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Chapter 36
The ride back to Hilltop House was beautiful, silent, and sad, with the Shenandoah River glittering in the moonlight and the two of them saying nothing, or next to nothing, while thinking the same thing: Everyone around me dies. Nikki. Bonilla. Shaw. It was a roll call of the dead.
McBride drove with one hand on the wheel, and his arm thrown casually along the back of the seat. It made Adrie
The car rolled through the countryside, the mountains and forests black against the starry sky.
Watery headlights loomed in the rearview mirror, sending a chill down McBride’s spine. But then the car swept past them, and they were alone again. “I’ve been thinking,” McBride said. “Maybe you should go someplace.”
“Like where?”
“The moon, if you can get tickets. Otherwise, anywhere you can lay low.”
She thought about it. And the truth was: there was nowhere she could go. Her basement bunker on Lamont Street was out. She didn’t have a job anymore. And after Bonilla and Shaw, she wasn’t about to stay with friends. “I want to find out what happened to Nikki,” she insisted. “And, anyway: you need me.”
“I do?” McBride glanced at her. The world inside the car was chiaroscuro, all black and white, noir. It was the moonlight. She looked good in it.
“Yeah,” she said. “You need the car, and my name’s on the paperwork.”
He shrugged. “Okay, you can stay.”
“That was easy.”
McBride chuckled, but what he was thinking was: it wouldn’t take much for my arm to slip around her shoulder. Then Hilltop House hove into view, and the moment was gone.
But not forgotten.
In their room, he asked her to tell him what she’d learned about Crane. She responded by pulling out a sheaf of papers from her suitcase, and handing them to him.
They consisted, mostly, of printouts from Nexis, including a couple of obits from the Washington Post and the Sarasota Star-Tribune. He read them carefully, noting the organizations that Crane had belonged to and the name of a surviving sister in Sarasota. As he went through the printouts, one at a time, he did his best to ignore Adrie
“We’re going to Florida, aren’t we?” she asked.
“Yeah, I think we have to.” He was doing his best not to look at her, keeping his eyes on the landscape outside the window. In the distance, down by the river, he could see parallel strings of lights—one white, one red, pulsing along in opposite directions. They appeared and disappeared as the road wound in and out of sight in the folds of the mountains. “We can look up the sister, for starters,” he suggested, “see what she can tell us. Go to the courthouse—see if there was any litigation. Check out his will…”
“Ummmm,” she said, stretching her arms over her head. “So, basically, we’ll go down there and beat the bushes.”
“Unless you have a better idea,” he agreed, pulling open the door to the balcony so that a rush of cold air entered the room—which had suddenly become quite warm.
She caught his eyes, held them for just a little too long and then executed another languorous stretch, extending her legs and flexing her feet, while raising her interlaced hands overhead. She arched her back, displaying her body, opening it toward him.
McBride groaned inwardly. Getting to his feet, he stepped out onto the balcony.
The truth was that all day, he’d been constantly aware of her, in the moony obsessed ma
Standing out on the balcony, he looked down at the lights of the cars and thought about it: how long had it been since he’d taken a woman to bed? He couldn’t be sure—his memory was still coming back in bits and pieces, flashes. But it was before Jeffrey Duran—that much was certain.
“So whatcha go
It was a line from Meatloaf’s Bat Out of Hell album, and it reminded him of all the good music he’d missed, as well, Jeff Duran having been, not merely celibate, but entrained by a different drummer. Or not even a drummer: Oprah.
“Whatcha go
Adrie
It was u
But it was too late—or, if not too late, an interregnum. The cold had had its effect, and he reentered the room, diminished. Adrie
“Looking at the stars?”
His eyes went to the ceiling. “No,” he replied. “I was thinking… “ He laughed. “You don’t want to know what I was thinking.”
She made a little sound in the back of her throat, and it took all his willpower not to launch himself at the bed. A flying dive into the depths of her.
Instead, he said, “I guess we’d better get some sleep.”
She nodded. Pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. All closed off now. The radiator ticked in the hot room. After what seemed like a long time, she heaved a sigh, and flashed a bright little smile. “Great,” she said.
It was a long way, and they took turns at the wheel, driving all the next day, arriving late at night. They checked into a Super 8, requesting a room with twin beds. She was actually embarrassed by the way she felt. She would not have thought her body capable of this swoony teenage lust.
In the morning, they went to the sales office at La Resort on Longboat Key, where a ta
No.
They drove back by way of Armand’s Circle, stopping for lunch at Tommy Bahama’s, where they ate salads and conch chowder, discussing their next move. Which was the courthouse in Bradenton, where they all but struck out. Crane wasn’t engaged in litigation with anyone, or not, at least, in Manatee County. And his will wasn’t as interesting as they’d hoped. Half of his estate was bequeathed, in equal proportions, to Harvard University and the American Cancer Society. The remainder was earmarked for his “beloved sister, Theadora Wilkins,” and his “lifelong friend, Marijke Winkelman.”
Their next stop was a trailer park in Bradenton, where Crane’s Jamaican caretaker, Leviticus Be