Someone Was Watching

by David Patneaude

  “It’s going to be late by the time we get there,” Chris said. “I think we should try to check into a motel and start looking around tomorrow.” He hoped they could get a motel. What if there weren’t any in Westview, or if none of them had a vacancy? What if they wouldn’t rent a room to a couple of kids? He and Pat should have called down here ahead of time, he decided, but it was too late now.

  Pat shot him a questioning look. “Why wait to start looking?” he said. “We can get a motel room and then check things out. It’ll still be light for quite a while.”

  Chris looked at his watch. Not yet four, and he’d already set it to Eastern time. Pat was right. “Okay,” he said. “I guess I’m trying to put things off. But we need to be careful. We can’t let Bud and Clover know we’re in town—not yet.” He got out his wallet and took a long look at Molly’s picture, at her smiling face. Wondering if she was smiling now, he put the wallet back in his pants pocket.

  “So what’s the plan, Sherlock?” Pat asked. “You got any ideas? You think we can get a motel room?”

  Chris stared out the window for a long moment. Pat seemed more relaxed than he’d been earlier in the day, and Chris wished some of that would rub off on him—that he’d feel better, too. But at least he wasn’t feeling any worse. That knot in his stomach could be getting bigger and tighter with every mile they traveled along this highway. Instead it was just sitting there, letting him know that this wasn’t just an adventure they were on.

  “No real plan, I guess, Pat,” he said finally, ignoring Pat’s concern about the motel. “I thought we’d call information and try to get the addresses for the store and house, and then find them—without being seen.”

  “And get into their house if we have to,” Pat said.

  “Yeah, somehow, without looking suspicious. Without getting caught. And then get back out with Molly, or convince the police to get her out. No problem.”

  “Not for us,” Pat said.

  Chris got the impression that Pat really meant it. And why not? They weren’t coming all the way down here to get discouraged or cowardly at the last minute. He couldn’t think of anything he wouldn’t do to get Molly back. But he hadn’t been tested yet.

  Outside, the terrain had become long stretches of green foliage interrupted by patches of swampy water and an occasional side road. The palm trees stood in clumps and rows now, appearing like something from a postcard, but Chris was surprised by the big, long-needled pines lining the highway. They looked out of place, anchored in the marshy ground. He stared out toward the horizon—still flat for as far as he could see—where the blue sky met the earth and turned almost white in the afternoon haze. He couldn’t see any houses—or buildings of any kind—and he imagined what it would be like to be out there in that great, green stretch of water meadow in the heat of the day.

  Pat leaned over and peered out at the countryside passing by. “Let’s make sure we can get a motel room,” he said. “There’s no way I’m sleeping in a field with alligators and snakes.” He folded his arms across his chest.

  That was fine with Chris. He’d never been fond of snakes. And he wasn’t anxious to get acquainted with any alligators.

  The bus exited the main highway three times to make stops in small coastal towns. They could see water and beaches, and Chris wondered what it would be like to swim in that water, to run along those beaches. He’d never been to the ocean before. But this wasn’t the day to find out.

  The fourth time the bus stopped, the town was New Moon Bay. They were getting close. They spent the rest of the trip on the edges of their seats.

  “This has to be it,” Pat said as the bus slowed and turned off again. A flat road winding through shallow marshes, green trees, and thick undergrowth brought them to the sign for Westview a few moments later. Population 1,972, it said. Somebody had blasted it with a shotgun.

  The only indication of a town was a few mossy mobile homes tucked back in the trees. A three-legged dog stood sentinel by an old rusted pickup. In an overgrown yard, a thin boy about Chris’s size threw a dirty baseball into the air and caught it barehanded. He stared at the bus as it roared past. Chris involuntarily slumped down in his seat.

  “You’d think that guy had never seen this bus come by before,” Pat said.

  “Maybe it’s the main attraction in this town.”

  “I don’t think so,” Pat said. “I think the main attraction would be the bus out of town.”

