They were hesitant to say it, but they both did. “That’s right.” Then Ron added, “But this could be a matter for the police.”
“No!”
Eloise was even more vehement about that. “No police! Doan call ’em, I doan want ’em!”
“Easy, girl, easy,” said Shirley.
Dane asked Shirley, “Can you stick around a little while?”
She nodded with a half shrug.
He told Ron and Steve, “Thanks, guys. Really appreciate it. Looks like we’ll need to talk to her for a while. Is she out of danger?”
“As near as we can tell,” said Ron.
“Okay. Thanks, we’ll keep an eye on her. Shirley’ll be right here.”
They weren’t happy about it. They gave in, but didn’t leave before pulling Shirley into a private discussion outside the door. Dane could imagine the subject matter. “Eloise?”
She turned her head just enough to see him.
“You are nineteen, aren’t you?”
“Uh-huh.”
Ron was sneaking sideways glances at Dane through the door’s window. Well. This would all have to resolve in its own good time.
Shirley came back inside. Dane pulled a chair closer for her, then another for himself. Eloise tried to sit up, but her eyes rolled and she rested on her pillow again. She groped and touched Dane’s hand. “Thank you.”
Shirley arranged the blanket under her chin. “You warm enough?”
Eloise nodded.
Dane asked, “I suppose you’ve met Shirley?”
Eloise looked at Shirley and nodded.
“Shirley works for me. She takes care of the place.”
Eloise seemed glad to know that. “’Ello.”
“Hello, Eloise,” said Shirley, patting her hand.
“Cute girl, isn’t she?” Dane asked.
Shirley gave Eloise a smile. “Oh, yes.”
“You like her shoes?”
Shirley looked quizzical, but checked out one shoe poking out from under the blanket. “They’re okay. Nice.”
Dane craned to look. “What kind of shoes are they, anyway?”
Shirley leaned. “I don’t know. Running shoes.”
“Silver and gray? Nice color choice.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And what do you think of her hair? Cut kind of like yours.”
Shirley examined Eloise’s simple, short hairstyle, definitely not looking its best at the moment. “Well, kind of. Her hair’s straighter and there’s no frosting.”
“Brown, and yours is …”
“Brown with blond highlights.” She put her hand to her hair, playfully showing it off. So far she seemed to think he was just making calming conversation. Good enough.
He asked Eloise, “Who cut your hair?”
“Rhea,” she answered. “A girl frien’.”
“Nice color.” He told Shirley, “It sets off her brown eyes.”
Shirley gave him a look. “Her eyes are blue.”
Dane took a second look and feigned enlightenment. “Oohhhh … excuse me.”
“So,” said Shirley, “are we gonna talk about what happened?”
Eloise tried to sit up and slurred, “I havuh go to the bathroom.”
Dane helped Shirley get her up, and Shirley took her around the corner and down the hall.
Got to make sure, got to make sure.
Dane made a quick circuit around the living room. He found a vase of dried flowers knocked over but not broken. A stack of magazines on the end table had slid off onto the floor. The celestial globe he kept against the window next to his telescope had hopped off its stand. So he did hear real noises down here. He replaced everything with little time to wonder about it before Shirley returned with a towel and started wiping down the couch.
“Dane? Her clothes are wet. I could put them in the dryer and maybe she could wear …” She let her face ask the question as her eyes looked upstairs.
He knew what she meant. Mandy’s things, tucked and folded away in drawers, hanging in the closet, safe on shelves. Inviolable. Sacred. “Sorry. No.” He felt guilty but couldn’t bend.
“What about a bathrobe? Do you have a bathrobe?”
Fair enough. He bounded up the stairs to the bedroom to get it, tossed it over the railing, and Shirley took it down the hall. He hurried back down to wait.
When Shirley and Eloise returned, the young girl wobbled, hanging on Shirley’s arm with one hand and clutching his robe about her with the other. It hung from her like it was melting, and the hem almost touched the floor. She shuffled to the couch and sank into it, checking up and down herself for any breach of modesty. Her eyes had progressed from dopey to early morning drowsy and she didn’t seem too happy about having to wear that robe. “So here we go again,” she muttered.
