With renewed motivation, I searched the southern sector, not giving up until dark. In town, I refilled the gas tank, ready for an early start the next morning. Then I walked along the shadowy main street, noticing FOR SALE signs on a lot of doors. The financial troubles gave me an idea.
Tipton Realty had its lights on. I knocked.
“Come in,” a woman’s voice said.
As I entered, I couldn’t help noticing my haggard reflection on the door’s window.
Again the hardwood floor creaked.
“Busy day?” The same woman sat at the desk. She was about 35. Her lush red hair hung past her shoulders. Her bright, green eyes were hard to look away from.
“I saw a lot of beautiful country.”
“Did you find him?”
“Find. .?”
“Bob Wentworth. Everybody in town knows you’re looking for him.”
I glanced down. “I guess I’d make a poor spy. No, I didn’t find him.” I held out my hand. “Tom Neal.”
She shook it. “Becky Shafer.”
“I can’t get used to people calling him ‘Bob.’ I gather you’ve met him.”
“Not as much as other people in Tipton. I’m new.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, I came here only twelve years ago.”
I chuckled.
“I drove into town with my artist boyfriend,” she explained. “We loved the quiet and the scenery. We decided to stay. The boyfriend’s long gone. But I’m still a newcomer.”
“Sorry about the boyfriend.” I noticed she didn’t wear a wedding ring.
“No need to be sorry. He turned out to be a creep.”
“A lot of that going around.” I thought of my CEO.
She gave me a look that made me think she applied the word to me.
“I do have an important reason to see him,” I said.
After I told her about the manuscript, she thought a moment. “But why would he use a pseudonym?”
“That’s one of many things I’d like to ask him.” Thinking of the FOR SALE signs, I took my chance to propose my idea. “To hear the old timers tell it, things got crazy here with so many fans wanting to talk to him. You can imagine the effect a new book would create. The publicity. The pent-up demand. This town would attract a lot of fans again. It would be like the excitement of thirty years ago.”
I let the temptation sink in.
Becky didn’t respond for several moments. Her gaze hardened. “So all I need to do is show you where Bob lives, and in exchange, next year I’ll have more business than I can handle?”
“When you put it that way, I guess that’s right.”
“Gosh, I didn’t realize it was so late.” She pulled her car keys from her purse. “You’ll have to excuse me. I need to go home.”
The weathered old Tipton Tavern was presumably the place Wade told me about, where Wentworth sometimes watched a baseball game. There was indeed a baseball game on the televison, but I was the main interest, patrons setting down their drinks and looking at me. As much as I could tell from recalling the photograph on Wentworth’s books (a lean-faced, dark-haired man with soulful eyes), he wasn’t in the room.
Heading back to the motel, I didn’t go far before I heard wary footsteps behind me. A cold breeze made me shiver as I glanced back toward the shadowy street. The footsteps ended. I resumed walking and again heard the footsteps. My Manhattan instincts took charge. Not quite running, I passed my car and reached the motel. My cold hands fumbled with the room key.
In the night, glass broke outside my room. I phoned the front desk, but no one answered. In the morning, not having slept well, I went out to my car and found the driver’s window shattered. A rock lay on the seat. The radio was gone.
The surprised desk clerk told me, “The town constable runs the barbershop.”
“Yes, we’ve been having incidents lately.” The heavyset barber/constable trimmed an elderly man’s spindly hair. “A bicycle was stolen. A cabin was broken into.”
I took a close look at the man in the chair and decided he wasn’t Wentworth.
“Town’s changing. Outsiders are hanging around,” the barber continued.
I recalled the two druggies I’d seen emerge from an alley the previous day. “What are you going to do about it?”
“Contact the state police. I hoped the problem would go away as the weather got colder.”
“Please remember I reported the stolen radio. The rental car agency will contact you.” Trying to catch him off guard, I added, “Where does Bob Wentworth live?”
The barber almost responded, then caught himself. “Can’t say.”
But like a bad poker player, he hadn’t been able to repress a glance past me toward the right side of the street.
I went to the left to avoid suspicion. Then I walked around the block and returned to the main street, out of sight of the barbershop. As I stepped from an alley, I again had the sense that someone followed, but when I looked behind me, I seemed alone.
More people were on the sidewalk, many dressed like outsiders, the town finally attracting business as the weekend approached. But the locals paid attention only to me. Trying to look casual, I went into a quilt shop, then continued down the street. Wentworth didn’t live on a country road, I now realized with growing excitement. He lived in town. But I’d checked all the side streets. In fact, I’d used some of those streets to drive north, west, south, and east. Where was he hiding?
I walked to the end of the street. In a park of brilliant maples, dead leaves crunched under my shoes as I followed a stream along the edge of town. I soon reached a tall fence.
My cell phone rang.
“I hope you’ve found him,” a stern voice warned.
“I’m making progress.”
“I want more than progress. The Gladstone executives phoned to remind me they expect a better profit picture when I report on Monday. I hinted I’d have major news. Get Wentworth.”
A locked gate sealed off a lane. I managed to climb over, tearing a button off my sports jacket.
Sunlight cast the shadows of branches. To my left were the backyards of houses. But on my right, the fence stretched on. A crow cawed. Leaves rattled as I came to a door that blended with the fence. Signs warned NO SOLICITORS and NO TRESPASSING. A mailbox was recessed into the fence.
When I knocked on the door, the crow stopped cawing. The door shook. I waited, then knocked again, this time harder. The noise echoed. I knocked a third time.
“Mr. Wentworth?”
Leaves fell.
“Mr. Wentworth? My name’s Tom Neal. I work for March amp; Sons. I need to talk to you about a manuscript we think you sent.”
A breeze chilled my face.
I knocked a fourth time. “Mr. Wentworth?”
Finally, I took out a pen and a notepad. I thought about writing that Carver was dead, but that seemed a harsh way for Wentworth to get the news. So I gave him the name of the motel where I was staying and left my cell-phone number. Then I remembered that Wentworth didn’t have a phone. But if he sometimes left his compound, he could use a phone in town, I concluded. Or he could walk to the motel.
“I’m shoving a note under the gate!”
Back in the park, I sat on a bench and tried to enjoy the view, but the breeze got cooler. After an hour, I returned to Wentworth’s gate. A corner of my note remained visible under it.
“Mr. Wentworth, please, I need to talk to you! It’s important!”
Maybe he’s gone for a walk in the woods, I thought. Or maybe he isn’t even in town.
Hell, he might be in a hospital somewhere.
“Did you find him?”
In the tavern, I looked up from a glass of beer. “No.” Strictly speaking, it wasn’t a lie.