Chapter 12
Ricky and I both stood still, keeping our eyes locked on the brown-haired woman as she conferred with the dairy employees. The choking woman, Rose, seemed to be on the road to recovery, shakily sipping from a glass of water.
I didn’t know why, but I felt the need to whisper to Ricky, leaning sideways into him and hissing, “What do we do?”
“Come around to my side of the table and sit by me so we can both keep eyes on her,” he said in a low voice. We both sank slowly into our chairs, not daring to look away and lose track of her.
The woman finished her conversation with the dairy staff, then gave Rose a friendly pat on the shoulder and a few words of goodbye as she turned to go back to her own seat at an adjoining table.
She appeared to be alone as she dug back into her salad contentedly.
After a moment, she pulled her phone out of her pocket and began scrolling idly while she ate.
Ricky and I kept our gazes fixed firmly on her. I didn’t know about Ricky, but my heart was racing a little, which seemed like an awfully silly reaction to watching a woman sitting alone eating her lunch.
“We’ve got to find out who she is,” Ricky said with an urgency that belied the woman’s placid chewing.
“Right,” I said. “How do we do that?”
“We tail her,” Ricky said, “until … um, until … until she goes somewhere we can get someone who knows her to identify her.”
“Right,” I said again. I was dimly aware that this was likely a silly diversion, and that there probably wasn’t much of import we could learn by identifying this woman. I’d take any excuse to try to get even a tiny bit closer to unraveling the mystery of the Rose family.
“She’s getting up!” Ricky tensed with excitement, ready to jump up and follow her. “And not bussing her seat, tut-tut.”
“That’s because she’s only getting a refill,” I said, relaxing back into my seat as the woman topped off her root beer at the soda fountain.
She meandered back to her spot and sat back down, resuming her focus on her phone.
I looked at my watch. “Do we need to set a cap on how long we watch her, so we’re not late checking out of the inn? ”
Ricky broke his stare away from the woman to give me an appalled look. “You would set a time cap on solving a murder?”
“Are we sure that’s what we’re doing here?”
“We won’t know if we don’t try,” he pointed out, then tensed up again. “Look! She’s getting up. And she’s taking her tray, so she must actually be leaving this time. Be ready to follow her when I say go.”
Our eyes followed her as she deposited her dishes in a bin at the bussing station and threw away her trash, then Ricky squeezed my arm and we both jumped up and tried to be both nonchalant and quick, keeping our distance as we followed her out of the hall toward the front of the visitor center.
Straining to keep eyes on her as we pushed through the crowds thronging the various food stalls, I said to Ricky, “This would be easier if any of us was tall.”
“Did you really call me short? I am average height, sir, thank you very much, and I can still see her,” he huffed.
A second later, a family of six, the parents and the three oldest teen kids all over six feet tall, all wearing matching blue T-shirts and all carrying massive ice cream cones, pushed their way in front of Ricky and me, and I saw him briefly shoot up onto his toes, his head bobbing, as we both lost sight of our target.
Average height had nothing on this family, but as soon as they passed, he grabbed my wrist and pulled me full speed ahead as he homed back in on the brown-haired woman.
As it happened, we didn’t have far to go anyway. She crossed the lobby, making a beeline for the gift shop.
“Act natural,” Ricky hissed as we entered the shop. “Look around at stuff, maybe buy something. I’ll keep eyes on her.”
“I did want some of those cheese curds,” I said, eyeing the refrigerated cases that lined one wall.
I found the curds quickly and got in line, casually looking around to see the woman picking up stuffed cows from a rack and smiling at them as Ricky thumbed through T-shirts on a nearby display while glowering in her direction.
She seemed to be moving aimlessly through the store, in no particular hurry, which was good news for me. After I finished checking out, I handed my bag to Ricky, saying, “I have to use the bathroom. Think we have time?”
He looked again in the woman’s direction, in an exaggeratedly furtive fashion that would have been totally conspicuous if she’d been paying any attention to us instead of slowly flipping the pages of a cookbook. “Try to hurry,” he said under his breath.
I took care of my business, not taking any longer than necessary but not in any particular hurry, either.
Ricky liked to heighten the drama of a situation, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to thoroughly wash my hands.
I was surprised to find Ricky waiting impatiently for me at the restroom door.
