chapter seventeen

“Mrs. H. F. Aird?” The desk clerk looked at Carol after she had signed the register. “Are you Mrs. Carol Aird?”

“Yes.”

“Message for you.” He turned around and got it from a pigeonhole. “A telegram.”

“Thank you.” Carol glanced at Therese with a little lift of her brows before she opened it. She read it, frowning, then turned to the clerk. “Where’s the Belvedere Hotel?”

The clerk directed her.

“I’ve got to pick up another telegram,” Carol said to Therese. “Want to wait here while I get it?”

“Who from?”

“Abby.”

“All right. Is it bad news?”

The frown was still in her eyes. “Don’t know until I see it. Abby just says there’s a telegram for me at the Belvedere.”

“Shall I have the bags taken up?”

“Well—just wait. The car is parked.”

“Why can’t I come with you?”

“Of course, if you want to. Let’s walk. It’s only a couple of blocks away.”

Carol walked quickly. The cold was sharp. Therese glanced around her at the flat, orderly looking town, and remembered Carol’s saying that Salt Lake City was the cleanest town in the United States. When the Belvedere was in sight, Carol suddenly looked at her and said, “Abby’s probably had a brainstorm and decided to fly out and join us.”

In the Belvedere, Therese bought a newspaper while Carol went to the desk. When Therese turned to her, Carol was just lowering the telegram after reading it. There was a stunned expression on her face. She came slowly toward Therese, and it flashed through Therese’s mind that Abby was dead, that this second message was from Abby’s parents.

“What’s the matter?” Therese asked.

“Nothing. I don’t know yet.” Carol glanced around and slapped the telegram against her fingers. “I’ve got to make a phone call. It might take a few minutes.” She looked at her watch.

It was a quarter to two. The hotel clerk said she could probably get New Jersey in about twenty minutes. Meanwhile, Carol wanted a drink. They found a bar in the hotel.

“What is it? Is Abby sick?”

Carol smiled. “No. I’ll tell you later.”

“Is it Rindy?”

“No!” Carol finished her brandy.

Therese walked up and down in the lobby while Carol was in the telephone booth. She saw Carol nod slowly several times, saw her fumble to get a cigarette lighted, but by the time Therese got there to light it for her, Carol had it and motioned her away. Carol talked for three or four minutes, then came out and paid her bill.

“What is it, Carol?”

Carol stood looking out the doorway of the hotel for a moment. “Now we go to the Temple Square Hotel,” she said.

There they picked up another telegram. Carol opened it and glanced at it, and tore it up as they walked to the door.

“I don’t think we’ll stay here tonight,” Carol said. “Let’s go back to the car.”

They went back to the hotel where Carol had gotten the first telegram. Therese said nothing to her, but she felt something had happened that meant Carol had to get back East immediately. Carol told the clerk to cancel their room reservation.

“I’d like to leave a forwarding address in case of any other messages,” she said. “That’s the Brown Palace, Denver.”

“Right you are.”

“Thank you very much. That’s good for the next week at least.”

In the car, Carol said, “What’s the next town west?”

“West?” Therese looked at the map. “Wendover. This is that stretch. A hundred and twenty-seven miles.”

“Christ!” Carol said suddenly. She stopped the car completely and took the map and looked at it.

“What about Denver?” Therese asked.

“I don’t want to go to Denver.” Carol folded the map and started the car. “Well, we’ll do it anyway. Light me a cigarette, will you, darling? And watch out for the next place to get something to eat.”

They hadn’t had lunch yet, and it was after three. They had talked about this stretch last night, the straight road west from Salt Lake City across the Great Salt Lake Desert. They had plenty of gas, Therese noticed, and probably the country wasn’t entirely deserted, but Carol was tired. They had been driving since six that morning. Carol drove fast. Now and then she pressed the pedal down to the floor and held it there a long while before letting up. Therese glanced at her apprehensively. She felt they were running away from something.

“Anything behind us?” Carol asked.

“No.” On the seat between them, Therese could see a piece of the telegram sticking out of Carol’s handbag. GET THIS. JACOPO. was all she could read. She remembered Jacopo was the name of the little monkey in the back of the car.

