Murder and Mayhem (27 page)

“Are you about done in the kitchen?” I asked him.

“Nearly finished.”

“Don’t forget to give the oven a wipe down with some
warm soapy water,” I reminded him.

“I was in the middle of doing that when you girls
decided you wanted your tea. I can only do one thing at a time.” He chuckled
and headed back to the kitchen.

“Can someone tell me why is it
that men can’t multi-task? Women do it all the time.”

“Beats me, it’s probably one of those male gene
things. I know if I set Cody or Drew more than one thing to do at a time, they
about fall in a heap.”

I nodded knowingly, and dropped the last cookie crumb
in my mouth. “Shall I continue?”

“Oh, absolutely, I can’t wait to find out what
happened next.”

“So where was I?”

“You had just headed off to find something to eat.”

“Oh, that’s right. Well, about five miles down the
road we came to a gas station where the attendant had started to close up for
the night. We asked him if we could get something to eat, but all he had was a
bunch of candy bars and a couple of stale doughnuts. So we grabbed the
doughnuts, half-a-dozen candy bars, and a couple of sodas. We were getting
pretty low on gas but the attendant had closed off the pumps so we said we’d
come back in the morning, paid him for the sugar fix and headed back to the
motel.”

“Was the room okay?”

“Let me tell you Hon, it was real low-rent. The sheets
and towels were clean, but the rest was pretty grotty.”

“Didn’t even have professional wrestling on the
television,” Ross called from the kitchen.

“I’m surprised they still have a license to operate,”
Rosie called back.

“That’s what I reckon, Hon. You’d think the
authorities would do something about it,” Ross said as he leaned against the
doorframe and started to chew on a hang-nail.

I glared at him over the top of my glasses.

He got my drift. “Sorry,” he said and headed back to
the kitchen.

“As I was saying… If I hadn’t been so exhausted, I
would have rousted the clerk and got some bleach for Ross to give the place a
real good scrub, but we were exhausted, so I just got him to pour shampoo down
the loo and wipe the seat with the disinfectant I always carry in my bag in
case of emergencies, and, for the first time in my life I didn’t bother to
shower–because I wasn’t sure what I might catch. So, we sat on the bed and ate
the candy bars and doughnuts washed down with the sodas, and finally turned off
the light after I’d sprayed the bed with perfume to get rid of the awful stale
smell from old sweat and bad breath. God only knows what might have been
lurking inside the pillow, but I wasn’t taking any chances, I threw it outside,
rolled up a couple of clean towels and used them instead.”

“What about Ross?”

“He wasn’t born a princess like we were Hon. Ross can
sleep on anything. But even in the best hotels you never know what might be
lurking between the layers of Dacron so now I buy a new pillow and a couple of
pillowcases from Wal-Mart or Target at the start of our trip, and leave them in
the last hotel we stay overnight before returning to San Francisco. That way
they’re not taking up room in our luggage–and they’re cheap enough not to
matter.”

“You certainly learnt some good lessons on that trip,”
Rosie said. Before I could answer I heard Ross mumble something from the
kitchen.

“What was that Ross?”

“I said, now comes the good part.”

Rosie’s eyes widened. “The good part?”

Ross stood in the doorway wiping his hands on a tea
towel and said, “You won’t want to miss this bit, Hon.” He flung the tea towel
over his shoulder, leaned against the doorframe and crossed his arms and legs.

I looked at him over the top of my glasses–waited.

“Sorry, Bee, please continue,” he said with a wide
sweep of the hand.

Rosie laughed. “Yeah, Bubbie, I’ve got a feeling I
won’t want to miss this part.”

 I filled our cups with tea, handed one to Rosie, took
a sip out of mine and held up my finger in a ‘just give me a minute’ gesture.
After I’d drained the cup dry I wiped a napkin across my mouth and sighed.
“Ah…, that’s better. Now… where was I?”

“You were settling down for the night,” Rosie
prompted.

I nodded. “Well, just as we started to doze off we
were woken up by loud noises coming from the room next door. There were moans
and groans and yells and screams and we wondered if we had stumbled into a
modern day version of the ‘Bates Motel’. But then we realized our neighbors
were having very loud sex!”

The room erupted into howls of laughter.

“The walls of the motel were so thin we could hear
everything that was going on–and I do mean everything! The bed was banging so
hard against the adjoining wall, I thought the picture above our bed was going
to fall on our heads, so I got Ross to climb up and remove it.”

“The noise was unbelievable. I have never heard
anything like it before,” Ross said as he sat on the end of the bed.

Rosie was laughing so much she had trouble speaking.
“So what did you do?”

“There was no way we could get any sleep with all that
noise going on so we just had to wait until they had finished. Finally they
stopped. So, we settled back down and made ourselves comfortable, but just as
we drifted off to sleep they started again. Well, Ross banged on the wall, and
yelled but they were so loud I doubt they would have heard a freight train
roaring past their room with the whistle blowing.”

Rosie’s eyes were bright with mirth. “So, what did you
do?” she asked again

Ross looked at me propped up
against the headboards, and grinned. “What else could we do? You know that old
saying,
if you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em?
At least the entire night wasn’t
a complete waste.”

“Speak for yourself.” A pillow sailed through the air
but Ross’s reflexes were good–he caught it before it found its mark.

“The next morning we could hear them packing up and
when the door to their room opened we raced over to the window to have a look
at the lovebirds. Well, we couldn’t believe our eyes. Waddling over to this old
Cadillac parked outside their door was this enormous woman. Even though she would
have only been about five feet tall she must have weighed at least three
hundred pounds. She was dressed in pink frills and flounces with bleached blond
hair piled high on her head. She had candy-pink lips and wore enough make-up to
cover the entire cast of a blockbuster movie.”

