by KG MacGregor
"Elena, it’s me Spence."
"Wha–? This is way too early, bitch. Didn’t you get laid?"
"Elena, listen. I’m in trouble. Henry was murdered last night. I got called in to work when I left your house and I saw the guys who did it. They chased me, but I got away. I need your help. I don’t know where to go."
Spencer waited for the inevitable barrage of questions, but it didn’t happen.
"Elena?" Fuck! "Elena?"
"If you’d like to make a call, please hang up and try again…."
Angrily, she slammed the phone down and dug deep in her pocket for more quarters. This time, she called her friend’s cell phone.
"All circuits are busy." It cost her fifty cents to find that out.
"Fuck! Goddamn it!" Spencer screamed in frustration as she threw in her last two quarters and dialed the home number again. This time, it didn’t even ring. Nor did it return her coins.
Who else could she call? Henry and Elena were her only real friends. She had neighbors, but what good would it do to call them? For all she knew, those fuckers had tossed her house already and her neighbors would want to know why.
She needed more quarters, but the clerk inside wasn’t in the mood to make change. Grudgingly, she tossed a sweet roll onto the counter. "How much?"
"A dollar nine."
"Perfect." After pocketing the change, she grabbed another roll and threw two ones on the counter.
"You got a dime?" he asked. Dense.
"No."
"But I just–"
"I lost it. May I have my change, please?"
The light bulb finally went on and the young man sighed and shook his head.
Armed with six quarters, Spencer decided to try the cell phone one more time. Again, she set her helmet on the ground by her feet, cradling the phone in her ear as she dialed with her working hand. This time, the call went right to voicemail. Elena had call-waiting, so she must have turned it off, probably to avoid being disturbed again. Fuck!
Out of options for the moment, the injured woman pulled one of the sweet rolls from her pocket and ripped open the cellophane. She needed to find a dry place to wait out the day, a place near a phone.
Turning toward her bike, Spencer caught sight of a police cruiser slowing as it headed toward the store. A coffee run, probably…she hoped. Relax…be cautious, but relax, she told herself. She’d done nothing to warrant the attention of the police. Gripping her bruised side as she swung a leg over the saddle, she shoved the remains of the roll back into her pocket and prepared to ride out.
It was at that moment that she saw the second black and white, creeping around the corner from behind the building. Spencer tried to calm her rising paranoia, cranking the bike and gripping her helmet.
"Stay where you are and put your hands on your head!" the car’s loudspeaker barked as it pulled onto the lot.
What the fuck! Surely this wasn’t about telling the clerk that she’d lost her dime. And it could only be about one other thing.
There wasn’t time to weigh options. Spencer’s instincts were screaming at her to get the hell out of there, and that’s exactly what she did, dropping her helmet to the ground as she shot past the incoming car. Crossing three lanes of traffic on the nimble bike, she hurdled the median and sped off, this time heading west toward the Beltway. Over her shoulder, she saw one police car already in pursuit, lights flashing and sirens blaring; the other cruiser was hung up on the median. She never saw the third car that joined the chase.
Accelerating wildly, Spencer felt the sting of the cold rain on her unprotected face. She’d gotten a good jump this time — better than last night — but with the commotion behind her, it was only a matter of time before her pursuers caught up. She had to lose them.
On the Beltway, she picked up even more speed, crouching low behind the small windshield as her speedometer topped 110 miles per hour. A cyclist couldn’t afford a lapse in concentration at this speed; nor could she spare a glance over her shoulder. The sirens had faded, but she doubted they would give up the chase this soon.
At I-66, Spencer peeled off at the last second toward Fairfax, unknowingly missing the patrolman that was lying in wait on the Beltway up ahead. When the lookout radioed that she never passed, two of the three cars giving chase abandoned the Beltway, one turning east on I-66 toward Arlington; the other following the interstate west.
