A few hundred feet farther down the highway, the VW slowed…sputtered…gasped one last time…and died.
“What?” Ellie demanded, looking at McCall.
“I don’t know.” Frowning, he tried turning the ignition key. The starter coughed and growled like a bad-tempered tiger. “Feels like we just ran out of gas, but that’s…”
“We can’t be out of gas. We just filled up,” Ellie said, flatly stating the obvious. And after a moment, “Maybe something happened when we were bouncing around back there.”
“Maybe,” McCall grunted as he opened his door and stepped out of the car. “Come on, help me get it out of the road.”
With both of them pushing on the doorjambs and McCall steering one-handed, they managed to maneuver the VW more or less onto the shoulder. McCall opened the hood and took out a serious-looking metal toolbox which he carried around to the back of the Bug.
“I thought you said you could fix it,” Ellie said when she saw him standing there, scowling at the open engine compartment and absently swatting at mosquitos.
“Gotta find the problem first. Might be a ruptured fuel line…maybe the pump. If it’s the pump…only thing I can think of is to flag somebody down and hitch a ride to Los Limones, see if we can order a part. Car this old…I don’t know. Probably have to come from Merida…someplace with some good-sized salvage yards. Maybe take two…three days-”
He broke off, primarily because his audience had deserted him. And secondly because he suddenly had a sinking feeling in his stomach. Because Ellie was just then crawling into the Beetle’s front seat, where she had no business being. That was not good. Not good at all.
His worst fears were confirmed when she sang out happily, “Hey, I think I’ve found the problem.”
“What the hell do you mean, you found the problem?” McCall stalked around to the open passenger-side door just as she was squirming out from under the dash, looking flushed and radiant-and so damned delicious she’d have made his mouth water if he hadn’t been frustrated enough to spit nails.
“This is what-a ’58, ’59? Must be, because only the really old VWs had it. It was because they didn’t have fuel gauges then. There’s this little switch down here, see? So you can manually switch over to the reserve tank. Or, you can also shut it all the way off. That’s what happened-you must’ve hit it with your knee when we were bouncing all over the place back there. Try it now.”
Damn. He didn’t know whether to admire her or shoot her.
Mentally gnashing his teeth and silently using up every swearword he knew, McCall stomped around to the driver’s side and got in. He turned the key, and, of course, after only the usual amount of pumping, begging and growling, the engine fired.
“Don’t forget your toolbox,” Ellie said in a tone that tried too hard not to be smug.
“How come you know so much about a car that’s probably twenty years older than you are?” he grudgingly asked when he had his tools stowed and they were on their way again. “I never even thought of that fuel switch.” Well, okay, he was a liar. May that be the least of the sins I commit this week, he thought.
“I’m not that young,” Ellie cried, which in McCall’s opinion only proved she was. It had been his experience that only very young women objected to having their ages underestimated. “For heaven’s sake, I have a doctor’s-” She clamped it off there as a look of dismay flashed across her face, then looked away out the window and finished with a testy, “Just because I’m short, don’t underestimate me.”
“I’d never make that mistake,” McCall said fervently, meaning it-and also mightily intrigued by what she’d been about to say. A doctor’s…what? Permission slip? “But seriously-how come you knew about that switch?”
She flashed him a uniquely feminine look, lashes lowered, pleased with herself again. “Old VWs are very popular with us Save-the-Whales types, you know.” Practically purring with satisfaction, she gave her head a toss, and he was so distracted by the way the wind played with her cinnamon curls he allowed the VW to wander briefly onto the shoulder again. “I once rode all the way from Portland to the tip of Baja in one that was probably older than this. It was a convertible. Hardly anything was left of the top and you could see the road going by through the floorboards. There aren’t too many service stations in some parts of Baja, either, so you’d better know some basic auto mechanics.”
“And you do?” Just my luck, he thought sourly. Of all the women in this world, he had to hook up with Tillie Tune-up. “They teach you that back on the farm?”
“Well, it’s something you just sort of learn, actually, when you grow up on a farm. At least we-my brother and I-did. My mom made sure of that. At least the basics-things like how to change your own oil and tires and stuff.”
“Your mom?” He snapped her a look, thinking about his own fifties-style mother with her bright red nail polish and soft hands, leaning in admiring feminine helplessness over her mechanic husband’s shoulder while he checked the oil in her car. Ellie, he suddenly noticed, had almost boyish hands, freckled as her face, with short, unpolished nails. “Not your dad?”
