While I was bent over, I played the light around the area. Maybe Wayne left a trail of butts and I could find out where he’s staying. Fairy-tale reasoning. I thought of Hansel and Gretel, though I’d never liked such stories as a child. Like the Bible stories Sister Pauline told us, they all failed my logic test. “Why didn’t the glass slipper disappear at midnight, too, like her beautiful new clothes?” I’d asked the lady in the library at the Saturday morning reading session.
I went back to the edge of the bushes, this time looking at the ground. A few steps in I found a cigarette butt, a Camel, next to tire tracks that were too narrow for a motorcycle and too wide for the kind of bike I had as a kid. Some in-between off-road bike, I figured. The on-and-off rainy weather made the perfect mold for the tracks and I could make out the design in some detail.
I followed the bike tracks to the back of the lot, which ended at the asphalt driveway of an office building. Along the way, wherever the indentation seemed deeper, there were one or two Camel butts alongside it, as if Wayne had made his way across the lot riding, lighting up, waiting, then repeating the cycle. I shuddered at the image of Wayne Gallen sitting on his bike, enjoying a smoke while lying in wait for me. I shuddered again thinking of MC as the object of his stakeout. I realized the whole episode in my car had lasted fewer than ten minutes, but that’s long enough when you know you’ve lost control of your life.
I made my way back to my car, beaming my flashlight back and forth in front of me, collecting cigarette butts. Overkill, probably, but why not? I gathered three butts into a tissue and put them in my pocket. I foresaw more midnight activity at our washer/dryer.
At least now I knew how Wayne was getting around. No rental car or local taxis, all of which had been checked by the police. Wayne was riding a bike. Now the police could carry Wayne’s photo to bike shops and possibly get an address or phone number. The idea that I’d come away from my frightening ambush with some information excited me. This time I didn’t rule out the possibility that Matt had come up with it already, as with the Lorna Frederick connection. As long as we got that man off the street.
I felt a drop. Rain would be nice, I thought, to wash away the presence of Wayne Gallen around my car. Then I looked at the bike track at my feet and got it in my head that the tire treads might also be helpful, though I didn’t have time to figure out why. I realized they would soon be washed away if I didn’t preserve them. Not that I carry plaster of Paris around in my trunk. But I did have some supplies. Think, I told myself as the raindrops came faster.
I went back to my totes and pulled out some extra clear transparencies that I’d brought to class, to use in real time with the overhead projector. I peeled one off the stack, grabbed a marker, and went to the nearest track with good definition. I made a little pile of rocks and propped my flashlight on it. By now my knit suit was wet and dirty, my shoes caked with mud. Police work could ruin a good wardrobe, I thought, and it was a good thing I didn’t have one to begin with.
It was pouring now, water filling the grooves of the track as well as the space between my collar and my neck. I rushed to make a trace of the pattern on the clear, stiff plastic, using a blue marker to follow the design. Straight line, zigzag, reverse zigzag, straight, curvy, reverse curvy, straight, and back to the zigzags. I lifted the transparency from the ground and held it near my flashlight. Nothing that would stand up in court, but I had the dimensions correct, and a good representation of the angles of the zigzags and the wavelengths of the curves.
I held the transparency between my shirt and my jacket, both soaking wet, but some protection from the now-pelting rain as I walked back to my car. I found my keys on the floor of the backseat where Wayne had thrown them. I held them out the window to wash him off.
If the remote got scrambled from the rain, I’d resort to Matt’s old-fashioned method of unlocking doors.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
MC fished a couple of clean mugs and silverware out of the dishwasher. The smells of fresh coffee and the peppery Tex-Mex frittata brought back old memories, the good ones. She carried the mugs and forks to the small dining table between the kitchen and the living room, pleased she’d been able to find her favorite pale blue and white mats in her still mostly unpacked boxes of household goods.
“Smells terrific,” Jake said, pouring coffee for them. He ran his finger down the side of a small ceramic vase holding the purple and white icicle pansies MC had picked from her mother’s yard yesterday. “I miss all your nice little touches.”
MC smiled and sat across from him. He’d come by last evening, low-key and attentive, showing her his new, reformed self. He’d looked so great in a light denim shirt and the leather jacket she’d bought him last year—a cross between brown and red, a rusty, cowboy color, she thought. They’d laughed over the style, how it had no “Texas fringes.”