by Artemis Hunt
“Well, I stay with my Mom and Pop. We have a guestroom if you’re looking. My Mom is real generous. She won’t charge you a cent.” He’s looking me up and down in that elevator-style ‘check me out’ I’ve become used to.
“I’ll pay for it, thank you very much.” That way, I don’t have to be beholden to anybody. I have always been supremely independent and I intend to keep it that way.
Outside, large drops of rain begin to spatter upon the pavements and awnings. I turn to the glass windows in dismay.
“It happens,” Rick says apologetically. “Listen, I don’t get off until eleven. But I can call my Mom and ask her to expect you if you want to take me up on my offer.”
I figure that his offer will still stand at eleven o’ clock, seeing as I’m probably the only visitor in town.
“OK,” I say reluctantly. Especially as the rain is coming down now in torrents. I don’t think I want to drive all the way to Aberdeen in this downpour.
“Great.” He beams.
A customer comes to the counter and puts down a six pack of Budweiser. I wait as Rick totes up the till. I’m not finished here. I want to find out why the name ‘Ethan Greene’ evokes such a reaction. The customer, a sixty-something gentleman, eyes me up and down as well before going out into the awful weather.
“So what’s up with Ethan Greene?” I say casually.
Rick’s plain features grow dark. “I don’t really know,” he mutters. “It’s only what folks have said. I haven’t personally met him, seeing as he hardly ever comes out of that mansion of his.”
“He lives in a mansion?’
“Yeah, up the hill. The hill is called Pine’s Lookout and it’s private property.” He leans over and his voice drops an octave. “It’s a real creepy place. No one wants to go there. The house itself used to be haunted, my Mom says. When Ethan Greene bought it, he moved right in and locked himself up in there. Hardly anyone sees him. When he comes down the hill in that big black car of his with the blackout windows, he doesn’t stop here on Main Street. He goes right out of town. Where, nobody knows.”
“Maybe he’s gone to the nearest Kmart,” I say lightly. “You don’t have a Kmart here, do you?”
“Yeah,” he admits. “His butler or housekeeper or whatever you want to call him comes here a couple of times a month to pick things up. But he’s not real friendly like either. His name is Jeffrey. Doesn’t talk much.”
“Maybe Ethan Greene is secretly Batman,” I jest.
Rick doesn’t laugh. “Maybe. But he’s no caped crusader for justice, if you ask me. A couple of years ago, a trio of kids from Aberdeen went up to Pine’s Lookout on a dare.”
A tiny shudder creeps up my spine. OK, I know it’s the atmosphere, but still –
“They chugged up in their car, even though we warned them it was private property. Nobody really knows what happened that night, but those kids never came back here to Main Street. They fled back to Aberdeen faster than you could say ‘Halloween’. What happened up there, none of us here ever found out. Those kids weren’t telling.”
I make a mental note to check this story out in Aberdeen.
“But surely someone must have said something,” I say.
He shakes his head. “I don’t know. Then there was that funny incident four years back with the police.”
My ears prick up like antennae. “Police?”
“Yeah.” Rick is clearly enjoying himself, claiming my attention like this. “They came around to Main Street, asking about some hooker from St. Louis who had gone missing. Turns out her pimp says she went with someone who fit the description of Ethan Greene.”
“What happened?”
“The police went up the hill looking for him, but they came back empty-handed.” Rick sounds disappointed. “Hooker was never found.”
“Maybe she absconded with someone else.”
“Or maybe . . . just maybe . . . ” His eyes gleam.
I laugh uneasily, spooked despite myself. “Maybe you’re reading too much into all this.”
I don’t know, but for some reason, I have this awful image of the hooker’s dead body being buried in an unmarked grave behind the Pine’s Lookout mansion that I have yet to lay my eyes upon.
Come on, I tell myself. This is David Kinney we are talking about, or whatever name I think he goes by now. Ethan Greene might not even be David Kinney for all the clues in my sleuthing. I might have been kidding myself this whole trip. Ethan Greene might turn out to be some psychopath who is permanently holed up in his mansion, kind of like the mad scientist in Edward Scissorhands.
“Folks don’t talk without a reason,” Rick warns me. “Say, you hungry? I’ve got a break coming up in fifteen minutes. If you want to grab a quick bite – ”
“No thanks.”
He seems disappointed.
“I’ve already eaten,” I add.
“So . . . you wanna wait till eleven when I get off . . . or do you want to go find my Mom? I can call her right now.”
I make a swift decision. “Sure. Call her. I’ve been driving all day and I need to shower and stuff.” I’m sure I smell ripe, though Rick is too polite to say so. “Do you have an address? I can go find the place myself.”
“Sure.” Rick seems eager again.
He sketches some directions involving turning this way, and that way, and looking out for landmarks like ‘the old red barn’ and ‘the broken scarecrow’ on the back of a magazine. I’m beginning to feel more and more like Dorothy stepping out of Kansas.
“You got it?” he asks me, concerned.
“Yeah, I’ve got it. After all, I found Kelowna, didn’t I?”
“Yes, you did.”
“See you later.” I take the magazine and straighten my hair. I’m in a simple red blouse which I wear over a comfortable pair of jeans. I’m dressed to drive long distance, not to impress guys.
Outside, the rain is screaming down as if the sky hasn’t opened since the days of Noah. I don’t have an umbrella. The magazine with the directions is too precious to use as a shade, and so I bolt to my car, very glad for the fact that I parked it curbside.
I drive off, putting my windscreen wipers on max, and even that is not enough to confer visibility of more than ten meters. I have my headlights on too. For once, I’m glad I’m in a small town and there isn’t a lot of traffic for me to contend with.
I’m good at following directions, and so I drive very slowly. It’s a bitch to peer through the rain. The houses and buildings look washed and semi-translucent, like someone has splashed a grey coat of paint all over them. The road is a winding mess.
I don’t know exactly how I wound up at this junction, but I think I’m lost. I stop the car in the middle of the road, aware than any moment, a blaring truck could crash into me from behind. But somehow, I don’t think there are many blaring trucks out here.
A weather-beaten signboard is lighted in front of my car by my headlamps. It has an arrow pointing upwards, and it says ‘PINE’S LOOKOUT’.
I’ll be damned.
It’s kismet.
I know I should be trawling out of this tangle of roads to head for Rick’s mother’s home. Possibly to a comfortable bed and a warm shower and some good, old-fashioned Key Lime pie. But the words ‘PINE’S LOOKOUT’ is calling impossibly to me, like some sort of siren. I’m a sixteen-year-old fan again in LA for the first time – in an open top bus, peering at the homes of celebrities in Beverly Hills.
David Kinney used to live in LA when he was still working there, and we kind of camped outside his modest Hollywood Hills house, hoping for a glimpse. Which, of course, we never got.
I should wait till tomorrow morning, really. I should wait till it’s bright and dry and cheery and more conducive to snooping.
I step on my gas pedal.
The car starts its cranking way up Pine’s Lookout.
Somehow, I think, even then . . . I wanted to be burned.
Table of Contents
The Pretend
Boyfriend 2 (Alpha Male Erotic Romance)
Midpoint