by Keith Taylor
As he approached the lot and screeched through the entrance he saw what he was hoping to find. What he knew he’d find, because this lot was pretty much identical in every town across America.
In amongst the fast food joints dotted around an enormous Safeway store he saw the glowing sign he needed, and he gunned the car towards the front door.
Rite Aid Pharmacy
΅
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
DE NADA
THE SOUND OF footsteps and chatter on the other side of the door roused Jack reluctantly from sleep. He grunted and turned away, bending his pillow over his head to block out the noise, but against the deathly silence of the motel room it sounded like there was a carnival marching by in the street outside. A child wailing for her mother cut through his slumber like a bucket of ice water over the head, and Jack knew he wouldn’t be getting any more sleep.
He peeled open one eye, and for a moment the usual bout of bleary eyed confusion hit him full in the face. He could see nothing. The room was pitch black. He had no clue where he was, but thanks to the regular blackout drinking and constant travel this had been pretty much the status quo for the last year of his life. He woke up most mornings with the same sense that wherever he was it wasn’t where he was supposed to be, so often that the confusion barely worried him any more. He knew he’d just have to wait a minute for the message to get through to his brain that his body was awake.
All he remembered right now was that he was in some sort of hotel room, and even if his memory had been a complete blank he could have figured that out in pitch darkness. It was obvious.
All hotel rooms carried the same basic DNA. The pillow beneath his head, built more for stamina than comfort, so firm that his ear ached a little where it had been pressed against it. The smell of cheap, mildly scented laundry detergent on thin sheets still tucked tight beneath the mattress by his feet. The clean but slightly cloying aroma of a plug in air freshener, probably hidden behind the TV or in the closet, somewhere out of sight. And below it all, faint but never quite perfectly hidden, the lingering odor of the thousand people who’d used his bed before him. It was a smell no detergent could quite banish, and no air freshener could completely mask. Every hotel room had that same smell, from roadside flop houses to five star suites.
Jack pushed back the sheets and dragged himself up to the edge of the bed, and two thoughts struck him right away. First he felt a moment of disbelief when he realized that it was only yesterday he’d awoken in his hotel room in Seattle. He remembered grabbing the vodka from the mini bar. The taste of the macadamias he’d forced himself to swallow. The cold tile of the bathroom floor against his bare feet.
Has it really only been a day? It seemed like a month ago.
The second thought followed close behind, and this one was a little more pleasant.
I’m not hungover.
He thought about it for a moment, but in this half-awake fog Jack genuinely couldn’t remember the last time he’d woken in a hotel room without even a hint of a headache. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d woken without dragging himself to the minibar to rinse the taste of old booze from his mouth with fresh booze, but now… he didn’t want to jinx it, but all he wanted right now was pancakes.
Jack scanned around the dark room, still waiting for his memory to seep back. He couldn’t remember the layout of the room, and in the darkness he could only make out the dim edges of furniture. The only light he could see was the red glow cast by the digital clock on the nightstand, and he frowned as he read the time: 10:17.
AM or PM?
Now it started to come back to him, just fragments as his brain pieced together the muddled memories it managed to dredge up. He remembered rolling into town behind Parsons. He remembered the sheriff waking a maid in the motel reception. He remembered feeling so tired that he almost floated across the parking lot to his room. A couple of awkward moments as Parsons tried to politely ask without actually asking whether Jack and Cathy would be bunking together. Boomer trailing after Doug like a lovesick puppy, and Doug halfheartedly pushing her away from the door before he finally gave up and let her in. He remembered… something about his clothes? Someone tried to take them from him? He’d been so tired he barely knew what was going on.
That was… he thought about it for a moment, trying to get it straight in his head. That was just last night, right? Hell, it was just a few hours ago. How come it’s still dark?
He pushed himself away from the bed and stumbled towards what he thought was the door, and he’d only taken a couple of steps before he began to regret it. All the little aches he’d felt yesterday seemed to have unionized while he slept. They’d ganged up into one big ache, and they were making angry demands. Everything hurt. He had no idea how, but even his hair seemed to sting.
