The 45th Parallel

by Lisa Girolami

  “Are you sure this is the same car?”

  “Yes…I mean, how many Buicks are there in Hemlock?”

  Cam’s expression turned sardonic. “Take a better look. Tell me if you think this is the same Buick.”

  Val looked it over and thought a moment. She slowly ambled over to the back of the car.

  “Yes. This is it.” She pointed to the bumper, and Cam came around to flash her light on it. “‘Land your Bow at Dory Cove Restaurant.’ That’s the same bumper sticker.”

  “Well, I can tell you that this car did not hit a deer. Come here.” At the front of the car, Cam said, “Look. See this grill and hood? It’s obvious that Mack hasn’t started repairing it. There’s not enough damage for a deer hit. These dents and dings are rusty and old.”

  “Cam, I know I hit a deer.”

  “I don’t doubt you. All I’m saying is that a deer would have had to leap over this car to cause such little damage here.”

  “Can they do that?”

  Cam laughed. “No! I was just kidding. This car was hit by a hammer or something else metal. Not a deer.”

  “I just about had a deer sandwich that night. It came so close to me I could see its fur.”

  Val watched Cam as she walked around the car. She was deep in thought, and Val liked the way she studied everything with such command. When Cam reached the front of the car again, she ran her hands under the hood, feeling for something. Val heard a clacking sound, and then Cam lifted the hood.

  “This latch is broken.”

  She locked the hood in an upright position and inspected the engine. She then turned her attention to the underside. Rubbing her finger on something, she told Val to come closer and hold her cell phone up.

  “See this,” Cam said, “these tiny holes? Now look here.”

  Directly below, on the body of the car right next to the hood latch, were matching holes.

  “Someone drilled these recently.” She flicked at the holes with her finger.

  “What are they for?”

  “I have no idea, but they’re unusual.”

  In the dark, Cam’s eyes looked inviting and Val knew she was being silly, but her body hadn’t been acting very appropriately since she’d watched Cam get down on her knees.

  “Are you okay?” Cam was looking at her oddly.

  “Yes. I am. Fine. Thank you.”

  Cam paused, and Val hoped she wouldn’t pry.

  “Okay,” Cam said. “We need to go look at your car.”

  They walked back over to the door. Cam tried it again, pulling on the doorknob. It shook but still wouldn’t open.

  “It won’t take much to push the door open,” Val said.

  Cam looked up and down the alley. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “Something really weird is going on, and I’d rather not get gassed or beaten up again.”

  Cam paused, then said, “You go to the corner of the building. We’ll wait until a big truck goes by. Signal me when it’s right out front, and I’ll kick the door.”

  Val hesitated, but not because she thought she might get caught. She stepped closer to Cam.

  “Donna told me she thought it was probably you that had been searching through my things. She told me I should stay away from you.”

  “Me?” Cam said. “Do you think I have something to do with this?”

  “I admit that I’m very confused. I really don’t know what to think. But something told me to call you instead of asking her for help.”

  “And here I thought it was my heavenly turtles.”

  “Seriously, I think I should be asking you the same question. Are you sure you want to do this? If you get caught…”

  “We’re not here to steal anything. We’re just going to take a look. Plus, I want to do this. I know Mack’s a fucking asshole, but if he’s committing a crime, he needs to be caught. If we can find anything you can take to the police,” she said and pointed to the door, “then we’ll figure out how to explain this.”

  “You’re not over Donna, are you?”

  Cam paused, and Val felt the strange twinge of envy.

  “I’m asking because I know you really don’t like Mack and I wondered if…” Val hesitated because the question suddenly felt meddlesome.

  “I’m not over what she did to me.” Cam reached up and put her hand around Val’s arm. “There’s a difference.”

  “Are you seeking retribution, maybe?”

  “As much as you’re seeking the truth.”

  Val smiled, although she still felt like she was the outsider. But what stake did she have in Cam? None, really. They’d kissed once. Val hadn’t been able to read the look on her face. Maybe she hadn’t been exactly bowled over. Plus, Cam had a world of history with Donna, Mack, and this town. Val was just an interloper watching a ship that Cam and Donna had once sailed together and was now crashed on the rocks.

  And it was possible that their boat was just stuck, waiting to be saved and relaunched.

  Maybe that was what was behind Cam’s need for retribution. She certainly seemed to have a different reason for wanting to open that rickety old door. Was Cam simply trying to help Val figure out what was happening to her? Was she involved in some disturbing Hemlock plot in which Val was the mark? Or, Val worried, was Cam trying to find something about Mack that would have Donna running back to her arms?

  She stepped away and walked to the corner of the building that looked south on Pacific Coast Highway. It was dark, but in the spots of moonlight that shone through the evergreens, she could see a low-rolling layer of fog coming in from the ocean, creeping across the asphalt of the road like an overflowing bathtub spreads water over a bathroom floor.

  She looked back and saw Cam watching her, ready to react.

  Should she trust her? Not much was making any sense since she’d arrived in Hemlock. Granted, she’d been the one to walk into Cam’s store, so apparently whoever had cracked her on the head earlier hadn’t planned their meeting.

