Honeymoon for Three (29 page)

“After all I’ve done for you? Do you
remember last night…?”

“I’m sorry. I have to do it.”

He sounded contrite. She was prepared to
argue, to go into detail about what they had done last night, talk
until he gave in. But the first thing he taped was her mouth. He
obviously didn’t want to hear about his shortcomings in bed. And
this wasn’t the time to let him know that she could talk with her
mouth taped.

Penny was raging. If she had known he would
make her lie on the bed, she wouldn’t have produced the roll of
tape. She lay on her back and kept her legs ramrod straight. She
placed her hands together in front of her, hoping he would tape
them in front rather than behind her. Then he couldn’t tape her
hands to her legs.

It worked. He didn’t try to turn her over.
He taped her hands in front. He covered her with a blanket,
including her head. He did feel sorry about what he was doing to
her. She had won a small victory.

CHAPTER 31

It was difficult for Gary to keep his
concentration. After several hours, he was sure he had missed a car
or two. He just hoped he hadn’t missed Penny. He had to go to the
bathroom, but he was afraid if he deserted his post for even five
minutes, it would be the wrong five minutes.

He had climbed over the guardrail and now
leaned against a telephone pole on the cliff side of it, mainly
because he didn’t trust the drivers of the cars coming around the
curve. They cut it too close. A blue house beside him sat right on
the edge of the cliff. It had a square turret with large windows
that overlooked the bay. He saw a man look at him from a window,
but nobody approached him on foot. The road was too narrow for
walking here.

Saturday morning traffic was moderately
heavy. Families were heading for the coast to enjoy a late summer
camping weekend. Typical of the weekend crowd was the Volkswagen
camper that had just come into view. Gary glanced at the driver,
just to keep in practice. He immediately became alert. The driver
looked familiar—was it Alfred? If so, there was something different
about him. Something about his forehead. Nobody was sitting beside
him.

Gary spun his head around as the camper went
by, trying to read the license plate. There was a sign taped to the
back, so he switched his attention to that. He had time to read the
word “Penny.” The word below it might be “Alfred.” Penny and
Alfred. It was a signal from Penny. She was inside the camper.

Gary ran for his car, his heart beating
fast. He couldn’t lose the camper. He came up to the Beetle,
breathless, fumbled with the door lock, jumped in, started it, and
raced after Alfred. By now the camper was out of sight and several
cars were between them. He fumed as he crawled along in the
traffic, until he got out of the village of Bodega Bay and was able
to speed up.

He had to pass the cars ahead of him, and it
was difficult to pass on the narrow and winding road, which was now
heading inland, away from the coast. He drove more aggressively
than he had ever driven. He passed cars on blind curves. He was
doing this for perhaps the third time when a logging truck came
around the corner in his lane, heading straight toward him.

The truck filled his field of vision. Gary’s
first thought was that the truck wasn’t supposed to be there. He
instinctively braked hard, even as he had this thought. He started
skidding, but he was able to duck behind the car he had been
passing. He released the brake and struggled to keep his car under
control. He used the experience gained from driving on icy streets
in Western New York while growing up. It was touch-and-go, but he
felt the tires grab just as he was afraid he would go off the
road.

He was shaking with fear and relief, but he
didn’t dare stop while he calmed down. He had the camper in sight
now, and he had to stay where he could see it. He realized that his
instincts had saved him, not the thinking part of his brain. Thank
God or Darwin or whoever for instinct.

He became much more cautious, but after a
few minutes, he had a chance to pass the car ahead of him safely.
Now he was directly behind the camper. He pulled up close to it and
read the sign again. Yes, it definitely said “Penny” and
“Alfred.”

He knew that Alfred had probably spotted
him, but he wasn’t going to back off and take a chance on losing
the camper. He would stick to it like duct tape.

***

Somebody was tailgating the camper. Alfred
didn’t like tailgaters. He had the rearview mirror trained on
Penny, so he checked his side mirrors. It was a Volkswagen—a green
Volkswagen. Shit. It was Gary. He caught a glimpse of Gary’s intent
face through the windshield of the VW.

