Your Chariot Awaits

by Lorena McCourtney

  Small silence, as if Rachel was wondering whether that could possibly be true. “Actually, she looked pretty good in the jeans,” she finally muttered grudgingly. “But still . . .”

  “Did she buy any?”

  “No. But she might. Okay, I gotta go now. She’s coming back down the hall.”

  “Rachel, I think this is something you just have to live with. Your mother has a life to live too, and you need to be supportive.”

  Another moment of silence as she digested Grandma’s tough-love stance. “I suppose.”

  In a you’ll-be-sorry-when-I’m-dead tone she added, “I guess if it gets too bad, I can always go raise llamas. I have this book on how to do it, you know.”

  “There you go,” I agreed cheerfully.

  Although, after Rachel hung up, I had to wonder. Sometimes women Sarah’s age, and in a situation such as hers, did try the back-to-youth thing, with disastrous results. Something else to worry about.

  I changed out of my office clothes and went to stare into the refrigerator, trying to spot something appealing for dinner. I was echoing Joella’s good riddance about Jerry, but at the same time the evening stretched out long and empty without even the prospect of a phone call.

  This is what life is going to be like from now on, I reminded myself dispiritedly. Get used to it.

  6

  I was just sitting down at the counter to eat leftover meat loaf and spinach when the phone rang again. Whatever worrisome news it was this time, it couldn’t be any worse than the down-sized, dumped, and granddaughter blues I’d already encountered.

  “Hello?”

  “Andi? Is that you? This is Fitz. From the coffee shop. Remember?”

  “I remember. The guy who read my private letter.”

  “That’s all you remember about me?” He sounded disappointed.

  “There’s more?”

  “You could remember that I’m this handsome ex-TV detective, currently involved in glamorous charter sailboat trips, and I wanted to buy you a peach smoothie.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Come to think of it, if that Jerry guy doesn’t have your evenings all sewed up, I might even spring for dinner.”

  I gasped dramatically and clutched my throat. “Be still my throbbing heart!”

  “You going to hold some permanent grudge about the letter thing?”

  Okay, it probably was petty. Nosy wasn’t a capital offense. I changed the subject. “I thought you were taking a charter sailboat trip out today.”

  “We are. I’m on my cell phone. We’re sailing by Seattle right now. I can see the Space Needle and the Seattle skyline. It’s beautiful. Maybe you can come along sometime. You’d love it.”

  “Ummm,” I said. How did he know what I’d love? For all he knew, I could be a shopping-mall addict without a drop of outdoorsy blood in my veins.

  But he was right, of course. I probably would love it. I’d loved hiking and sailing with Jerry.

  “The reason I called, I stopped in at the Sweet Breeze this morning before I picked up our guests, and Joella told me about your limousine. She said you’re thinking about starting a limousine service.”

  “What I’m planning to do is sell it.”

  “Oh? Isn’t this a great opportunity to have a business of your own? You wouldn’t be stuck in an office. You’d be meeting interesting people and going places and being your own boss. All kinds of adventure and excitement.”

  He had some good points there, though adventure and excitement were not high on my list of occupational requirements.

  I muttered another noncommittal “Ummm.”

  “The thing is, we have guests from New York arriving next Tuesday for a trip up around the San Juan Islands. They’ll be coming in at Sea-Tac. I usually transport people in our SUV, but these people are arriving at a different time than they originally planned, and I have an appointment with a lawyer set up for that morning.”

  A lawyer? I wondered why, of course, but I hadn’t the nerve to come right out and ask. Though I suspected Fitz might have, if the situation were reversed.

  “Anyway, I was thinking you could pick up these people with the limousine. In fact, we might turn it into a regular thing. It would add kind of a classy touch. We’ll pay whatever the going rate for limo service is, of course.”

  I was still hung up on one word back there. Sea-Tac. The huge Seattle-Tacoma airport was situated on the other side of Puget Sound, up between the two cities, at least an hour and a half or two hours’ drive. Maybe considerably more, if the traffic was bad, and it often was. Just the thought of putting my long-tailed limo out there for every eighteen-wheeler and oversized SUV to take aim at made me cringe. “Oh, I don’t think so. It’s quite a distance, and all that traffic . . .”

