by Medora Sale
Ginger stopped the Jeep at the path to the cabin. Because if they had brought the bus up the mesa road, and if they hadn’t made it to the plane, then they had to be at the cabin. It wouldn’t have hurt Scotty to call from there and let people know what the hell was going on, but maybe he felt he couldn’t risk it. Scotty had always been a very cautious sort. Ginger took the rocky path with the long and powerful strides of someone who has lived in mountains most of his life, and has been forced to walk more than he ever drove. It was less than a mile to the top at this point, and in comparative terms, a gentle climb. He crested the hill and stopped to observe the situation. There was, as Rick and Suellen had discovered, very little to see.
Then he let himself half-run, half-fall down the path on the other side, until he came to an almost invisible fork. The right-hand side would take him, after a long and thirsty walk, back to the main road. He took the left.
It wasn’t more than a hundred yards to the cabin from the fork in the trail. Carl Deever’s really hidden hideaway. One could get to it by knowing the trail and walking, either from the mesa road or the highway; or one could fly in and walk a much shorter distance. That was how all the supplies and equipment came in. But no matter which side you approached it from, it blended with the mountainside and the trees, invisible.
He knocked on the door, not expecting a response, but knocking all the same. No one answered. He drew a fistful of keys from his pocket and unlocked the door.
Someone had been here. Scotty, of course. He had detailed contour maps of the entire region with him—and the keys. Ginger turned the handle on the tap and water came out. Someone had been here long enough to bother turning on the water system. An empty beer can stood on the counter; there was a dirty plate in the sink, along with a fork and a cup. The coffee on the stove was cold, and so were the beans still in the pot. He sniffed the beans. They hadn’t been there all that long. And Scotty must be coming back. He knew Carl hated a mess.
He washed the dust off his face, drank a couple of glasses of water, washed the dirty dishes in the sink and the pot on the stove, and headed back to see if he could find the bus. Or Scotty.
He whistled cheerfully as he climbed back up the mountain and headed down the other side. His legs always felt cramped walking on flat ground, and his feet hurt walking on pavement. Someday, maybe, he’d have money, and he’d go back home and buy a little place— Out of the corner of his eye he glimpsed something that shouldn’t be there over to his right. He stopped to listen. Satisfied, he turned his head to see.
Something multicoloured—white, brown, blue, rust-coloured—lay in a heap under a tree. He stepped cautiously in its direction to have a look. The blue blanket that had been decently shrouding Kevin Donovan’s remains had been pulled aside by inquisitive teeth and paws during the night. “Jesus,” said Ginger, looking down at the mangled face. No point in looking for Scotty anymore. Mr. Deever wasn’t going to be pleased.
Instead of continuing on to the Jeep, Ginger moved quietly across the wooded slope until he heard the sound of voices coming up from the road below. He slipped closer and then gently crouched down. Directly below him, largely hidden under a jutting piece of ground, he could see the edge of a dark blue bus. He had been wrong. There was a place to hide a bus, and by God, those local boys had found it. He rolled quietly onto his belly and crawled as close to the edge as he could. He lay there in silence as people walked back and forth, chatting, lying stretched out in the sun, and even reading. A tall woman, wearing a hat tied on by a scarf, came around the curve of the road and walked up to the bus, where she disappeared from his view. Ginger nodded in satisfaction and began to crawl backward until it was safe to stand.
The first two stages in climbing down the hill had proceeded successfully enough. Finding a place to stow their goods that would also hide Diana proved more difficult than carrying her down. Although that was hard enough. Every footstep on the uneven, gravelly surface of the track was potentially treacherous. Coordinating their movements sufficiently to carry such an awkward burden was almost impossible. And so sometimes they both carried her; sometimes John did. Sometimes she tried to walk, but that was the least efficient of all, never lasting more than a few steps. The children drifted above their heads, scrambling silently over the rocks above, occasionally appearing beside them and climbing back up when their high road temporarily disappeared into another gully.
