Frank nodded slowly. "Funny enough. He was standing up and sniffing? Not looking underneath?"
"Nope. Just sniffing along the side, like a big dog." The boy laughed at the memory. "That’s pretty silly, isn’t it?"
"Hysterical. Do me a favor and go get your mom."
Steven looked around the seat. "But she just went and laid down."
"Just get her. Tell her I need to see her for a minute."
"Okay." Steven shrugged, slipped off the chair, and jogged toward the rear bedroom. A few moments later Alicia appeared, blinking and rubbing at one eye.
"That wasn’t much of a rest, dear." She settled into the chair. "But if you’re ready for me to drive, I’ll take it."
"It’s not that. There’s something wrong."
She was suddenly alert and awake. "With the motor home?"
"No. I don’t think that’s it. I think it’s something else. I’m not exactly sure what it is, but I’m tired of wondering about it and I think I’ve figured out how to fix it." He tapped the map clipped to the dash. "In a few minutes we’ll be in Baker. That’s where our hitchhiker is getting off."
"In Baker? I thought you wanted to take her all the way to Vegas?"
He nodded vigorously. "That’s what I thought at first, yeah. On reflection, I think maybe we’d be better off dropping her sooner. I have this feeling we’re getting ourselves too involved in someone else’s personal business, some kind of business we don’t know anything about and that we’re better off not knowing about. I’ll think of some reason. It’s not like we’re dumping her in the middle of nowhere. She ought to be able to get a ride out of Baker easy if she just hangs around one of the gas stations."
"You’re not making a whole lot of sense, Frank. That’s not like you."
"Didn’t you want to get rid of her?" he asked challengingly.
"Well, I wouldn’t put it that way." She glanced toward the back bedroom. "She looks so frail and innocent when she’s sound asleep. What happened to change your mind?"
"Tell you later. You agree we should put her off, then?"
"I don’t know. I know what I said when we first picked her up, but we’ve agreed to take her all the way to Las Vegas. I don’t feel right about changing my mind."
"This is our vacation, isn’t it? She oughta be grateful that we brought her this far instead of leaving her standing where we found her."
"If you think this is the best way, Frank."
"I do."
There was silence between them for a while before she spoke up anew.
"Frank?"
"Yeah."
"Can’t you tell me what’s going on? Please?"
He chewed at his lower lip. "Hon, I’m not sure I know what’s going on. I just know that she’s involved somehow and that I don’t want us to be a part of it. She still sleeping?" Alicia nodded.
"I think what’s going on is she’s in some kind of trouble. She may be a singer like she claims. I mean, we know she can sing, but we don’t know that that’s her profession. Now, you know me. I’m always ready to go the extra mile to help somebody out of a jam. But not if I think it’s going to touch my family."
"Us?" Alicia was genuinely puzzled. "How could any problems Mouse might be having affect us?"
"Like I’ve been saying, I’m not sure. It’s just that there are a number of things that don’t feel right."
"Your funny-looking snakes troubling you again?" She half smiled, uncertain whether she expected to be taken seriously.
"Among other things. You remember the old attendant who sold us gas?"
"Not really. I hardly got a look at him. I was talking to Wendy."
"He asked me if we’d picked up any hitchhikers. He tried to be casual about it, but I could tell he was real interested in my answer."
She frowned. "Why would he ask a question like that?"
"He said something about having problems with people swiping stuff, but I don’t think that had anything to do with it. I think it’s something else, something a lot more serious. Steven said he saw him trying to sneak a look inside while I was pumping gas. Sniffing around, you might say."
"You think he was looking for Mouse?"
"I don’t know, but he sure as hell was looking for something, and I don’t want any part of what’s going on. He wouldn’t give me any straight answers, and she" — he jerked his head in the direction of the back bedroom and their sleeping guest — "hasn’t given us any straight answers and I think the best thing under the circumstances is to let people like that work out their problems among themselves. Let her find another ride. I’ve had enough of her and enough of this."
Then maybe life would return to normal, he thought desperately. Whatever else Mouse might be, she wasn’t normal. Her appearance wasn’t normal and her voice wasn’t normal and her whole aspect was slightly skewed. Once they were rid of her maybe the world would return to normal. Unless he was the only one who’d gone crazy. But Steven had seen the attendant sniffing.
Alicia thought her husband was overreacting, but she kept quiet. She accepted his change of heart gratefully. Not because she didn’t like Mouse. She just didn’t like strangers. Obviously Mouse’s presence was putting a strain on their vacation. That was reason enough to ask her to find another ride.
It had nothing to do with funny-looking snakes and curious gas station attendants.
4
According to the map, Baker was less than ten miles ahead. They drove the ten miles, then fifteen, without sighting the little desert town. Frank hadn’t paid much attention to the odometer since they’d left Los Angeles, but he watched the slowly revolving numbers intently now.
Admittedly Baker wasn’t much. A couple of hundred inhabitants, a few gas stations, a convenience store or two. But it was definitely too big to overlook. He drove another ten miles, searching the salt plain north of the highway. They had yet to see so much as a sign.
At least the sky had brightened. The unnatural darkness had vanished. The absence of their intended destination, however, mitigated the relief he felt at the return of the sky to normalcy. He checked the map. Baker should be twenty miles behind them by now.
"Sweetheart?" Alicia shifted uncomfortably in her chair. "Shouldn’t we be there by now?"
"According to the map." He nodded at the dash.
"Could we have gone past it somehow?"
"You can’t go past a whole town out here," he shot back irritably. "Maybe it ain’t Manhattan, but there’s at least one off ramp. I don’t see how we could have missed it. We’ve both been watching and there are no wrong turns out here. I don’t under — "
She interrupted excitedly. "Oh, there’s a sign!"
Sure enough, they were coming up fast on one of the familiar big green highway signs that were posted on the shoulder. He could read it easily.
LAS VEGAS — 152 Miles
HADES JUNCTION — 6 Miles
The sign came and went at fifty-five miles per, leaving him little time to ponder the implications. Hades Junction but no Baker. He squinted at the map. There was no town by that name anywhere along I-40.
"They don’t always show the real small towns, Frank," Alicia said, replying to his concerns. She leaned close to the dash, looked satisfied when she sat back in the chair. "This map’s a couple of years old. They’re always putting in new stops."