“You’re getting old, Jack,” he told himself, limping with pain as he blindly reached out for a door handle that seemed to have shifted several feet across the wall in the night. Eventually he found it, and when he pulled open the door the blinding light was enough to send him stumbling two steps back.
“Jesus wept!” he cursed, shielding his eyes from the morning sun. He hadn’t been ready for it, and it was only now the light was flooding in that he realized why the room had been so dark. There were thick blackout curtains shrouding the window. He yanked them open, forcing his eyes to acclimatize to the brightness, and as the shock began to fade he looked down and gave himself a wincing once over, painfully assessing the damage of the previous day.
It wasn’t pretty. Across his chest and shoulders the skin was grazed and bruised where the straps of the parachute had cut into him. Both elbows were crusted with dried blood, and his right thigh all the way from his waist down to the knee glowed red with road rash, probably caused when the chute had dragged him across the field. His heels were red raw where the blisters had burst from all the walking, and he had a dozen random purple and yellow bruises dotted across his body, all of them caused by God knows what. They could have come from anywhere, but all that was certain was that they all hurt like a motherf—
“Knock knock,” a sing song voice called out from the door, and a figure leaned in through the gap. “Oh, sorry!” she cried, quickly pulling the door half closed when she noticed Jack. “I can come back later.”
Jack looked up to find a young Hispanic maid standing just outside the room. She tried to keep her eyes politely pointed to the parking lot, but Jack could see a blush creep up to her face as he caught her sneaking a quick glance through the gap in the door. It took him a few moments to realize that he was only wearing a pair of boxer shorts.
“Oh! Sorry, don’t mind me.” He looked around the room, but all he could see was his ruined suit jacket in a heap on the floor. “I don’t… ummm, I don’t seem to have any clothes.”
“That’s OK, I have them here,” the maid replied, averting her gaze as she thrust a set of hangers through the gap in the door. “Mrs. Parsons washed them last night.”
“Thanks, umm…?”
“Oh, Gabriela,” she answered.
“Thanks, Gabriela.” Jack grabbed the pants first, sliding them on before pulling the door fully open.
“Mrs. Parsons said she managed to get the worst stains out of the pants and shirt, and she asked me to give you this.” She held out a green windbreaker, the chest embroidered with a Plumas County Sheriff’s Department patch. “She said it used to belong to the sheriff, but he doesn’t need it now that he’s…” she stifled a smirk and tried not to laugh, “now that he’s too big to zip it up.”
Her words jogged Jack’s memory. He’d been so tired when they’d arrived at the motel his brain had been pretty much completely switched off. He’d fallen into the bed fully dressed, but just as he was about to fall asleep a woman had knocked on the door and brusquely ordered him to strip. He’d been down to his underwear before it occurred to him to ask why, or who she was.
He reached out and took the jacket from Gabriela with a smile
. “Thank you. And could you please pass on my thanks to Mrs. Parsons? I really appreciate this.”
“You can tell her yourself,” she replied.
Jack was taken aback. He didn’t expect hotel maids to give him attitude.
“Ummm, OK,” he said, for want of a better response.
Gabriela noticed the surprise on his face, and quickly corrected herself. “Sorry, my English. I mean she expects you for breakfast after you’ve showered, over at the blue house.” She pointed across parking lot to a prim little wooden bungalow with a well tended yard out front. “I’d hurry if I were you. The food doesn’t last long at Mrs. Parsons’ table.”
“That good, huh?” Jack asked as he tugged the shirt from the hanger.
“No, it’s just…” the young woman hesitated for a moment, a slight grin flitting across her face, unsure whether she should speak. “The sheriff will eat everything if you don’t take it first.”
Jack chuckled. “Thanks for the warning. I’ll be right down. And thanks for the clothes, too.”
“De nada.” Gabriela flashed a shy smile as she pulled the door closed behind her.
