Mr. X. Peter Straub
the car-rental agencies were closed for the night. I went to the bar and started talking to a young assistant D.A. from Louisville named Ashleigh Ashton who was on maybe her second sea breeze. When she spelled her name and asked if I thought it was (a) pretentious and (b) too cute for a prosecutor, the drink in front of her seemed more likely to have been her third. If she didn’t like the way defendants grinned when they heard her name, I said, she should grin back and put ’em away. That was a pretty good idea, she said, would I like to hear another one?
Whoops, I thought, three for sure, and said, ‘I have to get out of here pretty early.’
‘I do, too. Let’s leave. If I stay here any longer, one of these guys is going to jump me.’
Sitting at the bar were two heavyweights with graying beards and biker jackets, a kid in a T-shirt reading MO’ BEER HERE, a couple of guys with chains around their necks and tattoos peeping out from under their short-sleeved sport shirts, and a specter in a cheap gray suit who looked like a serial killer taking a break from his life’s work. All of them were eyeing her like starving dogs.
I walked her through what seemed a half mile of empty corridors. She gave me a quizzical, questioning look when she unlocked her door, and I followed her in. She said, ‘What’s your story anyhow, Ned Dunstan? I hate to bring it up, but your clothes look like you’ve been hitchhiking.’
I gave her a short-form answer that implied that I had learned of my mother’s illness while hitchhiking for pleasure on a whim. ‘It was something I used to do when I was a kid,’ I said. ‘I should have known better. If I had a car, I could get to Edgerton tonight.’
‘Edgerton? That’s where I’m going!’ Suspicion rose into her eyes for a moment, and then she realized that I could not have known of her destination until she announced it. ‘If we’re still speaking to each other tomorrow morning, I could give you a ride.’
‘Why wouldn’t we be speaking to each other?’
‘I don’t know.’ She raised her arms and looked wildly from side to side in only half a parody of extremity. ‘Don’t guys hate the idea of waking up beside someone they don’t know? Or get disgusted with themselves, because they think the woman’s cheap? It’s a mystery to me. I haven’t had sex in a year. Thirteen months, to be exact.’
Ashleigh Ashton was a small, athletic-looking woman with short, shiny-blond hair and the face of a model for Windfoil parkas in an Eddie Bauer catalog. She had spent years proving to the men who took her for a cupcake that she was capable, smart, and tough.
‘Why is that?’ I asked.
‘The charming process of getting divorced from my husband, I suppose. I found out he was screwing half his female clients.’ An ironic light shone in her eye. ‘Guess what kind of practice he had.’
‘Divorce law.’
She pressed her palm to her forehead. ‘Ashleigh, you’re a cliché! Anyhow, I asked you those questions because I’m thinking about going back to my maiden name. Turner. Ashleigh Turner.’
‘Good idea,’ I said. Her divorce was probably no more than a week old. ‘The bad boys won’t smirk at you. But if you weren’t looking to get picked up, why did you go to the bar?’
‘I thought I was waiting for you.’ She glanced away, and the corner of her mouth curled up. ‘Sal and Jimmy asked me on a tour of their favorite Sinatra bars. The kid in the beer shirt, Ray, invited me into his room to do coke. He has a lot of coke with him, and he’s on his way to Florida. Isn’t that the wrong way around? Don’t people go to Florida to get the stuff and bring it back here? Those bikers, Ernie and Choke, wanted … Forget what they wanted, but it sure would have been adventurous.’
‘If Ray wants to make it to Florida, he better not hustle Ernie and Choke,’ I said.
She snickered, then looked chagrined. ‘I’m in this stupid mood.’
‘Did your divorce just come through?’
This time, she pressed both hands over her eyes. ‘Okay, you’re perceptive.’ She lowered her arms and turned in a complete circle. ‘I knew that, I really did.’
She sat on the edge of the bed and took off her nice lady-lawyer shoes. ‘The other reason I’m in a funny mood is that I can see my case going down the drain. Now that I’m being indiscreet, you’ve probably heard of the guy we’re after. He’s one of Edgerton’s leading citizens.’
‘Probably not,’ I said. ‘I left when I was a kid.’
‘His name is Stewart Hatch. Tons of money. His family sort of runs Edgerton, from what I hear.’
‘We didn’t move in those circles.’
‘You should be grateful, but I’ll never understand why a guy with so much going for him would decide to turn into a crook.’ She efficiently buttoned herself out of her pin-striped suit.
About a quarter to six in the morning, I jumped out of bed before I was fully awake. Nettie’s sixth sense was operating at full strength. The only thought in my head was that whatever was going to happen to my mother was rushing toward her, it was already on the way, and I had to get to Edgerton in a hurry. Still foggy, I fumbled around for my clothes and saw a naked woman on the disarranged sheets. One of her legs was drawn up, as if in midstride. Her name came back to me, and I put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Ashleigh, wake up, it’s time to go.’
She opened an eye. ‘Huh?’
‘It’s almost six. Something’s happening, and I have to get to Edgerton, fast.’
‘Oh, yeah. Edgerton.’ She opened the other eye. ‘Goo’ morning.’
‘I’m going to take the world’s fastest shower, change clothes, and check out. Should I come back here to get you?’
‘Get me?’ She smiled.
‘You’re still willing to give me a ride?’
She rolled onto her back and stretched her arms. ‘Meet me outside. I’m sorry you had bad news.’
A speedy shower and shave; a scramble into clean khakis, a blue button-down shirt, a lightweight blue blazer, loafers. I was going to see all my relatives, and for Star’s sake as well as my own, I wanted to look respectable.
Hoping she would not make me wait more than twenty minutes, I carried my duffel and knapsack through the revolving door into the cool morning light and heard a female voice call my name. Across the parking lot, Ashleigh stood beside the open trunk of a blaze-red little car. She was wearing a trim navy blue suit that showed off her legs, and she looked as if she’d had maybe twice the time most people need to look the way she did.
‘Slowpoke,’ she said.
She sailed down the nearly empty highway at a comfortable sixty-five, fiddling with the radio and letting the occasional trucker blast on by. Neither one of us knew quite what to say to each other. She found a university FM station playing a mixture of hard bop and Chicago blues and let the digital counter stay where it was. ‘Did you call the hospital before you woke me up?’
I said that I had not.
‘But you told me something happened to your mother. You didn’t get a call in my room, did you? I mean, I don’t really care, but …’
But if you didn’t tell them you were in my room, how did they find you?
‘I guess I had a premonition.’ She shot me a sidelong look. ‘Maybe it was just anxiety. I don’t know. I wish I could explain it better.’
She glanced at me again. ‘I hope she’ll be all right.’
‘I’m just glad you were there.’
‘Well, I am, too,’ she said. ‘I think you should probably go around the country giving hope to depressed women. And you were so tactful, you never made anything seem prearranged.’