Full Dark, No Stars(52)
“Mine, too,” Tess said.
“When you get to 47, you’ll see a sign pointing you to I-84, but you’ll only need to take the turnpike for twelve miles or so, that’s the beauty part. And you’ll save tons of time and aggravation.”
“That’s also the beauty part,” Tess said, and they laughed together, two women of the same mind watched over by a smiling Richard Widmark. The abandoned store with the ticking sign was then still ninety minutes away, tucked snugly into the future like a snake in its hole. And the culvert, of course.
- 5 -
Tess not only had a GPS; she had spent extra for a customized one. She liked toys. After she had input the intersection (Ramona Norville leaned in the window as she did it, watching with manly interest), the gadget thought for a moment or two, then said, “Tess, I am calculating your route.”
“Whoa-ho, how about that!” Norville said, and laughed the way that people do at some amiable peculiarity.
Tess smiled, although she privately thought programming your GPS to call you by name was no more peculiar than keeping a fan foto of a dead actor on your office wall. “Thank you for everything, Ramona. It was all very professional.”
“We do our best at Three Bs. Now off you go. With my thanks.”
“Off I go,” Tess agreed. “And you’re very welcome. I enjoyed it.” This was true; she usually did enjoy such occasions, in an all-right-let’s-get-this-taken-care-of fashion. And her retirement fund would certainly enjoy the unexpected infusion of cash.
“Have a safe trip home,” Norville said, and Tess gave her a thumbs-up.
When she pulled away, the GPS said, “Hello, Tess. I see we’re taking a trip.”
“Yes indeed,” she said. “And a good day for it, wouldn’t you say?”
Unlike the computers in science fiction movies, Tom was poorly equipped for light conversation, although Tess sometimes helped him. He told her to make a right turn four hundred yards ahead, then take her first left. The map on the Tomtom’s screen displayed green arrows and street names, sucking the information down from some whirling metal ball of technology high above.
She was soon on the outskirts of Chicopee, but Tom sent her past the turn for I-84 without comment and into countryside that was flaming with October color and smoky with the scent of burning leaves. After ten miles or so on something called Old County Road, and just as she was wondering if her GPS had made a mistake (as if), Tom spoke up again.
“In one mile, right turn.”
Sure enough, she soon saw a green Stagg Road sign so pocked with shotgun pellets it was almost unreadable. But of course, Tom didn’t need signs; in the words of the sociologists (Tess had been a major before discovering her talent for writing about old lady detectives), he was other-directed.
You’ll ramble along for sixteen miles or so, Ramona Norville had said, but Tess rambled for only a dozen. She came around a curve, spied an old dilapidated building ahead on her left (the faded sign over the pumpless service island still read ESSO), and then saw—too late—several large, splintered pieces of wood scattered across the road. There were rusty nails jutting from many of them. She jounced across the pothole that had probably dislodged them from some country bumpkin’s carelessly packed load, then veered for the soft shoulder in an effort to get around the litter, knowing she probably wasn’t going to make it; why else would she hear herself saying Oh-oh?
There was a clack-thump-thud beneath her as chunks of wood flew up against the undercarriage, and then her trusty Expedition began pogoing up and down and pulling to the left, like a horse that’s gone lame. She wrestled it into the weedy yard of the deserted store, wanting to get it off the road so someone who happened to come tearing around that last curve wouldn’t rear-end her. She hadn’t seen much traffic on Stagg Road, but there’d been some, including a couple of large trucks.
“Goddam you, Ramona,” she said. She knew it wasn’t really the librarian’s fault; the head (and probably only member) of The Richard Widmark Fan Appreciation Society, Chicopee Branch, had only been trying to be helpful, but Tess didn’t know the name of the dummocks who had dropped his nail-studded shit on the road and then gone gaily on his way, so Ramona had to do.
“Would you like me to recalculate your route, Tess?” Tom asked, making her jump.
She turned the GPS off, then killed the engine, as well. She wasn’t going anywhere for awhile. It was very quiet out here. She heard birdsong, a metallic ticking sound like an old wind-up clock, and nothing else. The good news was that the Expedition seemed to be leaning to the left front instead of just leaning. Perhaps it was only the one tire. She wouldn’t need a tow, if that was the case; just a little help from Triple-A.
When she got out and looked at the left front tire, she saw a splintered piece of wood impaled on it by a large, rusty spike. Tess uttered a one-syllable expletive that had never crossed the lips of a Knitting Society member, and got her cell phone out of the little storage compartment between the bucket seats. She would now be lucky to get home before dark, and Fritzy would have to be content with his bowl of dry food in the pantry. So much for Ramona Norville’s shortcut… although to be fair, Tess supposed the same thing could have happened to her on the interstate; certainly she had avoided her share of potentially car-crippling crap on many thruways, not just I-84.
The conventions of horror tales and mysteries—even mysteries of the bloodless, one-corpse variety enjoyed by her fans—were surprisingly similar, and as she flipped open her phone she thought, In a story, it wouldn’t work. This was a case of life imitating art, because when she powered up her Nokia, the words NO SERVICE appeared in the window. Of course. Being able to use her phone would be too simple.