‘I don’t wanta be castin no dispersions on yer intelligence, or nothin, but jeezle!’ She reached down between her knees to pick up her sack. ‘See ya in a shake,’ she said as she opened the door. She climbed out of the car and headed for the gas station’s mini-mart, swinging the sack by her side.
Neal, still behind the wheel, slipped the bracelet off his wrist and put it into a pocket of his trousers. Then he reached out to turn off the ignition.
He suddenly imagined himself driving off. Right now. Without Sue. By the time she realized what was happening, he’d be gone.
Why would I want to do that? he wondered.
Because she knows about the bracelet.
But she also knows about my involvement in the murder, he reminded himself. And she knows who I am, and where I’m going.
The bracelet’s going to be a real problem. She’ll be wanting to use it all the time. Maybe she’ll even try to steal it.
He never should’ve let her touch it.
I could ditch her right now. She might not know my last name. I could change my destination . . .
‘Yeah, right,’ he muttered, and pulled the key and climbed out of the car.
No matter how much trouble might be saved by ditching Sue now, Neal knew he wasn’t capable of such a thing.
Leave her stranded at a gas station in the middle of nowhere?
He supposed that Sue would probably get along just fine. Probably be stranded for all of five minutes before finding a ride with someone else. But he couldn’t do it.
He studied the gas pumps, trying to find a sign that might tell him to pay before pumping. He didn’t see one. Not unusual. Away from places like Los Angeles, gas stations often let you pay after filling your tank. They trusted people more, out in the boonies. Not as much experience dealing with barbarians.
Pleased, Neal took down a nozzle and started to pump.
Maybe I should just let Sue use the bracelet as much as she wants, as long as she’s with me. Take her back to Mojave in a few days and drop her off at Sunny’s. After that, I’ll have the bracelet all to myself again.
Unless she steals it.
Might even want to kill me for it.
No, he told himself. Not Sue.
Though she apparently found the bracelet interesting – and a useful tool for getting to the truth – she didn’t act enthralled by it. Considering the magic of the thing, which she’d experienced twice, she seemed quite nonchalant.
Might be an act, Neal thought.
I need to get into her head with it.
Sue hadn’t returned by the time the nozzle clicked off. Neal hooked up the nozzle, made sure to put the cap on his gas tank, checked the pump number and price, and headed for the mini-mart.
After paying at the counter, he went into the men’s room. As he locked the door, he realized he was alone.
He could use the bracelet, pay a visit to Sue.
‘Yeah,’ he muttered. ‘It went so well, last time.’
If he hadn’t tried to use the bracelet in the restroom at Sunny’s, it would’ve been in his pocket when he went back out to his car and Sue wouldn’t have seen it.
He left the bracelet in his pocket.
When he was done urinating, he washed his hands and studied himself in the mirror. He looked okay except for his mussed hair. He ran a dry comb through it, then left.
Stepping out of the mini-mart, he saw Sue in his car. Not in the passenger seat, though. In the driver’s seat.
He opened the passenger door and peered in.
Instead of the white, short-sleeved blouse of her waitress costume, she now wore a blue chambray work shirt. It was faded and its sleeves had been taken off at the shoulders. It wasn’t tucked in. It hung down past the waist of her skirt. The skirt looked like black leather. It was tight and very short. Her white socks and sneakers were all that remained of her waitress outfit.
She watched Neal stare at her. After a few moments, she said, ‘Want me to drive for a while? Ya been at it a long time.’
‘Sure. Okay. Thanks.’ He climbed in, being careful not to step on her big paper sack – which now, he assumed, held her waitress costume. ‘I see that you changed.’
‘Yup.’
He shut the door and fastened his seatbelt. ‘You do have a driver’s license and everything, don’t you?’
‘Don’t know about everything, but I got me a license. Wanta see it, just open up the bag and look in my purse.’
He looked down at the paper sack.
Maybe I should, he thought.
‘Do you mind?’ he asked.
‘Help yerself. I got nothin to hide.’
