The Road to Roswell, page 13
It took her several minutes to finish undoing the knots. “There, all done,” she said. She jammed her dress and the high-heeled sandals into the duffel bag on top of Wade’s shirt, and picked up the pink scarf Wade had bought. She twisted her hair into a ponytail, and Indy immediately began flailing again.
“No, no,” she said. “Stop.” She pointed to her hair. “Body.” She held the scarf out to him. “Clothes. Understand?”
Apparently not. She had to take him through the whole litany again, which took so long she was still tying her hair back when Wade opened the door.
He was carrying a bag of hamburgers, a molded cardboard tray of drinks, and a small plastic bag. “It’s taken you all this time to get dressed?” he said, handing her the tray.
“Long story,” she said, knotting the scarf, but he wasn’t listening. He was looking at the open duffel bag.
“What were you doing in my bag?” he demanded.
“I was selling anti-abduction insurance to the Border Patrol, what do you think?” she snapped. “I was trying to explain the concept of clothes to Indy. When I tried to take my dress off, he freaked out. He thought my skin was peeling off or I was mutilating myself or something.”
“Oh,” he said. “Lyle, there goes your theory about aliens mutilating cows.” He reached over her to zip up the duffel bag. “Your turn to go in. Lyle and I’ll see what we can do with the license plate while you’re gone.”
“They had duct tape after all?”
“Nope, but they had masking tape and Magic Markers. You’d better hurry if you want to beat the geezers to the bathroom.” He nodded at a couple of gray-haired women heading for the door.
She nodded, bent over to put on the moccasins Wade had bought, and saw Lyle staring open-mouthed at her tank top, or, rather, the lack of it. “You need to give me some money,” she said to Wade.
“What for?”
“So I can buy a tank top that fits.”
“We don’t have time,” Wade said, “and besides, that was the best of the bunch. The others all said ‘Ride Me, Cowboy.’ ”
“I’ll bet,” she said, and held out her hand for the money.
He handed her a twenty. “Now go.”
She went. “You look great, by the way,” Wade called after her and then, “The restrooms are in the far corner of the building, past the cowboy boots. And no, we don’t have time for you to take a shower.”
In what? The bathroom sink? she wondered, hurrying across the hot pavement. And if she’d thought that Indy’s panicked concern that she was hurt and that little detangling session meant Indy trusted her now, she was wrong. One of his unknotted tendrils whipped out and fastened itself around her wrist before she was halfway to the door.
But it was far less conspicuous than the getup she was wearing. When she held the door for the women with her non-tethered hand, they gave her disapproving looks, and she could have sworn she heard a whispered “Hussy!” amid their discussion of how they needed to hurry if they didn’t want to miss the bus.
Not that they did hurry—they were very slow going through the door. Come on, Francie thought, looking longingly past them at the sign for the restrooms. Wade hadn’t told her she would have to cross several acres of aisles filled with Navajo blankets, beaded belts, NRA bumper stickers, picture postcards, toy bow-and-arrow sets, Stetsons, strings of red chiles, agate bookends—not to mention rattlesnake ashtrays, rattlesnake-skin boots, rattlesnake travel mugs, and rattlesnake Christmas ornaments—but thankfully no people except a trio of seniors from the bus headed toward the restrooms.
She recognized one of them, the tiny woman with the dice-covered straw hat. She was carrying a tote bag with a sequined array of cards and the slogan Luck Be a Lady Tonight on it, and she was talking to another woman in a T-shirt with Las Vegas or Bust written across the chest, who was maneuvering her walker through the racks and racks of clothes between them and the door marked Restrooms.
There has to be something better than this tank top among all these clothes, Francie thought. But first things first. She made a beeline for the restrooms, or as much of a beeline as possible considering Indy’s tether. She didn’t want to snag it on a Native American suncatcher or a longhorn belt buckle. Or a Roman candle. There were even more fireworks here than there were rattlesnake souvenirs.