  Chris smiled. They rounded another curve, and suddenly the town was there. The road had become its main street, and on either side of it neat, rectangular buildings squatted in the afternoon sun. Chris quickly spotted three motels with vacancy signs. Spaced between them were other businesses, including some fast-food restaurants. Next to him, he heard Pat give a sigh of relief, but Chris wasn’t ready to relax—yet. They had somewhere to eat now, but he wasn’t sure that the vacant rooms would be available to a couple of kids.

  The bus continued on past the town hall. A sign at the curb said POLICE VEHICLES ONLY, but the two parking spaces were empty. Chris could see the blue water of the gulf behind the buildings lining the left side of the street. One side street dead-ended at a strip of sand where a white lifeguard tower stood silhouetted against the water like a skeleton.

  “Westview,” the driver said over the speaker system. The bus slowed and pulled up to the curb in front of a T-shirt shop. Other small stores lined both sides of the street for the next few blocks, and Chris quickly scanned the names on the storefronts nearby. He wasn’t about to blunder out into the sunlight and be spotted by Clover or Bud before they were there five minutes.

  “See anything?” he asked Pat.

  “No Cloverbud. No ice cream shop, even. Not right here, anyway.”

  “Me, neither. Let’s go,” he said, taking some sunglasses from his pack and slipping them on. Not much of a disguise, but it might help.

  Pat put his glasses on, too. They hurried to the front of the bus and stepped out into the afternoon heat, into the inside of a sauna. Chris had seen the ocean, and expected the weather to be cooler here. It wasn’t—but he had other things on his mind.

  A few people strolled by them while they stood on the sidewalk glancing around, but nobody seemed especially curious. The bus left them in a smelly cloud of exhaust and roared on up the street.

  “How far back to the motels?” Pat asked.

  “I’d say less than a mile,” Chris said, starting in that direction. A whiff of salt air tweaked his nose and he took a deep breath, filling his lungs with it, but it was too warm, too sticky, to be refreshing. He forced it back out through clenched teeth.

  “This looks like a pretty nice little town after all,” Pat said, falling into step beside him.

  “Yeah,” Chris said without enthusiasm. He was trying to look at every person walking up and down both sides of the street, without being obvious. The glasses helped.

  “I can hardly wait until we leave,” Pat said.

  16

  In less than fifteen minutes they were back at the first motel: the Westview Shores. Not new, not fancy, and definitely not on the shore. A quarter mile of side road and several other pieces of property separated it from the beach, but it looked clean.

  Chris had a story ready for the desk clerk, an explanation for why he and Pat were staying there by themselves. An aunt and uncle had been delayed in meeting them in town and taking them to their place in the country. Sudden illness—nothing real serious, though. They should be able to get there in a couple of days.

  But the woman behind the counter didn’t ask. “Thirty-two dollars,” was all she said when Chris told her they wanted a room. That was more than Chris had figured this place would cost—quite a bit more—but at least she was willing to take their money, and he doubted that any of the other places would be cheaper. She handed him a registration card. “Payable in advance,” she added, and returned her attention to a small television set. The TV blared loudly over the noise of the air cond
itioner, which didn’t seem to be working; the cramped room was hot and stuffy. An orange cat jumped up on the woman’s lap, stretched, and plopped down, its eyes on Chris. The woman absentmindedly stroked its chin and chest.

  Chris and Pat each put a twenty on the counter. The woman wiped some sweat from the base of her fat neck and made change for them while Chris filled out the registration. “Fred Barnes,” he wrote. “Green Bay, Wisconsin.” Barely glancing at it, she filed the registration in a drawer under the counter.

  “Room eight,” she said, handing Chris a key with a green plastic tag attached. The gold number was worn to a shadow. She turned back to the television, her face a mask of indifference.

  “Any places around here to get ice cream?” Pat asked.