The third stage looked as if it might be the next to last. “There’s a very bad patch of road ahead, but I could see the intersection,” said John, when he climbed back up to get Diana. “Unless I’m suffering from highway mirages. I didn’t quite get to it, although it was very tempting. Let’s go.”
They rounded the next curve and faced another precipitous drop. “Shit,” said Harriet.
“It’s not so much that it’s steep,” said John. “It’s that the surface is terrible. But if I take her shoulders—”
“We’ll fall,” said Diana. “I’ll walk. If you can hold me up on each side—”
“It’s the only way we can do it,” said Harriet.
John set her down and the three of them began the slippery descent. Abruptly, their painful concentration on the placement of every footfall was interrupted by a cry from above their heads. “It’s the Jeep,” said Caroline. “Hide.”
Ginger was driving along the track with considerable care, trying to decide whether Carl Deever would be more enraged that the bus had been sitting precisely where he had said it would be, and that in two days no one had found it, or that someone had murdered Scotty without his permission. And to what extent would that rage be mollified by the knowledge that his wife, whom he had assumed was long gone, was still with the bus? Hell—why was she still with the bus? At that thought, he speeded up involuntarily, and the Jeep skidded around the next curve. Shaking his head, he slowed to a much more conservative pace.
A rattling of stones on the edge of the road behind him made him slow even more, craning his neck around to the right in order to peer back into the canyon. Nothing. Probably an animal escaping from the menace of the vehicle. While his attention was directed toward the canyon, he failed to notice three adults plastered against the ground at the foot of the little gully wall. He drove on very carefully down the last steep, twisting section of road and onto the secondary highway.
It seemed to take them only minutes to get to the intersection once the Jeep had passed them by. The children forgot their exhaustion, thirst, and hunger in their elation and triumph.
“I threw an enormous rock,” said Stuart. “I thought he’d never notice.”
“That’s because it landed miles behind him,” said Caroline. “I threw two huge handfuls of stones. Right beside the Jeep.” She giggled. “I almost hit him. Then we both ducked down.”
“I read about something like that in a book,” Stuart went on, managing to combine becoming modesty with looking extremely pleased with himself. “Where someone hid an elephant just by getting the bad guys to look the other way as they were walking by. He did it by throwing rocks, too.”
“Thank goodness it worked,” said Harriet. “Because you do realize that things in books don’t always work in real life, don’t you?” And then felt very mean-spirited. “But you really saved our lives,” she added. “It was very clever of you.”
“Of course we realize that,” said Caroline haughtily. “But books give you ideas.”
Then laughing out loud for the first time in a long time, they ran, walked, limped, and hobbled their way to the crossroad.
And luck continued to smile on them when they hit the main road. A rancher in a battered-looking truck with a CB appeared almost at once, drove them ten miles closer to Santa Fe, and called the state police before dropping them off by the side of the road to await further rescue.
And so, when two cars filled with state police arrived, they found them sitting in the afternoon sun, waiting. Joe and Samanth
a Rogers climbed, white-faced, out of the second car, and stumbled in the direction of their waiting children.
“Mummy,” screamed Stuart, and the twins launched themselves at their parents. In an orgy of hugs and tears and endless rapid speech they all moved toward the cruiser.
“Wait,” said Caroline when they reached the cruiser. She ran back, flinging her arms around Harriet’s neck. “Thank you,” she said. Tears were pouring down her cheeks.
“Yes,” whispered Stuart. He stood beside his sister in an agony of embarrassment, searching for the right words. “I don’t know what . . .”
“Think nothing of it,” said Harriet, and gave him a hug. “You made great camping buddies.”
“Excuse me,” said a voice from behind them. “But are you Harriet Jeffries?” And the questions and explanations began.