But even though Indy’s tentacle remained tightly around her wrist, the leash slackened as she turned corners and threaded between clothing racks, letting her move almost as if she wasn’t tethered at all.
After what seemed like several miles, she made it to the restrooms. Next to the door marked Gals was one marked Showers, which explained Wade’s comment. In spite of what he’d said, she stood there a moment, calculating whether she could get away with a super-quick shower, just a quick soap-and-rinse.
No, better not risk it, she decided. The touch of water on Indy’s tentacle might freak him out like her undressing had. Or it might be poison to him, like those movie aliens Lyle had talked about. And besides, she wasn’t sure that, wet, she’d be able to get back in these shorts. Plus, she didn’t have time to have a shower and buy a new shirt. And some less indecent shorts.
After using the restroom, she hurried through the rattlesnake area to the clothing racks and began flipping through the array of T-shirts for something, anything that would cover more of her and that was less garish than what she was currently wearing.
She owed Wade an apology—every shirt she found was either gaudy or obscene, and often both. They were neon-colored, rhinestone-studded, and emblazoned with Confederate flags, striking rattlesnakes, automatic rifles, and, of course, the Ride Me, Cowboy! Wade had mentioned, as well as a Harley-Davidson Gals Do It on a Motorcycle and Sexy Babe and Men In Black—When It Absolutely Has to Be Covered Up Overnight.
The Hawaiian shirts two racks over weren’t any better: beer bottles, naked women, Bowie knives, zombies, none of which Francie wanted to have to explain to Indy. And the rack past that was all black leather Harley-Davidson halter tops.
Surely there were other shirts somewhere. She looked up toward the front of the store and saw two police officers standing just inside the door, looking purposefully around. And these two weren’t Border Patrol agents.
Francie grabbed a T-shirt and a cowboy hat at random and headed toward the door marked Fitting Rooms. And ran straight into the white-haired woman with the dice-covered straw hat.
“Do you mind if I ask your opinion?” she said, pulling Francie over to a counter full of cactus. “I don’t know which to buy.” She picked up two of them. “Which one do you think?”
“I don’t know,” Francie said. There was a tall rack of sunglasses between them and the police officers, and she was grateful for its concealing height. And for the cover the woman’s talking to her was giving her. Who could suspect someone when they were with such a sweet, harmless-looking old lady?
Francie put her tethered hand casually behind her back and said, “They’re both nice.”
“I know,” the woman said. “This one has a bloom, but this one’s a prickly pear. I like its big round pads, just like a mouse’s ears, except for the thorns. Which one do you think?”
“Mmm,” Francie said noncommittally, sneaking a glance around the sunglasses rack. The officers were still standing by the door. One of them said something to the other, and they started resolutely in her direction.
“I’m terrible at making decisions,” the woman was saying. “Everybody says so. ‘Eula Mae,’ they say, ‘honestly, it takes you an hour to decide which slot machine to play,’ and they’re right! Could you hold them so I can compare them, dear?” she asked, and before Francie could think of an excuse, Eula Mae grabbed the T-shirt and cowboy hat out of her hands, dumped them next to the sunglasses rack, and thrust the two cacti at her.
Please don’t let her notice Indy’s tentacle, Francie prayed, taking the cacti from her, but the woman was totally focused on the plants.
“I like this pot better,” the woman said, squinting at them, “but I like this color better.”
“They’re over here,” one of the police officers said, and Francie’s heart nearly stopped. She glanced at the side door, wondering if she should make a break for it, but her hands were full of cacti, Eula Mae was standing in her way, and if Indy’s leash caught on the prickly pear’s thorns—
“Jesus, they’re miles away,” the other officer said, and Francie’s heart began to beat again. They were heading for the bathrooms, not her, and they passed her and Eula Mae without a glance.
