Another pause, longer this time. “Louisa, what are you talking about?”
I took a deep breath. “Bob and I went out to dinner this evening, and afterward he went into the grocery store to get some dog food while I waited in the car because it was raining and I wore my velveteen sneakers and he came out with a woman and got into her car and they drove away and I tried to follow but I lost them.”
“Whoa, whoa, wait a minute! Slow down. You’re not making any sense. You and Bob went to dinner—”
“Right.”
“And then you went to a grocery store? He really knows how to show you a good time, doesn’t he?”
“Kay,” I flared, sitting up straighter, “the Food Right was on the way to my house and he needed to get food for Jack. He said he was going to run in for a minute and come right back out.”
Jack must have heard his name. He appeared in front of me and leaned heavily against my legs.
“Okay, okay. Whatever. He ran in for dog food and came right back out, but he came out with another woman?”
“Yes. And he didn’t have any dog food.” I leaned over and patted Jack’s head.
“I hate to say it but that is pretty damned tacky.” I could tell from her voice that she was wrinkling her nose the way she does when she doesn’t like something. An image of her in first grade faced with a slimy wad of canned spinach on her lunch plate swam up from my memory.
“It would be more than tacky if he did it on purpose.” I sat back up. “And I suppose he could have. After all, Roger—”
“Don’t even go there,” she snapped. “I forbid you to ever compare Bob with Roger, even if Bob did leave you at the Food Right. I mean, ditching you at the store is nothing compared to—”
“Yes, yes, okay,” I interrupted in turn, waving my free hand. “You’re right, Roger was far beyond tacky. But Kay, I don’t think he did it on purpose. Bob, I mean. The woman was practically glued to his side, and I think she had a gun or a knife or something.”
“What!”
“Well, I couldn’t really see her hands,” I admitted. “She was partly behind Bob and she kept one hand in her jacket pocket. But why else would he just walk off with someone and not even look my way?” I chewed my lower lip as I pictured the scene again. “He walked…I don’t know, sort of stiffly. Tense. Not talking and laughing together like you would if you’ve just picked someone up. Or met someone you know. She made him unlock the car door. As though she had to keep her eyes on him the whole time. And they both got in the passenger side, and he slid over behind the wheel to drive.”
“Wouldn’t the transmission get in the way?” she asked.
“The car had a bench seat. I think. It was an old car. A gray Mercedes with the silver thingie on the hood.”
“So at least he went off with someone who had a cool car.”
“I don’t think Bob cares all that much about cool cars,” I said, annoyed.
“True, look what he drives. And don’t get all huffy at me. I know it's just like yours. So what did this woman look like, anyway?”
I described the woman and her red suit and heels.
“Weird outfit for a grocery store,” my cousin said. “Maybe she just ran in for something too and saw Bob and—”
“Decided he was on her take-out menu for tonight?”
“Maybe they knew each other.”
“It's possible. I just don’t know. Anyway, they drove off, and I followed them—”
“He left his keys? He must have, I can't see you hotwiring a car.”
“Yes, he left his keys. So I could listen to the radio. And I bet you can't hotwire one either. Anyway I followed, and a Pinto pulled out in front of me and they were getting further away, so I passed it and I was probably speeding a little, because a cop pulled me over and I lost them.”
A little silence played along the line. “A cop?”
“Yes.”
“Not…”
“Yes.”
“Did he know who you were?”
“You mean that I'm your cousin? Oh yes.”
“Did he manage to piss you off?”
“Yes.”
“That figures. What did he do?”
“You mean aside from not listening to me until the Mercedes had disappeared from sight, and telling me that in his professional opinion it made perfect sense for a man to go off in a Mercedes instead of a Honda, especially with a blonde involved? Other than that he pretty much told me to drive carefully and call him if I got a ransom note.”
“Goddammit!” she snarled. I knew she had bounced to the edge of whatever she was sitting on. “How dare he talk to my cousin like that! This is so typical. What a lug he is!”
“Thanks, Kay.” I was warmed by her partisanship. “But to be fair, I was telling him a really weird story, I was driving someone else’s car, and I was speeding. Not a whole lot, it isn’t easy to speed seriously in an eighty-nine Civic, but still. Anyway, after he let me go, I went back to the store to look for Bob. Just in case it hadn’t really been him. But he wasn’t there. So I went to his house to get Jack.”
“No sign of Bob?”
“No, but I found a phone message. I saw the machine blinking and thought maybe he’d called and maybe I should listen—” I realized I was twisting the phone cord around my finger and stopped.
“Anyone would have done the same,” she assured me. “What was the message?”
“Someone telling Bob that he’d been found and should be careful. That was pretty much it.”
“Did you take the tape with you?”
“No, I—”
“That’s what they always do in the movies.”
“Yeah, well, in the movies they have phone machines with tapes in them. This was the digital kind that doesn’t use a tape. But I thought the police should know about it so I called them.”
“Did Kerry Sue Maddock answer the phone? I swear that is the stupidest woman in town.”
“No, your friend Ed had already made it back to the station.”
“Uh oh. What happened?”
“He asked me to play the message for him.”
“Then what did he say?”
“Before I managed to erase the message or after?” I hedged. I shrugged my shoulders to release some tension.
“Louisa! You erased it?” She sounded like she was choking back a laugh. “Of course you did. Why do I even ask?” My track record with electronics is not outstanding. “Then what?”
“He told me either to wait and see if they called again, or go home. He sounded like he was tiptoeing around a nut case. I'm sure he thought I'd made the whole thing up. So I hung up and came home. What did you tell him about me, anyway?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? You never said you had a cousin in Seattle?”
“Of course I told him that. But we haven’t spoken to each other for months, so he wouldn’t know about your more recent history, or rather Roger’s, if that’s what’s worrying you. I certainly didn’t tell him anything about it.”
“Kay, everyone in the world knows about all that.”
“They do not! Geez, get over it!”
“Easy for you to say. But anyway, I got Jack and started home, and someone was driving close behind me soon after I left Bob’s place, and I made a bunch of turns and a car was always behind me. I finally shook it off and came home.”
Now that I'd narrated this madness to another person I felt impossibly tired. I wanted to let my lead-weighted bones collapse on the bed and sleep until all this—whatever it was—was over. Stress takes me that way.
“Louisa, what have you gotten yourself into? This whole thing is so weird,” Kay said. “It will probably turn out to have a mundane explanation, but it is weird.”
“No kidding,” I agreed. “Do you think I should call Officer Johnson again?”
“It's actually Chief Johnson,” she said.
“He’s the chief? You never said you were dating the chief of police. What was he doing out chasing speeders? Shouldn’t he have been at the station telling everyone else what to do?”
“Hey, it's a small town, they all do everything.”