He reckoned it was time to put the ball in play.
“I’m looking for Ideal Maternity,” he said.
“Ideal?” the woman echoed.
“Some directions would be helpful,” Remo told her. “I could save a bit of time.”
“Ideal Maternity, you say.” Her husband wore the look of someone trying to do calculus by counting on his toes and fingers. “I don’t rightly know—”
The woman jabbed him with an elbow in the ribs to shut him up. “Keep on through town,” she said, “until you~ meet Highway 11, ’bout a mile, or so from where we’re standing. Left’s the only way it goes from there—that’s east to you and me. Another mile and something, there’s a private road off to your left. They got a sign.”
“Appreciate it,” Remo said. He palmed his key and turned to leave the office.
“Selling something, I expect,” Scarface chimed in.
“You-never know,” said Remo, and he let the. door swing shut behind him as he walked back to the car.
“You didn’t have to tell him, for God’s sake!”
“What was I supposed to do, then, Raynard? Maybe stand around and make believe we haven’t lived here thirty years? Like we’re so blasted dumb we couldn’t find our way across the street without a map?”
“We don’t know who he is, Matilda!” Sweat had beaded up on Raynard’s forehead as he paced the tiny office. “Why, he could be anybody!”
“So? What’s that to us?” she challenged him.
“Dammit, woman, you know as well as I do! Talk about how much you know, and then play stupid like a little child!”
“Nobody’s paying us to send some stranger on a wild-goose chase,” she said. “And if they are, I damn sure haven’t heard about it.”
“Strangers asking questions lead to trouble,”″ Raynard Bisbee told his wife. “It don’t take no rocket scientist to figure that one out. This Mr. What’s-his-name starts raisin’ hell, who d’you think them folks out there are gonna blame? The ones what told him where to go, that’s who!”
“Think straight for once,” Matilda, snapped. “The home ain’t like some kinda secret military base. They got a sign out on the road. They’re licensed with the state, got people goin’ in and out there all the time. They must be on a hunnerd lists for people sellin’ everything from pills to sheets and toilet paper. Jumpin’ Jesus, Raynard, you beat all!”
“So why’d he have to ask directions, then?”
“Well, lemme think about that puzzle, for a second. Could it be because he’s never been here in his life, before? You figure that could have something to do with it?”
“Don’t mock me, woman!”
“No one’s mockin’ you, for Lord’s sake. I’m suggestin’ that you use your head for once, and don’t go makin’mountains out of molehills.”
“I don’t plan on windin’ up like Winthrop’s boy, awright?”
She flashed him a look that didn’t thank him for being reminded. “That was an accident, for all you know.” But Matilda Bisbee didn’t sound convinced somehow. “Besides, the doctor settled out of court on that. Good money, what I hear down at the Clip ’n’ Curl”
“You’d like that, I expect. Found money, you could just forget about me, easy as you please, and find yourself somebody else.”
“You’re talkin’ foolish, Raynard.”
“Accident, my ass. Boy gets electrocuted, fried like catfish on the griddle, and they claim he did it messin’with some kinda fuse box.”
“Can you prove he didn’t?”
“Can’t prove nothin’, ’cept he’s dead as hell, and I’m in no great rush to join him.”
“Jimmy Winthrop was a troublemaker, Raynard. You know that as well as I do. He was trespassin’ the night he had his accident, most likely hopin’ he could catch one of them girlies with her britches down. Can’t say I miss him all that much, you wanna know the truth.’
“You got a cold streak, woman.”
“Maybe so,” she said, “and maybe not. One thing I am sure of, the doctor and his people haven’t hurt this town one little bit. Spend money here, they do, and never make no fuss. They pay their bills on time, but otherwise keep outa sight and outa mind. Good neighbors all around the way I see it, even if they haven’t been here fifty years, like some who think they’re so damn special.”
Raynard Bisbee couldn’t argue with her logic, even if it gave him chills sometimes to think about the Winthrop boy. The Dogwood Inn was not a major beneficiary of the financial benefitsfrom Ideal Maternity, although a family had been known to spend the night from time to time, when they were dropping off a pregnant daughter, waiting to be sure she settled in just right.
And then there was the little something extra Raynard got each month as an incentive to keep both eyes open and alert for strangers in the neighborhood. He had a hard time working out exactly why a home for unwed mothers would be so concerned about security, but it was certainly a crazy world these days. You had all kinds of pressure groups around—pro-life, pro-choice, whatever—butting into other people’s business, telling them what they should read or watch on television, whether they should keep a kid or get it farmed out at the clinic. Hell, for all he knew, they could be hiding Russian agents at the home. No skin off Raynard Bisbee, either way.
He got a hundred dollars on the first of every month—in cash, with no reports to Uncle Sammy—just to keep a watch for anybody who came snooping thereabouts.
“Why me?” he’d asked, suspicious, when the matron from the home had first approached him.
“You’re a man of substance, with his roots in the community,” she said, so sweet and flattering that Raynard didn’t even mind if it was soap before the bar. “Besides, with the motel, you have a decent chance of meeting any strangers stopping off in town.”
It made good sense, and so what if he found out later they were also paying someone at the two restaurants? Fool and his money, Raynard thought. It didn’t shave his profits any if they chose to throw more cash around. His curiosity was piqued, given the way they seemed so paranoid, but Jimmy Winthrop’s fate was a reminder of the risks that came with snooping into other people’s business.
It pissed him off, the way Matilda took it on herself to point the stranger on his way, but there was only so much he could say about it. Going on five years, he hadn’t told her yet about his monthly stipend from the home, and Raynard didn’t plan on sharing with her now.
Too late to throw the stranger off, but that had never been a part of Raynard’s job, in any case. He was supposed to watch, report and mind his own damn business after that.
“I’m goin’ out awhile,” he said.
There was suspicion in her whiny voice. “Where to?”
“To have a brewskie at the Pine Room, if you must know,” Raynard told her. “Arguin’ with you’s done made my throat sore.”
“Brung it on yourself, at that.”
“I’ll see you later on.”
They had a pay phone at the Pine Room, with a good old-fashioned wooden booth where you could close the door and not be overheard by every jackass in the place. First time in all these years that Raynard had to earn his monthly C-note, and he didn’t want an audience. Whatever happened after he made his call was someone else’s headache, he decided.
Indiana’s county roads showed signs of neglect and infrequent repairs. Baked in summer, frozen in winter, they displayed the scars to prove it—potholes disguised as harmless puddles when it rained, but were still deep enough to jolt a vehicle off course and sometimes blow a tire. “Repairs” consisted, in large part, of sporadic asphalt drops to fill the more impressive craters, but the patchwork never seemed to last. Throw in a few steep hills, blind corners, one-lane bridges, season it with roadkill, and they were a proper driving challenge for the inexperienced.