Eula Mae was still talking. “And I tell them, I like to take my time deciding. Like at the casino. I go to casinos all the time, but I don’t just walk in and sit down at the first slot machine I see. I like to make sure it’s a lucky one. I wish I could do that with these cacti, but I don’t have time. ‘Be back on the bus in fifteen minutes or I’m leaving without you,’ Jerry—that’s our driver—says, and he means it. The driver we had before him, Raoul, always made sure everybody was back on, and if somebody was missing, he’d wait for them.”
The officers had disappeared. And I need to disappear, too, before they come back out, Francie thought. “I think you should definitely buy the prickly pear,” she said because the hand she was holding it in was the one without the tether, but Eula Mae was still talking. “Raoul knew some of us oldsters can’t move very fast, and he took that into account, but not Jerry. Fifteen minutes, and he just shuts that door and goes.”
The police officers would be out any minute. I need to go before they spot me or Eula Mae spots my tether, Francie thought, glancing down at her wrist—and realized to her horror that Indy’s tentacle was no longer wrapped around it.
How long had it been gone? And what did it mean? Had something happened to Indy? Were there other officers outside? What if they’d seen Wade altering the license plate? Or worse, seen Indy?
“Mr. Dunn, he’s one of our regulars, has prostate problems,” Eula Mae was saying, “and it always takes him a long time in the bathroom, and last week Jerry just went off and left him! He had to take a taxi home. It cost him half his Social Security check and—”
“I have to go,” Francie said, thrusting the cacti abruptly at Eula Mae, and shot across the miles of merchandise toward the side door. What if they’d tried to arrest Wade, and Indy’d thought they were hurting him and gone into his whirling dervish routine? What if they had guns and—
She pushed the door open and ran outside into the parking lot. There was no sign of the police.
Or of the car.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“You’re gonna need a bigger boat.”
—Jaws
For an endless minute, Francie simply stood there on the hot pavement and stared at the spot where the Navigator had been. It couldn’t be gone. But it was.
They went off and left me, she thought. Sending her inside had been a setup, and all Wade’s talk about not turning Indy over to the authorities and trying to help him get to where he was going had been a blind. And their stopping here hadn’t been to disguise the license plate and get a change of clothes for her, but to get rid of her so he could take Indy to Roswell and exhibit him at the UFO Festival. And once she was safely inside and out of Indy’s reach, he’d taken off in the Navigator.
But that couldn’t be what had happened. She hadn’t been out of Indy’s reach, she’d been attached to him, and when he saw what Wade was doing, he’d have kept him from driving away.
Unless something had happened to him. Or to all of them. The Border Patrol, she thought, her heart beginning to pound, but their car was still parked where it had been, and the two Border Patrol officers were still inside the trading post. And the passengers were getting on the casino bus as if nothing had happened. If they’d seen an arrest, wouldn’t they be standing around talking about it?
Maybe Wade had driven around to the other side of the building to keep the Border Patrol—or the police, or both—from spotting them.
She ran around to the front to see, and there, parked three spaces away from a Highway Patrol car, was the Navigator. What on earth did Wade think he was doing? The cops could come out of the building any minute.
We’ve got to get out of here, she thought, and flung the car door open. “You scared me to death,” she said. “I thought—”
There was no one in the Navigator. The bag of food Wade had bought still sat on the back seat. The cardboard tray of cups had been knocked over, and coffee was spilled all over the seat.
Oh, no, she thought. There must have been more than one Highway Patrol car, and the cops had taken them into custody and driven off with them.
But how? Indy wouldn’t have let himself be captured without a fight. He’d have grabbed the cops just like he had them. Unless they’d shot him.
But I’d have heard a shot, she told herself, trying to keep her panic at bay. Or a siren.
She leaned into the car, looking for clues to what had happened. The car keys weren’t in the ignition. She checked the floor and under the front seats, but they weren’t there, either. Which meant Wade had taken them with him.
