Caroline might know what the document meant, but she wasn’t speaking to me. The only other person I could think of to ask was Ron Kappelman. The insurance information didn’t look as though it had anything to do with the SCRAP recycling plant, but Nancy had liked Ron, she worked closely with him. Maybe he’d see the same exciting possibilities in the letter that she had.
By a mercy his home number was listed, and—greater miracle still—he was in. When I told him what I had he seemed most interested, asking a lot of sharp questions about how I’d come to have it. I responded vaguely that Nancy had bequeathed me responsibility for some of her private affairs, and I got him to agree to stop by at nine the next morning before he went to work.
I looked again at the mess in the living room. There was no way putting away back issues of The Wall Street Journal would make my place look as good as his gleaming house on Langley. I stuck the skillet with the chicken into the refrigerator—I’d lost interest in cooking, let alone eating. I called an old friend of mine, Velma Riter, and went to see The Witches of Eastwick with her. By the time I got home I’d gotten enough of Chigwell and Max out of my brain to be able to sleep.
23
End Run
I was in the Chigwells’ garage. Max had his hand around my wrist in a fierce grip. He forced me to go with him to the black sedan where the doctor sat. “You will kill him now, Victoria,” Max said. I tried fighting him, but his grip on my hand was so fierce that he forced my arm up, forced me to pull the trigger. When I fired Chigwell’s face dissolved, turning into the red-eyed dog at Dead Stick Pond. I was thrashing through the swamp grasses, trying to escape, but the feral dog hunted me remorselessly.
I woke up at six drenched with sweat, panting, fighting an impulse to dissolve into tears. The swamp dog in my dream had looked just like Peppy.
Despite the early hour, I didn’t want to stay in bed any longer—I would only lie there sweating, my head filled with grit. I took the sheets off, bundled them together with my dirty sweats, put on jeans and a T-shirt, and padded down to the washing machine in the basement. If I could find something to run in, I’d be able to take the dog out. A run and a cold shower would get my head cleared for Ron Kappelman.
After a long search I found my old college warm-up pants stuffed in the bottom of a box in the hall closet. The elastic was loose—the drawstring would barely keep them on—and the maroon had faded to a washed-out pink, but they’d do for one morning. I weighed the gun, but my dream was too much with me—I couldn’t bear to carry it just now. No one was going to attack me in front of all the joggers crowding the lakefront. Especially if a large dog accompanied me. I hoped.
Mr. Contreras had already let Peppy out by the time I finished my stretches. I met her on the stairs outside my kitchen door and the two of us set off.
It was another misty morning, about forty degrees, the skies leaden. No matter what the weather, the dog was ecstatic to be out in it. I left her at the lagoon, her tail waving like a golden pennant, and headed on to the lake.
A handful of fishermen stood along the rocks, hopeful even in this dreary weather. I nodded at a trio of black slickers who were seated on the seawall in front of me and headed out to the harbor entrance. I stood at the end of the promontory for a moment, watching the sullen water break against the rocks, but in the chilly mist my sweaty clothes started clinging to me uncomfortably. I retied the loose drawstring on the sweats and turned back.
The fierce storms earlier in the winter had washed boulders across the seawall all along the edge of the harbor; I had to leave the path more than once to keep from tripping on the loose rocks. By the time I got back to the land end of the harbor my legs were sore from broken-field running; I slowed to a jog.
The trio of slickered fishermen had been watching my approach. They didn’t seem to be doing much fishing. In fact, they didn’t seem to have any gear. As I came to the end of the seawall they got up and formed a casual barrier between me and the road. A lone jogger passed behind the men.
“Hey!” I called.
The runner was deep in his Sony earphones. He paid no heed to us.
“Give it up, girlie,” one of the men said. “We’re just fishermen stopping a pretty girl for the time.”
I was moving away from them, trying frantically to think. I could head back up the seawall to the lake. And get trapped between boulder and water trying to get past someone’s Walkman for attention. Maybe if I went sideways—
A shiny black arm swung out and grabbed my left wrist. “The time, girlie. We’ll just look at your watch here.”