Wicked Fix (28 page)

husband can refer him to a great one."

Heywood stopped, turned back again slowly, his

blue eyes fixing me in a gaze that was deliberately

transparent. The belt buckle winked slyly at me.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he said.

Walking back along the rutted dirt track, I

found the farm ruins still mouldering in the

slanted sunlight, gnarled branches of old apple

trees casting crooked shadows. Thick

clumps of pale, blue-green iris foliage marked the old

perennial garden, ancient roots pushing out of the

earth like massive knucklebones.

A scallop dragger puttered in the channel at the

end of the old Toll Road as I crossed the causeway

back onto the island. In my rearview a line of cars had

begun forming; off-islanders, most likely, impatient to

reach their destination after a long drive.

There was nowhere for them to pass and I'd been

just loafing along. I hit the gas hard and sailed into a

long uphill curve, my thoughts still on Heywood's last

comment. He'd been lying.

The engine coughed. I glanced at the dash. The gas

gauge's needle sat on E. Impossible--but there was no

time to worry about the implications of it; I was already

into the curve.

The engine died, slowing me suddenly. The power

steering went too, and to make matters worse, a car

behind me was speeding up, pulling out, trying to pass.

Disastrously worse, actually: An air horn shot my

attention forward again. An eighteen-wheeler, coming

the other way around the curve ...

I hauled the steering wheel, struggling to get off the

road. The right front tire bit into the soft, sandy shoulder,

slowing me further but not, I felt suddenly, slowing

me enough. Ahead was a metal guardrail, beyond it

thin air followed by a three-hundred-foot drop to the

water, and of course I had no power brakes at that

point, either.

The truck got bigger, its air horn blasting again.

The car that had been trying to pass was now right

beside me, aimed head-on at the truck. He couldn't

back off; the other cars had pulled up, closing the gap.

But the big vehicle didn't have anywhere to go either,

because to its right was a vertical granite cliff, the continuation

of the ledge that the road had been built into.

The only area of shoulder was occupied by the massive,

disabled crane-hauling rig I'd seen earlier, on my way

out.

Oh, it was fascinating, and happening so fast, yet

slowly, too. Gracefully, inevitably. In the next few instants,

several of us were going to die, not a thing I

could do about it.

Suddenly the car beside me slammed mine, with a

thud that snapped my head sideways. It jolted me

toward the rail, which was a puny thing, toylike, and

then I couldn't see the rail at all because it was underneath

my front bumper. Thin air yawned ahead of me

and he jolted me again, trying to get by; a metallic

groan said the rail was giving under the pressure.

Then with a shriek of metal on metal the other car

scraped past, skinning the eighteen-wheeler and my

front fender by a matter of inches. My front bumper

bent the guardrail out another fraction, trying to uproot

the rail's support posts, stopped.

And then it was over, the big rig's air horn howling

one way, the car speeding away in the other. The ones

behind me kept on going too; there was nowhere for

them to stop.

I just sat there, looking out over the dashboard to

the water. A seagull swooped down, peered curiously

at me with a sideways flash of his beady eye, flapped

away again.

Finally I picked up the car phone and called Bob

Arnold, my hands shaking and my voice an odd,

breathless cartoon version of itself. And then I waited

by the side of the car, its emergency blinkers on,

hoping the vehicles coming up from behind would see the

flashers and not give the car a final, over-the-edge

bump. It didn't take long before I heard the crunch of a

car pulling onto the narrow verge, and I turned expectantly,

figuring that Arnold could put his squad's

cherry beacon on, stop traffic long enough for me to

empty a gas can into my vehicle's tank and get into the

driving lane again.

But it wasn't Arnold. It was the blond woman I'd

collided with outside Paddy Farrell's and whose photo

I'd seen at Mike Carpentier's cottage: Molly Carpen

tier's mother.

"Hey," she said cheerfully, getting out of her rental

sedan. "Problem? I'm Anne Carpentier."

She strode toward me. "Hope you've recovered

from that smack I gave you. I get to barreling along on

some errand, don't always watch where I'm going."

She stuck her hand out and I shook it, introducing

myself. Her grip was firm but not overwhelming in that

crushing, I've-got-a-point-to-make way that some very

physically fit women affect.

She eyed my car. "It looked like you hit the guardrail,"

she said. "So I just wondered if you were okay.