But not his duffel bag, which lay on the floor of the back seat. It was halfway unzipped. Could Wade have hidden Indy in it when he saw they were going to be arrested? She pulled it out of the car, set it on the hood, and unzipped it the rest of the way. Wade’s blue shirt was inside, though not her maid-of-honor dress and shoes, which meant the cops must have gone through the bag and Indy couldn’t be inside, but she began to search through it anyway, pulling out Wade’s shirt and the anti-abduction insurance policies to see if he was under—
“Miss? Miss?” a voice called from the corner of the building Francie had just come around, and Francie looked up, startled.
It was Eula Mae, the woman who’d wanted to know which cactus she should buy. She was carrying her Luck Be a Lady Tonight tote bag and the T-shirt and cowboy hat she’d grabbed from Francie when she’d thrust the cacti at her. “You left these in the store,” she called, and trotted over to the car.
“Oh, I’m so glad I caught you,” she said, out of breath. “You forgot your purchases.”
I didn’t purchase them, Francie thought in a panic, hastily jamming Wade’s shirt back in the duffel bag and zipping it up. This is all I need, to be arrested for shoplifting.
She looked anxiously past Eula Mae, expecting to see an irate clerk storming around the corner, no doubt with the cops for backup, but the only thing coming was an enormous black recreation vehicle, nearly the size of the casino bus, lumbering toward the gas pumps.
“Here,” Eula Mae said, holding out the T-shirt and cowboy hat. “I felt so guilty. I was the one who made you set your things down, and I know how easy it is to forget things. One time at the Cities of Gold Casino I went off and left a stuffed toy I’d won at blackjack. It was a pink chihuahua, and it was the cutest little thing. It had a poker chip for an I.D. tag.”
“Don’t you need to be getting on your bus?” Francie said desperately. “I saw they were loading.”
“Oh, I’ve got time,” Eula Mae said carelessly. “So, anyway, I set the chihuahua on top of the slot machine while I got something out of my purse—”
I’ve got to get rid of her so I can find out what happened to Wade and Indy, Francie thought frantically. And the only way to do that was to accept the clothes even though she hadn’t bought them.
“Thank you,” she said, taking the hat and the T-shirt. “I really appreciate it.” She laid them on the back seat and picked up the duffel bag, “but I’m kind of in a hurry—”
Eula Mae wasn’t listening. “I forgot about it till I was halfway home on the bus,” she prattled on, “and the next day as soon as I got to the casino, I asked about it— Oh, my!”
“What?” Francie said, alarmed.
“That RV,” Eula Mae said, pointing at the black recreation vehicle, which had OUTLAW painted across its side in bright red letters and which was pulling into the gas station’s island. “That’s never going to make it under there.” She pointed at the roof of the island. “It’s too tall.”
The driver of the RV seemed to have realized it, too. It slowed to a crawl, its side door opened, and two metal steps unfolded onto the pavement.
“Oh, good,” Eula Mae said, “the driver’s making somebody get out to check the height,” and a swarm of tentacles lashed out from the open door.
It was exactly like the other times—Francie was grabbed and pulled into the RV without touching the steps, so fast she had no time to process what was happening. But this time Indy must have misjudged the distance or been thrown off by the RV’s movement because Francie landed sprawled awkwardly on the floor in front of the RV’s door on top of Wade’s duffel bag, her face buried in rust-colored carpet.
Which is what I deserve for acting like a teenager, she thought silently, because her first thought at the sound of Wade’s voice above her asking, “Are you okay?” had been pure joy. He didn’t go off and leave me, she’d thought giddily. He came back! Even though that was patently ridiculous. Indy was the one who’d yanked her aboard. Wade hadn’t had anything to do with it. It was idiotic to be so glad to see him.
“Are you okay?” Wade asked, squatting down beside her.
“No,” she said, raising herself onto her elbows. “I came out and saw the car was gone and thought you’d gone off without me—”
“Never,” he said, and she felt another ridiculous surge of happiness.
“I thought I’d better do what I could to make the car less recognizable, and I didn’t think it was a good idea to do it with the Border Patrol likely to come out that door any minute, so I moved the car around, but—”