Alfred had spotted the VW parked on the side
of the road in Bodega Bay, and had felt momentary alarm, but there
had been nobody inside it. He had become elated, thinking he had
gotten safely past Gary. Now he remembered the guy he had seen,
loitering on the side of the road, just before he spotted the car.
That must have been Gary, watching for him. He had been wearing a
baseball cap, and Alfred hadn’t recognized him.

Gary hadn’t given up. Alfred had
underestimated him. What should he do? He couldn’t outrun the
Beetle. It was more maneuverable than the camper and could go
faster. And as much as he hated to admit it, Gary could drive a
stick-shift better than he could.

He had to abort his plan to go over the
Golden Gate Bridge. All Gary had to do was to tell the toll taker
that there was a kidnapped girl in the camper, and the San
Francisco police would be all over him like maggots on a dead body.
In fact, although he had now backed off, Gary had been close enough
to read his license plate. He could report it to the Highway
Patrol.

Alfred guessed that Gary wouldn’t stop to do
that as long as the camper was moving. He wouldn’t want to take a
chance on losing Penny. That meant Alfred had to deal with Gary. He
had to go toe to toe with him. The situation was like the one Gary
Cooper faced in
High Noon
, except that Gary was the bad guy
in this case. Alfred was the good guy. He would win the battle.

He had one advantage that even Penny didn’t
know about. While he had been searching for the duct tape, he had
found something wrapped in a cloth in the back of the storage
cabinet. Something hard. It was a small handgun, much like the one
he had purchased. It must belong to Don.

Alfred had checked it, holding it inside the
cabinet, out of sight of Penny. It was loaded. When Penny bent down
to pick up the tape, Alfred shoved the gun into his pants pocket.
He was glad that Don was a gun lover. He was ready for Gary.

***

Penny worked carefully, trying not to
attract Alfred’s attention. She knew he was watching her in the
rearview mirror. Since she was completely under the blanket, he
couldn’t tell exactly what she was doing. Hopefully, he would
regard her movements as just an attempt to get comfortable.

She was pulling the tape off her wrists,
using her teeth for the most part. Because her hands were taped in
front of her, she had been able to use them to untape her mouth.
However, she left that piece of tape dangling from her cheek, so
that she could quickly retape her mouth if Alfred stopped the
camper. It was tedious work, especially in the dark, but she had
found the end of the tape with the sensitive tip of her tongue and
managed to get a tooth hold on it. She was carefully unwinding it,
working it around and around her wrists.

As the loose end got longer, she could even
help the process along with her hands. Not much further to go. Then
she would take the tape off her legs. Once she was free, she would
be ready to make her escape when Alfred stopped to pay the toll at
the Golden Gate Bridge.

Suddenly Alfred braked and put the camper
into a tight left turn. What the hell was he doing? From the sound
and feel of it, he fishtailed on gravel for a few seconds. Now they
were back on the road again. Unless she was mistaken, he had made a
U-turn and was headed in the opposite direction, away from the
Golden Gate Bridge. Had he lost his mind? Or had he seen something?
The change in direction threw her plans into disarray.

***

When Alfred slowed and made the U-turn, he
caught Gary by surprise. Without thinking, Gary immediately turned
behind him. His car had a tighter turning radius than the camper,
but he had to cut in front of an oncoming car, causing its driver
to stand on his brakes, which produced the loud screeching noise of
skidding tires, followed by several honking horns. Too bad. Gary
took off after Alfred, ignoring the car that was now behind him
with the driver still blowing his horn. Alfred had to do better
than that to get away from him.

***

On their drive south, Alfred had noticed a
particular cliff a bit north of Bodega Bay, with a place to park
beside it. It was far enough away from the road that the traffic
from Route 1 wouldn’t be able to see what he was doing. It was a
perfect place to get rid of Gary. Gary, who was the source of all
his problems.