  Maybe she was making a big deal about everything. Two events didn’t necessarily add up to a coincidence.

  It was very quiet out. The wind rustled trees here and there, and the only other sound came from a bird far off somewhere toward the water. She was pretty sure it was a storm petrel, a gray seabird with white tail feathers and britches. One of her middle-school teachers had once said their sound was like a cat purring, but to Val, it was more like the rapid chirping of a squirrel, with inconsistent high and low chirps. Some lived to be thirty years old. Maybe the one she heard had been around when she last lived in Hemlock. Like Cam, and Donna and Mack, maybe the storm petrel had stayed here and been shaped and formed by the little town by the sea, with the same amount of paradox and contradiction as its purring or chirping.

  A low rumble came from the north. She couldn’t see around the building that far, but she knew a truck was coming. She turned back to Cam and raised her arm. Cam nodded that she was ready.

  The sound of a big truck grew, and when she could see the long beam of its headlights on the road, she waited another beat and then snapped her arm down.

  The truck roared by, swirling up the fog until its wisps were vaporized.

  Val turned and half trotted, half limped back to Cam, who stood there with the door hanging from the top hinge. Cam raised a finger to her ear, and Val understood to listen for the beeping of any pre-alarm.

  When no sound came, Cam pushed the door farther inward and they climbed through.

  Though the front of the building was made up of windowed sliding garage doors, there wasn’t enough light from the street to help them see much. Val took the lead, tiptoeing carefully toward where she’d last seen her car. Her heart was racing, and she felt as well as heard the glug glug of its pulsing in her ears.

  “There,” she whispered. “Those are the parts Mack took off my mom’s car.”

  They bent down and studied the grill and hood.

  Cam ran her hands over the grill. After a minute, she
said, “This is a deer hit.”

  Val moved closer and Cam took her hand, guiding it along the grill.

  “How can you tell?”

  “There’s blood and flesh here…and here.”

  Val pulled away quickly. “Ugh! Okay.” She stood. “See? It was a deer.”

  “Shit,” Cam said.

  Val’s adrenaline was surging through every part of her body, and suddenly, she realized she had to pee.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Bathroom. It’s right there.” She gestured to the door, and as she tiptoed over to it, Cam whispered rather loudly.

  “Hurry up!”

  Val carefully closed the door, pushing it until it clicked. She turned the light on, and the whirring sound she’d heard the first time she used the bathroom started again. She hastened to the toilet and dropped her pants. Hovering over the toilet and holding her ribs, she was still puzzled. She looked up and realized the noise was coming from a fan on the ceiling above her. Relieved, she finished her business and zipped up, but paused. She flushed and climbed onto the toilet. The noise was coming from the fan, but the fan blades weren’t moving. As a matter of fact, she could see through the grill that the fan blades had been removed from the mechanism. She reached up to the grill and pulled, but it was screwed on tight.

  Flipping her cell phone on, she pecked at the flashlight app and pointed the light up.

  Her mouth opened suddenly. “Fuck.”

  There, beyond the grill and pointing down, was a small video camera. Its red indicator light had been taped over. She now knew that the whirring noise meant that it was turned on, recording her.

  She backed away and almost fell off the toilet. She yelped at the muscles that were bruised and painful, and scrambled down. She got to the door and flung it open so hard that Cam yelped, “Gee-zus!” from the other side of the garage.

  “Cam! Come here, now!” Val was frantic, feeling the need to run as far away as possible, but it was too late.

  “What?” Cam was at her side and Val grabbed her arm, pulling her back into the bathroom.

  Val stopped at the doorway and put a finger up to her lips. She turned the light off. The whirring stopped. She turned it back on and the whirring began again.

  “It’s the fan,” Cam said.

  Val flicked the switch once more. “It’s off now, come here.”

  Standing by the toilet, she turned her cell-phone light upward. Cam squinted and then climbed on top of the toilet seat. And a second later, Cam turned around and looked down at Val.

  “Holy shit.”

  Cam got off the toilet and they moved away. “That bastard is taping whoever comes in here.”

  “Jesus.”

  “I heard that noise the other day and couldn’t figure it out.”

  Cam shook her head. “I don’t think Donna’s gonna like the fact that Mack’s taping all the housewives pulling their pants down.”

  Val pulled Cam out of the bathroom.

  Cam stopped just outside the door. “That sick fuck. We need to go to the police.”

  “I’m on the tape, Cam. If we go to the police, it’ll be obvious that we broke in.”

  “Well, we need to get the tape either way, because Mack’s going to find out you broke in.”

  Cam went back in, and Val leaned against the open door. She watched Cam climb up onto the toilet and pull at the grill.

  “I tried that. Let me go get a screwdriver.” Val hurried off to the garage and found one.

  In less than a minute, the grill was off and Cam pulled the camera out.

  “Shit.”

  “What?”

  “It’s hardwired. This is just a camera. The recorder’s somewhere else.”

  “It’s gotta be in Mack’s office.”

  But as soon as Val said that, she could tell that Cam realized what she’d just remembered. “His office is alarmed.”

  “We can still go to the police with this,” Cam said as she stuffed the camera back up and screwed the grill back in. “You can say you saw it when you were in the bathroom the other day.”

