Murder Takes the High Road(14)

The Mini buzzed away, expressing outrage in an extended beeeeeep!

Regaining my balance, I gazed at the circle of red and white faces surrounding me—reading those shocked and frightened gazes, I realized how close I had been to becoming road kill.

My knees felt kind of...crumbly. I’ve never fainted in my life, but for a second or two I felt definitely...odd. Light-headed. My friends—and they did seem like friends now—seemed equally shaken.

“Th-th-these country drivers are worse than the Germans!” stuttered Nedda.

Yvonne said, “It’s not the driver’s fault. It was Mr. Stafford. He walked right into Mr. Matheson.”

“I saw that!” Laurel Matsukado looked flushed and indignant. “He practically pushed Carter into the road.”

The Poe sisters had joined us by then. They said in unison, “We saw it too!”

“Now, now, ladies,” objected Wally Kramer. “I know we all love a good juicy murder, but even in jest those kinds of accusations—”

Murder.

My stomach lurched, and it was all I could do to maintain my already not-so-stoic fa?ade.

It couldn’t be true. Vance couldn’t have really intended to push me into the road. And Trevor certainly couldn’t have been aware of what was happening. Regardless of the situation between us now, he wouldn’t want me dead.

Neither of them would want me dead.

I mean, I didn’t want them dead, so why would they want me dead?

“He’s going to faint!” Laurel and Nedda cried in unison.

I waved them off. “No, no. I’m okay. I’m fine.”

“I wouldn’t blame you if you did faint,” Nedda said. “If you’d only seen how close those tires came to crushing your head.”

I swallowed the very bad taste in my mouth.

“He needs a drink,” Laurel said. “We could all use a drink.”

We gazed wistfully at the Tudor-style inn a few yards beyond the café. I could make out cheery red awnings over the tops of the tall hedges.

“We don’t want to go there,” one of the Poes objected. “That’s where they went.”

In the end, we opted to continue to the café and have lunch as planned, although the way my stomach was roiling I couldn’t imagine eating anything other than Xanax.

The long tables and wooden chairs of the dining room appeared to be packed with locals and hikers. We appropriated the few remaining tables, shrugging out of our coats and hats and scarves.

John had arrived a minute or two before us, and Bertie and Edie Poe invited themselves to share the corner he inhabited with the Scherfs and Rices. He did not look thrilled. An organized tour was not the best choice for the non-socially inclined, and observing John’s pained smile as the Poes squeezed in with him, I suspected that John fell in that category.

The Poes proceeded to relate the story of my near brush with death. Or I assumed that was what the whispers and fingers pointing at the now empty stretch of road meant. John, the Scherfs and the Rices all looked politely shocked, no doubt thinking the sisters exaggerated.

I tended to think the sisters exaggerated too, now that the initial flood of adrenaline had drained away. The car couldn’t have been as close as it seemed. Vance couldn’t have knocked into me as forcefully as it had felt.

My hands tingled. I glanced down and studied the scrapes on my palms. My knees felt sore too.

“You would have been dead if Ben hadn’t been there,” Yvonne said suddenly, as though reading my thoughts. I glanced at her, noticing she still wore her name tag. It was firmly stuck to her green quilted sweater. “He single-handedly snatched you from beneath the tires of that madman.”

Across the table, Ben met my eyes and cleared his throat.

“Thank you,” I said. I meant it.

“Single-handedly?” objected Nedda Kramer. “We all saved Carter.”

I smiled, noting that I had become “Carter” after nearly becoming a travel statistic. Vance and Trevor and John were still mostly being referred to by their surnames.

“And I appreciate it,” I said. “A lot. That’s not the way I want to find out more about the NHS.”

There were a few uneasy chuckles.

“It might not be the first time one of these trips has ended in tragedy,” Rose piped up. Her expression was meaningful. The Kramers exchanged uncomfortable looks.

Fortunately, the waitress appeared and further speculation on my close call was postponed while we gave our orders. Having defied death once already that day, I decided to gamble my entire circulatory system and order the steak pie and chips—with a half pint of Watneys to wash it down. Most of the others ordered burgers, fries and cokes, which I thought was a little unadventurous, but maybe they were feeling their way toward total cultural immersion.

I excused myself to wash my hands and examine the damage to my knees in the lavatory. Scrapes and scratches. Nothing serious. When I got back to the table, the talk had circled back to Vanessa and her works, in particular Pressure Cooker. There was some debate as to whether it lived up to her first standalone, Blink, and then more debate as to whether any of the standalones were as good as the MacKinnon series. Nothing that I hadn’t discussed with fellow readers before, but there was something sort of, well, comforting about being able to talk books and stories with people every bit as obsessive as me.