day?”
She shook her head. “No, she’s only doing this until his car is fixed. Before he wrecked his car, he would take care of his own grocery shopping, or, you know, he’d go out to eat. I’m hoping she doesn’t spoil him too much.”
“What happened to his car?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. He got into some kind of accident a few weeks ago. I guess it, like, kind of embarrasses him. He won’t talk about it. He was going to try to fix it himself. God! Can you imagine? Probably have to drive it in reverse all the time!”
A few weeks ago. I tried to respond lightly, to keep the conversation going, but it was difficult to keep smiling. “I take it you talked him out of that idea?”
“No, Grandma had the car towed down to Sun Coast-this body shop on Beach Boulevard. Uncle Bobby was mad, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it.”
“Maybe he thought it needed to go to a specialist.”
“A Camry? I don’t think so-hey, are you sure you’re okay? You look a little pale again.”
A little truth wouldn’t hurt. “I’m just not very good about being locked in places.”
“No one could blame you for being freaked out. I mean, you go into this dude’s house, just bringing him something to eat, and he acts like something out of
I laughed. “It’s the inventor in him.”
“Oh, wow, you’ve seen that movie?”
“I read the book.” I steered the conversation back to Robert DeMont. “So your uncle was surprised to find the car gone from his garage?”
“Oh, man, it was so funny when he found out that it wasn’t there! He just about died! But if we had waited for him to do anything about it, Grandma’d be fixing him free meals forever!”
“Do you think Sun Coast does good work? I’m thinking of having this car painted.”
“Yeah, they’re good. But this car is so rad just the way it is-you aren’t going to paint it pink or anything like that are you?”
I grimaced. “Not pink.”
She laughed and gave me directions to Sun Coast. We talked for a little while longer, then she said she’d better go back to help her grandmother. She stepped away and said, “Hope you’ll come back. I could tell that Grandma liked visiting with you.”
“I promise I will. Tell her I’ll bring Travis.”
“Who’s he?”
“My good-looking cousin,” I said. “Much younger cousin.”
She smiled. “Cool!”
I didn’t think a body shop would be open on a Sunday, but I couldn’t keep myself from driving past it. I made my way over to Highway 39, Beach Boulevard. I didn’t have far to go before I came to Sun Coast. As expected, it was closed. I pulled up in front and saw several cars locked up behind its wrought-iron fence. None of them were Camrys. I’d have to come back on Monday.
I headed back to PCH. At a traffic light, I moved the envelope on the seat next to me so that it was tucked in more securely. I thought of Travis. With some distance between me and Robert DeMont’s house, I began to doubt myself. Maybe I should have stayed and talked to De-Mont, should have at least tried to figure out what he was planning next. I could have learned more. What assignment was Richmond working on now, I wondered?
With a little lane changing, I got past some slowpokes on Highway 1. In the clear, I asked for a little more from my old ragtop, and it delivered. I was anxious to get back to my family.
28
“Frank called,” Mary said when I returned. “He left this number. Room two fifty-four.”
“Where’s Travis?”
“Sleeping. His hand was bothering him and-of course, much more than that. Took one of those pills. Sleep will do him good. You look like you could use a little nap yourself.”
I did feel weary, but I knew it wasn’t caused by a lack of sleep. Remembered precariousness, vulnerability-that was what weighed on me. It was as if I had blindly stepped out over a cliff with one foot, drew back in time to keep from falling, but now, with solid ground beneath me, could only think of that near miss.
“Maybe I’ll try to catch some sleep a little later,” I told her. “Mind if I use your phone?”
I billed the call to my home number.
“Are you in Montana?” I asked Frank, once I was connected to his room.
“Yes, in Helena.” He gave me the hotel name, which I hadn’t been able to decipher from the switchboard’s mumbled answer. “Thought I’d give you that information on DeMont,” he said.
“That was fast-this friend of yours must be pretty efficient.”
“I didn’t ask for anybody’s help.” I could hear the satisfaction in his voice. “I looked it up myself-well, Pete and I worked on it together, and I found it first.”
“How?”
He laughed. “Same way you would have. I went to the library.”
“And to think some women have to worry about how their husbands will spend a Saturday night on the road.”
“Be sure you tell Rachel that Pete came with me. The library was open last night and we had some time, so we looked at microfilm-old local newspaper files, just to see if we could find anything. Pete took the first half of June, I took the second half. And I found it.”
“Great! Tell me what you learned.”
“Okay. June 19, 1940. Robert DeMont and his father were named in the article, and the paper referred to them as ‘two drifters from California.” They did some work on a farm owned by a widow, on the understanding that she’d pay them. She wasn’t satisfied with the work and was going to give them less than the agreed-upon amount. Robert lost his temper, picked up a kitchen knife and took a couple of swipes at her.“
“A knife?”
“Yeah.” He paused. “Maybe it’s his weapon of choice.”
I began to feel a little better about breaking DeMont’s window-and a little shaky again.
“Are you there?” he asked.
“Yes-sorry. So what happened then?”
“According to the paper, Horace and the widow struggled with Robert, both trying to get control of him, but he still managed to cut her once. Horace wrested the knife away from him, and then helped the widow bind up her wound.”
I had been in Robert DeMont’s kitchen. What if he had been in the mood to stab somebody then?
“Apparently it wasn’t very deep,” Frank was saying, “but naturally, she was upset. A neighbor happened by and the DeMonts got scared and ran off. The neighbor called the police, who managed to catch the DeMonts before they got very far.”
“They were both arrested?”
“No, just Robert. But Horace wouldn’t leave town without him. There was a second article, a little later on, saying that the charges were dropped, and there’s a quote from the widow that made it sound as if the whole thing was a misunderstanding.”
“Right,” I said. “A misunderstanding that got straightened out once Papa DeMont’s checks cleared the bank.”
“Probably.”
“I wonder how often his money covered some situation like this?”
“I don’t know,” he said, “but steer clear of these people, all right?”
“I can promise you, I won’t go near Horace or Robert DeMont.” I didn’t tell him I had already learned that
