The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend (38 page)

She was still thinking about dragons when Jen made her entrance.

‘You're going to need a wedding dress.'

She must surely have spoken to Tom by now, Sara thought. And he must have said no? If he hadn't, then this was definitely the right occasion for her to.

She looked Jen straight in the eye, as determined as she could, and said: ‘I –'

‘You've got to go to Madame Higgins,' Jen interrupted. ‘She's been selling wedding dresses in Broken Wheel forever.'

Sara had seen Madame Higgins's shop window. It hadn't been an encouraging sight.

Jen glanced down at the piece of paper she had in her hand. It seemed to be a list, because she sounded as though she was reading from it: ‘Bachelor and bachelorette parties, for the pictures. Documentation. Suspicious people at the USCSI.' She had almost got the name of the authority right.

So unfair of them, Sara thought cynically. ‘Jen,' she said, ‘this is madness.'

‘I'm not saying they have to be proper bachelor and bachelorette parties.' She laughed. ‘Though it would be worth it just to see Caroline's face when the stripper turned up. Don't worry, I've thought of everything. We'll invite a few select friends to the dress fitting and add a bit of wine. Nice pictures, nothing to organise. Plus, you'll get a few style tips.'

‘This wedding is madness,' Sara reiterated. ‘It's illegal, for one thing. And Tom doesn't want to get married.'

‘Tom!' Jen said dismissively. ‘Don't you worry about Tom.' She looked Sara straight in the eye. ‘Do you want to stay?' she asked.

That was one question Sara could answer ‘Yes' to without a moment's thought.

Gavin Jones was a good bureaucrat. He knew many people saw that as something of a contradiction in terms, but laws were there for a reason. People voted for representatives, and then a majority of them decided that the laws were good. It would have been pointless to go through the whole process of elections and so on if there was no one to make sure the rules were introduced and adhered to. He was needed. He was paid to do a job, and so he did it. He was competent and smart, and he did it well.

Gavin was good at his job for three reasons. Firstly, he could instinctively tell when something wasn't right. Secondly, he took this feeling seriously and was prepared to work hard to investigate the circumstances. Finally, he picked up bits and pieces of information and he remembered them. A tourist who had been living in a neighbouring town for a long time, for example, without him having seen any visa application. Rumours about workers who couldn't speak English. Temporary residences which popped up.

Because he wanted to do a good job, he read the local papers, memorised things, followed up on side issues. His intuition probably depended on some stored, half-conscious information that he had picked up somewhere. On this particular occasion, there was nothing to immediately set any alarm bells ringing. He looked at the application form.

Broken Wheel …? Had he even heard of that town? He didn't think so. He shrugged. If something didn't add up there, he would find out, sooner or later.

‘
ARE YOU EVER
going to tell your parents?'

She was lying naked in bed next to him. The lights were off, of course, but since it was the middle of the day the room was still light. She couldn't decide whether it felt sinful or liberating or just plain old indecent.

In actual fact, Caroline didn't know what she thought about any of it. Even her inner voice had fallen silent. She hadn't heard as much as a stern word for hours; it was as though all … this … was so unthinkable that her moral compass had been thrown off track. The sex she'd had before, that time all those years ago, had been an entirely insignificant experience, definitely not worth the bother or the sin. But
now.
She hadn't had any idea that sex could be like this. She had just had sex with
Josh
, for God's sake.

‘About us?' Josh asked.

She stared at him, about to sit bolt upright in bed before she realised she wasn't wearing anything. She pulled the covers up to her chin and lay back against the pillows.

‘No, of course not about
us
,' she said, shocked. She couldn't understand how he could even entertain the thought. Absolutely no one could find out about this. Not his parents (she was dangerously close to burying her head beneath the covers at the thought of
that
scene), and definitely not anyone from Broken Wheel. ‘About you. About … liking men and women.'

