Cecilia was standing there in the hall. She said, “I didn’t call the cops. No one else is here. You don’t have to worry. But hurry, Miss Susan, hurry.”
“Do I know you?”
“No, but my mama always took care of you when your parents brought you here every year. She said you were the brightest little bean and so sweet. She told me how you could write the greatest poems for birthday cards. I still have several cards she made me that have your poems on them. Good luck, Miss Susan.”
“Thank you, Cecilia.”
“I’m Agent Quinlan and this is Agent Savich. Are Mr. and Mrs. Harrison here?”
“Yes, sir. Come with me, please.” Cecilia led them to the study, just as she’d led Sally Brainerd here thirty minutes before. She closed the door after they’d gone in. She thought the Harrisons were now watching the Home Shopping Network. Mr. Harrison liked to see how the clothes hawked there compared with his.
She smiled. She wasn’t about to tell them that Sally Brainerd now had money, although she didn’t know how much she’d gotten from that niggardly old man. Only as much as Mrs. Harrison allowed him to give her. She wished Sally good luck.
Sally stopped at an all-night convenience store and bought herself a ham sandwich and a Coke. She ate outside, well under the lights in front of the store. She waited until the last car had pulled out, then counted her money.
She laughed and laughed.
She had exactly three hundred dollars.
She was so tired she was weaving around like a drunk. The laughter was still bubbling out. She was getting hysterical.
A motel, that was what she needed, a nice, cheap motel. She needed to sleep a good eight hours, then she could go on.
She found one outside of Philadelphia—the Last Stop Motel. She paid cash and endured the look of the old man who really didn’t want to let her stay but couldn’t bring himself to turn away the money she was holding in her hand.
Tomorrow, she thought, she would have to buy some clothes. She’d do it on a credit card and only spend $49.99. Fifty dollars was the cutoff, wasn’t it?
She wondered, as she finally fell asleep on a bed that was wonderfully firm, where James was.
“Where to now, Quinlan?”
“Let me stop thinking violent thoughts. Damn them. Sally was there. Why wouldn’t they help us?”
“They love her and want to protect her?”
“Bullshit. I got cold when I got within three feet of them.”
“It was interesting what Mrs. Harrison said,” Dillon said as he turned on the ignition in the Porsche. “About Sally being ill and she hoped soon she would be back with that nice Doctor Beadermeyer.”
“I’ll bet you a week’s salary that they called the good doctor the minute Sally was out of there. Wasn’t it strange the way Mrs. Harrison tried to make Mr. Harrison look like the strong, firm one? I’d hate to go toe-to-toe with that old battle-ax. She’s the scary one in that family. I wonder if they gave her any money.”
“I hope so,” James said. “It makes my belly knot up to think of her driving a clunker around without a dime to her name.”
“She’s got your credit cards. If they didn’t give her any money, she’ll have to use them.”
“I’ll bet you Sally is dead on her rear. Let’s find a motel, and then we can take turns calling all the motels in the area.”
They stayed at a Quality Inn, an approved lodging for FBI agents. Thirty minutes later, Quinlan was staring at the phone, just staring, so surprised he couldn’t move.
“You found her? This fast?”
“She’s not five miles from here, at a motel called the Last Stop. She didn’t use her real name, but the old man thought she looked strange, what with that man’s coat she was wearing and those tight clothes he said made her look like a hooker except he knew she wasn’t, and that’s why he let her stay. He said she looked scared and lost.”
“Glory be,” Dillon said. “I’m not all that tired anymore, Quinlan.”
“Let’s go.”
18
SALLY TOOK OFF her clothes—peeled the jeans off, truth be told, because they were so tight—and lay on the bed in her full-cut girl’s cotton panties that Dillon had bought for her. She didn’t have a bra, which was why she had to keep James’s coat on. The bra Dillon had bought—a training bra—she could have used when she was eleven years old.
The bed was wonderful, firm—well, all right, hard as a rock, but that was better than falling into a trough. She closed her eyes.