“She’s rolling,” he said, nodding across the lobby toward the exit doors.
I could see the woman making her way down the path to the parking lot.
We scrambled to follow her, trying to keep eyes on her as she weaved through the sea of cars, while also trying to head at least vaguely in the direction of our own car.
I eventually lost her as she ducked between two giant SUVs and didn’t seem to reappear on the other side.
Ricky was looking around, too, and it appeared he had also lost her trail.
“All right, let’s get to the car quick. Maybe if we can catch up with anyone else leaving we’ll be able to pick out which car she’s in,” he said, pulling me toward the overflow lot.
I trotted at his heels toward the little old copper-colored car, easy to pick out among the sea of modern grayscale SUVs and sedans. “Wasn’t she in a little red pickup when we saw her at the park?” A bright color seemed like a good thing. Maybe that would be easy to spot, too.
Ricky hurriedly unlocked his door, got in, and reached across to unlock mine, starting the engine as I dropped down into my seat. “Was she? I think you’re right,” he said. “That should help us spot her. Ideally before she gets on the highway; otherwise, we don’t know which direction she’ll go.”
As he maneuvered into the lane to exit the parking lot, however, we saw no red pickup. “I guess we go south? She was south of here when we saw her with Lis,” I suggested. “And we ultimately have to go back south to the inn anyway.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Ricky said, flicking on his left turn signal. “But keep a sharp eye out for her. She may even be in a different car.”
I tried to scan the faces in other cars headed our way as we followed the highway south, into the town near the dairy.
Traffic was moving at the slow pace we’d come to expect in small Oregon towns, but Ricky was zipping around, jockeying for position, trying to pass as many cars as he could, both to try to catch up to the woman and to give me a chance to see if she was inside a car we weren’t expecting.
As we crossed one intersection, I saw a police cruiser idling at the light with the cross traffic.
“Better not be too aggressive,” I said mildly to Ricky.
He gritted his teeth and slowed slightly, still gripping the steering wheel tightly.
“I had a terrible thought,” he said. “We know she’s been somewhere down south, near the inn, because we saw her meeting with Lis.
But what if she lives somewhere north, like Portland or Seattle or something, and she decided to stop here on her way home? What if—”
“There!” I pointed ahead to a gas station, where an old red Toyota pickup was pulling in from a few car lengths ahead of us.
“Ah! Yes! Nice work, Oliver!” Ricky put on his signal and turned into the gas station as well. He pulled up to a pump at the island across from the red truck, and we both watched as the woman climbed out and began poking at the payment screen.
I was startled by a tap on my window. I turned and cranked my window down slightly. A cute younger guy with a curly mullet sticking out from under a ball cap hunched down to smile through the window at us. “What’ll it be, fellas?”
“Huh?”
“Whaddaya take for this, premium? Ninety-three? You wanna fill up?”
“Oh,” I said. “We don’t want anything. We’re just waiting here for a second.”
The attendant screwed his face up. “You’ll need to wait somewhere else, then, fellas. I got other people here who actually want gas, you know.”
Ricky fumbled for his wallet, handing a card across to the attendant. “We’ll take premium. Five gallons, please. Oliver, you keep watch, and at least if she leaves we’ll know which way she goes.”
The attendant touched the brim of his cap in thanks and turned to the pump. I rolled my window back up, turning to look back at the woman leaning against her red truck as it filled up with gas. “I didn’t know that full-service gas stations even existed anymore,” I said.
“Only in Hollywood period pieces and Oregon, I guess,” Ricky replied. “And New Jersey, I think. I didn’t notice I was pulling up to a full-service pump. Obviously,” he said, nodding in the direction of the red truck, “there’s a self-service option, too.”
The woman’s pump finished its job. She put the nozzle back, closed her gas cap, grabbed her receipt, and hopped in the cab. I heard our nozzle click off, too, and saw the attendant pull it out and return it to the pump, screw on the gas cap, and amble away.
“She’s going south again,” Ricky said, cranking over the engine and engaging first gear.
As he began to pull forward, I cried, “Wait! We didn’t get your card back!”
He slammed the brakes and threw the car in reverse. I rolled my window down again as he backed down the island, sticking my head out and waving to get the attendant’s attention.
The attendant emerged from his booth. “Yeah?”
“Can we get our card back, please? And the receipt,” I called.