“Would you quit calling me that?” She addressed the question to his back. Fie was already a dozen paces ahead. Summer hurried to catch up. “Damn it!”
“What’re you swearing for?”
“Fun.”
“Whatever turns you on.” He stopped in front of an ancient-looking black car and bent, feeling beneath its massive front bumper. The sound of the hood popping open was as loud as a gunshot to Summer’s sensitized ears.
“What are you doing?” Glancing around, Summer wrapped her arms over her chest. The night had grown cool, but she thought it was nerves rather than temperature that was the cause of her sudden chill.
He opened the hood wide, pulled a coil of wire obtained God knew where from the back pocket of his cut offs, and bent over the car’s yawning mouth. “Connecting the battery to the coil.”
“Why?”
“Jesus, Rosencrans, don’t you ever shut up? I need to concentrate here.”
“So who’s stopping you?” But after that she seethed in silence as, following a couple of apparent false starts that had him swearing under his breath, he wrapped one end of the wire around a battery post and threaded it down through the engine. He dropped to the ground, turned rather clumsily onto his back, and scooted under the car. Minutes and a ton more curse words later he was out again, grimacing as he clambered to his feet.
“Get in.” He shut the hood.
“But …”
“Just do it, would you?” He came around the car, opened the driver’s-side door, and stood waiting.
“But—this is somebody’s car.”
“No kidding.”
“You’re stealing it.”
“I’m trying to. Only you keep talking.”
“Stealing a car is against the law. You could go to jail. We could go to jail.”
“Just get in the car, Rosencrans.” An ominous glance warned her against continuing to argue. It was clear he wasn’t in the right humor to appreciate dissent. Not without severe misgivings, Summer swallowed her objections and got in.
The interior of the car was clean. A baseball cap and a couple of textbooks in the backseat attested that its owner was probably a male high school or college student. At the thought of making off with some kid’s car, Summer felt another pang of conscience.
“I don’t think we should …” she began.
“Don’t think, okay?”
He slammed the door behind her and leaned in the open window. Seen up close and personal, his face looked awful. It was impossible to tell whether, under normal conditions, he could be described as a handsome man. Summer tried to recall whether or not she had ever glimpsed a picture of Steve Calhoun, and failed. Surely the papers had carried photos of him, but she simply couldn’t remember.
“Look, this is a ’55 Chevy. We can start it without a key. I know, because I used to drive one when I was in high school. The transmission’s in neutral. I want you to keep it in neutral till it starts picking up speed down the hill. Then shift into first.”
“But …”
“Don’t talk, Rosencrans, okay? Just do what I tell you. When we get a good clip going, shift into first. Simple.”
“But …”
“I’m gonna be back here pushing. If we do it right, the engine’ll turn over and we’ll have wheels. Wheels that nobody knows we’ve got. We can just cruise right past ’em out of Dodge.”
“I don’t know how to drive a stick shift.”
“What?” He looked at her as if she had suddenly started speaking in tongues.
“I don’t know how to drive a stick shift. I learned to drive on an automatic, and that’s all I’ve ever driven.”
“Jesus.” He rested his head against the top of the window, and closed his one good eye. A second later, he opened it again. “You’re gonna have to learn. Right now.”
“I’ve never been very mechanical …”
“The alternative is that I drive, and you push.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, oh.”
“I’ll try.”
“Great.” He took a deep breath. “Okay, listen. All you have to do, when you get ready to shift into first, is depress the clutch pedal first. See that third pedal over there on the other side of your brake? That’s the clutch. Step on it, shift into first”—he reached in front of her to demonstrate with the black-tipped handle that stuck out of the right side of the steering wheel—“just like this. Hit the pedal, move the stick up and forward. Easy. Try it.”
Summer did.
“See?” he asked when she had performed to his satisfaction.
“Easy.” If her voice lacked conviction he overlooked it.
“Good. Let’s do it.”
“Wait!” Summer hoped the panic that infused her voice was audible only to her own ears.
“Hit the clutch, shift into first.” He was already walking around to the rear as he called to her.
With both hands on the wheel, Summer was once again tense as a crouched cat. Slowly, laboriously, the car started to move. Gravel crunched. She turned the wheel so that they were aiming toward the gate. The road leading to it was downhill all the way.
The car began to pick up speed.
“Now!” he yelled.
Move the stick up and forward—a hideous grinding noise—no, step on the clutch first and then … She did it. Through the rearview mirror, she saw that Frankenstein was lurching along in a lopsided jog behind the car. Then the engine coughed to life, capturing her attention.
Alone in an unmarked car, she drove straight on down to the gate.
11
“Death—the last sleep? No, it is
the final awakening.”
—Sir Walter Scott
Being a ghost was not a whole heck of a lot of fun.
Deedee felt as though she were being borne helplessly along by a swift river current. Once she had drifted outside the window, a mysterious force had caught her up, propelling her to destinations unknown at speeds so fast that the stars above and lights below had melded into a gigantic sun-streaked torrent. She bobbed up at scenes from her own life, not of her own will but for some reason she didn’t yet understand. The tiny clapboard house where she had lived as a little girl. The high school where she’d been cheerleader. The recording studio where, two months before she had died, she’d gotten the chance to sing backup for Reba McEntire because the regular girl was sick.
