Now, she had to know. The window was open, and there was no shutting it. If Edna wouldn’t talk, there had to be another way. Myrtle had two elderly female cousins in the area, one a widow in a nursing home in Dudson Falls, the other an old maid still in her family’s farmhouse (though without the farm acreage) outside North Dudson. Myrtle had tried talking to both of them this last week but had gotten nowhere. The frustrating thing about trying to deal with doddering oldsters was that it was impossible to know for sure whether they were lying or merely feeble-minded. Both old ladies had sworn ignorance of Myrtle’s male parentage, though, so that was that.
What else was there, what other way to learn about the past? Twenty-six years ago. Who was spending time then with Edna Gosling, already thirty-six years of age and chief librarian at the Putkin’s Corners municipal library? It was really too bad the Vilburgtown Reservoir had drowned Putkin’s Corners a few years later; there might have been clues there. Well, they were unreachable now.
And the County Post seemed to contain no clues at all. No photos of the younger Edna Gosling on the arm of this gentleman or that at VFW Post clambakes or Dudson Consolidated School reunions, no “and passenger Edna Gosling” in stories of automobile accidents, no “accompanied by Miss Edna Gosling” in social-page wedding reports.
What else had Edna said about the man she claimed to be Myrtle’s father back there at her first startled instant of recognition? “It couldn’t happen, but it did,” she’d said, meaning, presumably, that she hadn’t believed the man would—no, could—ever return to this part of the world. Because she’d thought he was dead? Out of the country? Permanently hospitalized? But then she’d called the man, as Myrtle remembered it, a “dirty bastard son of a bitch.” Was that because he’d left her, pregnant and unwed, so many years ago?
If only Edna would open up!
But she wouldn’t, that’s all. But there was nothing. And now it was nearly six o’clock, time for Myrtle to leave work and go pick up Edna at the Senior Citizens Center. Having finished going through for the third time the papers covering the year before her birth, Myrtle sighed, fast-cranked the roll of microfilm back onto its reel, put it away in its box, said good evening to Janice (the employee who would steer the library through the twilight hours), went out to the employee parking area behind the library, got behind the wheel of the black Ford Fairlane, and drove across town and down Main Street to where Edna stood irritably on the curb, waiting.
The clock on the Fairlane’s dashboard assured Myrtle she wasn’t late, so Edna’s irritation was simply at its normal level of background static and nothing for Myrtle to worry about. Therefore, she had a welcoming smile on her face as she pulled to the curb before the dour old lady and pushed open the passenger door, calling, “Hello, Mother!”
“Hm,” Edna commented. She stepped forward to climb into the car, then glanced up over its top at a passing vehicle and suddenly shouted, “Goddamn!”
Now, “goddamn” was not something Edna said. It certainly wasn’t something she ever shouted, and it absolutely positively wasn’t something she would shout in the middle of the public street. Astounded, Myrtle gaped at her mother as Edna clambered into the car, slammed the door, pointed a trembling and bony finger at the windshield, and cried, “Follow that son of a bitch!”
Then she understood. Peering out, seeing a clean new tan automobile driving away from them down Main Street, Myrtle said, “My father again?”
“Follow him!”
Myrtle was, God knows, willing. Putting the Fairlane in gear, she pulled out onto Main Street just about a block behind that tan car, with only one other automobile in between. Weaving left and right to see past that intervening car, she could make out that the tan car was a new Cadillac Sedan de Ville, with MD plates. Myrtle, waiting impatiently for a chance to pass the extraneous car, said, “Is my father a doctor?”
“Hah!” Edna said. “He liked to play doctor plenty enough. Don’t you lose him, now.”
“I won’t,” Myrtle promised.
“What’s he up to?” Edna muttered, beating her bony fist against the dashboard.
The car up ahead had four people in it, two in front and two in back. Maybe I’m going to get to know my father after all these years, Myrtle thought.
“Prick son of a bitch cocksucker.”
And she was sure as heck getting to know her mother better, too.
TWENTY
“Car following us,” Kelp said.
Dortmunder, in the backseat with Wally, twisted around to look out the rear window. They’d just put yet another little town behind them, and three vehicles were visible back there, strung out along this country road flanked by forest and small clearings containing tiny aluminum-sided houses with dead automobiles in their front yards. “Which one?” Dortmunder asked. “The black Fairlane. The one right behind us.”
The Fairlane was about three car lengths back; pretty close for a tail. Frowning at it, Dortmunder tried to make out the people inside through the sky-reflecting windshield. “You sure?” he said. “Looks to me like a couple women in there.”
“Been right on our ass for miles,” Kelp said.
“They don’t act like pros,” Dortmunder said.
Wally, excitement making his eyes and mouth wetter than usual, said, “Do you think they really are, Andy? Following us?”
Tom, up front next to Kelp, said, “One way to be sure. We’ll circle once. If they’re still with us, we’ll take them out. Anybody carrying?”
“No,” Dortmunder said.
Wally, very eager, said, “Carrying what?”
“You aren’t,” Dortmunder told him. “Don’t worry about it.”
“But what is it?” Wally asked. “Carrying what, John? What aren’t I carrying?”
“A gun,” Dortmunder explained, to shut him up, and Wally’s eyes grew huge and even wetter with this new thrill.
Meanwhile, up front, Tom was saying, “There’s a left just up ahead. You’ll take it, then the next left, and it’ll swing us back to this road just this side of that town we went through. If your Fairlane’s still with us then, we’ll have to get rid of them.” Twisting around, he frowned at Dortmunder and said, “This peaceful impulse of yours, Al, you’re letting it take over your life. You don’t want to go around all the time without heat.”
“As a matter of fact, I do,” Dortmunder told him.
Tom grimaced and shook his head and faced front. They made the left, onto a smaller and narrower and curvier road. “The Fairlane made the turn,” Kelp said, looking at the rearview mirror.
They drove along quietly then, the four of them in the purring Cadillac. Kelp had, as Dortmunder had known he would, come up with excellent transportation. And an extra passenger, too, since Kelp on his own had decided it would be a good idea to tell Wally the actual story here (which Tom hadn’t liked one bit, but it was already done, so there you are) and bring the little butterball along so he could have a look at the actual terrain, to help him and his computer think about the problem better. So here they all were, the Unlikely Quartet, driving around the countryside.
Around and around. A few miles farther along this secondary road, just after a steep downgrade and a one-lane stonewalled bridge, they came to the second left, as Tom pointed out. Kelp took it, and looked in the mirror. “Still with us,” he said.