Shirley started packing up her gear. “Okay, guess I’ve got an elk to cut up.”
Dane wasn’t ready for this. “You’re going?”
Shirley cocked an eyebrow Eloise’s direction and answered, “I understand you have a meeting.”
“But …”
“She’s all right for now. If she keels over, call me.” She extended a hand, and Eloise gave it a shake. “Nice to make your acquaintance, Eloise.”
“So nice to meet you,” said the girl.
“Her clothes’ll dry pretty quick.” Shirley grabbed her coat and kit, then paused in the kitchen door to ask Eloise, “You’re sure now?”
“I’ll be fine,” said Eloise, her head still a little too heavy for her neck.
“Okay.” Shirley headed through the kitchen for the side door and called out, “I told her you’re a gentleman so there’s nothing to be afraid of.”
And out the door she went.
So they’d had a little talk, the two of them. He looked at Eloise. “A meeting?”
Her eyes implored him through the drugs. “It’d be nice.”
Well, this was a nice little checkmate, so perfect she had to have planned it. It was awkward. It was even scary.
But he had questions of his own. “All right.”
chapter
21
D
ane noticed his body language: he was towering over her and he wanted answers so badly his expression probably seemed unpleasant. He made himself relax, slid his chair back a few feet, and sat down.
And then they stared at each other. Her eyes fell away a few times, perhaps to deal with a thought, perhaps because she was still half asleep, but they always returned and met his gaze again. He was trying to read her; she was probably trying to read him.
“So what did you tell her?” he asked, nodding in the direction of Shirley’s exit.
“That I came out here to see you, but then I had a problem with some drugs.”
“What drugs?”
“I don’t know. I made it up.”
“You made it up? You lied.”
“Well, I didn’t know what to say.”
“So what did happen?”
She laughed an apology. “It sure could have gone better.”
“Tell me what happened.”
He could see she was thinking, coming up with something, her eyes shifting to the left as she worked on it. “I guess I don’t remember most of it.”
“Do you remember ingesting or injecting any drugs?”
“You sound like a doctor.”
“I’m not. Do you?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Are you a drug user?”
“No. I don’t do drugs.”
“Do you remember running across my field?”
“Really? I mean, I did?”
“That’s where I found you. You fell down in my field.”
Those little tidbits helped her. “Oh! I think I hit my head! I was fixing a flat tire just a little ways up the road and I bumped my head with the lug wrench. I guess I wandered back here trying to get some help and finally conked out in your field.” She looked at him with a dull, spacey rapture. “And you rescued me, right?”
“I guess you could say that.”
“That is just so cool!”
“So who was that guy chasing you?”
Oh. Now she looked caught. “What guy?”
He cocked his head at her and raised an eyebrow.
She dug a little deeper. “You mean … who did you see?”
“I saw a man chasing you. Who was he?”
“Chasing me?”
“You were running from him.”
“I was?”
He held his forefinger and thumb a tiny gap apart. “You’re that far from getting thrown out of here, wet clothes or not.”
She searched through her brain another moment but gave up. “I don’t know—I mean, what did he look like?”
“Blond. Young, agile. Rough face. He looked like he’d been in a fight.”
“And he was chasing me?”
He leaned into this one. “Who was he?”
She shied back and replied, “Clarence.”
“Clarence. From the other night at McCaffee’s?”
She brightened and leaned toward him, managing a horse’s nod. “Yes! Remember him? He was my volunteer for the coffee mug trick.”
“His face is memorable.”
“He’s been there a couple times. He was there for my very first performance!”
“So?”
Now she didn’t know where to go. “So … what?”
“Why was he chasing you?”
“Um … are you sure he was chasing me?”
“You ran into my pasture, he was running after you, you were passing out, his face had blood on it and some really nice bruises, and he didn’t turn around until I threatened him.”
Her eyes got that wide, spacey look again, like she was looking at Superman … or Prince Charming. It made him cringe. “You threatened him?”
He held up a hand. “I’m lucky he bought it. I was waving that sword over there.”
She marveled at the sight of his stage sword, now resting on the floor against the wall. “You rescued me with a sword?”