Jack tossed the shirt on the bed and moved through to the bathroom, where he found a stack of thick towels and a tray of toiletries waiting for him. The thought of missing out on the pancakes across the street weighed heavy on him, but it wasn’t nearly enough to pull him away from the shower. It had been two days since he’d last washed, and since then he’d jumped out of a plane, dragged a man through a forest and push started a car on his own. The grime and sweat clinging to him felt like a second skin, and as he kicked off his pants and stepped into the warm stream he felt every muscle in his body relax.
Screw breakfast. He could stay here all—
Wait.
Something occurred to him as he squeezed out an entire miniature bottle of shower gel into his palm. The clock on the nightstand. It had read 10:17. What the hell were they still doing here? Parsons had said the Mobil station opened at nine. They should have been up and on the road more than an hour ago, but nobody had bothered to wake him?
He felt a flash of anger about the lost time, but he couldn’t muster the energy to feel genuinely mad about it as the grime sluiced away down the drain. The pain in his muscles melted away beneath the steaming hot spray, and as he rinsed the dirt from his hair he made his peace with it. There was still a long drive ahead, and an hour either way wouldn’t make much of a difference. He could just make up the lost time on the road.
When he finally felt as clean as he could ever get he stepped out and quickly toweled himself off, suddenly aware of the growling of his stomach. Now the thought of pancakes pushed aside the urge to get straight back on the road, and in just a couple of minutes he found himself dressed, starving, and hurriedly walking across the parking lot. He hopped the white picket fence at the edge of the yard, and as he reached the open back door of the Parsons house he looked in to find a bizarre Norman Rockwell scene playing out in the kitchen.
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CHAPTER FIFTEEN
BROUGHAM AND GLENROSS
“JACK!”
PARSONS WIPED his hands on a napkin and lifted himself out of his seat before a heavily laden breakfast table. “How you feeling this morning? Come on, pull up a chair and dig in. Joan just fried up some more bacon.”
Jack began to kick off his shoes, but Parsons beckoned him in. “Don’t worry about your shoes, this ain't a museum. Homes are meant to be lived in. Come on, pull up a seat.”
“Thank you,” Jack replied gratefully, taking an open seat beside the sheriff, nodding a greeting to Doug as he enthusiastically devoured rashers of bacon on the other side of the table. Beneath the table Boomer picked up fallen scraps like a vacuum cleaner. “Everything looks delicious. Thank you, Mrs. Parsons. And thanks for washing my clothes. You really didn’t have to do that.”
The heavyset middle aged lady he vaguely remembered from the previous night gave him a warm smile as she set down another towering stack of pancakes. “Call me Joan. You’re more than welcome, son, and may I say you’re not looking quite so much like a zombie as you did last night. Honest to goodness, I thought you might be a ghost when you I saw you climb out of that truck.”
“I guess I just needed a good night’s sleep,” Jack smiled, eyeing the pancakes. “And a decent breakfast.”
“Well, help yourself to as much as you can eat,” she said, patting him on the arm. “I don’t need my Bill getting any bigger.”
“It’s just winter insulation, dear,” Parsons interjected. “The winters get awful cold up here, Jack. You gotta pack on a few to make it through.”
Joan let out the exasperated tut of a long suffering wife. “You’ve packed on enough insulation for the whole town to make it through winter, you big lump.” Now she turned her attention to Doug, stacking bacon high on a thick slab of buttered bread. “So Douglas, you said your grandfather was a valet? That’s like a special sort of butler, isn’t it?”
Garside wiped his mouth daintily on his napkin and shook his head. “Oh, it’s much more than a butler, my dear,” he said, laying his accent on a little thicker than he had last night. “A butler merely manages a household, you see, but a valet – it’s va-let, by the way, rather than the French pronunciation va-lay that you use here for people who fetch your car – a valet is a gentleman’s personal gentleman. He’s responsible for the well-being of his master, from taking care of his health and appearance to organizing his social engagements. He’s equal parts assistant, confidante and even, on some occasions, bodyguard and friend. My grandfather, God rest him, was for many years valet to the third Lord Ponsonby of Brougham and Glenross.”