  “Joella said you took her for a drive and did great in traffic. And you are unemployed, remember?”

  Like I needed reminding. “What’s the going rate for limousines?” I asked cautiously.

  “The one time we used one, I think we paid something like $250 or $300 to a limousine service in Olympia. Call up some limousine outfits over there and find out their rates. Though we’d expect a break on price if we made it a regular deal.”

  Shrewd as well as nosy.

  “I guess I could think about it.”

  “Except that we need to know right now. We won’t be getting back into the marina until midday Monday, so I need to call now for a reservation with someone else if you aren’t available.”

  “Tuesday morning, you said?”

  “Right. Their flight comes in around eleven.”

  Three hundred dollars sounded pretty good. And by Tuesday, I’d be sixty. Maybe it was time to try something a bit adventurous. I could get the title change taken care of on Monday.

  Insurance too, if I had time, though my policy allowed thirty days to add an additional vehicle. But that would be on liability only, of course, since that was all I carried on my old Toyota. But, feeling oddly exhilarated, I made the leap. “Okay, I’ll do it.”

  “Good. I’ll talk to you about details when we get back from this trip. And I still want to buy you that peach smoothie.”

  With no more phone calls, I finally got to my meatloaf and spinach. I read through the hieroglyphics of Uncle Ned’s will while I ate. No surprise to see that he’d mangled the spelling of Sarah’s pistachios. But he had gotten lava lamp spelled right. That went to someone named Candace.

  IT WASN’T UNTIL the following day after work, Friday, when I officially became unemployed, that I remembered the chauffeur’s uniforms Larry had said he’d left in the trunk. I got the limo keys from the spot I’d assigned them, a hook by the door that opened from the kitchen into the garage.

  The trunk compartment was deep and roomy. It was on two levels, the second making a kind of platform at the back of the main compartment. The spare tire was fastened to the upper level, where it was easily accessible.

  Inside the roomy compartment were cartons and sacks from some of Larry’s on-the-road meals—grease seemed to be his main food group—and a cardboard box. A maintenance book lay on top of the box. I set it aside to take into the house. I unfolded a black jacket from the box, and at the same time something fell to the ground with a glass-shattering crash.

  Uncle Ned’s photo. He stared up at me from the gravel driveway, a sour-looking face topped with a shiny, coal-black toupee, as if he’d just had a midair collision with a disoriented crow. And mean little eyes that said I know what you did—you dropped me—and I’m gonna get you for it.

  I assured myself that dead people can’t get even and hastily scooped what was left of Uncle Ned into a Kentucky Fried Chicken sack. But just in case, I added a conciliatory thought. I’ll get you a nice new frame.

  I don’t know what chauffeur uniforms usually look like, but I was favorably impressed with these. A sophisticated black with two rows of gleaming silver buttons up the front of the jacket, a snug-fitting collar, two more silver buttons on the sleeves, and
pants with a narrow, black-satin stripe running down the side.

  Joella knocked on the kitchen door while I was trying on a uniform in my bedroom, and I yelled at her to come on in.

  “Hey, wow, classy!” she said when she saw me. The jacket was overlarge, but wearable. Both jacket and pants had nice silky linings. “You can cinch in the waist of the pants with a belt. It’ll be under the jacket, and no one will see.”

  There was a neat cap, too, also black with a silver pin in the shape of Texas above the visor. I stuck it on my head at a snappy angle, clicked my heels, and saluted my image in the mirror.

  “Right this way, sir,” I told an imaginary client as I made a grand sweep of the arm. “Your chariot awaits.”

  Joella applauded.

  I told her about Fitz’s call and asked, “Should I wear this on Tuesday when I go to Sea-Tac?”

  “Oh, yes. You’ll probably get a fifty-dollar tip.”

  “Limousine drivers get tips?”

  “My father always tipped the driver when he rented one.”

  This was looking better all the time.