In the left lane ahead, Spencer spotted yet another law enforcement vehicle, this one a Fairfax County sheriff’s deputy. She hung back near the exit lane, knowing she’d call attention to herself riding in this rain without a helmet. Too late, she heard the siren behind her as the deputy drifted to the right to seal off her advance.
Cold, wet, bleeding, and now completely demoralized, Spencer slowed and pulled over to the shoulder, coasting to a stop as the deputy pulled over in front and got out of his car to walk back toward where she waited. She would just tell him exactly what she saw last night, and surely they would find a conspiracy if it were there.
Her knees still shaking from the adrenalin rush, she sat idling on the bike as the car behind her came to a stop. With her thumb, the cyclist wiped the rain from the tiny rear view mirror.
The sight nearly stopped her heart.
In disbelief, Spencer turned to see the black sedan that had chased her from Margadon, prominently sporting its US Government plate. A suited agent in an open trench coat walked tersely toward her, his steely eyes daring her to move. This was the man who had been in Henry’s office last night; the man who had probably killed her friend; and a man who now wanted her dead as well.
Not waiting for an introduction, she spun the throttle and popped the clutch, rocketing forward again as the deputy scrambled back to his car. Without her helmet, she heard the unmistakable sound of gunfire from the man in the trench coat.
* * *
"Come back to bed," Kelly groaned, incredulous that her lover would be up and about so early after the party that had raged until almost three a.m.
Instead, the IRS agent pulled on her jeans and slipped a sweatshirt over her head. "Something’s wrong with Spence."
"What is it?"
"I’m not sure. She said she was in trouble and then the line went dead. I can’t call out, not even on my cell phone." Elena grabbed her socks next, then her ankle boots. "Look, I’m going to head over to her place and see if she’s okay. Go back to sleep."
The naked woman complied.
CHAPTER 7
WATCHING OUT FOR a new home piqued Jessie’s interest for an hour or so as they moved south on I-81 through eastern Pennsylvania; but eventually, the child returned to dreamland, worn out by her night on the road.
In Harrisburg, Ruth drifted over to I-83 toward Baltimore, but as she approached the outskirts of the Maryland capital, she knew that she wasn’t cut out to live in a place like that, no matter how much she wanted to leave the small town behind.
She’d never lived in a big city, but from what she’d heard from her friend Arlene, it meant that people lived close to you, but you never got to know them. Workers came home and went inside their houses, closed their doors, and retreated to their fenced-in back yards. There was more traffic, longer lines, and people were more anonymous. Being anonymous had its advantages, for sure, but some people figured that it gave them permission to be flaming assholes, since the chances were pretty low you’d ever see the same people again.
Ruth laughed to herself as she recalled Arlene’s most embarrassing moment. Driving in Boston one day, she’d flipped off somebody once who cut her off, and by the time she got home, she was horrified to find out it was her neighbor in a new car.
No, Ruth wanted something a little more out of the way, but a place large enough to afford at least a modicum of anonymity. Places like Madison guaranteed that everyone knew your business; it wouldn’t do for people in a new place to start asking questions of the newcomer, and to start comparing notes.
Skirting the maze of interstates and park
ways, the young mother continued south into Virginia, noting with interest their proximity to Washington, DC. It might be nice to live close enough to visit a place like this, she thought, with its monuments and museums.
A series of turns landed the old Taurus wagon on the outskirts of Manassas, Virginia. It was sort of a bustling town, lots of shoppers out on Saturday, even in this rain. The stops and starts at the busy intersections woke Jessie and she sat up to look around.
"Are you getting hungry?" her mother asked.
Jessie nodded grumpily. Her usually pleasant personality always got displaced for those first few minutes after waking up.
What Ruth wanted was a place where she could sit in a booth and drink a bottomless cup of coffee. Instead, to her daughter’s delight, she pulled into a fast food restaurant that boasted a playground protected from the rain by a large overhang. Ten minutes later, she was shivering outside at a picnic table, watching the four-year-old blow off steam climbing through one tunnel to slide down another.