  Good, Chris thought. The direct approach. Only this woman didn’t really seem like the helpful type. She kept staring at the flickering screen. Chris wondered if she’d even heard the question, but then she turned to face Pat.

  “Ice cream?” she said, as if waking from a trance.

  Chris guessed that they’d just needed to come up with a topic that would get her interested.

  “There’s the restaurants between here and uptown,” she continued. “Did you boys get here on the bus?”

  Pat nodded, and Chris let the peculiar sound of her words register. They were different—chewed on and softened and drawn out.

  “Then you must’ve seen some of ‘em on the way here from the bus stop. Drive-ins, you know. Handouts, I call ‘em. Then there’s some more on the other side of the bus stop, in with the shops. Regular restaurants. Some of ‘em have milkshakes, sundaes, stuff like that. Good stuff. You might try Murdock’s.”

  Chris watched her swallow. Her mouth is actually watering, he thought. “Any shops that just sell ice cream?” he asked. “You know, like ice cream cones and dishes of ice cream?”

  “Not yet,” she said dreamily, a little grin lifting up the corners of her mouth. “But there’s one opening up soon, I hear.” The word “hear” came out “he-uh.”

  “When? Where?” Chris asked, hoping he didn’t sound anxious.

  She didn’t seem to notice. “A few more days, I think, probably after you boys leave. How long are you staying, anyway?”

  “Just a couple of days,” Chris said. “Until my aunt and uncle get here.” At least he’d gotten to use part of his story.

  “Where?” Pat said.

  The woman looked at him with a blank expression.

  “Where…is…the…ice…cream…shop?” he asked slowly, dragging out each word.

  Chris could see him losing his patience.

  “It ain’t open yet,” she said.

  Pat looked over at Chris for some help.

  “Can you tell us where it will be when it opens?” Chris asked. “Just in case we’re still here?”

  “Sure,” she said, as if wondering why they hadn’t asked earlier. “It’s about two blocks past the bus stop—the T-shirt shop—but on the water side of the street. The same side as the post office and Murdock’s. Next to the toy shop—you can’t miss it. The name’s already up. Kinda cute,” she said, looking past Chris at the window behind him, as if the name were painted there. “The Cloverbud,” she said, but it came out “Cuhlovuhbud.” She shook her head slowly. “Not sure what it has to do with ice cream, but it’s kinda pretty.”

  Chris had stopped listening to her after “Cloverbud.” Having her say the name triggered an instant replay of everything that had happened in the last few days. The knot in his stomach tightened, and he could feel the sweat forming in his pores. He glanced at Pat, who looked nervous and excited at the same time. “Let’s go, Rocky,” he said.

  “Thanks,” Pat said to the woman.

  They were halfway across the office when she yelled, “Hey!”

  Chris froze, then cautiously turned around, watching Pat do the same. The woman looked at them without blinking, her eyes glistening in the sunlight coming in through the half-open window blinds. Then a faint grin lifted the corners of her mouth. “Go, Packers!” she shouted, smiling broadly and raising her fist in the air. Chris watched cat hairs drop from her hand and drift slowly down in the dusty light, while his heartbeat gradually returned to normal.

  “Go, Packers,” Pat said, forcing a smile.

  Chris couldn’t even do that. “Yeah,” he said, and turned back for the door.

  They found their room easily. With three others, it formed the bottom of the motel’s “U” shape, its window and door facing the street. A small swimming pool surrounded by short green shrubbery and white gravel took up most of the courtyard in front of it.

  Inside, the room was dark and hot and smelled faintly of mildew and pesticide. Pat turned on the air conditioning unit under the window while Chris opened the drapes and looked around. On the wall to his left, a low dresser supported a lamp and television. On the opposite wall, two double beds were separated by a nightstand, table lamp, and phone. Doors opened to a closet and bathroom at the far end of the small room.