As Sue drove away from the pumps, Neal picked up the bag. He opened it on his lap and looked down into it. Except for the denim strap, her purse was out of sight under the clothes. Reaching in, he pushed aside Sue’s skirt and blouse. And her bra.
Don’t think about it, he told himself.
Oh, man, she took her bra off when she changed.
Who cares, he told himself. No big deal. I’m not interested.
Good thing she isn’t in me now.
Taking a deep breath, he pulled out Sue’s purse and set the sack on the floor. The zipper across the top of the purse was shut. ‘You’re sure it’s all right for me to look?’
‘Snoop all ya want.’
He looked at her. She grinned at him.
He unzipped the purse. Spreading it open, he glimpsed a folded wallet, a hair brush, a couple of tampons, an emery board, packs of gum and mints, lipstick . . .
He took out her wallet, then quickly zipped her purse shut.
God knows what else she’s got in there.
Neal didn’t want to know. He felt as if he’d invaded a private place – like Marta’s bathroom medicine cabinet – and he was blushing.
He considered putting her wallet away.
‘Go on,’ Sue told him.
A very thick wallet, red leather, worn at the corners.
‘What’ve you got in here?’
‘All kinds of stuff.’
Neal opened it.
‘There’s my license.’ Sue reached over with her right hand and tapped it.
The license was incased in a cloudy, gray plastic cardholder.
She tapped the photo. ‘That’s me.’
‘Appears to be.’
‘It is me. Who else’d it be?’
‘Says it’s Barbra Sue Babcock.’
‘I don’t let nobody call me Barbra. I think it stinks. But I reckon I’m stuck with it, so I just been goin by Sue.’
‘Ah,’ Neal said.
The license gave a Mojave address for her.
‘After making sure the license hadn’t expired yet, he glanced at her date of birth.
‘You’re only eighteen.’
‘Gonna be nineteen this time next month.’
‘Jeez.’
‘So ya got a problem with that?’
‘You’re just . . . so young.’
‘So what’re you, ninety?’
‘Pretty near.’
She laughed.
‘Anyway,’ Neal said, ‘I guess you’re a legal driver.’
‘What’d I tell ya?’
He shut her wallet and unzipped her purse.
‘Don’t ya wanta look through the whole thing?’
‘No, that’s okay. I just wanted to make sure about the license.’ He slipped the wallet into her purse and quickly shut the zipper again. Then he lowered the purse into her brown paper bag on the floor, and folded down the bag’s crumpled top.
She smiled at him. ‘I’m a good driver, too. Ya noticed?’
‘Well, I noticed you haven’t crashed yet.’
‘I aim to get me a brand-new car all my own, one of these days, I been savin up. Gonna get me one of them Jeep Cherokees with the four-wheel drive, and go all over the whole country in it. On all the backroads, much as I can. Can’t see nothin on these dang freeways. Gonna try out all the backroads, and stop in and visit folks.’
&nb
sp; ‘Relatives?’
‘No! Gonna drop in on folks I don’t know. Just to say howdy and see what they’re like. Chat with ’em, ya know? Then I’ll just move on, and they’ll watch me drive off and say, “That was a nice girl. Wish she coulda stayed.”’
Neal stared at her.
She frowned at him. ‘Well? What’s wrong with that?’
‘Nothing.’ He shook his head. ‘Nothing at all.’
She stared forward for a while. Then she sighed. ‘That’s if I ain’t a broken-down ol’ cripple by the time I scrape up enough to buy me that Jeep.’
‘I guess you don’t make much at Sunny’s.’
‘Nope.’ She looked at him and knitted her eyebrows. ‘I been considerin a life of crime.’
He laughed.
‘You think I’m kiddin?’
‘I hope you’re kidding.’
‘Well, I am,’ she said, as if annoyed at herself. ‘I ain’t no Bonnie and Clyde. Ya ever see that movie?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Ya see how ol’ Bonnie ’n Clyde got perferated, there at the end?’
‘Yeah. In slow motion.’
