AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I waited until nine o’clock to call Delta Airlines. A recorded voice advised me that all reservation agents were currently busy and invited me to hold. I did, at least until a version of “Stairway to Heaven” by the One Hundred Comatose Strings came on, then gave up and went to American. Same thing. JetBlue, ditto. Southwest had a flight to Cleveland on Thursday, no connecting flight scheduled to Boston, but that might change, the agent told me. It was hard to tell. Thanks to the Coronavirus, everything was crazy.
I booked the flight to Cleveland, thinking if no connecting flight materialized I could rent a car, drive to Boston, and Uber to Newburyport. By then it was nine-thirty. I was very aware of the stroller sitting out in my garage. It was like having a hot stone in my pocket.
I went to the Hertz site on my phone and was put on terminal hold. Same with Avis and Enterprise. An agent answered the phone at Budget, checked his computer, and told me they had no oneway rental cars available in Cleveland. That left Amtrak and the bus lines, but by then I was frustrated and tired of holding the phone to my ear. I kept thinking of the stroller, the shirts, the child-sized black burial suits. The light of a hot August day should have helped. It didn’t. The more my options closed off, the more I wanted—needed—to get out of Greg’s house and away from Allie Bell’s down the road. What had felt like a place to recover near the serenity of the Gulf now felt like a prison.
I got a cup of coffee, paced around the kitchen, and tried to think of what I should do, but it was hard to think of anything but the stroller (squeak) and the matching shirts (squeak) and the black burial suits (squeak). The coffins had also been matching. White, with gold handles. I knew this.
I drank the coffee black and another penny dropped: the nighttime visitation might be over but the haunting was still going on.
Thursday. I concentrated on that. I had a flight at least as far as Cleveland on Thursday. Three days from now.
Get off the Key until then. Do that much, at least. Can you?
At first I thought I could. Easy as winking. I grabbed my phone, found Barry’s Resort Hotel in Palm Village, and called. Surely they would have a room where I could stay for three nights; hadn’t I seen on the news that few people were traveling this summer? Why, the place would probably welcome me (squeak) with open arms!
What I got was a recorded message short and to the point: “Thank you for calling Barry’s Resort Hotel. We are closed until further notice.”
I called Holiday Inn Express in Venice and was told they were open but taking no new guests. Motel 6 in Sarasota didn’t answer at all. As a last resort (little pun there—squeak!) I called the Days Inn in Bradenton. Yes, I was told, they had rooms. Yes, I could reserve one providing I passed a temperature check and wore a mask. I took the room, although Bradenton was forty miles away and two counties over. Then I went outside to try and clear my head before packing. I could have gone through the garage, but chose the patio door instead. I didn’t want to look at the stroller, let alone oil the squeaky wheel. The twins might not like it.
I was standing by the pool when an F-150 pickup truck, blinding in the summer sun, came down the driveway and pulled up in the courtyard, exactly where I’d found the goddam stroller both times. The man who got out was wearing a tropical shirt with parrots on it, very large khaki shorts, and a straw sunhat of the type only lifelong residents of Florida’s Gulf Coast can seem to get away with. He had a seamed, suntanned face and a really huge walrus mustache. He saw me and waved.
I went down the steps from the patio to the courtyard, already holding out my hand. I was glad to see him. It broke the repeating loop in my head. I think seeing anyone would have done it, but I was pretty sure I knew who this was: Super Gramp.
Instead of taking my hand, he offered his elbow. I gave it a bump, thinking this was now the new normal. “Andy Pelley. And you’re Mr. Trenton.”
“Right.”
“Don’t have the Covid, Mr. Trenton?”
“No. Do you?”
“Clean as a whistle, as far as I know.”
I was grinning like a fool, and why? Because I was happy to see him. So happy to not be thinking about black suits and white coffins and squeaky wheels. “You know who you look like?”
“Oh boy, do I ever. Get it all the time.” Then, with a smile below the mustache and a twinkle in his eye, he did a passable Wilford Brimley imitation. “Quaker Oats! It’s the right thing to do!”
I laughed giddily. “Perfect! Nailed it!” Babbling. Couldn’t help it. “That was a seriously good campaign, and I should know, because—”
“Because you used to be in advertising.” He was still smiling, but I had been wrong about the twinkle in those blue eyes. It was actually a look of assessment. A cop look. “You handled the Sharp Cereals account, didn’t you?”
“A long time ago,” I said, thinking: He’s looked me up online. Investigated me. Why, I don’t know. Unless he thinks I—
“Got a few questions for you, Mr. Trenton. Maybe we could go inside? Awful hot out here. Guess the cold front’s gone the way of the blue suede shoe.”
“Of course. And really, make it Vic.”
“Vic, Vic, got it.”
I meant to take him up the steps to the patio, but he was already headed for the garage. He stopped when he saw the stroller.
“Huh. Preston Zane told me you returned that to Mrs. Bell’s garage.”
“I did. Someone brought it back. Again.” I wanted to resume babbling, telling him I didn’t know why, had no idea why the stroller was following me around, following me like a bad smell (if a bad smell could squeak, that was), but the assessing look was back in his sun-crinkled eyes and I made myself stop.
“Huh. Two nights in a row. Wow.”
His eyes saying how unlikely that was, asking me if I was lying, asking if I had a reason to lie, something to hide. I wasn’t lying, but I certainly did have something to hide. Because I didn’t want to be dismissed as a crazy person. Or even considered as someone who’d had something to do with Allie Bell’s death, the fabled “person of interest.” But that was ridiculous. Wasn’t it?
