Madeline Mann (7 page)

“I'll be right back,” I said. “Your hair is all messed up.”

“That's your fault,” he said, smiling. I was briefly tempted to dive on him once again. Something about that vigorous autumn air, maybe. Instead, I stepped out of the car. The rest area was filled with Michigan tourist literature and, apparently, Michigan tourists. I struggled past a large group all laughing together, then fought my way around a chubby girl with a giant ice cream sandwich, which she seemed intent on eating in the middle of the main foot-traffic artery.

While I stretched my legs, I selected some pamphlets I thought I could use for my travel article, finally struggling away from the display because of someone's overpowering BO.

I waited in line at the ladies’ room, noting that a great many people bound for Michigan liked to smoke and did not like to acknowledge the posted “No Smoking” signs. One learns so much about humanity when one travels.

When I finally earned a stall, I was shocked to discover a toilet that flushed itself. Still reeling from the sudden explosion, I rinsed my hands in too-cold water and headed back into the frigid air. I walked briskly toward my car and noticed that Jack had moved behind the wheel. I felt a stab of annoyance. I reminded myself that I'd driven the majority of the way and attempted to adopt a generous attitude. As I drew closer, I noticed a vehicle pulling out a few spaces down. I was staring directly at its back window, which bore a big blue bumper sticker that said, “Don Paul Has It All! Vote Paul for Mayor.” My mom had suggested that slogan.

It was a black Caddy, just the kind Sunil had said had followed Logan. The car was pulling away, toward the exit, to merge back onto the highway. I squinted at the license plate, which revealed three digits—W23—and a logo indicating it was an official vehicle.

I tried to get a look at the driver, but I was too far away. It might have been a man. Or a woman. In other words, I had no idea.

I jogged the remaining distance to the car. Logan had worked for the mayor. Could it have been merely a coincidental meeting in the parking lot of the White Hen? An old colleague rolling down the window to say hello, to offer Logan a ride? Could I be reading too much into that meeting? The vibes were getting stronger, though. Just seeing that car with the blue bumper sticker had given me tummy butterflies. Plenty of people probably had the Paul election bumper sticker, though, right? In the window?

“Jack, follow that car!” I yelled as I jumped into the passenger seat. I pointed at the black vehicle, now merging into highway traffic.

Jack grinned at me. He thought I was joking.

“Seriously, Jack, follow it! This is about Logan!”

He sobered up enough to say, “Maddy, I'll never find it now.” He started the engine, though, to avoid being strangled. He made a halfhearted attempt to catch up to the Caddy, but of course we had lost it.

I let out one of those sighs that, translated into English, means, “This is
so
your fault.”

Jack sighed back. “I didn't know we were doing cloak-and-dagger stuff, Madeline. I thought we were just delivering a message. If I'd realized I had to be ready to drive like Mannix, I would have had the car idling and been scanning the area for perps.”

This was all a hilarious joke to my boyfriend, the one I'd just shared all those intimate thoughts with, the one I'd just kissed for twenty minutes. I sighed again—same translation. I told myself that the car might have been just a coincidence, that lots of people might have that bumper sticker. When I stopped being mad at him, I asked Jack what he thought.

“Other than people who work for Mayor Paul? Maybe,” he said unconvincingly.

“So should I be freaked out by the fact that there was a black Cadillac in the parking lot near our car with a blue bumper sticker in its window, or would that be a pretty common sight?” I asked nervously.

Jack stretched his arms over his head, steering with his knees. “I think you need to relax, Madeline. After this Logan Lanford business is over, I'm going to whisk you away for a weekend somewhere. And we'll plan our wedding, whenever that may be. And we'll plan our children, and name each one.”

“But did you see anyone while I was in there? Anyone we know?”

“Why does it matter?” he asked.

I clenched my fists. “Why can't you just answer the question?”

Jack spoke exaggeratedly, as though to someone of questionable intelligence. “No, Madeline, I didn't see anyone we know. And it's beside the point now, isn't it?”

He had me there. At that point, it really didn't matter. Not half so much as it would matter later. A woman should always listen to her intuitive voice. Instead, I shrugged and responded to Jack's idea about children.