He laughed and pulled her towards him so that her head was resting on his shoulder and neck rather than the pillow. Strangely enough, it was more comfortable.

‘Doesn't seem so relevant right now,' he said.

She tried to work that out but failed. Eventually, she simply said: ‘You know that there is no us, right?'

He didn't bother answering.

‘You'll end up finding a nice young man and moving on. Or a woman, if that's what you want. Your own age,' she explained.

Of course he would. It wouldn't be a problem for her. So long as no one found out about any of this, though perhaps she could cope with that, too.

Are you mad, Caroline?
You wouldn't stand a chance if anyone found out. They would tear you to pieces.

It would be catastrophic for him, too. She was sure he had no idea how cruel and careless even the nicest people could be once they had found something to laugh about.

He didn't bother replying to that either. Just to be on the safe side, she added: ‘No one can find out about us, Josh. They'd just … laugh at us.'

His finger grazed her shoulder. He drew slow, meaningless patterns on her skin. She relaxed, but couldn't help wondering whether he had understood.

‘Since there is no us, there's nothing to tell,' he said.

She nodded into his shoulder. Exactly. It could just be nice, as long as it lasted.

‘HA HA,' GAVIN
Jones's neighbour said. He was the kind of man who expressed his laughter in words rather than actually laughing. At that moment, he was leaning over the fence at the edge of Gavin's plot, showing no sign of leaving him in peace. ‘Deported any Mexicans lately?' he asked.

Gavin sighed. A few moments earlier, he had been busy raking leaves on a quiet Friday evening, and now he was being subjected to this idiocy.

‘That crackdown in Postville a few years back?' the neighbour continued. ‘Hundreds of poor Mexicans who hadn't done a thing other than work their asses off for lower wages than lazy Americans are willing to take …'

Gavin hadn't liked Postville either. It was one of the reasons he had applied to one of the USCIS local offices and now spent his days investigating Europeans who may or may not have married American citizens. Paperwork, for the most part, but there was satisfaction in that, too.

‘Doesn't it make you sick? Surely we should be able to just leave the poor souls alone?'

Just a month ago, his neighbour had been complaining about them not arresting the ‘darkies' taking their jobs. Not the kind of jobs you would want, he had thought at the time. And now they were all poor souls. He shrugged. He simply couldn't win.

His sixth sense for lies impressed his colleagues, but sometimes they looked at him with something verging on contempt. As though they didn't have enough belief in their job to appreciate that someone might actually be good at it. Because he
was
good at it. And so he had slowly moved away from arresting illegal immigrants simply trying to make a living to sending down spoilt Europeans who didn't seem to think that the law applied to them, that it was their human right to be able to stay in the US as long as they wanted. In contrast to the Latin Americans, who didn't know that there
were
any human rights in this life and expected nothing more than hard, thankless work, being separated from their families, and terrible wages.

He still gained no satisfaction from the actual busts. He knew some of his colleagues thought that it was the part he liked, that he enjoyed watching people grow nervous and trip up in front of him. And he knew that there really were people who got off on that. But now, it wasn't so serious. The Europeans were given fines and sent home. It had been worse with the Mexicans. Some went to jail barely having understood what had happened to them, and if they were sent home it was a catastrophe.

‘I might have a tip-off for you,' his neighbour said. Gavin forced himself to put the rake down and turn to him, in case being attentive would make the man finish speaking sooner.

‘Wait here,' the neighbour said, walking away. He returned a minute or so later, with two printed sheets of paper. Gavin reluctantly took them. At the top, they said
Broken Wheel Newsletter
. He was looking at his neighbour with more interest now.

‘A new bookstore in Broken Wheel,' said the neighbour.

Gavin read the articles. Sara. It could be a coincidence, of course. Or perhaps there were two Saras in town. The article didn't give a surname, but the Sara Lindqvist from the application awaiting completion on his desk had come to the US on a tourist visa (which hadn't yet expired) and apparently met and fallen in love with an American citizen.