Fernando had left Kate half-asleep in the huge bed at four-thirty, promising to return within the hour. When Antonia roared into the house like a small tornado at precisely five o’clock, Kate was sitting in the living room. A Rottweiler stretched out on the couch beside her, its head in her lap, and she was apparently deep in a paperback novel in Spanish she had hastily picked up from the table beside her. She had one foot tucked under her, and the other one was on the floor, being used as a pillow by another sleeping dog. “Buenos dίas, señora,” she said, without a care for how miserable her Spanish might sound. After all, it was supposed to be miserable, wasn’t it? She gently displaced both dogs’ heads and rose to her feet, slipping into a pair of Consuelo’s sandals at the same time.
“Buenas tardes, señorita,” replied Antonia, chidingly. “But let’s not force the child to practice tonight. She’s just flown in and she’s exhausted. Lola, my son, Roberto.” Her eye fell on the two dogs, who were lying very still, trying for invisibility. “Okay, puppy dogs, outside. Afuera.” The dogs got up, cast a reproachful glance at her, and stalked majestically out of the room.
A thin, lively looking man, smaller than his brother but equally tense with suppressed energy, grasped her by the hand. “Thank goodness for that,” he said. “There isn’t space for all of us in the dining room now that Antonia has filled the house up with dogs. They’re well trained, but large. Anyway, I’m glad we have a dispensation to speak English for this evening,” he went on. “It never goes beyond the first day, you know, so don’t get all comfortable. I take it you’re another victim sent by our grateful government?”
“Commerce,” she said, smiling. “Textiles. The first thing I’m going to have to do is find out how to say textiles in Spanish.”
“And my son Guillermo.”
When Kate looked up her breath caught in her throat and she could feel herself change colour. The resemblance between Guillermo and his brother was as overpowering as it was unexpected. It was not the same face; Guillermo had a fleshy sensual mouth and heavier nose and jaw than his finer-featured brother. He was also much fairer in colouring, and perhaps even bigger in size; and there was something slightly more relaxed about him. He lacked his brother’s wary vigilance, perhaps. But his body, outlined against the light, and the way he moved through space, graceful and powerful as a tiger, bore such a familiar stamp that she stared at him in amazement and confusion. She felt stripped and vulnerable under his scrutiny. Fernando could have warned her, she thought crossly. But then he probably hadn’t a clue.
“You are much more fascinating than the usual run of officials they send us from the Commerce Department,” said Guillermo, taking her hand and forgetting to let go of it. He spoke in a soft, mannered voice, like someone with ambitions to be an actor, or an announcer on public radio.
“Given that most of them are fat men over forty, I should hope so,” said Roberto.
Guillermo shot a nasty look at his brother and dropped her hand; he stepped back to examine her. “Local textiles,” he said. “Very tactful. That’s a beautiful dress,” he said. “Where did you get it?”
“You know, I bought it in New York. Isn’t that terrible? But I haven’t had a chance to shop since I got here. I just arrived this morning.”
“I love these designs,” he said softly. “Exotic but familiar, if you know what I mean.”
I should damn well hope so, thought Kate. They belong to your sister. But she nodded enthusiastically, like the good trade rep she wasn’t. “I think I do. This is an excellent example of the possibilities you find in the top-end segment of the cotton market.”
But she was torn from what was threatening to become a minute discussion of U.S. trade policy in the textiles industry—about which she knew nothing except that it was complex—by Roberto, who seemed just as determined as his more flamboyant brother to capture her attention.
“For God’s sake, don’t make poor Lola give a speech on American trade policy. It’s bad enough that she’s going to have to suffer one of Antonia’s weeks.” He smiled a shy sweet smile and she was drowned in panic again. Was that the treacherous voice that had called to her in the night, telling her that he was Bob Rodriguez? No. It wasn’t possible. He couldn’t be. Someone else had borrowed his name, thinking it would reassure her enough to bring her out. Surely, if he had been the person who had turned up at the cabin, who had tried to lure her out of her hiding place, he wouldn’t be able to stand there chatting innocently. Because he’d know. He’d have realized she was there, listening, safe in his loft. He would have checked to see if the ladder was fastened in its “up” position. Wasn’t he the mad inventor of the hidden ladder?
Just as she had convinced herself that she had nothing to fear from him, he tossed in a bombshell.