  “Hey, is my birthday celebration still on for tomorrow?” I was suddenly feeling more upbeat about a birthday too.

  “The cake is in the oven. I just came over to see what time would be good. Anyone you want to invite?”

  Oddly, the face that popped into my head was Fitz’s. But he was off sailing. Not that I’d invite Mr. Nosy anyway.

  “No, I don’t think so . . . Hey, I know what let’s do. Let’s make it a picnic out at that park on the other side of Hornsby Inlet. We’ll go in the limousine!”

  Joella clapped her hands. “We can build a fire and roast limo-dogs!”

  We decided to leave about noon the next day. My first-ever birthday celebration with a limousine. Maybe sixty really was prime time!

  I WOKE SOMETIME in the night. No, closer to morning, I realized as I peered at the red numbers on my clock radio. I had the feeling something had wakened me.

  Moose, the Sheersons’ Dalmatian, was barking, but that wasn’t out of the ordinary. The early-morning garbagecollection guys always set him off, as did anyone taking a stroll too early or late for his strict time standards.

  But the thing was, Moose usually barked at something. He also sometimes got out of his yard, and what he especially liked to do when he got out was rush over and dig in my flower beds.

  I listened another minute. No, he wasn’t in my yard now. His bark was too far away. So what had set him off? Crime certainly wasn’t rampant on Secret View Lane, and traffic wasn’t heavy because it was a dead-end street. But last fall someone had managed to dig up and steal an expensive Japanese lace maple JoAnne Metzger had newly planted in her yard.

  The limo. What if teenagers were hot-wiring it for a joyride? Or getting their kicks vandalizing it! Slashed seats, obnoxious graffiti, key-scratched paint, flattened tires—

  I jumped out of bed and raced to the kitchen window. A heavy fog blanketed everything, blocking out stars above and turning the houses across the street into mist-shrouded blobs. No streetlights on our little lane, though JoAnne was nagging the powers-that-be about it.

  But I could make out the long, sleek shape of the limo and my little Corolla, which I’d parked behind the limo when I got home from work. Nothing going on there. Moose was still barking, but sometimes he got excited about a stray cat wandering by.

  Then I glanced at the hook by the back door. No limo keys! And now I realized with even more dismay that I couldn’t remember locking the limo after I brought the uniforms in last night. Had I left the keys sitting right out there, readily available to any thief or vandal?

  I flicked on the outside light, released the chain across the front door, and stepped outside. The cool, misty air hit me, and an unexpected prickle of apprehension stopped me on the top step. If I really had heard something . . . if Moose was barking at something more than a stray cat . . . was rushing out there in my bare feet and pajamas really a smart thing to do?

  I peered at the dark shapes of the limo and the Corolla in the driveway. With the light over the front steps on, the night seemed darker, the mist more ghostly, the tinted limo windows more mysterious. Was that a movement? A flicker of something on the far side of the hood?

  I watched for a long, breath-held minute. No, no movement, just my imagination doing a 4 AM tango with nerves. But still, I decided, I’d feel better if the limo were properly locked.

  The shaggy grass between the concrete walkway and gravel driveway reminded me it was time to get the mower out again, and my bare feet squishing through the night-damp grass told me I should have taken time to put on some shoes.

  But this would just take a minute. Moose had resumed barking, but he was barking at me now, of course.

  I opened the driver’s side door. The dome light came on, casting a reassuring rectangle of light across the grass.

  But no, the keys weren’t on the front seat. I frowned. Had I used the keys rather than the button to open the trunk, and then left them in the lock?

  I turned to go around to the back of the limo and look.

  And plunged headlong into an explosion of silvery stars and then a pit of darkness . . .

  7

  There is no awareness of time when you’re out cold, but I knew minutes or hours had passed, because I was now looking up at a pale dawn sky, not foggy darkness. I also had a different view of the world now, a very peculiar view. The limousine loomed over me, the door open. Beside me, the underside stretched out in a gray maze of pipes and springs and unidentifiable car stuff.

  I was, it appeared, flat on my back.

