A String of Beads (Jane Whitefield, #8)(26)

“About five more minutes.”

“Two tickets, please.” She handed him two fifty-dollar bills, and looked up at the glass over the window to study the three men in the reflection.

She took the tickets and change, and walked behind the three men to the doors. A line was forming at the door of the bus, and Jane joined it. She glanced over at the area near the doors where Alma Rivers stood. She was still there, unmoving, still watching Jane. When their eyes met, Alma nodded once, turned, and walked around the corner of the building—maybe to the parking lot, maybe to the street. All Jane knew was that she was gone.

The bus driver began taking tickets. “Thank you, welcome aboard,” he said as each person handed him a ticket. “Thank you, welcome aboard.”

Jane handed him her two tickets. “One is for my husband, asleep in the back of the bus.”

“Thank you, welcome aboard.”

Jane climbed the steps, made her way down the aisle to the seat where Jimmy waited, and sat down. In a very short time, the driver had admitted the line of passengers and come in to sit down behind the wheel. The bus backed up, then turned and drove out again. As it made the first turn toward the Niagara section of the thruway, she put her face close to Jimmy’s and whispered.

“Did you see her?”

“Yes,” he said. “At first I thought it must be a hallucination from getting bopped on the head, but I could tell you were seeing her too.”

“She was there to warn us to keep going.”

“Why?”

“I’m not sure. There were three guys sitting in the station watching for something—I think she thought they were there for you.”

“Police?”

“They didn’t look like police to me, and I don’t think Alma thought so either.”

“How did she even know we were coming in on a bus, or when?”

Jane shrugged. “I can’t guess what they know or how they know it. Maybe they’ve been waiting at the airport, the bus station, the train station, and your mother’s house for days, watching to be sure you make it back safely. Maybe they know people so well they can predict what we’re going to do.”

“What do you think we should do now?” he asked.

“We’re doing it,” she said. “We’ve got another three-hour ride. Sleep as much as you can to get your strength back.”

Jimmy sat back and closed his eyes, and the sound of the bus rolling through the night lulled him back to sleep.

When they reached Erie a little after three, Jane got off the bus, went to the ticket booth, and then returned. “We’ll have to wait for a few hours to catch the next bus to Cleveland. It leaves at eight.” They bought snacks and water from vending machines. Jane whispered, “We can relax a little bit. Just crossing a state line still makes your face a bit less familiar, unless you were a movie star before your troubles started. Just look normal.”

“How do I do that?”

“Make up a little story and live it. You and I are from Rochester. We live in an apartment on Maplewood Avenue, near the Genesee River. We’ve been married for, say, eight years. We’re comfortable together, but we’re past the stage where we have our hands all over each other in public. We took the bus because it’s a cheap, easy way to visit my mother in Cleveland. You also want to see the Indians play while we’re there.”

Jimmy sat for a few seconds. “You’re right. When I think about how that guy feels, I forget to be nervous, and I don’t wonder what to do, because I know what he’d do. Right now he’d go get a newspaper and read it while you take a turn sleeping.”

“I’ll keep my eyes open until you get back with your paper.”

When he came back from the newspaper vending machine, he sat down on one of the long, pew-like benches, and Jane fell asleep beside him with her head on her backpack. They stayed that way until it was time to catch their next bus.

They got off the bus in Cleveland at around nine thirty in the morning. The station was a 1930s futuristic building, all rounded corners with a tall vertical sign like the marquee on a theater. They walked along Chester Street for a couple of blocks and came to a street with a sign that had an arrow and the words ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME.

Jimmy looked at it, then looked at Jane.

She shrugged. “It gives us a destination. And it raises the odds that there will be food in the area.”

They followed the arrows and walked a few blocks before they saw it. There were rows of man-high guitars painted in bright colors, and then a plaza up a wide set of steps. The building itself was a glass pyramid with concrete boxlike structures beside and above it. But what caught Jane’s attention was a roofed area at the margin with a pay phone. “Wait for me,” she said, and walked to it.

She put in a coin and dialed Carey’s cell number, then put in more coins when the operator told her to.

“Hello.”

“Hi, Doctor McKinnon,” she said. “I love you.”

“Hold on.” She could hear him walking from a place where there were noises in the background to a smaller, quieter space, then closing the door. “Hi. I’ve been worried.”

“Sorry. You got my message about ditching my cell phone, right?”

“Yes.”

“I had started to suspect somebody was using the GPS to follow me. What’s going on there?”