I followed the line of his pointing finger and saw a man cutting the grass around the bank building. “A lawnmower,” I told him.
“Yes,” he said, watching it thoughtfully. “That’s exactly what it is.”
I maneuvered the car into a space and opened the car door. Meanwhile, Robert was staring in fascination at the mower. Since places that have more sand than grass don’t require a lot of lawn maintenance, it wasn’t surprising that we hadn’t run across one before.
“Let’s go cash that check,” I prompted.
Robert didn’t take his eyes off the man with the mower. “You go in, Kitty. I’ll be there in a minute.”
I hesitated. Small, everyday things held great appeal for Robert — things like cameras and can openers, for example. And he was more impressed by the airplane models at the Wright Brothers Museum than he would have been with the actual space shuttle, had it landed right at his feet. There was no telling what a mere lawn mower could prompt him to do.
I should have placed bets. Sure enough, when I emerged from the bank a few minutes later, there was Robert huddled with the gardener over the lawnmower, which had been turned on its side. It was with some difficulty that I extricated him from the gardener’s lecture on the importance of balanced, sharpened blades to the appearance of a well-maintained lawn.
“I won’t even ask how you accomplished that,” I commented as we got in the car.
“It was very simple, really,” Robert said. “I merely told him I had been in Africa and I was interested in the developments in, ah, lawn mowers since I had been away.”
I turned to him, dismay (I am sure) written on every feature of my face.
“He seemed to think that was reasonable.”
“We really need to talk about Africa, Robert. It has cities and suburbs not at all unlike England and America. They would have the latest in lawnmower technology.”
“Well, he seemed unaware of that. As a matter of fact, Kathleen, people here seem to view Africa exactly as they do on the other side of the trap door. A place of raw beauty and primitive innocence unspoiled by modernisms such as, ah—”
“Mowers and merchandise scanners?”
“Exactly so.” He looked at me. “You worry excessively, Kitty.”
*****
Our next stop was the grocery store we bought enough essentials (finally) to last us until our departure Sunday morning. The store, which was within sight of the bank but too far to walk, was in a small strip-mall so new it was still under construction. I had never been there before, but I turned in anyway. Not only was it convenient, but I could report the details back to Lila who saw all new construction as a threat to every right thinking person. And besides, in spite of my occasional bravado, I was still shy of running into Lila’s Food Lion friends. It bad enough that Robert was introduced to Phillip before he was introduced to my mother. There was no point in adding anyone else to the list.
We had just finished loading bags into the back of the car when we looked up and saw the white Toyota parked one aisle over and four cars up. We probably would never have noticed him had not a green Chevrolet mini-van that was obscuring our view chosen that particular moment to pull out.
Robert caught sight of him the same instant I did. “Don’t let him know you’ve seen him,” he warned quietly and closed the trunk.
But it was too late. The driver of the other car had seen our eyes turned in his direction, and started his engine.
“Damn,” Robert hissed, and we piled hastily into the Accord. There were two exits to the parking lot. I bet on the closest one and beat the Toyota to it, sliding across the opening just as it tried to slip through.
“Well done!” Robert yelped. “You’ve cut off his retreat! Now pursue, Kitty, pursue!”
So I did, following on the bumper of the Toyota as it whipped around the corner of the grocery store and plunged into the service alley behind it.
“Do we have a strategy?” I asked Robert.
“Well, I should think it’s obvious, Kathleen. We want to box him in somewhere.”
I had no idea how to go about this. There had to be an exit someplace, but even if I found it first and blocked it, the Toyota would only turn around and tear back the way it came. And we couldn’t keep up this nonsense very long without attracting attention to ourselves.
And then I had another thought: what would we do if we actually caught the guy?