“It’s a prop for a magic act.”
She brightened. “You used to stab your pretty assistant with it while she was curled up in a box!”
“My wife.”
“Far out. I always wondered how that trick worked. Is it a depth perception thing?”
Trying to change the subject? Nice try.
“You say I rescued you. Did Clarence mean you harm?”
She looked away, rubbed her fingers, scratched her ear.
“Did he mean you harm?”
She had nowhere else to go. She nodded, then spoke as if confessing. “I got a flat tire and I pulled over and got out to fix it, and then these two guys—Clarence and another guy, named Lemuel—drove up and acted like they were going to help me, and when I wasn’t looking they gave me some kind of a super-zap like they were electrocuting me or something, and then they gave me a shot”—she pointed to the mark on her neck—“right here, and the next thing I knew I was waking up here on the couch.”
Well, it all fit. “They tasered you?”
“What’s that?”
“Taser. It’s an electric shock device that immobilizes the victim.”
“Oh! Whoa, yeah, I hope to shout!”
“So what about the other guy, this, uh … ?”
“Lemuel.”
“Yeah. What’d he look like?”
“He was cool-looking, Hispanic or Arab or Greek or something. But you might’ve seen him with Clarence the other night at McCaffee’s. They were both there.”
“But you don’t know them?”
“No.”
“But they jumped you, tasered you, gave you a shot to knock you out, chased you into my pasture. I take it you struggled.”
“I don’t remember anything after the shot.”
“Clarence looked like you’d landed a few.”
She enjoyed the thought of that. “Maybe I did.”
“But you don’t want to call the police.”
That got a reaction. “Ohhh, no! Let’s not, I don’t wanna … No, no police!”
“Why not?”
“I don’t like them. They do stuff to you.”
“What stuff?”
“Anything they want, and they don’t even ask if it’s okay. Them and motherly doctors and cute, redhead ‘designated examiners.’”
He braced himself. “So there’s more to this.”
“I don’t know.”
He rose. “Your clothes ought to be dry by now.”
She reached out to him. “No, no, okay! Okay!”
He stopped, standing over her. “You are the one who called this meeting we’re supposedly having, and I take it it’s to discuss your career. Your career! You expect me to work with you in trust and confidence when all you do is lie to me? This is absurd!”
She wilted, gathering the robe around her.
He settled in his chair again and waited, just waited, hoping a good, steady glare would do the job.
Finally she muttered, barely audible, “They were from the hospital.” Still he said nothing. She tried to look at him but couldn’t. “I was in the hospital and I got away.”
“What hospital?”
“Spokane County Medical Center.”
“And why were you there?”
She had to gather some courage to finally let it out. “I was in Behavioral Health. I guess I’m sort of crazy.”
“Oh, now
you’re
crazy.” He waved off any follow-up to that. “How crazy is ‘sort of crazy’?”
Now she met his eyes. “Not real crazy. Just a little crazy, and not all the time, just sometimes.”
“Enough to be in the hospital.”
“Uh-uh. No way. I’ve never hurt anybody. I have a job, I have an apartment, I have my very own driver’s license …”
“But you’ve been on the lam all this time?”
“Almost two months.”
“So what kind of crazy are you?” She looked puzzled. “Are you … paranoid, or split personality, or manic-depressive, or what?”
She looked away, but then, with a new resolve, she faced him and answered, “I’m delusional. I think I’m somebody else.”
He was silent, and not because he chose to be. Did she really say what he heard?
“But I’ve learned to live with it and I’m doing fine and I just want to be left alone. If they find me they’ll lock me up and drug me and I may as well die because my life will be over. There’s no moving forward in that place. All you do is sit and get moldy.” She was much different when she was honest. She was strong, able to face him.
Good.
“And since you asked and I’m telling, I’ll just let you know that I’m badly in need of some friends right now. I don’t need pills and shrinks. I just need a chance—if you’re interested.”
A soul at the mercy of other wills. He could see it so clearly. It chilled him to realize he could feel it within himself. “Who?”
His one-word question puzzled her.
“Who do you think you are?”
She wagged her head. “That would be going back. I’m Eloise Kramer, and that’s all.”