“You never talk about yourself, or where you came from, or anything.”
He was astounded. It was like inviting him to step off the top of a building, and she should be smart enough to know that. “None of that stuff is very pleasant. If it had been any good, I’d probably still be there, having a good time. Instead, I got out as soon as I could.”
“You don’t have to tell me, if it makes you sad.” She reached under the table and gripped his forearm. “I was doing a lot of thinking while I was driving. Kind of catching up, because I didn’t have any time to think before we left. I was thinking that maybe we could use this trip the way some married people do, to make a fresh start, maybe make everything new again.”
He had no choice now. His hand was still clenched in a fist on his thigh. He opened it and put it over hers, then watched her look of discomfort turn into a smile. He said, “I think that’s a good idea.”
She gave his hand a quick squeeze and released it, but as she looked at her plate the smile lingered on her lips.
When they had finished eating, Varney pulled the car to the gas pumps at the end of the lot and refilled the tank. Mae didn’t begin again until he had gotten into the driver’s seat and begun to drive back to the highway. She said, “We didn’t really need gas. We’d only gone about a hundred and fifty miles.”
He resisted the impulse to shut her up. He said gently, “Remember what we said before we left?”
“I think so.”
“This is a business trip. Sometimes in my business some small thing goes wrong, and you’ve got to get away as fast and as far as you can. You don’t know in advance when that’s going to happen, or you wouldn’t let it happen. If we went a hundred and fifty miles, we used a hundred and fifty miles’ worth of gas, right?”
“Well, sure, but the tank holds—”
“It doesn’t matter what it holds,” he interrupted. “It had a hundred and fifty miles less in it than it could have. If things go wrong, you’ll be real glad to be able to get an extra hundred and fifty miles away from it before you have to stop and show your face or run out of gas. It’s a problem that never happened, because I solved it ahead of time. It’s one more thing we won’t have on our minds to distract us.”
She looked at him with appreciation. “I’m sorry.”
“What?” She had surprised him again.
“I’m sorry,” she repeated. “That was what you meant when we were leaving. That you wanted me to do what you told me to, no questions asked. I was just afraid that if you got gas now, then you wouldn’t want to stop again for a really, really long time.”
“If that was what you meant, you should have said it,” he muttered. He was silent for a mile, then remembered that he had determined to keep her happy, or at least pliable, for the duration of the trip. “Anytime you feel like stopping, just let me know.” He turned to look at her, to let her see the benevolent expression he had placed on his features. “I’ll be happy to stop. We should be enjoying this.”
That night they stopped at a motel in Wisconsin. Mae took a hot bubble bath, then asked him to get in, and let him soak for a long time. Then she had him lie on the bed so she could give him a massage that was long, elaborate, and led seamlessly into sex. When it was over and Varney was lying on the bed listening to Mae’s breathing settling into the soft, slow cadence that meant she was asleep, he looked back on the day. Talking to her in exchange for peace and all the extra attention had not been a bad bargain. But he would have to be vigilant. Women didn’t seem to care much about sex. They tolerated it to get things, and it was simple human nature that when they had traded any kind of service for something, they felt entitled to it. She would probably want more and more talk.
The next morning after his exercises, they took showers and had breakfast, then drove on. She was bursting with chatter about everything they passed, even calling out the license plates for different states. He answered direct questions and grunted now and then to show he had heard, and that seemed to satisfy her. By nightfall, they were in Minneapolis. He had her be the one to check them into a big hotel downtown. Then he left her in the room while he used the exercise machines and went for a swim in the indoor pool.
They ate in the hotel restaurant and then went back upstairs. She didn’t seem surprised when he took off the coat and tie he had been wearing, but when he began to put on jeans and sneakers, she said, “Do we have to leave already?”
He shook his head. “You don’t have to do anything. I’m driving up north to take a look around.”
“At night?”
He turned and leveled his eyes on her, without answering.
“I did it again,” she said. “I didn’t mean to.”
He said, “It’s easy, and it’s safe. This way I can look at the town where he lives, see where the police station is, what the traffic is like at night, maybe drive past his house. They don’t move the roads when the sun goes down, but people won’t get as much chance to look at me.”
She jumped up from the bed. “Can I go?” She saw his frown, and said quickly, “If I drive, you could get a better look. If there are people, you could even duck down, and they’d never have a chance to see you.” She hesitated. “You’re not going to kill him tonight, are you?”
“No,” he admitted. “Put on jeans and we’ll go.”
The road up as far as Hinckley was a big, fast interstate. It would be an easy route to choke off if things went badly. But he supposed that the chance to cover a lot of miles quickly on the way out of there was likely to be worth some risk. The roads after Hinckley were smaller, but fast too. There were very few cars at night, and the only traffic signs had pictures of deer on them and warnings. When Varney came to the last intersection before the road where the farm was supposed to be, he pulled over to the shoulder and let Mae drive.
The farm was everything that Varney had hoped. The house and barn were set back at least three hundred yards from the road, at the end of a gravel drive. The best part was the trees. There were at least forty acres of woods on the west side of the farm that stretched from the southbound highway almost to the house. He could see lights in the upper windows, and a sport utility vehicle beside the barn, but no people. He had Mae drive the next ten miles so he could see where the other houses were, all the way to the next town. Then he had her drive back past the farm and beyond it to the junction with the southbound highway.
He took over and drove back toward Minneapolis, feeling contemptuous. People who knew somebody might kill them always seemed to do the wrong things. They went to live in some remote, deserted area like this, and thought that made them safe. What it did was make them slightly easier to find, and much easier to kill.
As Varney drove, he saw that Mae had dozed off. He used the solitude to construct a mental list. He would have to give Tracy a call from a pay phone to give her the number of the hotel. Tomorrow he would pick up a few items that might be usefuclass="underline" a shovel, for one thing. He couldn’t count on a rich guy from California even having one, let alone leaving it where Varney could find it. He would drive back up and take a look at the place in daylight. Then all he would have to do was wait for Tracy to call and tell him it was time to drive up here and pull the trigger.
33
In daylight, the farm appeared to be a perfect place. The area had the quiet bleakness of a land that was remote, wild, and sparsely populated, like a thawed tundra. This far north the growing season was short, so the fields Varney saw on the way had already been cut to stubble, the crops harvested with the first chill. Varney couldn’t tell if Kelleher’s farm had even been planted this year. The vast level plot that ran from the road to the left side of the house and took up two-thirds of the acreage looked patchy and unkempt compared to the land on other farms. The stubble was interspersed with weeds. The rest of the farm was covered with thick deciduous woods, all the trees looking exactly the same age. He wondered about that until his second visit.