Carol O’Connell: Find Me

And the woman sat down. “I wondered if you were traveling east or west.” After another long silence, intrepid April pressed on. “If you were traveling east, you might have passed my friends going the other way-on Route 66-a large group of cars all traveling together. You see, I missed the big meeting in Chicago.”

Mallory looked up.

“That’s where the maps were handed out,” said the tourist, “and I’ve been trying to play catch-up with the caravan. Well, by now, of course they’re at the campsite, but I don’t know how to find them. I had numbers to call. They were stored on my cell phone, but the battery died, and then I-”

“Get off this road and take the interstate,” said Mallory, who did not intend to listen to this woman’s e ntire life story. “All the public campgrounds are marked by signs.”

“Oh, not ours. It’s on private land somewhere on this old road. I don’t know what to do. I can’t go back out there. Tonight I got frightened-really, really scared-and I couldn’t e ven tell you why. That sounds silly, doesn’t it?”

A man in coveralls walked up to the table, wiping his hands on a greasy rag, and he spoke to the woman from Oklahoma. “Your car’s been ready for a while now.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” said April Waylon. “I just lost track of time. So the tire’s all right?”

“No, ma’am, it’s not,” said the man who smelled of gasoline. “No holes, but you got a busted air valve. That’s why it went flat. So I changed the tire. But if this ever happens again, you just stay put and wait for a tow truck.”

“I was out in the middle of nowhere, and my cell phone wouldn’t w o rk.”

“Well, that tire was flat as could be when you pulled in here. Now driving it that way-that’s just hell on the wheel and the front-end alignment.”

Mallory’s remote little table for one was turning into a convention center. A portly waitress had deposited a cup of coffee by her tray, and now the woman stayed to read the list of landmarks in her notebook.

When the man in the coveralls had departed, Mallory made another attempt to get rid of April Waylon. She pointed to a departing trucker. “Follow that man to the interstate and get a room for the night. You’ll have better luck finding your friends in the daylight.”

“I’m afraid. I can’t e x plain it. I just-”

“Ask the trucker to keep an eye on your car. You’ll be fine.” But now Mallory noticed that the woman’s o pen handbag had been left at the center table. Either this tourist hailed from some crime-free little town or she lacked common sense.

“But you’re a police officer, aren’t you?” April Waylon was suddenly hopeful. “And you’re traveling west. I can see that now-by your list. It starts in Chicago.” She touched the page. “I remember those green lions. So I could follow you .”

“No, you can’t. ”

“Tall Paul’s out of order,” said the iron-haired waitress, her eyes still on the list of roadside attractions.

And Mallory said, “What?”

“Tall Paul,” said the waitress. “Statue of a man holding a big hot dog,” she added- slowly -in case her customer was only half bright. “Well, he’s in the wrong place on your list. He belongs between Funks Grove and the queen.”

“No,” said Mallory, insisting on this. “Tall Paul was supposed to be up north in Cicero.”

“Not anymore .” The waitress wagged one gnarly finger at the young detective. “I was answering fool questions about this road before you learned to drive, missy, and I should know where that damn statue is. A few years back, it was bought up from an outfit in Cicero and hauled down to Arch Street in Atlanta. That’s the next town over. Now you take a left out of the parking lot and head toward the railroad tracks, but don’t c ross ’em. You’ll see a sign for-”

Mallory was not listening. She was rising from the table, dropping a fifty-dollar bill by the tray-many times the cost of her meal-and then, though her food and coffee were untouched, she headed for the door with some urgency to chase down a statue.

Upon entering Atlanta, Illinois, Mallory had no trouble finding Arch Street; the town was that small. The car lights shone on a fiberglass man, who did indeed carry a big hot dog, and he was tall. “ Tall as a building,” said the letter, “ Tall as a tree. Tall Paul.” So the statue had not been lost, only misplaced.

The author of the letter seemed partial to things on a grand scale, but Mallory could not understand the man’s passion for this road. So far, she had formed a one-word impression of Illinois- flat- with the occasional bump. By flashlight, she reread a few of the letters, wondering what she was missing here. She looked up at the statue.

So this was Peyton Hale’s idea of spectacle?

Headlights appeared in her rearview mirror, and a car pulled up behind the convertible, blinding her with a ricochet of high beams. She heard the other vehicle’s door open and close. When the tourist from Dixie Tr uckers Home came rapping on the window, the woman found herself staring into the muzzle of Mallory’s revolver. April Waylon opened her mouth wide to scream, but all that came out was a squeak, and her arms waved about like the wings of a demented bird.

After watching this for a few moments, Mallory got out of the car, saying, ordering , “Calm down. Now!” And the tourist froze, hardly calm, but not quite so annoying anymore. “What are you doing out here? I told you to take the interstate.”

“There’s a car following me. As I got closer to Atlanta, it dropped behind. Its lights went out, but they didn’t t u rn away. You know what I mean?” With one flat hand, April tried to demonstrate how a car might look if it was veering off the road. “Well, it wasn’t like that. The headlights just shut off . And my cell phone still won’t w o rk. I tried the car charger, but that wouldn’t-Oh, my!”

Mallory grabbed the cell phone from the woman’s hand and opened the battery bay. She had expected to see corrosion or a botched connection.

Now she held up the phone so April could plainly see the compartment where the battery should be. It was empty. “That’s why your phone won’t w o rk.”

“But that’s impossible. I used the phone when it was still light outside. I made a dinner reservation.” April Waylon prattled on. “It was a nice little restaurant. You must have passed it. It was just outside of-”

“While you were having dinner, somebody lifted the cell phone from your purse and stole the battery.” Given this woman’s c arelessness with her handbag, that would have been simple enough. However, the average thief would not risk returning the useless phone.

“Maybe it was him! The one who’s following me. He’s still back there. You have to believe me. I’m not hysterical. I’m not making this up.”

Mallory did believe her. A disabled cell phone worked well with the disabled air valve on April Waylon’s flat tire. “Get in my car.”

The woman meekly did as she was told.

The detective walked back to the red sedan. She opened the hood wide and left it that way. Next, she took the purse from the dashboard and locked the car, leaving the headlights on. Returning to her own car and her passenger, she tossed a red wallet in April’s lap, then hurled the red purse into the middle of the road.

“Oh, my handbag. It’s got all my maps and-” Here, April wisely closed her mouth and faced forward-quietly.

Mallory started up the car and drove off, keeping one eye on the mirror image of the road behind her. “If I don’t c atch your stalker, you should go back to Oklahoma when it gets light.”