“Yessir.”
“I miss you,” Morelli said. “Try to stay alive.”
“I’ll do my best.”
* * *
I was driving in the dark, taking directions from the navigation lady.
“Keep right at the fork to continue on I-295 North,” she said to me. “Follow this road for fifty-two miles.”
“Fifty-two miles,” Lula said. “Is this trip never going to end? My ass is asleep. I need a bacon cheeseburger with onion rings and slaw. I need coconut layer cake and ice cream. I need a drink. Vodka straight up. I need to get out of this car. Tell me we’re almost there.”
“We’re almost there,” I said. “We’re in Maine.”
The next time we heard the navigation lady’s voice, she told me to merge onto I-95 North.
“Continue on I-95 for eighty miles,” she said.
“Omigod,” Lula said. “Eighty miles. Do you know how far eighty miles is? It’s freaking far. It’s forever. Just shoot me. Get it over with. Make this misery end. I can’t feel my legs anymore. I’m numb from the waist down. I wasn’t meant to sit. I’m one of those women who’s gotta go. I’m a mover. Let me out of this car and I’ll walk the rest of the way. Oh crap. I can’t do that. My extremities are dead. I’m a cripple.”
“Look on the bright side,” I said. “When we get back to Trenton you can get a handicap sticker for your car.”
“I always wanted one of those,” Lula said. “You get good parking spaces. A handicap sticker is worth gold.”
“Merge now,” the navigation lady said.
“I hate this bitch,” Lula said. “She’s not telling me anything I want to hear. I want to hear we’re at our destination.”
I loved the navigation lady. She knew where we were going. This was a wonderful thing since I hadn’t a clue. She never sounded tired or annoyed. Her voice was pleasant and calm and confident. It was a small piece of sanity in my currently unpleasant circumstances.
* * *
It was close to eleven o’clock when I cruised down the main street of Alberton. The main street was named Main Street, and from what I could see at night the town looked like a movie set. White church with steeple. Hardware store. Grocery store. Real estate office. Rosey’s Bakery. The Champion Bar and Grill. There were streetlights, but that was the only sign of life. No lights in any of the businesses. Mine was the only car on the road.
“This is it?” Lula said, looking out the window. “Is it charming? I can’t tell in the dark. And my powers of observation aren’t as good as usual because I’m weak due to my sugar level is all off on account of I never got a bacon cheeseburger.”
“We stopped for dinner, and you got the Thanksgiving in October Special. Turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, green beans, cranberry sauce, herb stuffing, pumpkin pie, and ice cream.”
“That was a long time ago,” Lula said. “I’m a big girl. I need to eat at regular intervals. I have an active metabolism.”
I drove past a small park with a kid playground. A gas station was across the street from the playground, and next to the gas station was the Haggerty Inn.
“This is it,” Lula said, reading from Connie’s notes. “The Haggerty Inn. A three-star accommodation that’s dog friendly and has free breakfast. From the picture it looks like it’s got three floors and it says it’s got two hundred fifty rooms. It doesn’t say anything about room service or a bar.”
I parked in the lot, and we got out of the car and stood for a moment letting our joints adjust.
“It’s frigging cold here,” Lula said. “It’s wintertime cold. My nipples are all shrunk up and frozen. We don’t have weather like this in Trenton. I didn’t bring clothes for this. I don’t even own clothes for this.”
I zipped up my sweatshirt, popped the hatch on the Explorer, and grabbed my duffel and Bob’s food. “I’ll race you to the front desk.”
Lula hauled her suitcase out of the SUV, and we hustled across the parking lot to the lobby.
“We have you in two of our nicest rooms on the second floor,” the desk clerk said.
“What about food?” Lula asked.
“Free breakfast starting at seven o’clock,” he said.
“Yeah, but what about now?” Lula asked.
“You’ll find a list of takeout places in your room. Most are closed at this hour, but Jake’s Bar is open until midnight, and they deliver.”
Twenty minutes later, we were in my room, waiting for pizza and beer to get delivered. I’d already called Morelli and told him I was safely locked away for the night. I didn’t bother calling Ranger. He was able to follow his cars, and he knew my exact location in real time. Plus, he probably had my messenger bag bugged and a GPS tracker sewn into the pocket of my sweatshirt.
“This is a pretty nice hotel,” Lula said. “I tested out the bed and the pillows, and the linens are nice too.”
“I’d like to get an early start tomorrow,” I said. “Breakfast at seven and then we’ll check out the brother’s house.”
“It’s okay with me. I’m an early riser. And I’m going to get a good night’s sleep in my nice hotel room without Grendel.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Bob and I got to the breakfast room a couple minutes after seven. I helped myself to coffee, a box of Frosted Flakes, a blueberry Danish, and a banana. Lula shuffled in fifteen minutes later, did a tour of the buffet, and came to my table with coffee.
“I wasn’t ready for seven o’clock,” Lula said. “I was worn out from the ride. How can you get dead tired from sitting all day? I barely dragged myself out of bed. I’m too tired to eat.” She looked at my Danish. “Is that any good?”
“It’s average.”
“Average is okay. Average means good enough. And average is a lot better than lousy. I might need one.”
“What about being too tired to eat?”
“Yeah, but I should force myself to eat something to get my energy up. I need to get my yin and yang balanced out.”
Lula went to take a second look at the pastries and Ranger called.
“Checking in,” Ranger said. “How’s Alberton?”
“I haven’t seen much of it yet, but I suspect there isn’t much to see. Lula is laying waste to the free breakfast bar right now. When we’re done with breakfast we’ll head out to the brother’s house.”
“The brother is William Dugan. Forty years old. Manages an auto parts store. Two kids with wife number one. They’re with the first wife. Wife number two is Adele. She’s a dental assistant. They’ve been married for three years. No kids. Two dogs. They belong to the Methodist church and they’re on the Alberton Knights softball team. It looks like the Alberton Knights haven’t won a game in the last seven years. Adele and William have matching Honda Civics. Gray. They have a mortgage, the cars are leased, they pay their bills on time, no arrest records.”
“Thanks. They sound like good people.”
“There’s a cousin on death row in South Carolina for killing and beheading twelve people, but he’s twice removed.”