  They dropped their backpacks on the little circular table near the window and sat down in two straight-backed chairs. Outside, the sun had dropped low enough behind the motel that half of the courtyard was shaded. Chris looked at his watch—6:05. At home it was 5:05. Their parents wouldn’t be missing them yet. His mom was usually the first one home, at about five-thirty. In a half-hour she’d be reading the note. Pat’s parents would find theirs about fifteen minutes later, but Chris suspected that his mom would be waiting for Pat’s parents with some bad news when they got home.

  “So far, so good,” Pat said.

  “We’re here, anyway,” Chris said.

  “And we already know where the shop is,” said Pat. “Now to find the house.”

  “The sooner the better.” He realized that now he was ready to get this over with, one way or another. He walked to the phone, got an outside line, and dialed information. The number the operator gave him matched the one they already had. When he asked for the address she referred him to another number, which he wrote down on the small pad of paper on the nightstand and quickly dialed. He asked for the address to be repeated twice, carefully writing it on the notepad.

  “Four-seventeen East Orchard,” he said, hanging up the phone. “Now all we have to—”

  “Chris!” Pat shouted, his nose pressed to the window.

  Chris started toward him and then stalled halfway there, unable to move. Lumbering out of the bend in the highway and heading for town on the straight section of road in front of the motel was a big white van with a giant ice cream cone painted on the side. Chris didn’t have to read the words below it. He knew what they said.

  Sunlight glinting off the driver’s window made it difficult to see who was behind the wheel. But Chris picked out the shape of his head—big and blocky, like the rest of him.

  “It’s Bud!” Pat said, his voice now a fierce whisper.

  The van disappeared, cut off from view by the front of the motel.

  “Come on!” Chris said, yanking open the door. In a moment they were carefully peering around the wall of the motel office, down the road toward town, watching the white van get smaller in the distance, watching it slow, its right turn signal flashing. Watching it turn a quarter mile away and head east, disappearing from view once more.

  “He didn’t go to the shop,” Chris said. “It’s farther down on the other side of the street.”

  “The house?” Pat wondered out loud.

  “Could be,” Chris said, grabbing Pat by the shirt sleeve and starting back toward the room. His heart was thumping in his chest, and it wasn’t from the short sprint to the front of the courtyard. “Or maybe he’s already making his ice cream rounds in the neighborhoods. “

  “It looked like he was heading somewhere definite,” Pat said.

  “I hope you’re right,” Chris said. “Let’s find out.”

  They headed for town, stopping at a gas station a block away, where the attendant confirmed tha
t Orchard Street was three more blocks straight ahead. And the East Orchard address would be reached by turning right off the main road, which he called Palm Avenue. They each got a can of soda pop from an old machine in front of the station and continued toward town.

  They turned right on Orchard and walked a nervous first block. The neighborhood of small frame houses was quiet. Two small boys were playing in the dirt in front of one of the houses; they didn’t even look up. There were no adults in sight and no cars traveling the narrow street.

  “Get ready to run for it or hide behind something if anyone comes,” Chris said. He knew the sunglasses wouldn’t save them if Bud or Clover were suddenly to drive down the street.

  “What kind of car do they have?” Pat asked as they crossed the street to the next block.

  “A big pickup. Green, I think,” Chris replied. “With a camper on the back.” He could feel sweat trickling down his back. His legs felt heavy and stiff, and he wondered how fast he’d be able to run. There weren’t many places to hide. Pat’s big body wasn’t going to fit behind one of the skinny trees lining the street.

  They got past the second block—still no people, no cars on the road. The addresses were in the 200s and getting higher.

  The third block was even quieter. The houses were bigger and set back farther from the street. Their numbers were in the 300s. Chris was glad to see more cars parked along the curb here. They’d provide hiding places if necessary.

  They came to the end of the block; what Chris saw made the hair on the back of his neck tingle: In the middle of the next block, the big white van sat on the side of the street.

  He pushed Pat toward the curb, where an old blue station wagon squatted halfway up on the sidewalk. They ducked down behind it. Chris looked over at Pat, who was blinking the sweat out of his eyes.