I didn’t have long to worry about this. In the next instant the Toyota swerved around a cluster of dumpsters and plunged into a construction site. It was hemmed in on two sides by partially finished brick walls, on the third side by the dumpsters, and on the fourth side by us. I sat in dumb disbelief for perhaps half a second, watching the guy in the Toyota fling himself from side to side inside his car, looking for an escape. Robert, as a matter of fact, was doing the same thing.
“You’ve got him boxed, Kitty,” he said. And at that moment, the driver’s side door of the Toyota opened, and its driver bolted.
“Robert!” I cried out.
He was running right toward us. I suppose the idea was to take us by surprise and sprint past our car before before we thought to stop him, then disappear on foot in any number of directions. It was a pretty quick move, actually, and he would have made it, too — if Robert hadn’t thrust the car door open just as he streaked along the right side of the Accord. The door caught him between knees and shoulders, flattening him in midstride.
I gasped and leaned across Robert for a better view. There on the pavement by the side of the car laid our Toyota Man. His head seemed twisted at an odd angle and his eyes were opened wide.
I drew back in shock and clutched at Robert’s arm. “Oh my god,” I whispered. “We’ve killed him.”
Chapter 36
“Stay here,” Robert ordered me, and promptly vaulted from the car. The Toyota guy, I realized with an outpouring of relief, was alive enough to twitch. I watched as Robert hauled him to his feet and spun him around, locking his arm securely across the man’s throat. It took me a moment to realize he had also twisted the guy’s arm up behind his back in what I assumed was a fairly uncomfortable position. I waited until he had muscled his captive closer to one of the brick walls (where they were less likely to be seen) before I climbed out of the car.
By this time, Robert had smacked his captive face to face with the brick wall that hid us from view and was patting him down with remarkable efficiency. Meanwhile, I visually inventoried the guy’s attire: baggy khaki pants, dirty Nikes, shapeless canvas hat, wrap-around sunglasses — and a red Hawaiian print shirt. From his expression, I gathered he was not particularly enjoying life at the moment.
Robert’s search produced a pack of Winston cigarettes, a disposable lighter with a tiny American flag on it, a pack of Juicy Fruit gum and assorted convenience store receipts, all of which he dropped impatiently to the ground. His search also produced the man’s wallet, which he quickly tossed to me.
I stared at it uncomfortably for several seconds. Wallets are personal, and it seemed rude to rifle through it. On the other hand, the guy had been following me around for the last several days. Certainly that entitled me to a little invasion of privacy.
“Damn,” Robert said, abruptly interrupting my thoughts. “We’ve got nothing.” He sounded disappointed.
I looked at him inquiringly. “We’ve got his wallet, Robert. That’s something.”
“Actually, I was hoping he’d have some weaponry about him. A pistol, perhaps.”
I hadn’t even thought of that. The idea of Robert with a gun was almost as frightening as the thought of the Toyota guy with a gun. My relief that they were both unarmed was unspeakable.
Robert spun the captive back around, and resumed his throat-and-arm hold. “Who are you?” he demanded (predictably enough).
What he got in reply was stony silence.
“Kathleen, what’s in his, um, wallet?” Robert prompted.
His wallet! Of course! I flipped it o
pen and riffled through its meager contents. “A Texaco credit card in the name of Alfred J. Tubman,” I recited. “A Mastercard in the same name. Three twenty-dollar bills, a five and three ones. And here’s his driver’s license.” I scanned the card, reciting: “Alfred John Tubman, sex: male, height: five foot nine — a Fredericksburg address.” I looked at the birthdate. “He’s only twenty-six,” said I, an old lady of not quite thirty-three, and held out the card so Robert could inspect the non-reproducible photo on the front.
“Brown hair, colorless eyes, pasty skin. Yes, that’s our man,” Robert verified. “Would you like to tell us why you’ve been following us, Alfred?”
Our captive considered the question. “I’m a PI,” he told us finally.
My stomach twisted sharply. “And you thought I worried too much,” I hissed at Robert. ”You almost had me convinced I worried too much.”
But Robert kept his gaze on Alfred. “And a PI is … what?” he asked.