They came to a gas station café standing all by itself like a wart on the flat landscape. They might have been the first people who had stopped there in days. Carol looked at her across the white oilcloth table, and sank back in the straight chair. Before she could speak, an old man in an apron came from the kitchen in back, and told them there was nothing but ham and eggs, so they ordered ham and eggs and coffee. Then Carol lighted a cigarette and leaned forward, looking down at the table.

“Do you know what’s up?” she said. “Harge has had a detective following us since Chicago.”

“A detective? What for?”

“Can’t you guess?” Carol said in almost a whisper.

Therese bit her tongue. Yes, she could guess. Harge had found out they were traveling together. “Abby told you?”

“Abby found out.” Carol’s fingers slid down her cigarette and the fire burned her. When she got the cigarette out of her mouth, her lip began to bleed.

Therese looked around her. The place was empty. “Following us?” she asked. “With us?”

“He may be in Salt Lake City now. Checking on all the hotels. It’s a very dirty business, darling. I’m sorry, sorry, sorry.” Carol sat back restlessly in her chair. “Maybe I’d better put you on a train and send you home.”

“All right—if you think that’s the best idea.”

“You don’t have to be mixed up in this. Let them follow me to Alaska, if they want to. I don’t know what they’ve got so far. I don’t think much.”

Therese sat rigidly on the edge of her chair. “What’s he doing—making notes about us?”

The old man was coming back, bringing them glasses of water.

Carol nodded. “Then there’s the dictaphone trick,” she said as the man went away. “I’m not sure if they’ll go that far. I’m not sure if Harge would do that.” The corner of her mouth trembled. She stared down at one spot on the worn white oilcloth. “I wonder if they had time for a dictaphone in Chicago. It’s the only place we stayed more than ten hours. I rather hope they did. It’s so ironic. Remember Chicago?”

“Of course.” She tried to keep her voice steady, but it was pretense, like pretending self-control when something you loved was dead in front of your eyes. They would have to separate here. “What about Waterloo?” She thought suddenly of the man in the lobby.

“We got there late. It wouldn’t have been easy.”

“Carol, I saw someone—I’m not sure, but I think I saw him twice.”

“Where?”

“In the lobby in Waterloo the first time. In the morning. Then I thought I saw the same man in that restaurant with the fireplace.” It was only last night, the restaurant with the fireplace.

Carol made her tell completely about both times and describe the man completely. He was hard to describe. But now she racked her brain to extract the last detail she could, even to the color of his shoes. And it was odd and rather terrifying, dragging up what was probably a figment of her imagination and tying it to a situation that was real. She felt she might even be lying to Carol as she watched Carol’s eyes grow more and more intense.

“What do you think?” Therese asked.

Carol sighed. “What can anyone think? Just watch out for him the third time.”

Therese looked down at her plate. It was impossible to eat. “It’s about Rindy, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” She put down her fork without taking the first bite, and reached for a cigarette. “Harge wants her—in toto. Maybe with this, he thinks he can do it.”

“Just because we’re traveling together?”

“Yes.”

“I should leave you.”

“Damn him,” Carol said quietly, looking off at a corner of the room.

Therese waited. But what was there to wait for? “I can get a bus somewhere from here, and then get a train.”

“Do you want to go?” Carol asked.

“Of course, I don’t. I just think it’s best.”

“Are you afraid?”

“Afraid? No.” She felt Carol’s eyes appraise her as severely as at that moment in Waterloo, when she had told Carol she loved her.

“Then I’m damned if you’ll go. I want you with me.”

“Do you mean that?”

“Yes. Eat your eggs. Stop being silly.” And Carol even smiled a little. “Shall we go to Reno as we’d planned?”

“Any place.”

“And let’s take our time.”

A few moments later, when they were on the road, Therese said again, “I’m still not sure it was the same man the second time, you know.”

“I think you’re sure,” Carol said. Then suddenly on the long straight road, she stopped the car. She sat for a moment in silence, looking down the road. Then she glanced at Therese. “I can’t go to Reno. That’s a little too funny. I know a wonderful place just south of Denver.”

“Denver?”

“Denver,” Carol said firmly, and backed the car around.