“My, how fascinating!” Joan took a flustered breath and held a hand to her chest.
“Quite a dreadful man, I’m sorry to report,” Doug confided in a low voice. “He was an incorrigible drunk and a philanderer, by all accounts, and unfortunately it often fell to my grandfather to… well, let’s just say he had to deal with the unintended consequences of his master’s dalliances.”
“You mean…?”
Doug nodded solemnly. “I’m afraid so. A child born out of wedlock could be quite the scandal in those days, and especially so given the complications of his position. The last thing a Lord would want is an illegitimate child claiming the right to a hereditary title, never mind his fortune, and I’m afraid… well, a valet will perform his duties without complaint, no matter how unsavory. Many a backstreet doctor made his fortune from the purse of Lord Ponsonby, if the rumors are to be believed.”
Joan fanned herself with a hand, blushing. “Oh, I feel like I’m gossiping below stairs!”
“Then you should keep a watchful eye, my dear,” Doug warned with a sly smile, narrowing his eyes and lowering his voice. “His Lordship was known to prey on the household staff when his appetite was piqued.”
Jack chuckled as he poured syrup over his pancakes, and as Doug continued his story he turned to Parsons with a questioning look. “So how come we slept in so late?” he asked. “I thought we were going to head to the Mobil at nine.”
Parsons took a bite out of a rasher of crispy bacon, sprinkling fragments down the front of his shirt. “You were, yeah,” he said, idly brushing the crumbs away, “I meant to wake you, but it turns out there’s a town meeting up at the church at eleven. They gotta decide a few things, you know, what with the news and everything. Station’s gonna be closed a little while longer, so I figured I might as well let you sleep in.”
Jack nodded. “OK, that makes sense. But don’t you need to be at the meeting? I’d hate to think we’re keeping you from something more important.”
“What, and miss breakfast?” Parsons let out a laugh. “No no, they’ll fetch me if I’m needed. Don’t you worry about it.”
“OK…” Jack couldn’t tell if he was just being polite. “But if you need to take care of anything please don’t let us keep you. I’m sure we’d be just fine waiting for the station to open.” He grabb
ed a fork and jabbed at the bacon. “Has Cathy made an appearance yet?”
Parsons shook his head, chewing silently until he finally swallowed his mouthful. “Damnedest thing,” he said, picking something from his teeth with a fingernail. “Gabriela went to deliver fresh towels to her room this morning and found she wasn’t there. Said her bed hadn’t even been slept in.”
“What?” Jack couldn’t believe he was only just hearing this. “You’re saying she left?”
“Well, I guess so,” he replied. “I can’t think of a better explanation. It’s not like this is a big town, so she hasn’t just strolled off to the store.” He narrowed his eyes. “Doug was saying you guys only met her yesterday, right? She was just along for the ride? I guess maybe she changed her mind about tagging along after all.”
“But her truck is still parked outside! Why would she leave without it?”
Parsons shrugged. “Beats me. Maybe she decided to hitch a ride out with someone else. We had a fair few folks pass though town last night. Any one of them could have picked her up.” He studied Jack’s confused expression. “Look, I wouldn’t waste too much time worrying about it. Young girls like that, they’re flighty. They change their minds like we change our socks. Maybe it just occurred to her that it was a dumb idea to follow you guys down south when she could just head inland where it’s safe, know what I mean?”
Jack finally nodded. “Well… yeah, I guess that would make sense. Still, I can’t figure out why she’d leave her truck behind.”
Parsons shrugged and took a bite from his toast. “Women,” he said, spraying crumbs. “They’re a different species. And maybe it wasn’t her truck to begin with, you know? I’m guessing a lot of folks left car keys behind when they headed out to those safe zones.” He waved his hand as if to brush the conversation aside. “So, you’re a doctor, huh?”