“A private investigator,” Alfred supplied (looking frankly puzzled).
Robert waited a beat or two — translating, I realized, the term. “Who are you, um, investigating?” he asked.
“Her.” Alfred jerked his head toward me.
Robert shot me a glance, but I shook my head. I was a decoy, a red herring. What this guy really wanted was Robert. And he wanted him because he was really from the INS or maybe the CIA. Whoever deals in capturing People From The Wrong Century and Those Who Aid and Abet Them.
“Of what possible interest could the lady be to you?” Robert asked mildly.
“Her husband hired me,” our captive explained elliptically.
“Cameron!” For a moment I was so relieved my knees were weak. “Cameron!” I repeated again. I stared at Robert in joyful disbelief. No one knew his secret, no one was going to pounce on him and haul him off. We were safe, at least on that front. Or were we? I looked at the guy and then at Robert again. “Something about this just doesn’t make sense,” I said.
“Quite right,” Robert agreed. “It’s a rather underhanded thing to do, even for your husband.”
“No, it’s exactly something Cameron would do — except that I don’t know why. Plus, I just can’t see him hiring a guy like this.”
The guy-like-this bristled a little. “Hey,” he whined. “What do you mean by that crack?”
He sounded like something out of Mickey Spillane. I ignored him, my eyes on Robert. “I know Fredericksburg’s got some real detectives. Investigators. When I was working for Julie at Colonial Graphics I made up a brochure for these two guys for some sort of security business. Part of what they did was investigations, by which they meant detective stuff. One of them was a former FBI guy and the other was a retired Marine officer. I mean, Quantico is just up the road about 25 miles or so—”
“Quantico?”
“The Marine Corps base,” I explained, “And the FBI Academy is located there. Federal Bureau of Investigation,” I added, spelling it out.
“I see,” Robert said, probably not seeing at all.
“My point is that Fredericksburg isn’t exactly in the middle of nowhere. If Cameron wanted someone to spy on me for him, he could have found a person formally trained in that sort or thing, a real professional, without much trouble.”
“I am a formally trained investigator,” our formally trained investigator protested. “I graduated from Investi-Tech.
“What’s Investi-Tech?” I asked.
“A school! For investigating!
“Don’t investigators have special IDs?” I asked. “A license or something? You don’t seem to have one in your wallet here—”
“It’s in my car,” Alfred responded hotly. “I could show you if your buddy here would let me go a minute.”
“Well, he’s not,” my buddy said. “So we’ll just take your word for it.”
“How did Cameron find you?” I asked.
Pause.
“How did—”
“He knows my sister.”
Ah hah!
“She works at the hospital.”
I could have guessed. Even Robert figured it out. “Now that we’ve made that connection,” he said, “let’s move forward.”
Alfred and I both looked at him expectantly.
“Why would Mr. Finlay hire you to spy on his wife?”
“Investigate his wife—”
“Investigate, then—”
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
Robert twisted his arm a little higher.
“It’s because of the divorce!” Alfred gasped.
Divorce! I turned to Robert. “If Cameron wants a divorce,” I said, “all he has to do is ask me. He knows that. He doesn’t need a detective to gather evidence or anything. He can have a divorce in a heartbeat!”
“Well?” Robert asked our captive.
“If you want to know, ask her husband.”
“But I’m asking you,” Robert pointed out.
“Yeah? Well, figure it out. You can’t hold me prisoner and you can’t force me to talk—”
“Can’t I?” Robert asked, tightening his grip uncomfortably on his prisoner.
“Lighten up, man! You’re gonna break my arm!”
“Chat with me awhile,” Robert invited him pleasantly, “And I imagine your arm will feel much better.”
“There’s such a thing as client confidentiality,” Alfred advised us darkly.
