08 Illusion (67 page)

“No,
you’ve
gotta get out of here, that’s what
you’ve
gotta do. The place is crawling with cops and cameras and everybody’s asking questions. And the two of you seen together? Eeesh! Why don’t you just hang a sign on her? What are you thinking?”

They ducked on the other side of a tree, keeping their faces toward it.

“We were wondering what happened to you. One minute you’re there, the next minute—man, what
did
happen to you? You look like you had a scrape with somebody.”

Dane nodded. “Twice.”

“Ehh. Figures. Nothing halfway about you.”

Dane tried to look around the tree, but Arnie yanked him back. “Hey! Stick with your own plan. If she’s here, we’ll find her.”

“She’s got to be here.” He nodded toward the doves. “They made it.”

Arnie chuckled and wagged his head. “I hope to shout they did, and not a feather out of place.” And then, just taking in all the doves, he had to laugh. “Dane, you always were the idea man, I gotta tell ya!”

“Thank Parmenter.” Dane smiled, not in joy but in hope. “And Preston must have called in a thousand favors.” His attention lingered on some doves perched in the branches above them.

“Well let’s get you out of town. I’ve already gotten some calls, people wondering if you were mixed up in this.” Arnie noticed Dane staring. “What?”

There were four doves perched side by side. They were fidgeting, nodding, and bobbing in Dane’s direction, as if they knew him. He spread his arms out straight.

They flew down and perched on his arms, two on the left, two on the right.

Arnie did a jaw drop—then stood in front of Dane and the birds, trying to hide them. “What do you say we get ’em out of here?”

“They’ll let you hold them.”

Cradling a bird in each hand, they stole away.

On the far side of the hospital, as firemen, police, animal control people, and hospital maintenance personnel hurried through a loading door with a variety of fish, bird, and butterfly nets, a maintenance lady in coveralls and billed cap walked by them carrying a broken lamp. She dropped the lamp into a Dumpster beside the loading dock, then continued toward the street, not looking back.

chapter

53

R
ancher Jack Wright never heard from or saw the weird scientists again, which was fine with him; it was part of the deal. As for the 35.76 concrete blocks, they also were part of the deal. He hauled them away to use in a new pigsty, leaving that isolated little piece of his ranch looking as if no one had ever been there—if anyone even cared to look.

On Saturday evening at about seven, Dane stepped through the back door into his kitchen. The place was quiet.

“Hello?” he called, but there was no answer.

He walked through the house, checking the living room, the downstairs guest room and bath, the rooms upstairs. He stopped by his closet where Mandy’s costumes and wardrobe still hung neatly, touching the sleeve of the blue gown. Passing by his dresser, he studied a recent photo portrait; she was still so lovely.

He checked his answering machine. No messages. Well, that was part of the plan, cell and land phone silence until they knew which way the winds were blowing, whether the bad guys were listening.

He drove to the Quik Stop on Highway 95 to use the pay phone. Somewhere in Las Vegas, in a hotel room, a rented office, perhaps the home of one of Arnie’s friends, a telephone rang, but no one answered. He rechecked the number Arnie gave him and dialed again. Still no answer. He returned the receiver to the cradle less than gently, then sighed, resigning himself to a little more waiting, a little more not knowing.

He returned to the ranch, carried in his luggage, and then brought in Mandy’s four doves in their cage. They were tired, ready to sleep, so he set them in the utility room with the light off so they could call it a night.

Shirley had left all his mail in a pile on the kitchen counter and a note catching him up on the spraying she’d done, getting a new drive belt for the lawn mower, replacing the bulbs in the shop with the brighter wattage he wanted, having Susan the housekeeper skip a week and … blah blah blah,
thank you, Shirley
, he was too tired, too edgy to read the rest.

He fixed himself a bowl of oat flakes, something quick and easy, and settled in front of his computer to see if he could get any news.

The EPA had taken immediate interest in the “hazardous waste spill” in that vacant lot. A remediation crew showed up within an hour, cordoned off the area, and worked through the night to sanitize it, replacing six inches of topsoil and hydroseeding grass. The agency also took over the subbasement of the hospital, declaring those floors an environmental hazard and sealing them off. Dane had to wonder why a hospital was allowed to remain open sitting on top of an environmental hazard, but of course there was no explanation.

Public outcry prevented any killing of the doves, so they were being captured to be sold on the Internet, distributed to pet stores, employed by local magicians, adopted by bird lovers from all over the country. White doves were free for the catching and selling dirt cheap in Las Vegas.

As for deaths, casualties, missing persons, even what became of Mandy Whitacre, the newspeople had nothing, and the government was strangely, silently uninvolved.

Dane sighed and let his head drop. He didn’t know, would probably never know, what Parmenter’s “contingency plan” was, but if Dane threw Mandy’s collective mass off, there would have been only one way to counterbalance it. He probably would never see the venerable scientist again.

The Orpheus Hotel Casino had already booked another act for the big room in the aftermath of the great and mysterious tragedy: Gabriel’s Magic, featuring the famous television magician Preston Gabriel, who just happened to have some time available. Well, that worked. The Orpheus got a spike in name recognition no amount of money could buy and a great show besides. Now Dane didn’t feel
quite
so bad.

He closed the computer and rubbed his eyes, so very tired. To stay out of airports where he might be seen or looked for, he’d driven Preston’s Wrangler from Vegas to Salt Lake City, where he slept in a cheap room, then drove all day Saturday to get home … to an empty house, and no word.

He tried to sleep that night and finally dropped off. The telephone let him sleep; it never made a sound.

Sunday morning the weather was cheerful, a rare occurrence for March in Idaho. It helped. There wasn’t a swelling bud or a new blade of grass in sight, but it helped. Dane checked the answering machine again—it was a little irrational, but he might have missed something. No messages.