‘It’s always slow motion, ya ever notice that? Same goes with ol’ Thelma and Louise when they went off the Grand Canyon. Slow motion. Always slow motion. Anyhow, I don’t aim to end up like none of them. Ya get into the life of crime, yer just as likely to get yerself killed, and where are ya then? Dead. What’s the gooda havin a four-wheel-drive Jeep Cherokee if yer dead?’
‘Not much,’ Neal said.
‘Anyhow, who’m I gonna rob? Where’m I gonna find someone to rob, that I ain’t gonna end up feelin sorry for? ’Cause it’d really be their money, ya know? I got no right to it. It’d just make me feel bad.’
‘If you feel that way,’ Neal said, ‘you might as well forget about a life of crime.’
‘I know. It’s disgustin.’
‘You’re a good, decent person, that’s all. Nothing to regret.’
‘Well, can I regret I ain’t likely to land my hands on a four-wheel-drive Jeep Cherokee till I’m older than Methusalum?’
‘Yeah, I guess.’
After that, Sue stopped talking for a while. Lips pursed, she moved her head and shoulders slightly as if she had a tune in her head.
Neal was about to reach for the radio, but she suddenly spoke up again. ‘Ya know that bracelet?’ she asked. ‘I’ll bet there’s a whole lotta money ya might make off somethin like that.’
‘I’m not really planning to sell it,’ Neal told her.
‘No, I don’t mean sell it. I mean . . . it’ll getcha into people’s heads, ya know? Ya thoughta that?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Gotta be a hundred ways to make money outa that. Ya know? We’re gonna be in Nevada. They got gamblin there. What if we can figure a way so we can win at somethin? Ya know? By bein in somebody’s head.’
‘Are you serious?’
She cast him a look as if she questioned his sanity, and made a loud ‘Pfffff!’ sound with her lips.
‘You are serious,’ Neal said, as if translating.
‘You betcha.’
‘If we could figure a way, wouldn’t that be theft?’
‘It’d just be winnin.’
‘But cheating.’
‘Well . . .’ She shrugged.
‘Besides,’ Neal said, ‘I’m not sure there’s even a way to do it. You couldn’t have any effect on things like the slots. Not on roulette or craps, either . . . nothing that relies completely on chance, or machines. I don’t even know how keno works, but I doubt if being able to read someone’s mind would make you able to win at it. The only . . . card games. Blackjack, poker, that kind of thing. You might be able to win at some of those with the bracelet. It’d still be cheating, though.’
‘I don’t mind cheatin. It ain’t the same as robbin people.’
‘You draw fine distinctions.’
‘How ’bout you?’
‘Basically, I’m opposed to anything like that.’
‘You don’t never cheat?’
He shook his head. ‘No. Not really. I have cheated on a few things – like on my French homework back in college – but I felt so rotten about it . . . I always try to play by the rules now.’
‘How ’bout helpin me cheat?’
‘With the gambling?’
‘Yeah. Wouldn’t be the same as doin it for yerself.’
He looked at her. She grinned at him. He hated to refuse her.
I’d look like a self-righteous stick-in-the-mud.
‘The thing is,’ he said, ‘I don’t think there’s a way to win at something with the bracelet. I mean, it might be possible in theory . . . if we knew which cards were being held by the dealer, or something . . . The problem is, one of us would have to be physically present at the table, playing the game. That’d have to be me, since you’re under age. So you’d have to be in the dealer’s mind, with your body somewhere else. You wouldn’t be able to affect what he does. All you could possibly do is communicate stuff to me . . . which cards he’s holding. To do that, you’d have to leave him, return to your own body, and . . . signal me, or something.’
‘Sounds good to me.’
‘It would never work. You’d need to be someplace where I could see you, for one thing. You’d have to jump back and forth between the dealer and yourself. And there’s surveillance. These casinos have security cameras all over the place. You’d be caught in about two minutes if you tried to signal me from across the floor.’
‘Ya sure ’bout all that?’
‘Pretty sure.’
‘That ain’t a good way to try, then.’
‘No, it isn’t’
‘Gotta be a way, though. Ya know?’
‘Gambling?’
‘Well . . . by gettin in ahead.’