A cliff. Alfred thought about another movie:
Rebel without a Cause
. With James Dean. Alfred was James
Dean. He was the misunderstood rebel. There was a scene in
Rebel
in which James Dean and another boy drove stolen cars
over a cliff. Last boy to bail out before the cars went over was
chicken. James bailed out successfully. The other boy didn’t. He
went over the cliff in his car. The irony was that James was later
killed in an auto accident for real, not all that far from where
Alfred and Gary and Penny were playing out their own drama.

The three of them should do it the same way.
He and Gary should drive their cars over the cliff and find out who
was chicken. Penny would be the girl, played in the movie by
Natalie Wood. Alfred had always liked Natalie. He had seen all of
her movies. Penny somewhat resembled the beautiful Natalie in
looks, hair color, and hairstyle. Penny would wave her arms to
start them. The winner would get her. That was fair.

Alfred drove through Bodega Bay for the
second time this morning. Gary stayed on his tail. Once he was out
in the open again, he watched the rugged landscape along the coast,
looking for the spot he had in mind. He drove past a sandy beach.
That wouldn’t do. Then he saw it on a curve. The vertical, black
cliff, outlined against the sky, swooping down to the relentless
ocean. The top of it was shielded from the nearest section of the
road by rocks. And anybody who saw them from this far away wouldn’t
be able to tell what was happening.

He signaled for a left turn but had to stop
and wait for a stream of cars going by in the opposite direction.
Cars lined up behind the camper, since nobody could pass him. He
was pleased to see Gary’s car right on his bumper, also
signaling.

A gap in the traffic allowed him to make the
turn. He crossed the lane and drove off the road onto the gravel
shoulder as far as he could, to a spot partially shielded by rocks.
He shut off the engine and locked his door. He pulled out the gun.
This story was different than
Rebel without a Cause
or
High Noon
, because he wasn’t leaving anything to chance.

Gary stopped right behind him. In his
outside mirror, he saw Gary jump out of his car and run up to
Alfred’s window. Gary tried to open the door. Failing that, he
pounded on the window and yelled through the glass, “Where’s
Penny?”

“Come around to the sliding door,” Alfred
shouted.

Alfred got out of his seat and went back to
the bed where the blanket still covered Penny. He uncovered her
head, keeping his gun hidden. She glared at him, unable to speak
with her mouth taped. He unlocked the door, unlatched it, and gave
it a shove so that it slid open. Then he put the gun to Penny’s
head.

***

Gary looked through the window of the camper
past Alfred, confirming that Penny wasn’t sitting in the other
seat. If Alfred had done anything to her…. As he went around the
front of the camper, he noticed the damage to the spare tire and a
dent in the metal. Had Alfred caused that? Was Penny hurt?

Through the front window, Gary saw Alfred
get up from his seat and go back toward the sliding door. Gary
tried to open the front, passenger-side door, thinking that if he
could get through it, he might gain an element of surprise. It was
locked. He took another step to the sliding door and tried to open
it. Also locked. What kind of a game was Alfred playing? Gary
couldn’t see through the curtained window on the door. Within
seconds he heard a click and the door unlatched. Gary grabbed the
handle and slid it all the way open.

By the time the door opened enough for Gary
to see in, Alfred was standing over Penny at the end of the bed,
just inside the doorway. Gary saw Penny’s face and the gun pointed
at it simultaneously. The combination of the two turned him to
stone. Her eyes were large, looking at him with a warning she
couldn’t voice because her mouth was taped.

Alfred faced Gary, a slight grin on his
face. “I don’t want to have to shoot. If you cooperate—”

“Is she hurt?” Gary’s fear showed in his
voice.

Penny hummed, “Mmmh mmm.” It sounded like a
negative.

“No, she’s fine. The tape is just a
precaution.”

“If you hurt Penny, I’ll kill you.”

“Brave words from the guy who doesn’t have
the gun. This is what I want you to do. Sit down here with your
back to me.” Alfred pointed to the floor of the camper.

Gary saw the cut on Alfred’s forehead. It
had been bleeding fairly recently. Something had happened—but what?
He sat down at the entrance, reluctantly, with his feet on the
ground. He turned his head to watch Penny and Alfred. How could he
get the gun away from Alfred without endangering Penny’s life?