  I felt groggy and stiff . . . and why was my right leg bent under me, and driveway gravel digging into my backside?

  And my head, I realized with a sudden groan, oh, my head . . .

  I reached up to touch it gingerly, and something moved to block the pale sky overhead. Tom Bolton’s frowning face. What was he doing here?

  I felt a strange sense of disorientation, as if I’d plunged into a time warp in one of those science fiction books Rachel likes to read.

  “You okay?” Tom asked.

  “I don’t know. What happened?” I wiggled my lips. They’d gone puttyish, slow moving and sluggish.

  “I noticed the limousine door standing open. I came over to see what was going on and found you lying here unconscious.”

  I sat up hastily. Mistake. Limousine, Tom, and pale sky whirled as if we’d just been engulfed in some cosmic readjustment. I waited until the whirling stopped, then winced as I fingered the back of my head and found a lump that felt like the shape and size of Texas.

  I offered the only explanation that seemed plausible. “I must have stumbled and bumped my head on the door when I fell.”

  “What were you doing out here in the middle of the night?” Tom’s tone oozed disapproval, as if he figured I had to have been up to something nefarious.

  I hadn’t been, but why was I out here? And in my pajamas too. Straining to think back, I remembered trying on that chauffeur’s uniform. Yes, and waking up in the night, being worried about the limousine. Coming outside, opening the limo door . . .

  Then that big, dark pit.

  I got my hands under me and tried to lever myself to my feet. Tom pushed me down.

  “You’d better stay right there. I called 911. An ambulance and someone from the sheriff’s department will be here in a few minutes.”

  Alarm joined the foggy mist in my head. Police? Ambulance? I knew I should thank Tom for coming over to check on the open door of the limo, but at the moment I didn’t feel too appreciative. Would they charge some huge fee just for coming out with the ambulance, even if I didn’t need it?

  Again I tried to rise; again he pushed me back. I looked at his scowl and had the peculiar feeling he wasn’t so much concerned with my welfare as he was with keeping me immobilized until someone from the sheriff’s department arrived.

  “Perhaps you could call back and tel
l them everything is okay here,” I suggested.

  He didn’t move. “Soon as I saw that limousine in the neighborhood, I knew we were in for trouble,” he said darkly.

  His logic escaped me. “Why?”

  “Mafia. Crooks. Drug dealers. Hookers. It’s people like that who use limousines.” He nodded sagely.

  “All kinds of ordinary people use limousines,” I said, with as much indignation as I could muster with chunks of gravel digging into my bottom and Texas throbbing on the back of my head. “They use them to go to the airport or get married or celebrate an anniversary! Kids even go to the prom in them.”

  “Emma and I never rode in any limousine.”

  I could hear sirens approaching. I was still sitting beside the limousine door, Tom watching me suspiciously, when a blue-and-white car bearing the insignia of the county sheriff’s department pulled to the curb.

  We were outside the city limits here, so it was the sheriff’s department rather than the city police who’d responded to Tom’s call. Two middleaged officers in brown uniforms stepped out. When Tom wasn’t looking, I struggled to my feet.

  “Got a problem here?” the shorter of the two officers inquired pleasantly.

  He introduced himself as Deputy Somebody and the other officer as Deputy Somebody-else, but by now I was so rattled that the names slid by me like fried eggs on Teflon. Down the street, I saw a front door fly open, then another.

  “Nothing’s wrong.” I yanked my pajama top down, feeling uncomfortably exposed even though everything was modestly covered. At the same time I was halfway wishing I’d worn something more stylish than these daisy-flowered things that were more Old Mother Hubbard than Victoria’s Secret.

  “Everything’s fine. I just came out to check on the limo and stumbled and hit my head on the door. My kind neighbor here found me and was concerned for my welfare and called you.”

  I gestured toward my kind neighbor. I realized I was babbling, but there’s something about police officers looking you over that makes you feel you have to explain yourself. It gives you a guilty feeling, as if you’ve probably done something illegal even if you can’t remember what. “But I’m fine, so if you could just radio the ambulance not to come—”