Thirty-six

Unlike their first blissful stay at the other Hacienda, Caroline and Grant couldn’t leave this one fast enough. The Sturgises declined to spend the night and fled north to a house they sometimes rented in Wellfleet, Massachusetts. It would be shuttered for the season, but they knew where the key was hidden, and they would call the owners in Baltimore as soon as they arrived so the Wellfleet police wouldn’t think they were squatters. Having already had run-ins with police in two states and despite the hockey outfit, Caroline and Grant weren’t looking to score a hat trick. And there was a TJ Maxx nearby, so the next morning Caroline could buy warm clothing and get out of her son’s smelly sports gear. No phone in the house, no cell service, no Internet. It was just what they were looking for.

“There’s a general store fifteen minutes away from the house where I can get a cell signal. I’ll call you from there tomorrow,” Caroline said, rushing to her husband’s car in the dark.

Bone-tired, I suggested to Lucy that we spend the rest of night at the Hacienda-after all, we had no fewer than two rooms at our disposal and instead of preservative-laden muffins at the free breakfast bar we could have leftover pizza-but she said something about preferring to take the pizza, chug an energy drink, and get on the road, so we left shortly after Caroline and Grant. Lucy insisted on wearing the wig again and readjusted it several times before we were allowed to leave the room. (Ah yes, room 104, so many fond memories.) She said the wig was in case anyone was following us, but I think she enjoyed being in disguise. How often do grown-ups get to play dress up?

“It’s one thing to stay in a place like that for a story. Quite another if I have a choice,” she said, giving the room a once-over before we left.

“Later when my brain is functioning properly, I’m going to ask you about that ‘story’ part,” I said. “No, let’s do it now and get it over with. What the hell are you talking about?”

She stalled for a bit, not wanting to risk my disapproval, then blurted it out. After spending all day with Grant, she’d gotten his consent to write about the experience, “I Was a Fugitive,” by Lucy Cavanaugh.

“What about Caroline? Doesn’t she have a say?”

She assured me, as she had probably assured Grant, that it would be tasteful and respectful. I had my doubts whether any story entitled “I Was a Fugitive” could be tasteful and respectful. I wondered which tabloid would be the highest bidder for the classy piece.

In the hour or so it took us to drive home, I brought her up to speed on the note and package that Caroline had received what seemed like days ago but was really only that morning.

“You think it was sent by this guy Eddie?” she said.

That was the obvious assumption. Dead or alive-and I was beginning to suspect that Caroline hadn’t told me everything-if Kate Gustafson was not a suspect, who else even knew about Caroline except Donnelley? Warren? O’Malley had told me that he was in the hospital. Her brother? He was an unlikely candidate for villain. Caroline had only spoken of him in glowing terms: my brother. I realized I didn’t even know his first name and wondered if that was an unconscious habit Caroline had picked up from years on the run. Why would he reveal her identity now after all this time? If he had needed money, Caroline would have simply given it to him as he had given it to her.

“And you think Donnelley is passing himself off as this Kevin Brookfield?” she said.

I wasn’t sure what I thought anymore. Brookfield was one of the few newcomers in town. Newcomers were always suspect. I’d been there myself. “That’s what I think today. Last week I thought it was a guy who turned out to be a priest.” I told Lucy about my trip to Mossdale’s stables and my chat with Father Ellis Damon.

“Ellis Damon? E.D.? Same initials?” she said, turning in the passenger seat to face me. “Isn’t that what people do when they make up fake names? Use the same initials as their real ones?”

“E.D. also stands for erectile dysfunction. Do you think Bob Dole was involved? For pete’s sake, Lucy, the guy was a priest.”

“Oh, and I’m a natural blond? You can buy gladiator outfits online. How hard can it be to get one of those little white collars? I think I have one from a silk jacket I bought in Chinatown.”

“If he’d been Eddie Donnelley,” I said, “Caroline would have recognized him when she saw him at Mossdale’s that first day. He couldn’t have changed that much in twenty years. She recognized Jeff Warren right away, but she didn’t even mention the man at the stables. I think she just saw judgment day coming toward her. She was already spooked by the traffic ticket and the fear that her personal information was being fed into a law enforcement computer system. All Father Damon had to do was say ‘good morning, my child’ and she’d have freaked. Poor guy. I think her reaction caused him to question his calling.”

Lucy fell silent. Neither of us had seen any pictures of Donnelley online, and now that Caroline was hurtling toward Cape Cod, the one person who could give us a description was temporarily unavailable. Correction, the one woman. There was always Jeff Warren. And once he got out of the hospital I might ask him. Maybe I could try him anyway. Plenty of people who’d had car accidents could still talk on the phone. I asked Lucy to get my cell from my backpack. Dead.

“This is aggressively antisocial behavior,” Lucy said, shaking the phone at me. “You do realize that.”

“Chill out.” I plugged the cell into the car’s cigarette lighter to recharge it and heard the snippet of classical music that told me I had a message. It was the one from Roxy I hadn’t deleted. I’d forgotten about it.

“Listen to this.” I replayed the message for Lucy.

“What the hell does that mean? Have you spoken to her?” Lucy asked.

I shook my head. “No idea. Just picked it up a few hours ago. I don’t think even Roxy stays in the office that late. We’ll see her tomorrow.”

Warren’s number was in saved contacts, and I scrolled through to find it. I autodialed but was kicked into voice mail. Now I started to wonder where McGinley was. Was he back in Michigan, having made his report? Or was he still in Connecticut waiting to finish the job he’d been sent here to do? Or was he-long shot here-really crashing at his friend’s place so that they could get an early start hauling those countertops?

I checked the rearview mirror obsessively.

Lucy noticed. “I’m not the nervous type,” she said, “but you’re making me jumpy. No one is following us. Why would they? Let’s just get back to your place.”

We pulled into my driveway at around 3:15. We should have been tired, but we’d both gotten our second winds, or maybe it was nervous energy, and instead of collapsing in bed, we decided to pull an all-nighter just like in the old days.

“What’s the flashing light-radon levels reaching red alert?”

“Pay no attention. Something to do with the alarm system. I haven’t been able to clear it since it went off, and I’m afraid to touch any more buttons for fear it’ll go off again. I found out I’m going to be fined a hundred bucks for having a false alarm that the Springfield police had to respond to and I don’t want it to happen again.”

“Ouch. Can’t you get your cop friend to fix it? Like a ticket?”

Did everyone know how to do that except me?

“I’ll get around to reading the manual one of these days when I have some time, like in December.” I dumped my things on the sofa and headed into the kitchen.

“Let me try.” She pushed the reset button and I held my hands over my ears, gearing up for the sirens, but they didn’t go off and surprisingly the flashing red lights disappeared.

“Excellent.”

We sat on the living room floor with our reheated pizza and I powered on the laptop to google images of Eddie Donnelley. Like Warren, it was a relatively common name and until we added the state and the crime we got nowhere. Even then all we got was a grainy black-and-white mug shot from twenty-five years ago that had been reproduced many times, and had only been resurrected because of Caroline’s recent arrest. It could have been any dark-haired male with a long face and brown eyes. The aviator glasses, long hair, and beard didn’t help, I guess. When you’re a drug dealer or undercover cop, it’s an asset to be able to change your looks quickly. Enlarging it only further distorted the image.