William Bell - Fanatics

I showered and changed into fresh jeans and shirt. I pulled a duffle bag out of my closet and tossed in a set of clothes, a flashlight, a novel, and the charger for my cell. I planned to leave the clothes at the shop in case I was ever soaked or stranded again.

In the kitchen I made some sandwiches and raided the fridge for a few cans of juice, making a mental note to find a small used fridge for my workshop, and put the food into my pack. Dropping into a chair, I sat back and keyed Raphaella’s number into my cell.

“Hello?” she answered.

“It’s your boyfriend.”

“You’ll have to be more specific.”

“The good-looking one.”

“That narrows the field to seven.”

“The one you love the best.”

“Oh. Hi, Steve.”

“Very funny,” I said. “Listen, can you make it out to the Corbizzi place today?”

I heard the muffled sound of Raphaella holding the phone against her body and telling her mother she’d be there in a minute. “I’m at the store,” she said to me. “I have to unpack and shelve a big shipment of Chinese herbs that came in this morning.”

Raphaella’s mother made up natural medicine prescriptions. Lately she’d been teaching Raphaella to prepare some of the simpler ones.

“Can you mix me up a batch of frogs’ teeth and spiders’ tails?”

“Not today. I’ve got to get going.”

“How long will you be?”

“Probably all day. Maybe I could come by your place for dinner.”

I tried to keep the disappointment out of my voice. “Okay. Give me a call if you get the chance.”

“I promise. Gotta go.”

“Okay, bye.”

“Bye, Steve,” she said brightly.

BACK AT THE SHOP I cut pieces of dowel to make spindles for the decorative “fence” around the edge of the new mantel top. I fixed the first one between the spurs of the wood lathe, clamped the tool rest into position, and turned on the motor. Using one of the old urn-shaped spindles as a model, I meticulously shaped the wood until I had an accurate replica, finishing it with sandpaper. Then I turned off the motor.

The lathe had a feature that made the rest of the process easier, an electronic gizmo with a stainless-steel tip much like a ballpoint pen. I manoeuvred the tip to rest against the new spindle, turned on the device, and stood back as it silently travelled the length of the spindle, “reading” and memorizing its shape. I had only to remove the spindle, put a blank in its place, fix a cutting tool into the attachment, push a button, and watch as the lathe automatically shaped a new spindle exactly like the first.

It was slow tedious work as the lathe did all the thinking and cutting while I fed it blanks when the time came, but in less than an hour and a half the job was done. At the workbench I laid out the mantel top, the fence rail, and the spindles, then glued and clamped them, careful to keep the fence spindles perpendicular to the top. Then I made the decorative fences for the side panels. I was hanging up my apron when my cell rang. As usual, Mrs. Stoppini got right to the point.

“I shall be serving lunch on the patio in twelve minutes, if you’d care to join me.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Stoppini. Perfect timing, as always.”

“Indeed.”

After eating a plate of cold pasta salad with sparkling mineral water-a few notches up from the peanut butter sandwiches I had brought with me-I told Mrs. Stoppini I’d be working in the library for the afternoon.

“Splendid,” she commented, and began to clear the dishes.

I looked up into a perfect summer sky whose blue deepened as my eyes moved up from the horizon. There was a cool breeze off the lake, just enough to turn the leaves on the maples in the yard to show their pale undersides. I would have preferred to go swimming with Raphaella at Moose Park or lie on a blanket on the grassy shore and read-or doze off to the sound of kids playing in the sand at the edge of the water. I was beginning to feel the loss of sleep the night before, and the prospect of spending time in that unwelcoming room full of old books wasn’t exactly inspiring.

But about an hour later I banged the top back onto a paint can and surveyed the newly painted wall above the fireplace. Satisfied, I gathered the roller and brushes, folded the dropcloths, and took the stuff to the workshop. I decided to take a break and go for a ride on the Hawk while the paint in the library dried and the fumes cleared away. It was a soft summer day, and a motorcycle ride along quiet roads outside of town sounded like a good way to relax.

Then I noticed the broken GPS I had found on the shore lying on the workbench, pushed to the side. I had planned to try new batteries in the hope the unit hadn’t been destroyed in the lake. I might be able to find the owner’s house and return the device-giving me a destination for my ride.

I inserted the fresh batteries and pressed the Power button. Nothing.

“Oh, well,” I muttered.

Then a thought sparked. I powered up my laptop, connected the GPS to it, and launched the GPS software.

“Searching for devices” appeared on the laptop screen. “Device found” was my reward.

Because my own GPS was the same brand, my software could talk to the camo GPS and read its files. I searched around for information on the owner but came up empty. Not to worry. I might find his home by deduction.

A GPS like the camo one was pretty basic but powerful. It could memorize positions-longitude and latitude references-called waypoints, create a route linking selected waypoints, lead you to a specific waypoint using a compass rose, and record tracks. A track was a trip memorized and stored by the GPS. The tracks were usually filed in the unit’s memory by date, unless the user had given them titles. This unit was useless because the screen was broken, but I could read its files. And copy them.

The software displayed all the waypoints on a map. After a quick search, I found that almost all the activity was in an area northwest of town, and one spot in particular had a lot of tracks leading to and from it. I deduced that this place was the owner’s residence.

On my laptop I created a folder, naming it “Found Unit,” then uploaded the contents of the camo GPS into the folder. I slipped outside and removed my GPS from the motorcycle’s handlebars. I downloaded “Found Unit” into my GPS. I had now duplicated the contents of the camo GPS on my own.

I threw on my leather jacket and pocketed the camo GPS and my cell. I clipped my GPS back onto the Hawk’s handlebars and turned it on. Before long I was on Burnside Line at the edge of town. The houses lining the road fell away behind me as I rode away from town and into flat green farmland dotted with cattle and a few small stands of trees.

Motoring along under the speed limit-which was rare for me-I glided past an abandoned limestone quarry, a small herd of horses standing drowsily in the shade of an elm, a field striped with huge rolls of hay lined up under white plastic tarps. The new-mowed hay filled the air with a clean summery scent. The North River meandered lazily across the landscape, making its way to nowhere in particular. The tension from the last couple of days dissolved in the brilliant air.

Beyond the Maple Valley Crossroad the blacktop narrowed, the farmhouses took on a tired defeated look, the fields were blistered by protruding rocks. The road grew even more restricted, then played out completely. I turned onto a gravel side road, following the compass rose on the GPS with growing doubt that I was being taken to the owner’s residence. The gravel soon disappeared and I found myself bumping along a dirt track twisting its way over stony, rolling ground toward a forest in the northwest. A couple of pickup trucks hitched to flatbed trailers were parked along the verge. ATVers, I figured.