“Don't even think about naming them some of those Irish names that I can't pronounce,” I said crossly.

“Like Seamus? Or Mairead? Or Siobhan? Ah, those are good names,” he purred with a false brogue.

“So is Hans. And Wolfgang. And Johanna,” I countered.

As he drove toward Saugatuck, I thought about the black car. I could still see that sticker pulling away, like a little blue warning in the back of my mind.

six

When we finally
drove off the interstate and curled around the winding Blue Star Highway into Holland Street in Saugatuck, the sun was setting on the water in the harbor, which gave the town a mysterious glittering sheen. I spied an antique barn and some luxury vacation condos, and then some more mainstream businesses on the quaint little downtown streets.

“Maybe I should go shopping,” I murmured. “For the article.”

“Sure.” Jack was generosity itself, now that I'd promised dinner and eternal devotion. “But let's eat first. I see an Italian place. And this looks like seafood. Or we could eat at that hotel back there.”

I felt a sudden nervousness. “You know, though, Jack. I'm having a funny feeling.…”

“Oh, please, Maddy, can't we just eat in peace?” he asked. “Look. Water Street. We're right on the harbor here.”

“I'll feel more relaxed if we just look at Logan's place first. If he's there, he can answer my questions and call his wife, I can tell him off, and then we can come back. If he's not there, we'll be back even faster. Let's just get it over with.”

Jack agreed, and I pulled Jamie's directions to the cabin, which she'd scrawled on a sheet of Noah's construction paper, out of my purse.

I couldn't account for my sudden anxiety. Certainly, it would be awkward to talk to Logan and explain my own involvement in all of this, especially after ten years of non-communication. That hadn't bothered me up until now, though, and it certainly didn't merit the nervous rumblings in the pit of my stomach.

I guided Jack to some back roads in the growing twilight.

“You turn here at this cornfield, I think. Is that a stop sign? It says turn at the stop sign,” I bellowed, squinting at Jamie's writing.

“I can hear you, Maddy.”

“It's kind of creepy out here,” I muttered.

“It's beautiful. Take a deep breath. This is country air,” Jack enthused. He went on about our declining farmland and growing pollution and was saying something about the settlers and the Indians when I finally tuned him out.

We drove past pretty little houses dotted in the fields. Then we were back in forested land, and we could glimpse front porches bedecked with pumpkins and scarecrows and orange lights.

We found the driveway to the Lanford cottage merely by chance. I had seen car lights coming out of a narrow dirt driveway and realized this must be the “opening in the trees” Jamie had written about.

“There, Jack!” Now I was yelling again. “Pull in there. If it's Logan's place, he's seeing visitors.” Jack drove up a curving, forested path to a brick manse.
No Abe Lincoln cabin, this,
I thought in surprise. I knew the Lanfords had some money, but I didn't realize they were in this strata of wealth.

I sat for a moment, taking in its glory and feeling the twinge of envy that always comes to me, at least briefly, in the presence of the rich. The cabin was more brick than wood, an elegant structure and thoughtfully landscaped. It was tastefully lit by several exterior floodlights. I fancied that a woman's hand had been responsible for many of the little touches visible even in the growing dusk: the life-sized friendly scarecrow sitting on an Adirondack chair on the porch; little orange luminary bags, currently unlighted, that stretched the length of the graduated stone stairway; pale orange fairy lights glittering on a trellised bench in the front yard.

Even from our vantage point in the driveway, it was obvious that lights were on within the house. My unease grew, along with a reluctance to face Logan. I sat in the car.

“Well?” Jack prompted after a moment, running a hand through his windblown hair.

“Suddenly, ah…”

“Yes?”

“I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent,” I quoted shakily. I thought of the car that had just left. Had it been Logan? Had it been a visitor? Had it been someone with a blue bumper sticker in their rear window? Or had it been another driveway that I'd seen a car emerge from?

Jack wasn't buying my reluctance. “I'll prick your intent. You dragged me out here before dinner, and dinner is my spur, so I'll do it for you.”

In a flash, he was out of the car and ascending the stone steps. Jolted into action, I chased him, yelling. I certainly didn't want to have to explain the ravings of a hungry boyfriend to my old high school chum.