You couldn't open a bookstore on a tourist visa, that much was clear. And if she had done so, then that made her whirlwind romance with the good Tom Harris appear in a whole new light.

‘Is it OK if I keep hold of these?' he asked reluctantly, nodding towards the papers.

‘Sure,' the neighbour said, gesturing widely and revealing more of his chest. It was October and the man still had a suntan, Gavin thought to himself with distaste. Three of the buttons on his shirt were undone beneath his jacket.

He sighed. Now he would just have to visit the bookstore and talk to this Sara. He saw his free Saturday disappear before his eyes.

The next afternoon, Gavin had no trouble recognising Sara from the picture in the newsletter. From where he was standing on the sidewalk outside the bookstore, he had a perfect view of her at work. Just then, she was busy recommending two books to a customer, and she was moving with the natural calm of someone clearly used to working in the shop.

He didn't go in right away. In cases like this, he preferred to have something solid to go on before he spoke to any suspects. That said, he didn't doubt that he would get to the truth.

The Sara Lindqvist from the application form had been in Iowa nearly two months. If she really had fallen so head over heels in love that she was now prepared to get married for reasons other than residency, then other people living in town would be aware of it. The place would be abuzz with their romance; they would have spent plenty of time together in excessive infatuation; they would, in all likelihood, already be living together. It would be impossible to have missed it.

Unless they had known one another from before. But people would probably be aware of that, too. He would have introduced her as his girlfriend or his friend from Sweden. It was just as illegal to enter the country on a tourist visa if you were planning to get married and stay.

The diner next door to him was relatively full, but the woman behind the counter was standing alone and idle. She had the bearing of someone who kept her eye on what was going on. A diner was second-best to a bar when it came to picking up gossip.

He went in and clambered up onto one of the bar stools. The woman began frying a hamburger he strongly suspected was for him. He could already feel waves of nausea washing over him as a result of the greasy smell. Just endure it, he thought. And find out as much as you can, as quickly as you can.

He had conducted countless interviews before, with impatient people who had been just like the woman behind the counter. People wanted to talk, that was his experience. If you gave them the slightest encouragement, they would tell you all you wanted to know. The trick was to get them to talk and to drop all caution and then simply listen to whatever they had to say, asking a couple of questions along the way. Repeating their last sentence with a question mark at the end of it was often enough to keep the conversation flowing. Hardly brain surgery.

He grunted a thanks for the coffee which had appeared in front of him, raising the cup in a silent toast. ‘I guess your family has been living in Broken Wheel a long time?' he began. A friendly question about family was normally enough to break the ice with anyone.

Grace's face lit up. ‘Ah,' she said. ‘Funny you should ask.' She held out her hand. ‘Grace,' she said. ‘Though I was actually christened Madeleine.'

Forty-five minutes later, Gavin was feeling exhausted. He hadn't found out a thing about Sara, but he now knew more about the shotgun being kept under the counter than he really wanted to. At one point, a sheriff had also been involved.

He hoped it had been an old anecdote, though she had said something about upgrading to a hunting rifle which sounded worryingly current. He had only made it out because the place, for whatever reason, was closing early. And when he did come out, the bookstore was also dark and empty.

‘
ARE YOU SURE
you're going to get married in a dress?'

They were crammed into Madame Higgins's crazy boutique. Sara wasn't at all sure. She was wearing a fluffy white wedding dress, almost yellow with age and clearly made for some matronly Iowan woman with more … authority.

‘You look fantastic,' Jen said.

‘Do you know why women get married in white?' Andy asked. No one bothered to answer him. ‘It's obvious. All household appliances are white.'

Sara laughed. Jen took a picture.

Madame Higgins's boutique was just big enough for them all, but they were forced to split into smaller groups in order to move among the various voluminous gowns. The view out onto Second Street was entirely blocked by three monstrous dresses made from a deep pink fabric.