs and out the door, then, feeling almost dizzy and with a lump in my throat, dropped onto the edge of the bed. She hadn’t told me to pack a bigger bag, but she hadn’t told me not to. I had to make this right. I had to climb back out of this hole, to-
The phone rang.
I glanced at the digital readout, didn’t recognize the number, and picked up. “Hello?”
“Mr. Walker? Zack Walker?”
I thought I knew the voice, but wasn’t sure. “Yes?”
“I’m sorry for calling you at home, but when I called the Metropolitan, they said you were on a leave or something. But there was only one Z. Walker in the phone book, so I took a shot.”
“Who’s this?”
“Brian Sandler. From the city health department.”
Sandler? I suddenly felt my guard go up. The last time we’d spoken, he’d implied any number of threats. “What is it?”
“I-I need to talk to you.”
“About what?”
“I think I may have crossed some sort of line when I was talking to you yesterday. I think you might have taken what I said as a threat.”
I wondered what sort of game he was playing here. “Okay,” I said.
“Look, I think I’m ready to talk. I need to tell someone what’s going on.”
“Talk about what? What’s going on?”
“I can’t talk to you about it on the phone. Could you meet me someplace?”
I shoved a pair of rolled-up socks that I’d tossed onto the bed into my bag. “I’m heading out of town for a day or two,” I said.
“When are you leaving?”
“Pretty soon.”
“I could meet you in the next hour. You know Bayside Park?”
“Sure,” I said. I hadn’t even picked up my rental car yet. I might have to grab a cab if I was going to meet him within the hour.
“I’ll be in a blue Pontiac. In the parking lot that faces the lake.”
I was curious, and thought, What the hell. “Okay. In an hour.”
“Don’t bring anyone with you.”
“What is this, Sandler? Are you setting me up for something?”
“God no, just do it, okay?”
I ran my hand across the bedspread, feeling the texture of it on my fingers. “An hour,” I said, hung up, and instantly wondered whether I had done the right thing.
What if this was some kind of trap? What if Sandler was setting me up for a meeting with Mrs. Gorkin and her charming daughters? Maybe they planned to rearrange my face, fit me with concrete overshoes, or even worse, make me eat one of their burgers.
Was it smart to go into something like this alone?
I walked down the hall to my study, where, if I still wrote science fiction novels, I’d be writing them. It would be nice, I thought, to be doing that again. How much more relaxing it would be spending my days imagining encounters with multi-eyed, acid-spewing aliens than dealing with real-life thugs.
I found my address book and opened it to J, found the phone number I was looking for, and dialed.
“Jones,” said a voice after the third ring.
“Lawrence,” I said.
“Zack, I’ll be damned,” said Lawrence. “How ya doin’?”
“Well, I’m thinking that I might be in a situation where I’m in over my head.”
“Well,” said Lawrence. “There’s a surprise.”
Of course, Gary denied having anything to do with Eldon’s death. Shocked, he was. Simply shocked. But Miranda was pretty good at spotting liars. She’d had one for a father. When Gary said, “I can’t imagine what happened. How could he not see that train coming?,” it was just like when her father would say, “I was just tucking you in, sweetheart, don’t make a federal case out of it.”
And there was what the police had told her. That the engineer, up in the cab of the diesel that took Eldon’s Toyota for its harrowing trip down the track, said he’d seen a pickup behind the car, that he could have sworn the truck rammed the car, shoved it right onto the tracks just before the impact.
The police already suspected Gary’d had something to do with that other gang member whose Super Bee got pushed into the side of a moving train. So they figured this for a retaliation, a tit-for-tat kind of thing. Give them a taste of their own medicine.
“That must be what happened, Candy,” Gary said, when Miranda told him the theory the cops were working on. “A revenge thing. Although, still, it might have been an accident. You never know, right? Crazy shit happens sometimes.”
“It’s just funny,” Miranda said, trying to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. “Eldon dying just like that other