The highlight of her life.
They’d said she was good, the people in the studio. That she had some pipes.
If she had lived, she might have been a star.
That was what she mourned most about her lost life, she realized. The waste of her God-given talent before it could be recognized. She had had the voice of a honky-tonk angel, yet precious few had ever known it.
A honky-tonk angel. If she was an angel at all, that was the kind she was.
But she didn’t think she was an angel. She wasn’t sure, of course, but when she thought of angels she thought of heavenly beings with golden halos floating over their heads and big white wings and harps.
Angelic angels. She’d been many things in life, but angelic wasn’t one of them.
Did Heaven have an angel opening for a hard-drinking, fast-living hell-raiser with three-inch nails and blue jeans so tight it hurt her to sit?
Maybe. But it didn’t seem likely.
Instead she thought she might be a ghost. As a kid, she’d always thought being a ghost might be kind of fun. Floating through darkened hallways, moaning in the middle of the night, moving things out of their accustomed place—just in general scaring the socks off people. Fun.
But if she was a ghost, ghosting wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. For one thing, though she seemed to be able to materialize—at least, the warm tingling that every once in a while pervaded her being along with a sense of the matter that was her rushing together and becoming solid made her feel like she was materializing—she could not materialize at will.
She just poppe
d up, like a jack-in-the-box, and vanished as quickly. Her mother had been sitting on the tattered tweed couch in the living room of the house where she had grown up, watching Roseanne. Deedee had recognized her mother, recognized the poor shabby room, even recognized the program—and felt the tingling. All of a sudden her mother’s eyes had turned toward where Deedee floated by the rocking chair and grown huge. She had screamed—and fainted dead away.
Just about the reaction to be expected from someone who had seen a ghost.
Her old buddy Steve—what had happened to his face?—at least he hadn’t fainted when she’d felt the tingling again outside the boat-storage place. But he hadn’t waved back, either, when she had tried a tentative greeting. Instead he’d just stared at her, real hard. Maybe he hadn’t seen her at all. She couldn’t be sure.
There wasn’t much she could be sure about, anymore.
But she did know one thing: There was some tie, like a huge invisible rubber band, that bound her to earth. In order to get to heaven, she had to break the bond.
But first she had to figure out what the bond was.
12
If Summer had remembered the code, she would have been gone. Out of the whole mess and headed for home. As it was, she sat glowering at the closed gate until Frankenstein opened the passenger door and slid in, panting.
“Nine-one-two-eight,” he said.
Sulkily Summer punched in the numbers. The gates swung apart, and the Chevy bucked through the opening like a spastic kangaroo.
“Damn it, when you let up on the brake, you have to hit the clutch first!”
“I told you I don’t know how to drive a stick!”
Somehow she got the car smoothed out. A glance in the rearview mirror showed her that the gates had closed behind them. In response to his gesture, she turned left onto the road, retracing their route back through the small town. The lights of the 7-Eleven glowed on the right. Apparently the store was true to its neon advertising: OPEN 24 HOURS A DAY!
“You got any money?” He felt in the pockets of his cutoffs and came up empty.
“No.” They both knew where her money was. In her purse, waiting with her bucket and vacuum cleaner by the funeral home’s front door.
“Check out the gas gauge.”
There was a hair less than a quarter of a tank.
“That’ll get us maybe eighty, ninety miles.” He glanced at the 7-Eleven speculatively. Summer’s blood went cold as she wondered if, horror of horrors, he was thinking about robbing the convenience store for gas money.
“I’m not going eighty miles.” That glance of his was the last straw. She had had it. Absolutely had it. She was not being a party to anything else dangerous—or illegal.
He either missed or ignored the implication in her words. “Pull in, will ya?”
“No!” Summer almost shrieked, and stepped on the accelerator for emphasis. The Chevy sputtered twice, then spurted forward. “No, no, no!”
“A thousand times no?” He looked at her as if she had suddenly sprouted an extra nose. “What the hell’s the matter with you?”
“I will not be a party to robbing a convenience store!”
“I wanted to stop so I could take the wire out of the engine!”
“No!”
They reached the intersection that led out of town. Just past the traffic light Summer saw a small white sign identifying the road: 266. She knew where she was!
“Hang a right.”
She glanced both ways down the dark, deserted strip of highway—and turned left. Just in time she remembered to depress the clutch. The Chevy lurched, but kept going.
“Hey, I said hang a right.”
“No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
“I’m going home.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“You’re going home?”
“That’s right.”
“You mean to Murfreesboro?”
“That’s right.”
“You’ve gotta be out of your effing mind!”
“I’m going home.” Summer set her jaw, clamped her hands around the wheel, and refused to look at him.
“Do you have a death wish or are you just plain stupid? Murfreesboro is where the bad guys are, remember?”
“It’s where the bad guys were. They’re probably spread out all over this part of Tennessee by now, looking for us. Anyway, they’re looking for the van. You said so yourself. They won’t recognize this car if they drive right past us.”