She gave a light, gurgling laugh, full of amused affection. “My dad’s a newspaper columnist-Mike Lanagan, maybe you’ve heard of him? I don’t know, maybe he knew something about fixing cars once, but these days the most complicated piece of equipment he deals with is his new all-in-one-printer-scanner-fax machine.”
“Mike Lanagan.” McCall never knew how he kept his face blank, his voice neutral, utterly without inflection. Because it had suddenly dawned on him. Jeez. Mike Lanagan. Newspaper columnist. No wonder that name sounded so familiar. He took his time lighting a cigarette, and by the time he’d finished that task he was able to say in a normal, no more than mildly interested tone, “Newsweek, right?”
“Right!” She turned her head to beam at him, like a little girl delighted that he’d correctly answered her riddle.
McCall stared resolutely at the road ahead, not trusting himself to look at her. He cleared his throat and said carefully, “I thought he was based in Chicago. Doesn’t he also write for one of their big dailies?”
“Yeah, he does. When my brother and I were growing up he used to spend a lot of time in Chicago, but nowadays, with modems and stuff, he mostly works at home. Which is nice for my mom. Dad, too, I guess. He’s writing a book-nobody’s allowed to know what’s in it except Mom, but supposedly it’s about his early days as a journalist in Chicago, and how he and Mom met…”
“Yeah? How did they meet? A Chicago journalist and an Iowa farmer…”
“Are you sure you’re interested? It’s kind of a long story.”
McCall waved a hand at the ribbon of road walled in by jungle ahead of them and said dryly, “We’ve got a long way to go.” That’s the ticket, he thought. Keep her talking. Then maybe she won’t notice how rattled you are.
“It’s a pretty exciting story, actually,” said Ellie, shifting around in her seat in an eager, preparatory way. “First, Dad almost got killed by some hit men, because of this story he was working on. So he thought he’d better get out of Chicago for a while, but then he got lost in a thunderstorm and drove his car into a ditch, and that’s how he wound up in my mom’s barn…”
It probably was an exciting story, but McCall barely heard it. He just kept hearing the name Mike Lanagan, over and over again in his mind. Jeez, he thought, of all the women in the world I pick to get mixed up with…first Goody Two-Shoes, then Tillie Tune-up, and now…Mike Lanagan’s daughter.
Lucy came in for lunch red-cheeked and blowing on her hands. “Whoo-that storm’s coming in fast,” she said to her husband, who was sitting at the kitchen table waiting for her. “You know, I think it might even snow. I sure hope it doesn’t. Hope it holds off until after tomorrow, at least. Makes it so tough for the trick-’r-treaters.” She paused, noticing the manila file folder. “What’s that you’ve got?”
Mike shoved it forward a few inches with a forefinger, then brought it back. “It’s that file I was looking for-the one on Quinn McCall.”
“Quinn McCall? Who’s-”
“I told you I remembered a McCall. Did a whole series of columns on him a few years back. Seven, to be exact.” He tilted his head and made a small, appreciative sound. “He’s not a man you forget.”
Lucy had picked up the file and was flipping through it. She looked up, frowning and skeptical. “Oh, Mike, you can’t think Ellie’s McCall is this same person. Out of all the McCalls there must be in this world? That would be just too…I mean, coincidences like that don’t happen, except in books.”
Mike’s smile was wry. “No, actually, they don’t happen in books, at least not fiction, because people wouldn’t believe it. The fact is, they happen in real life all the time. The difference is, if it’s true, people have to believe it. Then they say, in awe, ‘My goodness, isn’t it a small world!”’
“Gwen always believed in Providence,” Lucy mused. Her smile, as she gazed at the man she’d been happily married to for…oh, so many years, was perhaps a tad misty. “You know she always said it was Providence made you take refuge in my barn-”
“-the very day your hired man quit,” Mike chimed in with her, laughing. “I know, I know.”
The laughter died, and his eyes grew thoughtful again. “I just keep remembering the last thing Quinn McCall ever said to me. It was after the last interview, the tape recorders were turned off, and we were packing up, saying goodbye. I asked him what he was going to do with himself, now that it was all over.”
“And?” Lucy prompted. “What did he say?”
“He said, ‘I’m gonna find me a beach. A long, long way from here.”’
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