As Angie put down the phone, wild trembling once more reasserted itself. She had irretrievably set her plan into motion. If Tony came home and caught her now, she was doomed for sure.
Clutching the suitcase, her beach bag, and a pair of three-inch, red high heels, she hurried out of the house and dashed across the back-yard to the place where the dry wash ran under the fence, the place where she had watched the rabbits come and go, and had envied them their freedom. She had measured the opening with her eyes, but she had never dared approach it with a measuring tape for fear Tony might catch her at it and guess her intentions.
Weak with relief, she found it was easy to push the suitcase, hat and high heels through the high spot under the fence. It was much harder to wiggle under it herself. Once, as she squirmed along, she felt the fabric of the pant-suit hang up on the bottom of the fence, but she managed to free herself without tearing the delicate cloth. At last she found herself standing upright outside the fence, brushing sand and gravel from her clothing and hair and laughing uproariously. She had done it. Despite all of Tony’s deadbolts and alarms, despite all his precautions, Angie Kellogg was Out. The funny little rabbits had shown her the Way.
She may have been out, but she wasn’t home free. Even now, Tony might drive up and catch her waiting beside the road. Resolutely, she crammed her feet into the heels and went tripping across the rough terrain that led to the road and to the house where she was supposed to meet the cab. If anyone saw her like this-and she hoped someone would-they were bound to remember. That was the whole idea. She wanted them to notice. It was Important that Tony pick up the trail and follow her-up to a point.
Her feet were out of practice wearing high heels, and she was limping by the time she reached the place where she was supposed to wait. The cab arrived after what seemed like an eternity, although Angie’s watch said that only twenty minutes had elapsed. “Where to, lady?” the driver asked.
She threw herself into the back seat, letting her head fall as far back as possible so her face was less visible to other cars they might meet along the way.
“The airport,” she said. “As fast as possible. I’ve got a plane to catch.”
The cab driver took her at her word and rove to Tucson International at breathtaking speeds. “What airline?” he asked her, as they approached the terminal.
“United,” she said, hoping that was an air-line that actually flew into Tucson. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw the air-line’s sign in the departing passenger lane.
“Are you gonna check your luggage?” the cabby asked.
“No. There’s not enough time.”
Angie Kellogg had been to O’Hare once, and she had been a regular commuter to L.A.X. She was shocked at the size of Tucson International. It was tiny by comparison.
Once she was in the terminal, she scanned the listed departures. The next plane scheduled to depart was one for Denver that was due to leave within fifteen minutes. With an astonishingly expensive one-way ticket in hand, one she purchased with a fistful of Tony’s cash, she headed for the gate. This was the part she wasn’t quite sure about.
The flight was already boarding when she reached the gate. She hurried inside and found her seat. Then, when the flight attendants were coming down the aisles, closing the over-head luggage doors in preparation for departure, Angie suddenly leaped to her feet, grabbed her bags, and with one hand covering her mouth, bolted for the door. The flight attendants were only too happy to let her go. After all, the flight would be busy enough without taking along a passenger who was clearly too sick to fly before the plane ever left the run-way. When she wasn’t in the jetway by the scheduled departure time, the attendants didn’t spend any time waiting for her, either.
Angie didn’t stop running until she was in-side the stall of the nearest ladies’ restroom. There, she stripped out of the pantsuit and hat in favor of a T-shirt, shorts, and thongs. She pulled off the single identifying luggage tag and left the suitcase in the locked stall by slipping out under the door when the coast was clear. With her purse inside, she carried only the shabby beach bag. She shoved her former finery into the nearest trash container then set about letting down her hair and scrubbing off the deftly applied makeup.
Angie Kellogg had entered the restroom as a distinctively dressed fashion plate. She left twenty minutes later disguised as a dingy young woman who might have been a harried housewife or an impoverished graduate student. With the addition of a large pair of sun-glasses, it was possible not even the cab driver who had picked her up would have recognized her, but Angie wasn’t taking any chances.
She walked back out into the terminal and made her way to the arriving passenger entrance where a driver was loading a stack of luggage into a hotel van. The van said “Spanish Trail.” Angie had no idea where or what the Spanish Trail was, but it was good enough to have a van, and that would take her away from the terminal.
“Room enough for one more?” she asked the driver. He was probably within months of being the same age as Angie herself, but he seemed much younger.
“You bet,” he said, smiling and reaching for her bag. “For you we’ve got plenty of room.”
Angie wasn’t willing to let the beach bag out of her hand. “I’ll carry this,” she said. “It’s not that heavy.”
She climbed into the van and went all the way to the back where a businessman sat with his briefcase resting on his knees. In the middle seat sat an older couple. The man smiled appreciatively at Angie as she went by, and she returned the smile. When she sat down behind him, though, she saw him jump as his wife elbowed him viciously in the ribs and scolded him in an exaggerated whisper.
You’re not working now, Angie reminded herself. Lay off. She was out of the life, and she wanted to stay that way.
As the van made its way through the city, Angie ignored her fellow passengers. Instead, she watched the scenery moving by outside the window, noticing how the desert seemed alive with vivid colors. The shadows on the pavement had hard, clear edges to them, and the silver-blue sky seemed to stretch away into forever. For the first time in her young life Angie Kellogg was free to go and do whatever she wanted.
The Spanish Trail Inn didn’t offer luxury accommodations, but it was far better than some of the flea traps Angie had frequented in her tune. At the front desk there was a bit of a hassle over her renting a room because she carried no ID, but eventually Angie was able to jump that hurdle, registering under her old name-Annie Beason. Desk clerks had never been impervious to her charms, and it pleased her to know they still weren’t. After picking up a newspaper from the stand near the front door, Angie was happy to let the van driver, who doubled as the bellman, carry her suitcase upstairs to her room.
“Will you be staying long?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Angie returned seriously. “If I like it well enough, I may just stay forever.”
Alone in the room, Angie closed the curtains, kicked off her shoes, and lay down on the bed. Annie Beason. It was strange coming back to that old, nearly forgotten name. Just thinking about it caused a stirring of memory and speculation. What would have happened to Annie Beason, if she had stayed in Battle Creek and in school, Angie wondered. By now, she might even have been graduating from college, if she had gone to college, that is. But then again, with her parents, that probably wouldn’t have been possible. According to her father, boys were the ones who needed college. For a man, that was the only sure way out of the blue-collar jungle, but why would a girl need an education?