Robert ignored him. “You know, Kathleen,” he mused, “broken arms are such nasty things. Miserably uncomfortable, and of course they don’t always heal properly. Then, too, there’s the sound of the bone when it actually cracks. That in itself is rather grusome, the sound of splitting—”
“He doesn’t want a divorce!” our prisoner blurted hastily.
“Did you say something?” Robert queried politely. “Kathleen, did Alfred say something?”
“Her husband doesn’t want to divorce her!” Alfred repeated.
“Then why are you following me around?” I asked.
When Alfred hesitated, Robert applied a little more leverage.
“He wants evidence that he can use to prove you’re an unfit mother,” Alfred gritted out. “To take the kids, if you pressed a divorce on him.”
I wasn’t getting it.
“He called me late Friday night,” Alfred went on. “Maybe early Saturday morning. Woke me up, as a matter of fact. Anyway, he sounded hot. Really pissed.”
Friday night, I remembered, was the first night Cameron phoned me, trying to appropriate the cottage for himself. Later that same night, Julie said, his true love dumped him. No wonder he sounded pissed, as Alfred put it. He had struck out twice.
“He called you here?” I asked. “Or in Fredericksburg?”
“Fredericksburg. It was the first time I ever talked to him but I could tell he was mad. He said he figured you must be seeing some guy coz you’re gone a lot and he wanted some evidence that would stand up in court. That way, if you tried to screw with him — hey! ease up on the arm, man! — he could threaten to take the kids.”
It didn’t matter if I tried to divorce him or he tried to divorce me. Either way, he’d control the shots. I felt like someone had hit me in the gut. “Prick,” I hissed. “Bastard.”
“Truly,” Robert said, looking a little white around the mouth. “Fortunately for you, however, he’s hired an idiot.”
“Hey!” the idiot objected. “I’m not an idiot!”
“We knew you were following us,” I said. “It was obvious, you were practically tailgating us—”
“I kept losing you! You drive like a bat out of hell — Jesus! — and besides, there were lots of times you never guessed I was back there.”
That was a creepy thought, but not a new one. “And you followed us to that burger place and parked in the parking lot and watched while we ate—”
Alfred smirked.
“And then you called the cottage. You called, and when I answered you hung up.”
“I tai
led you. I don’t do prank calls.”
“Well, you did. You called to see if we were home. To figure out where we were. Maybe even to unnerve us.”
“I didn’t call you,” Alfred muttered.
“And you broke into my house,” I went on.
“Someone broke into your house?” Alfred gave a good impression of surprise.
“Oh, come on now, Alfred—”
“That’s B & E!” he protested. “I could have my license yanked for that.”
“B & E?” Robert queried.
“Breaking and entering,” I told him. Then I contemplated Alfred. “When did you start doing this?”
“I told you, I didn’t—”
“No, I mean this tailing business. When did you start that?”
“Saturday. I got down here Saturday morning., but you were gone by then.”
“Saturday, we were in Ocracoke,” Robert reminded me quietly.
“The day of that…” I looked at Robert. “There was a party somewhere on the street that night…”
“And it was a perfect set up for a stakeout,” Alfred pointed out smugly. “Lots of cars, noise, people coming and going. I waited for hours, thought maybe you had gone back to Virginia. Then here you came.”
“Obliging of us,” Robert murmured.
“And you were clueless, too.” Alfred fairly radiated ill-suppressed glee.
“But not for long,” Robert reminded him. And to prove his point, he pressed Alfred back a little more snugly against the brick wall.
“Look, I’m not just some part-time dick,” Alfred bristled. “I got my own business. It’s called Magnum Investigations.”
“Oh dear,” I muttered.
“Does that mean something?” Robert asked.
“It explains the shirt,” I said.
“What?”
“Don’t you know anything?” our PI asked derisively. “Magnum’s a detective. He’s famous, man.”
“On television,” I supplied. “In re-runs. He wears Hawaiian print shirts.”
“Yeah,” sneered our friend. “Where you been all your life?”
Out of Time Page 27