about once I passed the Welcome to Groverton sign advertising a population of 4,500-maybe twice the size of the closest town to my father’s fishing camp north, and west, of here. There were enough locals to justify two grocery stores, half a dozen convenience stores, another lumber operation on the other side of town, and a main street with three traffic lights and about ten blocks of businesses.
It didn’t take long to find Sammi’s Gas Station, a block past the center of town. Eight self-serve pumps, five do-it-yourself car-wash bays, and a kiosk just big enough to hold a cashier, a counter, and a rack displaying candy bars, chips, and pine-scented car deodorizers.
The car needed gas, so I pulled up to the pump and popped the fuel lid by pulling on a lever on the floor by the front seat. There was a label on the lid advising me to use the high-octane stuff, so I hit the button for super unleaded, shoved the pump into the car, and squeezed the handle.
Rather than pay by credit card at the pump, I went into the kiosk when I was done and handed the short, dark-skinned, East Indian-looking man at the computerized cash register my credit card.
“How you doing?” I said.
He nodded as he swiped my card through the reader. “You want anything else? Some snacks? I have got the chips and candy bar.”
I passed. I’d had my fill of junk at the hotel. “I wonder if you could help me, though,” I said. “Do you recognize this car I’m driving?”
The man peered out the window at it. “That is a nice car,” he said. “Very expensive, I am betting, yes?”
“It was in here a few days ago, but there would have been someone else driving it. A woman.” I took the Suburban clipping from my jacket pocket, unfolded it, and showed it to the man.
The man shrugged. “We get many people, mostly from around here, but some passing through too, so I don’t know. She is very pretty, though. This woman, she is your wife?”
“No, she’s not, but yes, she is pretty. Do you recognize her at all?”
He shook his head. “No. I am so sorry. I do not.”
“Or the car? I bet you don’t get that many cars like that one.”
“Oh, it is a nice car,” he said again. “You don’t see many like that around here. Most people, they drive pickups or four-times-four. That car, it is no good in snow, right?”
“Well, I don’t know. I’ve never driven it in the winter. So did you see the car here last week?”
“What day was it?” I handed him the receipt I’d found in the car. He glanced at it. “This was Thursday. See?” He pointed to the numbers at the top of the receipt indicating the date. That would have been the day before Martin Benson was killed. It would have meant Trixie had driven up here probably just for the day, maybe driven back the morning of the day Benson had his throat slit.
“Thursday, I do not work, also Wednesday,” the attendant said. “That is my weekend, but then, on the real weekend, I work both of those days, the Saturday and the Sunday. I am here from eight in the morning until eight at night. It is a long day. At least I do not get robbed, not like my cousin, who runs a gas station in the city. He’s a surgeon.”
“Who would have been here on Thursday?”
“Well, Hector, he would have been here. He is here most days of the Monday to Friday. He is over there, in the car-wash bays, getting the change out of the machines. He might have noticed something. He is always looking for, you know, what he calls it, the snatch.”
“Yes, well,” I said. “If he’s always looking for that, then yes, he might have noticed this woman.”
The man beamed, glad to be helpful. “I have to stay here, but you go find him.”
Hector, a tall, fat, bearded man who looked like he’d be more at home on a pirate ship than maintaining a car-wash bay, had opened a locked panel on the self-serve car-wash controls and was dumping quarters into a plastic pail. Before he noticed I was there, I saw him grab a small handful of quarters and slip them into his pants pocket.
“Excuse me, Hector?”
I nearly gave him a heart attack. He whirled around, saw me, put his hand to his mouth and coughed nervously. “What?”
“Are you Hector?” I asked.
“Yeah, I guess. Sure. What can I do for you?” He turned so that I couldn’t see his pocket bulging with coins.
“The fellow at the cash register said you might be able to help.”
Hector rolled his eyes, as if his fellow employee was always fobbing things off on him. “Yeah, what is it?”
“I’m trying to find someone who was in here for gas recently.”
“Oh yeah?” Hector, taking a few steps in my direction, had figured by now that maybe I didn’t care about his skimming a few quarters off the top. He’d come close enough to the front of the bay to see the pumps, and I pointed to Trixie’s car.
“She would have been driving that vehicle,” I said. “On Thursday. I have a picture.” I handed him the clipping.
Hector held on to the paper as if it allowed him to touch Trixie directly. “Whoa, no wonder you’re looking for her,” he said, leering. Then he wiped the expression from his face and said, “She’s not your wife, is she?”
“No.”
He smiled and relaxed. “I didn’t want you to think I’d be speaking disrespectfully of your lady or something. But since she’s not your wife, I gotta tell ya, that’s a fine piece of ass.”
There was a bit of a whiff coming off Hector, and I suspected his involvement with members of the opposite sex was limited to discussing them as lecherously as possible, with other men.
“Oh yeah,” I said. “That’s for sure. Nice-looking lady. Why do you think I’m looking for her?”
Hector grinned. “I hear ya. She was driving that car?”
“That’s right.”
“So, like, how come you’re driving it now?”
“Long story,” I said, but decided I could give it a smutty twist to keep Hector interested. “Let’s just say she was happy to provide a few services for the chance to borrow it from me for a while.”
Hector snorted. He pointed to a rusty pickup beyond the kiosk. “I don’t suppose she’d like to borrow that for a weekend?” He laughed, then added, “Fuck, she could keep it!”
Now we were both a couple of dirty guys having a good laugh.
“So, do you remember seeing her?” I asked, trying to keep things on track.
“Sure, I remember. Don’t see a lot of girls like that around here, you know? Be hard to forget her. Black leather coat, these black high-heeled boots. Instant boner material, you know what I’m talking about?” He looked at me to see if I really did know what he was talking about. I nodded. “She pulled in, pumped the gas herself. I’d of been more than happy to do the pumping myself, if you get my drift.” Another grin.
I forced another smile onto my face. “You talk to her at all, notice anything? She have anyone in the car with her?”
“Didn’t see no one. And I didn’t talk to her, neither. She just filled up, was all. I like a girl pumps her own gas.”
“How about when she left? Which way did she drive out?” If she’d been heading back to Oakwood at this point, she’d have probably gone left, or west. If she’d turned right, and gone east, it was anybody’s guess where she’d gone.
Hector thought back. “Actually, she just pulled out and parked across the street and I think she went into that store over there.” He pointed to a children’s clothing store with a sign over the window that said Terri’s. First, Sammi’s, then Terri’s. The town had a y shortage.
“Did you see her leave after that, notice which way she went?”
Hector shrugged. “It’s not like I hung around to see where she’d go. I’m not like some sort of perv or something.”
“No,” I said. “Who’d ever think such a thing?”
I thanked Hector, moved my car so it wasn’t blocking the pumps, and found a parking spot on the main street. I walked back down to Terri’s, surveyed the display window featuring clothes and brightly colored, chunky-looking plastic toys for youngsters. A bell tinkled as I opened the door to go inside, and I browsed the tables until a woman in her mid-thirties with reddish-blonde hair approached.