All right. He’d take another trip down to the Quik Stop and try the number again. He grabbed his coat from the closet—

A cooing from the utility room stopped him.
Oh, brother. Can’t it wait?

Well …

If all things were ordinary, he would have left them there until he got back, but these were not just four little doves among many, these were Bonkers, Carson, Lily, and Maybelle. They were stars, ultimate aviators, and most of all, heroes. He saw them fly with Mandy through the whole thing and it tugged at his heart like crazy. However things turned out, he owed them.

And, of course, there was Mandy. She’d want them well taken care of.

He brought them into the kitchen and they were glad to see him, sidestepping back and forth on their perches, chirping, bobbing around. He gave them some breakfast—fresh seeds, water, celery tops from the refrigerator—and leaned on his elbows watching them scarf it all down. “I wonder if you guys even have a clue what you did.”

They just kept eating, cooing, and chirping.

He shrugged.
All in a day’s work. Another day, another seed, another leaf of celery.

They needed to get out of this cage. It seemed to Dane like living in a hotel room, out of a suitcase. They needed to be home in their coop, where they had plenty of room to move and fly around. “Okay, guys, let’s go.”

The dove coop was a temporary and adequate installation inside the shop building, just the right home for the doves until spring warmed things up and they could spend more time outside. The shop building was just a short walk down the path toward Mandy’s Meadow.

The morning sun made it a pleasant walk—warm colors, warmth on Dane’s south shoulder, the snow all gone, and a little steam coming off the barn roof. Some crocuses were coming up. The doves were fluttering, looking all around, excited.

He opened the door to the shop and went inside.

“Wow! You remember this place, don’t you?” They were really hopping and chirping, more agitated than he expected.
They must really be glad to be home.

The cage door flipped open.

“
What?
Hey, whoa, whoa, don’t—!”

They crowded through it, jostling, bumping, climbing over each other.

In all his effort to keep them in their cage he didn’t notice he’d left the shop door open.

“No! No no no no no!”

If it had been a movie with somebody else climbing the walls and grabbing the air trying to catch four ultimate aviators, Dane would have gotten the biggest laugh out of it, but it wasn’t and he wasn’t. He could have sworn they were working as a team, faking him out until they all got out the door.

The door. Why didn’t I just close the door?

Stupid. No, preoccupied. I’ve been through a lot.

No, stupid.

He stepped through the door and, for the sake of his own dignity and self-worth, closed it after him. The doves were up by the house aviating, making wild circles and loops over the driveway, showing off, having the time of their lives. “Yeah, rub it in.”

The phone rang in the kitchen.

“Oohhh!”
When it rained, it poured. Loose doves
and
the phone ringing. If Dane had been sitting on the toilet right now the morning would have been perfect.

He ran up the pathway, all stops out, pedal to the metal, his legs still sore from the last big run, and got to the kitchen door as the answering machine picked up. “Hi, this is Dane. Please leave a short message …”

Who? Who is it?

The doves were soaring high, heading down the driveway, as good as gone.

He almost went inside to hear the message but stopped on the threshold.

“Hi, this is Jack Lewis …” Arnie’s code name! “Just want you to know that your order is still in process”—they hadn’t found Mandy yet—“but be advised the, uh, the means of shipping is, uh, unavailable … well, it’s gone, we can’t find it.” They couldn’t locate her blue Volkswagen. “However, if you have any information you can get back to us at …”

Arnie was leaving a new number to call, but Dane was watching the doves circle down toward the front gate, then perch, hop, and fly in short bursts along the top of the paddock fence, following …

A blue Volkswagen, rolling, jostling, whirring up the driveway. Arnie hung up, and Dane didn’t care. He stepped into the driveway, wanting only to see who was behind the wheel. When the little car came near the house and into the winter-thin shade of the aspens, he could see through the windshield.

It was …

What world was he living in now? Had he fallen from the real world into another madness, or from one madness, one dream, into another? Could he really believe what he was seeing, or was another reality or illusion or goofy deflection in the space-time watchamacallit going to horn in and change everything again? He wanted to believe, but he couldn’t. He thought he’d be ready and could handle it, but all he could do was stand there.

When she’d stopped the Bug, set the brake, and turned off the engine, she looked at him through the car window for the longest time, as if she were having the very same questions, as if that pane of glass could shield her from answers she couldn’t bear.

She was glad he remained so still, so everyday human with his bruises, tousled morning hair, and confounded expression. She needed a good, reassuring look at him before she opened the car door—and maybe he needed that kind of look at her.

He looked like the man she remembered, as real as ever he’d been.
She
looked like …

She stole a look at herself in the rearview mirror.

Do you remember, my love? All the years, all the seasons, all the changes we went through? These are what brought us to this day, this is who we really are, and this is where we belong. Do you see it that way?

Dane approached as the doves lit on the car roof, their feet tap-tap-tapping on the metal. He gazed at her through the window, put his fingertips on the glass. She placed her fingertips against his from the other side. They had the time, so they took it to look at each other.

She was alive. Beautiful and unafraid.

He placed his hand on the door handle. The latch clicked. He eased the door open, she swung her feet out, and then she stood with no glass, no door, no barrier between them.

She’d made it to Idaho.

“Well …” he said, drinking in the sight of her. This was she, the woman he’d loved for forty years.

Six-oh
, she thought.
Of course.
He was supposed to be sixty and now it didn’t seem one bit strange to her. She was feeling kind of sixtyish herself and it wasn’t so bad, just a month or two older than she was before. It fit.

“Well …” she said back with a little smile, but thought,
Go ahead, touch me.

* * *