  Just as Val was about to argue that she was still on the camera, proving she broke in to the garage, a swath of light cut across the back wall of the garage.

  They froze, and Val watched the sudden horror in Cam’s eyes. A split second later, they ran out of the bathroom. Cam darted ahead of her and Val followed, trying to bend over like Cam was, so no one would see her through the windows.

  The engine of whatever car was just outside was still running, so Cam motioned for her to wait and snuck across the garage to the window of one of the bays.

  Over the pounding of her heart, Val could barely hear her own breathing, which was rapid and shallow. Soon it wouldn’t matter that she was on tape. They were caught.

  Cam snuck back, slower this time.

  “The car pulled in and turned around. It’s leaving now.”

  “Shit” was all Val could say, but her guts were cussing up a storm.

  In the dark, Cam’s eyes were large white cue balls. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Val reached the back door, but Cam told her to wait while she picked up a metal piece that was lying on a workbench at the back wall. It was about eight inches long and maybe six inches wide. She turned it over twice before looking up at Val. “Okay, I said we weren’t going to steal anything. But I lied.”

  She trotted over to Val and they made their way outside. Val propped the door back as best she could and Cam took a deep breath, blowing it out loudly.

  “I hope it takes Mack a while to figure out his door is broken,” Val said as she turned the doorknob to latch it, helping the door appear to be locked, then wiped her hands on her pants.

  “The bastard will be too busy watching women pee to notice,” Cam said as they walked back down the alley. “As soon as we find out why those people are after you, I want to blow the whistle on Mack’s little adult video production.”

  “Remember, I’m still on it.”

  They got to the street and headed for Cam’s car. Val held her ribs again, and Cam gently placed her arm around her. “We’ll have to figure out something to fix that.”

  Though she knew Cam was referring to the video, she wished she were talking about Val’s ribs. She let Cam’s embrace mean that Cam was taking care of her and Cam would fuss over her injuries. It was a fantasy, sure, but she liked the little thrill it gave her.

  Chapter Ten

  It was just after two o’clock in the morning, and Val was sitting on her couch looking at a small plastic medicine bottle while Cam sat next to her examining the metal plate. She turned it over, examined it, and turned it over again. She took a pen from the coffee table and began poking at the screw holes.

  Val’s muscles had finally calmed down. “The Vicodin is helping a lot more than the aspirin.”

  Cam’s laugh was sweet. “That’s because it’s a controlled substance and it kicks ass.”

  She shook the pill bottle. “It says my mom had back pain.”

  “How many are left?”

  “Four.”

  “That should get you through the worst part. But be careful. Those things are addictive.”

  “How long do you think it’ll take Mack to check his video tape?” Val put the bottle in her pocket.

  “I hope longer than it takes us to figure out what those thugs were looking for.”

  The Vicodin helped her pain, but anxiety still broke through, piquing her worry. And on top of all that, her gut felt sick about her old friend Donna. “Do you think she knows Mack’s videotaping women in his bathroom?”

  “I doubt it.” Cam placed her hand on Val’s thigh. “But people change sometimes.”

  Val considered her response, but it was hard to with Cam’s warm hand on her leg. It felt comforting. She wasn’t sure she should totally trust the feelings, but at the moment, she was spent from their recent criminal activities and fatigue was setti
ng in. At least that’s what she told herself.

  “I take it not for the better.”

  “No.”

  “Do you speak from experience?”

  Cam bit her lower lip in a way that was so endearing.

  Val nudged her with her shoulder. “Tell me about Donna.”

  “The Donna I was with,” Cam said, “was sweet, nice. We had a great first two years. Then…” Cam looked up toward a painting on her wall, but Val wondered if she was actually peering into the past. “Then she started to change. She refused to be close. Refused to have sex.” Cam shrugged, but the act of indifference didn’t seem sincere. “I know those things happen after a while, but this was different. She’d cringe when I touched her.”

  “Why, do you think?”

  “I didn’t know at first. Then I found out she was sleeping with Mack. When I confronted her, she couldn’t have cared less. By then she’d already started changing. She started keeping strange hours and dressing like she was a biker chick or something.”

  “I saw her in a leather outfit the other day.”

  “That’s what I mean. By the time we broke up, she was no longer the Donna I knew.”

  Val could see that she looked a little hesitant to elaborate.

  “I noticed a lot of little things. She bought a new purse that was, like, S&M themed, and she began wearing a lot of makeup. But the most telling of all was that she changed all her computer passwords and never let her cell phone out of her sight. She even took it with her into the shower.”

  Cam moved her hand back to the piece of metal, and Val felt a twinge of disappointment.

  “The coffee’s got to be ready,” Val said, getting up and going to the kitchen. “Do you take cream and sugar?”

  She heard Cam call from the living room. “I own a candy store. What do you think?”

  Val smiled as she prepared the mugs.

  “You know,” Cam said, “you should probably see if your mother has an extra set of keys for the house and the car.”

  “Yeah. I don’t want to keep leaving the house unlocked. I mean, these people could come back anytime, but if they haven’t found what they’re looking for yet, maybe they’ll start looking somewhere else.”