Guess it's not as bad as I thought, though."

"Yeah, I'm fine," I said, noticing those violet eyes

again. Then I explained briefly the fix I was in, not

expecting there was much she could do about it but

glad, actually, for some company.

"Bummer," she commented succinctly. "Hey, I've

got a coffee Thermos in my car. Want some?"

I accepted gratefully and found a Styrofoam cup in

my backseat; moments later we were chatting like a

couple of old pals.

"I met your daughter," I said as she poured steaming

liquid from the Thermos. "She's a beautiful little

girl."

Anne Carpentier nodded proudly. "Yeah. She's a

peach all right. I've been a little worried about her,

now that I'm away so much." She went on to confirm

what I already knew about her: merchant marine, lots

of travel, not very frequent visits home.

"But Mike's doing a great job with Molly," Anne

finished. "I wouldn't be able to keep working if I didn't

think so."

I didn't say anything. The idea of leaving Sam for

months at a time when he was little would never have

occurred to me; doing it would nearly have killed me.

Anne drank some coffee, looked pointedly over the

cup at me. "Lots of the guys I go to sea with are fathers.

Nobody tells them they're bad fathers, or implies

it. People have to make a living, you know."

Her tone was gentle but the meaning of her remarks

was not. "I'm sorry. It's none of my business.

It's just that ... Well, you don't think she's a little

isolated?" I hazarded.

But at this she only laughed. "You've been listening

to too much Eastport small talk. I asked Molly about

that, and it seems she has a perfectly satisfactory social

life at school. And she does see a few other children

outside of school, too. It's just that Mike looks them

over pretty carefully, and he's stepped on a few toes

doing it."

She looked out over the guardrail at the water.

"That's the thing about him, see. I couldn't live with

him. I never should have been married at all," she

added wryly, "if you want to know the truth. Definitely

not to someone as sensitive and complicated as

he is."

"Because?" It was an oddly personal admission

from someone I'd just met, but it didn't feel that way. I

got the sense that Anne Carpentier wasn't much for

meaningless small talk, that she made a habit of cutting

right to the chase. I liked it.

"He keeps things to himself," she replied. "I don't

pick up on them, then his feelings get more hurt. And

they stay hurt. I'm more the bull-in-a-china-shop type,

wade right in and battle to the death, you know? Take

care of things and pick up the pieces later."

Her face as she said this was as calm and sunny as

a summer morning, her yellow curls bobbing in the

breeze off the water, her remarkable eyes untroubled.

"But Mike would fight wild tigers for Molly," she

finished. "And that's what's important, if I'm not there

to do it."

She put the top back on the Thermos, caught sight

of Arnold in the squad coming around the curve.

"Looks like your ride's on its way," she remarked.

"I'm going to get moving."

"Thanks for stopping." I was glad she had. I liked

the fact that she would pull off the road for a stranger

who looked to be in trouble. "Are you going to be in

town long?"

She shook her head, getting back into her car.

"Going out tonight. Hey, nice meeting you. Maybe see

you next time."

She started the engine. Cars on the road were still

passing in a steady stream, and I didn't see how she

would make it back into the traveling lane without

help; I stepped over to stop the traffic so she could get

out, but she was already nosing the rental onto the

pavement, getting the oncoming cars to make way for

her by ignoring them, so they had to let her in or hit

her.

Gutsy, I thought. She waved cheerfully and drove

off, as Arnold pulled into .the space she had vacated.

"This tank was half-full," I answered his admonishing

look, "this morning."

"Uh-huh," he said. "Sure Sam didn't drive it? Or

Wade?"

I didn't bother to answer that; he knew Sam

walked and Wade always took his truck. Instead, I told

him about Monday's nose.

"That makes two incidents," I said. "Somebody

siphoned the gas out of that tank, Bob, when I was out

at the lake."

He peered under the car. "No leak, or not big

enough that I can see."

"Bob, the tank's empty. And don't you think I'd

have noticed if I was leaking gasoline all the way

home? I'd have smelled it."

"That's true." He squinted out at the water, considering.

"If the engine cut out and I'd lost power brakes

and steering on Washington Street, I'd have gone right

into the boat basin."

He still didn't quite buy it. "Wouldn't you have

seen a gas puddle that size? Out at the lake? Smelled it

there, too?"

"Not if somebody came prepared," I said. "Listen,