Charlaine Harris - Day Shift

Barry didn’t seem to be able to speak. He looked stricken.

“You ready to take your grandpa back home?” the deputy said, looking a little worried.

Barry had recovered his vocal cords. “Okay, Grandpa, you ready to go back to the hotel?”

“All right. If they’ll give me cake for supper and let me take a nap.”

“I’m sure Mrs. Whitefield won’t mind giving you some cake, if she’s got one made, and you can sure take a nap in your room.”

“Barry took a nap,” Shorty said. “But it was time for me to go home.”

“That was my big mistake,” Barry told the deputy. He seemed to have recovered his wits. “He woke me up last night with this ‘going home’ theme, and I dropped off to sleep this afternoon. He gets worse the closer to night it becomes. Sundowner syndrome, they call it.”

“Sundown,” Manfred said significantly. The deputy looked at him oddly, but Barry got Manfred’s drift.

It was very close to nightfall.

“Thanks so much, Deputy…” Barry paused.

“Nash. Glad to help. Glad we found the old guy before he came to harm.”

After some well-meaning advice from Deputy Nash and more profuse thanks from Barry and more disjointed statements from Shorty, Barry and Manfred extricated Shorty from the car and waved while the deputy backed out and turned right to go back to Davy.

“Go, go, go,” Manfred said. “Do you need to stay at my place?” He made the offer reluctantly, but he made it.

“We’ve got the time,” Barry said. “I don’t know what the urgency is, but we’ll be inside in four minutes, maximum.” He began to coax his grandfather toward the hotel, promising cake and ice cream and many naps. Manfred stood in his doorway watching.

Finally, the tall man and short man reached the double glass doors to the hotel.

Manfred heard a sound coming from somewhere close, a deep sound, one he could not identify. But it made him think of the zoo again.

In an instant, he was in the house with the door shut behind him. And he locked it. And he drew the curtains tight.

After he had gotten his breathing under control, he noticed that the message light on his cell phone was blinking. He had two messages. The first one was from Magdalena Powell. “I did the thing I said I was going to do,” she said. “Have you called my mom yet?”

The second message was from Fiji. “What the hell is with the cop car?” she said.

Manfred returned her call.

“Yeah?” she said breathlessly.

“Barry’s grandfather went walkabout,” he told her. “The cops returned him. Deputy Nash was confused because Shorty kept telling him that his grandson’s name was Barry Bellboy. Weird, huh?”

“He’ll have to do something about Shorty.”

“Yeah, I’m sure he’s thinking about that right now.”

“Did you tell Barry that? About the Bellboy thing?”

“The deputy did. Barry freaked out.” Manfred reconsidered his terminology. “Actually, he was scared shitless.”

“That’s pretty strange. Well, have a good evening and enjoy the bread.”

The next day was a strange one, right from the moment Manfred woke up. He glanced at his calendar and realized he had a dental appointment in Marthasville. Manfred hated going to the dentist almost as much as he hated zoos. This dentist in Marthasville was supposed to be especially good at treating jittery patients, and when Manfred had heard of her, he thought he’d give her a try before his teeth rotted out of his head. And he’d made an early appointment so his entire day wouldn’t be ruined by the anxiety over the impending trip.

By the time he got back to Midnight, it was ten in the morning. The dentist had been good and kind, but he was frazzled and longed for nothing more than to drink something cold and soothing and to bury himself in work. The past few days had put him horribly behind.

Manfred noticed there were some cars at Fiji’s shop, and he was glad that she had some business. There was a car outside Joe and Chuy’s place, too. And the hotel. Lots of visitors to Midnight today. Weird.

Manfred unlocked his front door and got another unhappy surprise. Olivia was sitting in his kitchen. She leaped to her feet when he came in. “Who are they looking for?” she said.

Manfred’s heart had stuttered when he saw her inside his house, and it took a few seconds for him to be able to process what she’d said. “Olivia, I’m plenty pissed that you broke into my house,” he said, trying hard to make his voice even. He didn’t want her to see how frightened he’d been.

“I’ll apologize later,” she snapped. “Who?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He poured himself a drink with lots of ice and let it cool his sore mouth.

“There are people in Midnight,” she said through clenched teeth. “Why are they here? They’re looking for someone. I want to know who.”

“They’re just shoppers,” he said, though he did not believe that.

“Bullshit!” She leaped from her chair, and he flinched. “How often have you seen four cars at one time in Midnight? Cars that stopped? With strangers inside?”

Manfred’s phone rang. He held it to his ear. “Yes?” he said.

“Hi,” said Fiji, in a bright, impersonal voice. He knew right away that something was wrong. “Mr. Bernardo, I did some research, and that was the correct reaction.”

It took him a second to decipher that. Barry had been right to be afraid that the name “Bellboy” had been broadcast. “Yeah,” he said. “I understand. That why you have visitors?”

“I am definitely not the only shopholder in Midnight who feels that way.”

“I understand,” he said again. “Are you okay?”

“Of course,” she said with a smile in her voice. “We’ll talk later, when you’re at liberty.” And she hung up.

“You’re right,” Manfred told Olivia. “They’re not here to shop. But they’re not looking for you. They’re looking for Barry.”

He stood at his window, assessing the situation. There was a sign across the way on the front door of the chapel.

“Can you read that sign, Olivia?”

She joined him. “It says, ‘CLOSED today and maybe TOMORROW.’ With ‘closed’ and ‘tomorrow’ in caps.”

There was now another car at Home Cookin. But the restaurant wouldn’t be open for a while. A woman — at this distance he could only tell she was tall and thin and pale — crossed Witch Light Road after turning away from Home Cookin. She hesitated in front of Joe and Chuy’s shop, and then walked to Gas N Go. He saw her push open the glass door, and he could almost hear the electronic buzz.

“They’re everywhere,” Olivia said.

“Olivia, I don’t know who these people are or what they’re doing here. Barry is the guy who probably knows all about it, and I’m pretty sure it’s because of his senile grandfather that he’s in a fix. I don’t think this is connected to you.”

“Tell me.” She seemed to relax a little.

“In a nutshell, Barry Horowitz isn’t his real name. It’s Barry Bellboy, which is pretty strange, and I have to think that isn’t the name he was born with. Yesterday in the evening, Grandpa got lost, told the deputy who found him what his grandson’s name was, the deputy broadcast that name to find somewhere to return Grandpa, and apparently whoever Barry is so scared of heard it. They’re in Fiji’s shop now. You believed these people were looking for you?”

“Yes, I did believe that,” she said. “They’ll be here any minute. No matter who they’re looking for, they’ll go to every place in Midnight.”

“Are you gonna let them see you?”

“Hell, no! I’m going to hide in your kitchen and listen to what they say to you.”