"Watch this!" the little girl shouted, suddenly appearing head first and landing on the carpet with a thud. Predictably, her face contorted as she began to cry.
"Sweetheart, you came out of there like a rocket. People aren’t supposed to be rockets," she teased gently. "Maybe you should come and eat for a few minutes until you feel better."
Jessie did as she was asked, tearfully climbing up onto to the bench and taking a big bite of her cheeseburger.
As a mom, Ruth felt pretty guilty about how she’d handled the care and feeding of this child over the last eighteen hours — a cheeseburger for dinner, sleeping in the car, a sweet roll for breakfast, and another cheeseburger for lunch. But it wasn’t the food that was important here; it was the playground, and the chance for Jessie to be a kid for just a few minutes. Ruth was asking a lot of her daughter right now, and she wasn’t going to lose sight of the fact that this was all about what was good for Jessie.
"I’m going to go get some more coffee, honey. I’ll be right back." The playground’s only access was from inside the store, and Ruth could keep an eye on Jessie easily as she drew another cup of coffee from the large dispenser. On her way back out, she picked up a complimentary copy of the Journal-Messenger, the local paper in Manassas. Once back at their table, she was pleased to see that her daughter had recovered from her spill and was back on the slide.
A couple of the stories on the front page on local businesses and an arts and crafts fair confirmed for Ruth that this was a thriving community, and yet a small town. Flipping to the back, she found the classifieds, which included several job ads, mostly entry level or service jobs. But it was a "for rent" ad that got her attention:
For Rent: 2BR/1B trailer furn $150 utl incl. Owner needs help w/errands & lt chores.
Ruth had figured on paying at least five hundred a month for something already furnished, and then to have to pay utilities on top of that. It was probably a dump, she reasoned. But maybe not.
Lowering the paper, she took a closer look at the community of Manassas. Traffic was moderate, the buildings new and modern. Signs to Old Town and to the Manassas Battlefield suggested that it was a tourist destination, and that the city’s history was a source of great local pride.
"Megan?" The little girl’s new name didn’t register. "Megan, sweetheart?"
The sweetheart part got the little girl’s attention, and it reminded her once again that she would be called Megan from now on.
"Look, honey, I need to make a phone call. Can you put your shoes back on?"
"One more time?" the girl asked hopefully as she started toward the ladder. Ruth smiled and nodded. One more time was the unwritten rule.
* * *
Turning off the main highway, Ruth counted the rows of mailboxes on the left side of the road. At the third one, she turned as instructed. The pavement ended almost immediately; and she hugged the right side of the rutted road until she reached the second driveway on the right. She’d feared from the woman’s directions that the place would be way out in the boondocks, but it didn’t seem that far out of the city at all.
"Is that it?" Jessie was sitting up straight, straining to see over the dashboard as they turned into the drive.
Ruth saw the white frame house as soon as she turned, but the trailer in the back didn’t come into view until she pulled even with the porch. It was pretty close to the house, she realized with disappointment. She’d hoped it would have been set back more for privacy.
Coming to a stop, she spotted a thin, gray-haired woman of about sixty dressed in jeans and an oversized denim shirt stepping from the porch into the driveway. As she got out of the car, Ruth was momentarily intimidated by the woman’s obvious appraisal, but relaxed at once when she cracked a smile at seeing Jessie.
"Hi, I’m Karen Oliver. And this is my daughter, Megan."
The woman smiled and stuck out her hand in greeting. "I’m Viv Walters. "Did you have any trouble finding the place?"
"No, your directions were perfect."
"Good," she said, nodding her head toward the back. "Well, it isn’t much, but if you want to see it, it’s out back."
"I’m sure it’s really nice," Ruth offered politely.
Viv chuckled. "I don’t know about nice, but it’s clean. I had to get in there and scrape up all the dirt and dog sh–," she stopped herself. "Sorry. The woman that lived here before asked me if she could keep a dog. I told her yes, but then she got another one, and another one, and before I knew it, she had eight dogs living in that little trailer. I had to pull up the carpet and put down vinyl, so the floor’s new."
