Caroline was close to tears. “Mike, I didn’t do anything.”
How could he respond? He was a cop. She was a convicted felon and a fugitive out on bail. He said nothing, just squeezed her arm and left.
I didn’t know what else I could do for her. As long as Lucy was out there pretending to be Caroline, the genuine article would have some peace. She could get in touch with her lawyer and try to explain things to her kids who were still in Tucson. The next day would be a totally different story. And she’d had lots of them. So many it was possible she no longer knew which one was the truth. I picked up my backpack and got ready to leave.
“I should go, too,” I said. “Besides, you probably want to be alone.”
“I don’t want to be alone. I’ve just gotten out of a ten-by-ten cell. You can’t leave me here. If the reporters don’t think I’m arriving until later, and Lucy and Grant take the back roads trying to ditch them, I’ll be all by myself. What if he is out there? Corian Man?”
“Countertop. He didn’t specify stone or composite. Caroline, much as I hate to admit this, O’Malley was probably right. It was a raccoon or a turkey.”
“Turkeys don’t throw off five-foot-tall shadows, and if there is one that big outside I’d rather not be here.” she said quite sensibly. She grabbed an erasable marker and scribbled a cryptic note on the whiteboard letting Grant know that she was all right and would be in touch. I waited while she rummaged in her hall closet.
– -
An hour later, we were on the road. Caroline Sturgis was crouched down in the backseat of my car, under a tarp wearing one of her son’s hockey uniforms. Every once in a while, she’d peek out from under the tarp.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“Toward New Haven,” I said. “More places to stash you.” That was our plan, I’d check Caroline into a hotel or motel for the night and head home. Then I’d call Grant and tell him where to pick her up in the morning.
“I should have made sure this was Jason’s clean uniform,” she said, sniffing the armpits of her son’s jersey. “I think I took the dirty one.” She popped up again like one of those carnival games where the mole keeps bobbing up and you’re supposed to whack it on the head. “Stay down,” I said.
“Between the stinky uniform and the dirty tarp it’s hard to breathe under here.”
“That’s not dirt on the tarp, it’s soil. Do you know there are places in the world where people eat dirt?” I said.
“Kids do it, too. They call of pica-eating stuff that isn’t food. I hope that’s not on the menu tonight, I am the tiniest bit hungry.”
We passed an exit whose only claim to fame was cheap gas, something called the Famely Restaurant, and a motel, the Hacienda.
“Famely with an e,” I said, thinking ahead to dinner. “If they can’t spell can they read recipes?”
“Oh, Grant and I stayed at a place called the Hacienda on our honeymoon in Zihuatenejo.” She sounded wistful and looked pathetic. Her face was dirty, and after all she’d been through, I thought, why not? Something told me it wouldn’t be the romantic Mexican hideaway she and Grant had found, but if the sheets were clean it would do for the night. And hopefully the cook at the Famely restaurant was better at his job than the sign maker was.
I got off at the next exit and made my way back, snaking along the road that ran beside the highway until it didn’t and then did again and finally we reached the Hacienda.
The place looked about as Mexican as your average generic bag of nachos-cardboardy, some orange, some red, very little spice. I parked around the back so the car couldn’t be seen from the lobby.
“Is there a hockey mask in that bag?” I asked.
Caroline looked through her son’s duffel bag and pulled out a face and throat protector. She put it on. Her face was covered but her hair stuck out.
“Here, use these.” I tossed her a scrunchie and a baseball hat, my “don’t leave home without them” kit that I always kept in the compartment between the seats. “Put the hat on backward. It’ll cover the stubby ponytail.” With Jason’s sweatshirt thrown around her shoulders, Caroline could pass for a boy, if someone didn’t look too closely.
“I’ll go to the front desk, you walk around the lobby like you’re not interested.”
“I have a teenage son,” Caroline said, fidgeting with her disguise. “I know what ‘not interested’ looks like.”
We needn’t have worried. Peyton, the desk clerk, couldn’t have cared less. It was a little strange to see a grown man, wide-eyed and baby-faced, in an orange vest festooned with yellow rickrack and pom-poms, guzzling diet soda and reading a vampire book so close to Halloween, but probably no stranger than seeing a nervous-looking woman and her sullen, hockey fanatic son checking into a dumpy highway hotel this late on a weeknight.
“Reservation?”
He must have been joking. Did anyone ever stop here intentionally? I’d assumed only the prospect of driving oneself into a ditch would induce anyone to check into this dive.
“No,” I said.
We checked in under my name, as mother and son; we’d be staying for one night and we’d need two beds and two keys. My “son,” wacky kid, insisted on wearing his face protector and waving his stick around when we entered the building.
“Teenage boys-what can you do?” I said, plucking the card keys from the counter and hoping I sounded like a typical suburban mom. I tried not to let it bother me that the desk clerk didn’t bat an eye at the idea that I was the mother of a teenager. (That was the last straw. Microdermabrasion, here I come.)
Caroline was in the breakfast area of the lobby where she’d probably be having bad coffee and chemically preserved muffins in the morning while I was home sleeping in.
“Jason, Jason.” It took a while for Caroline to realize I was calling her. She was transfixed by the local news report on the lobby television. It was her own smiling image. Blond, blunt-cut hair, velvet headband, no dark roots.
“C’mon,” I said, tugging on her sleeve. “No more television tonight. Didn’t you watch enough in the car?”
Caroline said nothing as we walked down the narrow hall all the way to the end. Our room, number 104, was on the left, next to the pool and spa, and smelled faintly of bleach or whatever it was they used to clean the Jacuzzi. At least they cleaned it. Inside the room, Caroline pulled off the mask and sucked air.
“No wonder Jason has zits.” She tiptoed to the bathroom and dampened a scratchy washcloth to wipe her face while I hurriedly pulled the curtains shut.
The bathroom was a toilet and a tub that Toulouse-Lautrec would have felt cramped in. Outside the closet-sized bathroom was a sink with a square of mirror bolted to the wall, and underneath the sink a rectangle of curling plastic tile on the floor to catch the drips. The rest of the room was just as basic with a microwave; a boxy tweed Herculon loveseat; and the one incongruous item, a giant flat-screen television, which probably cost more than all the other furnishings combined. Priorities, I supposed. I turned it on for background noise.
By this time Caroline and I were starving. I was ready to give the curiously named Famely Restaurant a try, so I told Caroline to make herself as comfortable as possible while I went out to get us some dinner.
“Can’t we order?” she asked.
“I’ll ask at the desk, but I don’t think they have room service here, and I doubt that the Famely Restaurant delivers. Barring any unforeseen circumstances, I’ll be back in thirty minutes with something reasonably healthy to eat. Bolt the door after I leave; don’t open it for anyone but me. Don’t call anyone and don’t answer the telephone. And don’t walk around barefoot on this rug. My shoes are sticking to it. Not a good sign.” Clearly, I was taking my role as “mother” seriously.