Buried in a Bog (17 page)

Then the car hit her. At first it was a nudge, and Maura’s anger flared—no driver had the right to be
that
impatient. She slowed even further, now alternately straining to see who was behind the wheel of the other car and watching out for the pits ahead of her. All she could make out was a man wearing a baseball cap and dark glasses. Then he sped up and hit her again, harder this time. Maura grabbed the wheel tightly, her knuckles white, and wondered what the hell was going on. Not that there was much she could do. There was only one way out: forward, downhill.

The man had fallen back slightly, but as Maura watched in her rearview mirror, he accelerated and came at her again, aiming for her left rear bumper. This time the hit caused her steering wheel to be jerked from her grip, and she felt a front tire spinning in air as the front end skewed toward the right—the downhill side. Another thud, and the car slowly tilted downward like a seesaw. One more solid thunk, and the back wheels slipped over the edge, and the car began
sliding downhill, despite her foot jammed firmly on the brake. As a last resort, she hauled hard on the parking brake—anything to stop her forward motion. And somehow the car skidded to a stop twenty feet down the hill, with the front bumper against a small tree.

She sat for several seconds, waiting to make sure she had really stopped, not just paused in her tumble toward the lake below. She could hear the ticking of the car’s engine, now stalled, and the crackling of the brush she had smashed in her passage. Finally she dared to turn her head back toward the road, to see if the other driver had stopped to check on her.

There was no one there. The bastard! He’d just left? Well, of course he had—he’d made every effort to push her off the road. Intentionally. No wonder he had left in a hurry.

With infinite caution Maura opened her door, inch by inch, afraid of jarring the car loose from its precarious perch. The car didn’t shift. Once the door was open, she swung her legs out. Still no movement. And then in one last burst, she thrust herself out, away from the car.

She took one look at the car, tilted at what looked like a forty-five-degree angle, and sat down hard, mainly because her legs wouldn’t support her. She looked down at her hands to see them shaking. What had happened here? This made no sense. She looked back at the car, just sitting there, totally out of place in the landscape. Nothing else had changed: somewhere in a meadow below she could hear a cow lowing, but there were no human sounds.

When her hands steadied, Maura remembered the cell phone that Ellen had given her. But the cell phone was in her purse—which was in the car. She’d have to go back to
the car or hike to the nearest house with a phone. Which was easier? If she went back to Bridget’s house, she’d have to tell her what had happened, but Maura was afraid that the news might be too much of a shock for her. Besides, there were other houses nearer, and downhill. Car, she decided: she’d need her purse anyway, since it held all her identification. She stood up shakily, using a spindly tree for support, and approached the car as if it were a wounded animal and she was afraid a sudden movement would spook it. She had left her bag on the floor on the passenger side, so she cautiously opened the front left door. She held her breath as she reached into the car and extricated the bag. Then she backed away and sat down on the grass again. In her purse she located the cell phone. She flipped it open and punched in 999.

A disembodied voice answered quickly, and she described as best she could where she was. The voice at the other end seemed to know where she meant. Yes, the car was off the road. No, she wasn’t injured—no medical assistance required. Yes, she would stay with the car until someone came. No, there was no one to call. The voice promised to have someone there shortly. Irreverently Maura wondered just what the Irish idea of “shortly” would be: Minutes? Days? As she waited, she tried to sort through her jumbled impressions and put together her story. She’d been driving normally, which in her case meant slowly and carefully. She hadn’t had anything to drink, or any medication. A person had come up behind her and used his car to run her off the road.

She shut her eyes, to better remember what the other car had looked like. She had never paid much attention to cars
in general and couldn’t tell one make or model from the next. She knew that the car had been small and brownish. Dirty? She hadn’t seen it from the side and had glimpsed the front only through the rearview mirror. She had a vague impression that it was battered—a crumpled fender maybe, or a cracked headlight? She couldn’t remember—she’d been a little distracted. Of course, she hadn’t gotten a license plate number—he’d been too close for that by the time she had noticed him. At least she could definitely say that the driver had been a “he”…unless it was a woman who had made an effort to disguise herself. But somehow she couldn’t imagine a woman driving the way this person had.

And that was the end of her observations. Was her car all right? From where she sat, she couldn’t see more than a few dents in the front bumper from the trees she’d hit, and a surprisingly small number of dings on the rear bumper where the other car had hit hers, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t somehow disemboweled itself on the bumpy ride down. What had that other driver been thinking, and where had he gone so fast? Was he some lone crackpot who just wanted to get past her on the road? Back home she had seen plenty of macho men who thought they owned the road, but here?

Maura was getting madder by the minute and couldn’t sit still, so she started pacing back and forth, looking alternately at the poor car and down at the road below where the expected police arrived a few minutes later. For a moment she was startled: with its blue light bar and bright yellow stripe; she had forgotten that Irish police cars didn’t look anything like the ones back home. She watched it come partly up the road, then stop, and a uniformed policeman
climbed out and walked up the lane to where she stood by the car.

For goodness’ sake
, Maura thought,
it’s Sean Murphy again
.
Is he the only cop in town?

When he reached her, he said incredulously, “Maura Donovan? Again?”

“Yes, it’s me, Officer Murphy. How’s your day been so far? Because mine is going downhill fast.”
Stop with the bad puns, Maura
—
this is serious
. “Can I call you Sean? You’re no older than I am, and it seems stupid to keep calling you ‘officer.’ Besides, we really ought to be friends now, since we see each other so often.”

“Sean’ll do, then.” He seemed to be suppressing a smile. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. And I think the car is too, but I don’t know how to get it back to the road.”

“Don’t you worry yourself about that. It happens to a lot of visiting Americans. Sure, and it’s not easy to learn to do everything on the other side—the wrong side, you’d say.”