‘I’m not sure there is, not if you exclude out-and-out theft. If you didn’t have scruples, I suppose you could use the bracelet to get your hands on certain information. The combination to a safe, for instance.’
‘Yeah!’
‘Or where a person might have some valuables stashed. You know, like cash or jewels they’ve hidden in their house. That sort of thing. But then you’d have to steal the stuff.’
‘Yeah, well, don’t wanta do that. But cripes, there’s gotta be some way to make a fortune off this thing. A way where ya ain’t gotta rob nobody.’
Sue scowled out the windshield, apparently hunting for a solution.
A solution already known by Neal.
He wondered if he should mention it to her.
Probably not.
‘S’pose we charge folks?’ Sue blurted. ‘Let ’em use the bracelet for maybe half an hour? How much ya s’pose they’d pay? Fifty bucks? A hundred?’ She turned her face toward Neal, her eyes and mouth wide open like someone struck with astonishment. ‘Just thinka that! We get us ten people to try it, a hundred bucks apiece, we’ll make us a thousand smackaroos!’
‘How much is that Jeep you want?’ Neal asked.
‘Well, all depends. Say ’round twenty-five grand.’
‘Then we’d need to get two hundred and fifty people to try the bracelet at a hundred dollars a pop.’
‘Maybe all I need’s enough for the down payment.’
Neal shook his head. ‘It’s a fine idea, but it’ll never work. For one thing, nobody would pay us a dime to ride the bracelet without proof of what it does. And if people actually find out that it works, they’ll try to take it from us. Nobody’s supposed to know what the bracelet does. Nobody except the person who has it. You’re not supposed to know. You just found out by accident. We can’t go around and tell anyone what it does. Some people would probably be happy to kill us for the thing.’
Sue stuck out her lower lip and blew. The gust of air lifted her bangs off her forehead. ‘Don’t see why they’d wanta kill for some bracelet when ya can’t even make no money off it.’
Just let her go on thinking that, Neal told himself. Bett
er if she doesn’t have a clue.
She resumed frowning. After a while, she said, ‘Gotta be a way. Something like this, gotta be a way to make yerself a fortune.’
‘If you think of it,’ Neal said, ‘let me know.’
Then he reached out and touched the radio’s ‘on’ button. Static hissed and crackled through the speakers. He touched the ‘search’ button. The radio began to hunt for a strong signal, and soon found a station playing the golden oldie, ‘I Fall to Pieces.’
‘I just love ol’ Patsy Kline,’ Sue said.
‘Me, too,’ Neal said.
He looked at Sue. She mouthed the words to the song in silence, a sad and wistful look on her face.
God, she’s so young.
Young and cute and sweet and vulnerable, full of odd notions and simple dreams.
A tightness came to Neal’s throat.
And he thought that maybe he should help Sue get the money for the four-wheel-drive Jeep Cherokee.
Twenty-Six
At the top of the hour, the music was interrupted by a news update.
The third story dealt with Elise.
‘Though police are so far without suspects in the murder of former Olympic diving great, Elise Waters, her husband, actor Vince Conrad, held an early-morning news conference today to announce a reward of fifty thousand dollars for information leading to the arrest and conviction of her killer, or killers. Conrad, who returned yesterday from Hawaii upon the news of his wife’s death, told the press . . .’ In a sound bite from the actor’s news conference, Conrad said, ‘The world lost a rare treasure when Elise was slain. But I have every confidence that . . .’ His voice broke, and Neal’s eyes suddenly brimmed with tears. ‘I just hope that the animal who did this to her is caught and . . . brought to justice.’
The newscaster’s voice returned. ‘In other news . . .’
Sue turned the radio off. ‘Reckon they ain’t after you. Not yet, anyhow.’
‘You never know,’ Neal said. ‘The police keep a lot of stuff to themselves.’
‘S’pose they’d hand over the reward to me if I turned ya in?’
‘Maybe,’ he admitted, feeling a little sick. ‘They’d have to convict me, though. And I didn’t do it.’
‘Well, don’t worry ’bout it, I ain’t gonna blow the whistle on ya.’
‘Thanks.’ He wondered if she was telling the truth.