I needn't have worried. Jack had already rung the bell when I reached him; we waited together for some response. After a while, I peered in the narrow window of the front door. I saw a foyer with a sturdy wood side table, above which hung an autumnal patchwork quilt, looking less like an heirloom and more like an expensive creation from a Saugatuck souvenir shop.

“Logan?” I called loudly, ringing the bell again. “It's Madeline. Madeline Mann!”

No response came from within. A sudden cold breeze wrapped around me, and I realized that my light jacket was not warm enough.

“I think the temperature just dropped,” Jack said. “Come on, Maddy. He's not here. Dinner time.”

“But what am I supposed to tell Jamie?” I wailed. “That after all this I'm not sure if Logan's here or not?”

Jack started down the steps. After one last glance through the glass, I followed him. A compromise occurred to me. “Hang on!” I called. I took out one of my business cards that identified me as a reporter for the
Webley
Wire
. On the back I scrawled a note to Logan, asking him to look me up in town (if he could find me at one of the B and Bs) or to call Jamie. I put it through the mail slot and had the satisfaction of hearing it fall to the floor on the other side.

“Okay,” I said. “I guess that will have to do.”

Anticlimax weighed upon me as we braved the sudden cold and ran for the car. The smell of wood smoke smote me with an inexplicable sadness, and a regret that I'd ever listened to Fritz's complaints.

“I have a weird vibe,” I muttered in the car as Jack fumbled with the keys.

“At the risk of making you angry, Maddy, when don't you?”

I shook my head, staring at the carpet under Jack's boots, lit by the car's interior light. There was blood on it. “Jack! Blood!” I shrieked, pointing.

He looked at the stained tan carpet, then at the bottom of his hiker. “False alarm. Those are mulberries. Didn't you notice them all over the walk?”

I hadn't. I looked under my own seat and saw a similar reddish purple stain. “My carpeting!” I said mournfully.

“It's hard to get out,” Jack informed me. “And they're stuck all over your tires. I'm surprised the birds haven't eaten them.”

Suddenly I hated this place.

Quinn
Paley's house was only ten minutes away. We found it with less trouble than we'd found Logan's, but it was hard to see anything in the dark. For some reason, I felt furtive from the moment we pulled into the long driveway. Halfway up I told Jack to stop.

“Why?” he asked.

“I just—let me walk the rest of the way. I'll come back to the car.”

I heard Jack sigh in the darkness and took it as agreement. I stepped out onto the dirt driveway, strewn with the last of the leaves. If there were mulberries here too, I wouldn't know. It was incredibly dark; Jack thoughtfully left the headlights on, but the driveway sloped around, and then I lost the light. There was a glow coming from the house, so I used it as my beacon as I snuck toward it. I hunched into my light coat and shivered with cold.

I heard a strange sound as I came closer, a sort of moaning or humming almost. It took me a full minute to realize it was the growling of a dog.
Guard dog
, I thought with a pang. What if it was loose? I was almost at the house. If the dog was unleashed, I'd be better off begging the Paleys for mercy than I would running back to the car. Assuming the dog was the kind who'd eat me for being a trespasser. I thought it was safest to assume the worst.

I crept cautiously toward the porch. The dog's growling hadn't yet grown into a bark, but it seemed to be gaining energy. I climbed the steps as silently as I could and peered into a brightly lit window, where a crack in the curtains showed me a large stone fireplace and a neatly kept living room, very domestic and Martha Stewart–ish. The facing wall was simply done in a hunting theme: a painting of British hunters pursuing a fox. Some guns hung beside it as a tribute to violence. One was missing, but its outline was still prominent, as though it had hung there for generations. A young woman lay on the floor in front of the fire, perusing a magazine. This must be the girl from the phone. Quinn's wife? She seemed young to be married, but I didn't want to make any assumptions.

A man walked into the room, holding a beer. It wasn't Logan, but that was all I was able to determine before the dog's growl erupted into a bark—no, that was definitely more than one dog. The cacophony made the man's head come up, a wary expression on his face. He made for the door, and I flew down the steps on the wings of fear and adrenaline.