No way was she going to take the blame for this. “This was
not
an accident,” she said through clenched teeth.

Sean nodded in what he probably thought was an encouraging way. “Something wrong with the car, then? The brakes went out, or the steering?”

Maura shook her head. “No, nothing like that. Will you please listen…”

The young officer went on, making an attempt to be soothing that only annoyed Maura more. “Sure, this must be distressing for you, on holiday and all. You just stay where you are, and I’ll call for assistance.”

Maura’s anger boiled over. “SEAN MURPHY, WILL
YOU PLEASE LISTEN TO ME?” He looked at her, startled, but at least she’d gotten his attention and jarred him from his script. “This was not an accident. Somebody ran me off the road. Deliberately. Which has got to be a crime around here, and you’d better start looking for the jerk who did it.”

Sean gazed mutely at her. Clearly he hadn’t been prepared to deal with an angry woman. Then he seemed to gather himself together. “I’m sorry. My chief always says I’m too quick to jump to conclusions. Let’s make a new start. What did you want to tell me?”

Maura took a deep breath, then suddenly paused. “You know this is Bridget Nolan’s car, which she loaned me to use while I was here—you don’t have to tell her about this right away, do you? Because she’s old, and I don’t know how she’d take it.”

Sean Murphy waved that comment away. “Let’s see what shape you car’s in before we worry about saying anything to Mrs. Nolan. You were saying?” he asked, pulling out a pad.

Maura quickly outlined the appearance of the driver and his determined efforts to force her off the road, and Sean carefully recorded what she said, looking equal parts concerned and puzzled.

“Did you recognize the driver?” he asked.

Maura shook her head. “I haven’t been here long enough to know many people. Besides, the guy had on a cap and sunglasses. I didn’t get a license plate. I was trying to keep my car on the road. And once he was sure he’d shoved me off it, he disappeared. I couldn’t tell you which way he went.”

“I see. And I apologize for my earlier questions. We do get a fair number of confused tourists on the roads.”

“I bet you do, but I’m not one of them. So, what now? Is the car okay? Do you have to get a tow truck up here?”

Sean Murphy eyed the car critically. “You didn’t hear any loud noises—you know, crack, crunch, and so on?”

Maura had to smile at his description. “Only the bushes.”

He bent down to peer under the car. “I don’t see anything leaking, which is good. It’s an old car, and built like a tank, thank goodness.” He straightened up. “Let’s get it towed back to Skibbereen and have it checked out. I wouldn’t want you to come to harm driving it around now, not knowing if it’s safe.”

“Sounds good to me, but I’ll need a ride back to Leap.”

“Sullivan’s?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re sure you don’t need medical assistance? Don’t blame me—I’m required to ask.”

“No, I’m fine, really. I wasn’t going fast, and I didn’t hit anything—except the brakes, and a few bushes on the way down. Mostly I was scared. And then mad.”

Sean Murphy smiled. “Let me make a call, then,” he said. He walked away, a cell phone at his ear. Figuring it might take a while, Maura sat down again.

Sean finished his call and sat down beside her. “All set—the truck’ll be here in a few minutes. Do you mind if we go over this again, while we wait?”

“No problem,” Maura said.

“I don’t suppose you noticed any possible witnesses?”

Maura looked around her. Nothing had changed. “Does a cow count?”

“They’re not very reliable.”

In spite of herself, Maura laughed. “Yeah, I’m not surprised. Anyway, no, I even stopped at the top of the hill to check out where I was going. This guy showed up out of nowhere and started pushing me around.”

“You described him as youngish, and wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses.” When Maura nodded, he asked, “And the car?”

“What I know about cars would fill a postage stamp. It looked ordinary and dirty. As far as I could tell, it had four wheels and a roof.”

The officer smiled. “Well, that certainly narrows down our search. A male in a nondescript car, which might or might not have some front-end damage, maybe before and most likely after he’d pushed you off the road.”

Maura leaned back and regarded him. “Do you believe me? You don’t think I’m just making this up, to cover up a stupid accident?”

“I believe you,” he said solemnly. “I can’t think why you’d make up such a story. But I also can’t see why anyone would want to do you harm.”

“That makes two of us.”

T
o her surprise, the tow truck arrived in less than fifteen minutes. The driver and Sean Murphy spoke briefly, and then the driver maneuvered his truck so that the winch at the back was turned toward Maura’s car. After another conference, the winch hook was attached to something or other, and as Maura watched, the car inched slowly up the hill. She winced when some part of the undercarriage scraped on the edge of the lane, but once it was back on the lane itself, Maura released a breath she hadn’t known she was holding.

“What now?” Maura demanded. “I don’t know squat about insurance here, or if the car is covered.”

“Don’t worry yourself. We can sort that out later,” Sean Murphy said.

“It looks all right, doesn’t it?” Maura said dubiously. “But
if there’s anything really wrong with the car, I don’t have any way to pay for repairs.”

“Let’s take one worry at a time,” Sean said in the same patient tone.

“But isn’t there going to be paperwork to fill out?”

“Not at the moment. I’m guessing that there’s nothing really wrong with the car, so all you’d have to pay for is the tow and having it looked at to be sure it’s safe to drive. Is it Bridget Nolan who’d be the owner of record?”

“Uh, I don’t really know. It may be Mrs. Nolan, or her late husband. Her grandson Mick would know, because he’s been the one taking care of it.”

“I’ll ask him later, then. Tell me, are you sure there’s no one who’d want to do this to you?”

Maura turned to glare at him. “I’ve been in this country all of five days. I’ve had conversations with maybe ten people, not including Mick and Jimmy at the pub and Rose and Ellen Keohane.”