“Cut the crap, Rosencrans, and turn around.”
“It’s McAfee” Summer growled. “And I’m going home! I refuse to be a part of this any longer! Whatever you’re involved in, it has nothing to do with me. I was doing my job, minding my own business, when you kidnapped me. I had nothing to do with murdering that man back there at Harmon Brothers. I had nothing to do with stealing the van. Or the bodies. Or this car. I’ve never been involved in anything illegal in my life. The police aren’t after me. Nobody has any reason to want to kill me.”
“Oh, yeah?” His voice was ominously quiet. “What about me?”
“What?” She glanced at him then.
“Maybe I do. Maybe you’ve just given me a reason. Maybe if you don’t do what I tell you, I’ll wrap my fingers around your neck and squeeze the life out of you with my bare hands. Did you ever think of that?”
She returned her attention to the road. “If you want to, go ahead.”
There was a pause. Summer could feel his gaze on her. She had called his bluff, and he didn’t much like it. She, however, felt perfectly confident in doing so. Whatever Steve Calhoun was, whatever scandal he might have been involved in, whatever crimes he might have committed, he was not a murderer. Or at least, she amended, remembering the van’s original driver with a tiny inner shiver, he wasn’t going to murder her. She was as sure of that as she was of her own name.
“What makes you think I won’t do it?”
“I told you, if you want to, go ahead.”
There was another pause. “Look, Rosencrans …”
“McAfee!”
“Whatever. Maybe I won’t kill you, but whoever’s after me will. They’ll be able to find you, in Murfreesboro. Didn’t you leave your purse in that funeral home? I bet it had your address in it, didn’t it? On your driver’s license? Sure it did. They’ll find it, and they’ll come calling. Looking for me.”
“So I’ll tell them you kidnapped me, used me to get you out of town, then let me go. I’ll tell them I don’t have any idea where you are. And it’ll be the truth. I won’t know. I don’t want to know.”
“They’ll kill you anyway. Trust me, Rosencrans. They’ll come after you, and they’ll kill you.”
“Then I’ll get out of town!” She was so agitated that she let that Rosencrans pass. “My mother’s spending a few weeks with my sister and her kids in California. I’ll go to them. I’ll catch the first plane out. I’ll go home and change and pack a few clothes, and head straight for the airport. In Knoxville, not Nashville.”
“And just how will you get to the airport? You don’t have a car anymore, remember?”
“I’ll call a cab! I’ll take a bus! I’ll get there, believe me!”
“You think they won’t come after you in California?”
“No! I think they won’t! I’ll go to the police, if I have to! At this point, I’m still an honest citizen! They’ll protect me. I’ll go to the police in California. That’s what I’ll do.”
“If you go back home, you may not live to get to California.”
“That’s what you say. Why should I listen to you? Nobody wants to kill me. They want to kill you. I don’t know why. I don’t want to know why. I even hope you get out of this with a whole skin, really I do. But I don’t want any part of it. I’m going home.”
“I don’t suppose it makes any difference to you that I can’t see to drive? How’m I supposed to manage until my vision gets back to normal?”
&n
bsp; This blatant attempt to tap in to her store of pity didn’t work.
“I don’t want to sound callous, Frankenstein, but that’s your problem.” Summer hesitated, her sympathy zone touched in spite of herself. “If you want, you can hide out at my house. For a day or two. Just until you can see.”
“Yeah, right. That’s the first place they’ll look.”
“Then park the car and catch a bus. Or a train. Or a plane. Do what you want. I don’t care. I’m going home.”
For a few minutes he said nothing more. Summer decided that he had given up arguing and felt herself begin to relax. She was really tired. What time was it, four, four-thirty? Her body longed for bed. Talk about a hard day!
“You keep any money at your house?”
His words, spoken out of the blue, made her start. She glanced over at him suspiciously. “Why?”
“I was thinking maybe you could float me a loan. I’ll need gas money.”
“I keep a little money in a cup in one of my kitchen cabinets. Not much, maybe thirty dollars. You can have that.”
“Thanks. I’ll pay you back.”
His unspoken rider was If I get out of this alive. Summer heard it as clearly as if he had said the words aloud. Guilt raised its bothersome head once more. She glanced at him, but he was staring straight ahead, out through the windshield.
“I’ve got a bank card.”
“Yeah?”
“I can withdraw up to two hundred dollars at a time. You can have that money, too.”
“Sure it wasn’t in your purse?”
“I keep my credit cards in a safer place than that.”
“Oh, yeah? Where?”
“In the freezer. Frozen into a tray of ice. That way I have to melt the ice before I use the cards. Sort of a built-in braking system, so I won’t be tempted to spend what I don’t have.”
“Smart, Rosencrans. Money’s tight, huh?”
Summer shrugged. “I get by.”
“Anything you lend me, I’ll see you get it back. I promise. Unless …” His voice trailed off.
“Unless you’re dead, right?” she finished dryly. He was laying it on thick, and she knew he was doing it deliberately, but still the thought of him dead was beginning to bother her. Just as he intended, she was sure.
Walking After Midnight Page 9