Viv didn’t seem to know much about salesmanship, Ruth thought. Was she trying to find a renter or trying to warn people away?
"You don’t have any pets, do you?" the gray-haired woman asked pointedly.
"No, no pets. Just my daughter and me."
"That’s good. ‘Course, if you wanted to have a pet, I guess that would be alright. No cats, though."
"I don’t think we’ll be getting–"
"Thor and Maggie don’t like cats much."
Ruth looked around to see if she could spot Thor and Maggie.
"They’re my Labradors. I had to lock ‘em up on the back porch so they wouldn’t jump all over you when you got here. Labradors are like that. Never met a soul that wasn’t their best friend. Now if you’d been a man calling about the trailer, I might have had ‘em out here with me, you know, just for show."
"You’ve had some trouble?"
"Oh, no! And I’m not liable to have any as long as they’re here. They’re sweet, but I don’t think they’d ever let anybody hurt me. You want to meet ‘em?"
"Maybe later," Ruth said tentatively. "Could we see the trailer?"
"Of course. Right this way."
As they rounded the house, two big dogs let loose with a cacophony of rich, throaty barks. Through the screen at the back door, they could see a black and a yellow Lab, eager to get out and meet these new friends.
Viv led them across the muddy back driveway to the trailer’s wooden porch.
"You’d have this spot to park in. I keep my Jeep in that shed over there."
As she opened the door, Ruth got a nasal clearing blast of disinfectant, welcome, she considered, in light of the previous renter. Viv stepped in and flipped on the overhead light switch to reveal a small living room and kitchen area finished in the standard dark wooden paneling. A couch, a recliner, and a straight back armchair practically filled up the entry, and the dining table was a built in bar with two stools and room for a third. A quick perusal of the cabinets found an array of mismatched plates, bowls, glasses and mugs. A few aluminum pots and pans were stored beneath the stove. A tray of assorted silverware and utensils lay inside one of the drawers, and the other held dishcloths and hand towels.
"It’s fully furnished, except for sheets and towels. You’ll have to get them yourself."
"Just sheets and towels?"
"Yep. Everything else is here al
ready. I mean, it’s not the best stuff, but it beats nothing at all, I guess. My daughter used to live here with her husband, but then she ran off with another man, and her husband didn’t want to stay, so I inherited everything. That was almost fifteen years ago."
Ruth would have guessed that, given the wear on the counters and appliances.
"Now like it said in the ad, it’s got two bedrooms and one bath." Leading the way down a darkened hall, Viv once again flipped a wall switch, this time getting no response. "Damn light bulb! Oops! I did it again. Sorry."
Ruth took it in stride, sure that her daughter had picked up these words and worse from Skip. But even at four years old, Jessie had the discretion not to use them in conversation with her mother.
The first bedroom held a twin bed and had a built in dresser, a stack of drawers, and a closet. Next was the bathroom, a simple tub and shower combination, with a toilet and sink, all in harvest gold. The back bedroom had windows on both sides, a double bed against the end wall, two nightstands, and a dresser with six drawers. Given the motif, Ruth found herself immensely glad that the carpet was gone. It had probably been shag…brown and orange shag.
"So it’s a hundred and fifty a month including utilities?" Even for a place like this, that seemed like a pretty good deal.
"That’s right. You got water, electricity, and Jerry from the church ran the cable over here and spliced it in, so you have that too."
"And your ad also mentioned some errands and light chores. Could I get an idea of what that involves?"
"Well, it isn’t a whole lot, really," Viv began casually. Now her salesmanship was creeping in. "See, I can’t drive at night because I don’t see so good. I get most things done during the day, so it usually don’t make no difference. But on Wednesday nights I like to go to bingo down at the church and I need a ride. Now you can drop me off and come back for me, or if you want to try your luck, you can stick around." A crooked grin popped out as she scuffed her foot on the vinyl floor.