“Do you go in for photography?” he asked. “It would seem to go along with your job, I would think.”
“A bit,” said Kate, her heart racing again, and not quite sure of the safest line to take. Claiming not to know a lens cap from an f-stop could turn out to be as dangerous as admitting to expertise.
“I’ve been out all weekend photographing birds,” he said. “Very difficult, but satisfying. Do you find it so?”
Kate looked confused. “I don’t think I’ve ever photographed a bird,” she said, quite truthfully. “They fly around so fast. I took some nice pictures of my dog once. Except he kept falling asleep while I was trying to get him to sit where I wanted him to.”
“What kind of camera did you use?” he asked, staring at her in fascination.
“My dad’s,” she said. She was beginning to relax again. If this was designed to trip her up, Roberto was awfully clumsy at it. “It’s one of those where you just point and push the thing. The button. Whatever it’s called. In fact, he gave it to me because he’s bought a video camera. But he’s like that, you know. Gadget crazy. I could always try taking some bird pictures. While I’m traveling around looking at textiles.”
“Do you travel much?” asked Roberto.
“Travel?” she said. Her knees were trembling slightly. “All the time. It’s the job—death for your love life. I spend more time on planes than I do at my desk.”
She could almost feel him checking off a long list of points he had been instructed to look for. What was next? An arm-wrestling challenge to check out the injured arm?
“Lola, my dear,” said Antonia from behind her. “Lola, my son, Fernando.”
Her heart raced, her stomach turned over, and she whirled around, her skirt—or actually, Consuelo’s skirt—swirling wildly, showing off a considerable length of her elegant legs. She did her best to smile at Fernando as if she hadn’t very reluctantly let him leave her bed not long ago. “What a lot of sons you have, señora,” she said huskily, taking his offered hand and trying not to let it go. “Are there any more?”
Antonia grasped her around the shoulders, holding her for an instant in affectionate amusement. “No, Lola my dear, Fernando is the last of them. And as soon as Consuelo comes home, we will have dinner.”
Guillermo looked thoughtfully a
t the three of them and walked over to the window. “There she is,” he said. “Speak of the devil—”
“Don’t say that about your sister,” said Antonia and led the way into the dining room.
At that same moment, Walt Frankel was watching the ringing telephone and considering whether it was worthwhile answering it. Or should he simply pack up now and hitchhike to Oregon? He shook his head and picked it up. And groaned internally. “That’s wonderful news, Mr. Deever,” he said. “I’ll contact the governor right away. He’ll be very pleased.”
“Not yet, you stupid little bastard,” said Deever. “I want someone to go out to the bus with me from the Sheriff’s Department—”
“That would be the state police, Mr. Deever—I mean they’ve been in charge—”
“No, it wouldn’t. I’m having trouble with them right now. I want someone trustworthy from the Sheriff’s Department to drive out there on a tip. Just a wild tip he’s being asked to check out discreetly. But I want it to come from the governor’s office. Ginger will show him the way, and I’ll be along. And then you can go to the movies or something and stay out of the whole thing. The cops will let the governor know.”
Frankel’s mind raced furiously as he checked over his little list of personal favors owing. Little list described it all right. Small, and getting smaller by the minute. Chewing his lip, he pulled the telephone toward him. Tomorrow, he really was going to do it. Off to Oregon. He couldn’t stand one more day of this.
As the day wore on, the remaining passengers on the bus had spread themselves as far apart as they could until night and darkness drove them together again. Rick and Suellen were back up on the mountain, where they could talk in privacy but keep an eye on what was going on.
Teresa Suarez had broken out a deck of cards and was sitting in the bus playing solitaire with as much intensity as if the game was at a hundred dollars a card.
Rose Green had exhausted her own life history, and was now pumping Karen Johnson for hers, as they walked gently back and forth on the road close to the bus. “The doctor says I have to exercise every day,” she had said. “And I don’t think sitting in a bus counts as exercise.” And so they strolled at a comfortable pace, searching amicably for interesting things to talk about.