Ross took up the story. “And, following right behind
her, sporting a large grin was lover-boy carrying the bags. He was well over
six feet tall, thin as a bean pole, bald as a badger and had a red cowboy hat
tucked under his arm. He was wearing red Cuban-heel cowboy boots and a green
western outfit embroidered with purple and yellow roses that were covered in
sparkles and tassels. Neither of them would have been a day under sixty.”

Ross looked at me and grinned. “I know age should never
be the criteria for sex but we could hear them talking all lovey-dovey to each
other like a couple of teenagers. And the woman kept looking up at the man,
smiling coyly, acting all shy and giggly like a love-sick schoolgirl. We
couldn’t stop laughing as we watched them climb into the pink Caddy and drive
off,” Ross said through tears of laughter with Rosie and me joining in.

Ross stopped and sniffed. “Oh
dear,” he said as he wiped the back of his hand across his cheeks.
“For the rest of that trip reliving that night was a
great source of entertainment for the both of us.”

Rosie passed around the Kleenex and said, “So, what
happened when you left the motel?  Where did you go?”

“We had planned to drive south along the Adirondack
Mountain Range to Pennsylvania and it was by sheer good luck that we were on
the right track, albeit by a different route, but when we got directions from
the reception office we realized we were near Lake Placid. So we drove to
Tupper Lake and followed the road south to Utica. I remember the lonely sound
of the Loons in the early morning mist when we passed the lake. I’ve always
loved that sound, but sadly now whenever I hear them it conjures up images of a
stick insect wearing a red cowboy hat and boots coupling with a fluffy pink
meringue.” His description set us off into gales of laughter again.

“What’s all that noise,” Cody asked as he slumped into
the room and flopped down on the bed next to his uncle.

“None of your beeswax little man,” Ross said as he
playfully ruffled Cody’s hair.

I kicked him in the ribs with my
bare foot. “Don’t mess his hair up, Ross, he’s probably just gone to a lot of
trouble getting it to look nice.”

“Yeah, right,” Rosie said.

The boys hooted with laughter as
they wrestled playfully on the bed, and then tumbled onto the floor.

*****

Suddenly the loud speakers crackled and a disembodied
voice advised passengers to return to their vehicles to prepare for docking.

As they made their way towards the SUV, Danny noticed
a man and woman mingling with people coming through the doorway into the
vehicle storage area… and disappear among the other commuters. 

“Danny, Danny!”

“Mmm... What?” he said distractedly as his eyes
scanned the deck for that brief flash of red, and a man wearing a black ball
cap weaving between motor vehicles.

“Are you all right?”

“Mm...? Oh sorry. I thought I saw the young couple who
were in the restaurant last night,” he said as he tried to peer round a
particularly large RV parked halfway down the row.

*****

My life is not filled with prescient moments but
occasionally I do have them and when I do they are not preceded by flashing red
lights or the sound of bells ringing, or the loud crash of cymbals banging
together. They sneak up when you least expect it and kick you right in the balls.
But…, this was not one of those moments. I knew what my sister was going to say
before she’d even opened her mouth.

“I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me who the lady
in red is?”

I shrugged.

“Is that an ‘I don’t know who she is’ shrug, or an,
‘I’m not going to tell you’ shrug?”

“Make of it what you will–it’s just a shrug.”

“If you keep reading, am I going to find out who she
is?”

“Oh sure… Eventually.”

*****

Danny drove off the ferry and headed for Highway-89.

“Do you want something to eat?” he asked. “We’ve still
got a couple of hours on the road and I need to stop for gas.”

“Something light will do.”

They pulled into a roadhouse where eighteen-wheelers
were parked by the pumps with engines hammering and airbrakes hissing as tires
rolled over the concrete. Danny filled the tank with diesel and headed for the
parking lot where big rigs lined the asphalt spewing diesel fumes into the air
through stainless steel exhausts that sat atop well equipped cabins, where most
long-haul drivers lived.

They found a booth at the back of the diner and placed
their order with a waitress with hard eyes that said she had seen it all.

“How far is it to your friend’s place?” Nicola asked.

“Not far, just a couple of hours. We should be in St.
Johnsbury, before dark,” Danny said as he looked around the restaurant.

“The restrooms are down there,” Nicola indicated with
a nod.

“Thanks,” he said distractedly.

“Danny, is something the matter? You seem to have been
preoccupied since we boarded the ferry.”

“Have you noticed any suspicious cars lately?”

“No. Why do you ask?”

“No reason. You haven’t mentioned anything for a while
so I was wondering if you still thought there may have been a car following
us.”

“To be honest I’d forgotten all about it.”

A waitress came by and splashed water in their
glasses, topped up their coffee and moved on to the next table.

                                                                    *
* *

The landscape was a patchwork of pine trees and
maples, and oak, and spruce as they passed through small towns and villages
that criss-crossed the Winooski River, where houses with ceiling-high windows
were built on the wooded banks of the river, and boats moored under the
overhang of trees. When he saw a sign by the side of the road, Danny slowed to
the thirty mph speed limit, but the only evidence of habitation on the long
stretch of road was a poplar-lined drive covered in a smattering of yellow
leaves where an old stone bridge spanned a narrow stream. Set well back from
the road were a group of faded red barns and outhouses; and a large stone
farmhouse surrounded by newly plowed fields. The blackness of the freshly
turned earth created long straight furrows on the stark gray landscape where an
elderly man crouched inspecting the soil, oblivious to the large black dog that
barked at something in the row of tall pines that served as a windbreak along
the fence line.