Fifteen minutes later Anna Langley took an armload of purchases to the cashier, who looked to be about a hundred years old. They exchanged pleasantries about the fine weather and the guilty pleasures of fast food (but, thankfully, no comments about the Night Stalker), then she paid up and pushed through the door into the sunlight.
She was annoyed to find that Woody had left the car unlocked. She tossed most of her purchases inside — several bags of peanuts and chips and pastries — and stuffed a six-pack of Sprite into the cooler they had put on the backseat. Neither Woody nor Mary was anywhere to be seen. Mary’s duffel bag and purse were gone as well. Anna hoped they hadn’t been stolen. There was such a thing as being too trusting, she thought.
Anna locked the car, headed back inside, described her traveling companions to the cashier, and asked if he’d seen them. He told her he had spotted Woody through one of the east windows, walking across the highway toward a stand of pines awhile ago, and had seen the young lady heading out there after him a few minutes later. That made sense, Anna thought; Woody was a photography nut, and couldn’t resist taking pictures of almost anything, and Mary had probably spotted him out there and followed him after visiting the restroom. But if so, where were her purse and duffel bag?
“If you go over there,” the old-timer said, “tell ’em to be careful — there are some dry washes and open wells around here, and things like that would be hard to see underneath all the grass and bushes. Most of it’s private property, but there ain’t no fences to tell you so. I’d hate for your friends to drop off the face of the earth.”
“I imagine they’d hate that too,” Anna said. But she doubted Woody would have any problems there. He had grown up traipsing through the backwoods.
She thanked the cashier and walked back out into the sunshine. After crossing the road and trudging through a weed-choked field with a sharp eye on the ground ahead of her, she spotted Woody’s blue windbreaker in the distance. Sure enough, he was snapping photos right and left. At the very edge of the trees was a tall, ancient windmill, its rusted blades turning in the breeze while accomplishing nothing at all. Something was rubbing against something, though, and with every rotation came a high-pitched noise: eeee-urrr, eeee-urrr, eeee-urrr. It was a metallic, irritating, and infinitely sad sound.
“Where’s Mary?” Anna called.
Woody looked up. “She hopped on the tornado to Oz. Found a better ride.”
“What?”
“An old couple, she said, on their way to Tupelo. Told me she met them in the parking lot. That’ll get her farther than we’re going, and besides, they had a bigger car.” He frowned and pointed to a spot near her feet. “Watch out — fire ants.”
Anna sidestepped to safe ground. “Probably the folks I saw inside, awhile ago,” she said. “I’m surprised, though, that she didn’t at least say goodbye.”
“She wanted to, but her new traveling buddies were ready to leave. I walked over to help her load her stuff into their car and they took off.”
“Didn’t she come out here with you?”
“Nope. When she found her new chauffeurs, she waved and hollered at me till I noticed her, then I hiked back over there to see her off and came on back. I’m getting some good pictures.” He looked at his watch. “You took awhile in there.”
“I bought some more provisions. I thought there’d be three of us.” Anna was a bit surprised to find herself sad that Mary had deserted them. “At least we swapped cell phone numbers.”
“Sorry she left,” Woody said, going back to his photos, “but it’s her loss. Now we can have all the snacks to ourselves.”
Anna looked around. The ground was damp, but grassy and covered in pine straw. “Why don’t we just eat lunch out here? You hungry yet?”
He grinned. “I’m always hungry.”
“Stay here and do your camera thing — I’ll fetch the vittles. Give me your car keys.”
“It’s not locked.”
“It is now,” she said. “I locked it.”
He dug his keys from his pocket and tossed them to her. “Just don’t go over there,” he added, pointing off to the south. “Poison ivy.”
“There are worse things out here than poison ivy and fire ants.” She told him about what the cashier had said to her about hidden wells and gullies.
“Danger,” he announced, drawing an imaginary sword, “is my middle name.”
Going back to the parking lot seemed a shorter trip than before. A good thing, since the temperature was steadily rising. When Anna arrived at the car she unlocked the driver’s-side door, started to pop the trunk to get the picnic basket, and remembered she needed her sunglasses. She thought a moment, then recalled that she had tucked them into the glove compartment. She hopped in, leaned across the middle console, reached into the glove compartment for her glasses — and froze.
Right in front of her, perched there in the compartment on top of Woody’s road maps and gas receipts and her sunglasses, was a bright green bracelet. Mary’s bracelet. Anna stared at it a moment, her mind reeling, then blinked and glanced across the road. Woody was still taking pictures.
Anna shut the glove compartment and stared straight ahead through the windshield. Her pulse was hammering in her ears.
What the hell is Mary’s bracelet doing here?
She decided she would ask Woody that question — but immediately changed her mind. Taking long breaths, she replayed the situation as Woody had described it. While Anna was in the bathroom Mary had come outside, spotted the other travelers, maybe spotted a Lee County license plate — Tupelo is its largest town (would she have known that?) — and decided to switch horses. Woody was supposedly already across the road, poking around in the pine forest. All that was understandable, and certainly possible. It could have happened. But none of it explained the bracelet in the glove compartment. I never take it off, Mary had said.
It also didn’t explain the fact that the cashier had told Anna he’d seen Mary walk across the highway and field to join Woody, something that Woody told her didn’t happen. Woody said Mary had remained on this side of the road, and had signaled to him when she was ready to load up the other car.
Anna swallowed, and forced her mind in another direction. A direction that terrified her.
What if Mary hadn’t found another ride? What if she had come back out and instead noticed Woody over there in the trees and walked over to join him, as the cashier said she’d done? What if no one else was around to see what happened then? What if—
What if she had fallen into a well?
That, of course, hadn’t happened. But...
Anna felt ice-cold fingers tickle her heart.
What if she’d been thrown into a well?
What if Woody had then lied about her catching the other ride?
Anna thought back to what Jack Speerman had said earlier: the killer was probably big, and powerful. Woody was six three, and more than two hundred pounds. A former football player. And what better place to hide bodies than in an abandoned well? Maybe she was in there with the three other victims, right at this moment.
What if Woody Prestridge is the killer everyone’s searching for? My God, Anna, think about what you’re suggesting here!
But could it be? Woody had been acting strange lately — she’d figured it was just the pressure of his new sales job — and he also spent a lot of time traveling the state. He obviously knew these stops along Highway 25. And Anna had been in the restroom and in the store buying goodies for a long time; there would’ve been plenty of opportunity for him to do away with Mary, steal her bracelet, hide it in the glove compartment, and then take her belongings from the Toyota and toss them into the metal trash bin. Or forget the trash bin: he could’ve tossed them into the hole after her. No one would’ve noticed. The old couple Anna had spotted earlier, inside the store, were the only people she’d seen since arriving, besides the cashier. Thinking about it now, she remembered that Mary had been the one to ask to take a break here — but if she hadn’t, Anna wondered, would Woody have found another reason for them to stop?