Honeymoon for Three (19 page)

***

“Why is that car sitting there by itself?”
Penny pointed to a campsite with a car parked at the entrance. Even
in the dark she could see that there were no other signs of camping
activity on the site: no tent and nothing sitting on the picnic
table. The car looked out of place.

Gary shone his flashlight at the car.
“That’s a Ford Falcon.”

“A blue Ford Falcon. Is that the license
plate of the car Alfred stole?” Her carefree feeling of a moment
ago was replaced by a tightening of her gut.

Gary dug into his pocket and pulled out a
wrinkled piece of paper. He shone the flashlight on the paper and
read the information written there out loud. Then he shone the
light on the license plate of the car. It was a Montana plate.

“It’s not the same.”

“Shine the light inside.”

They walked up to the car. Gary shone his
flashlight through the window into the front seat. Penny saw
several brochures and maps sitting on the seat, along with a bag of
chips.

“What about the back?”

Gary shone the light through the back
window. All she could see there was a hat, something like a cowboy
hat.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” she
said. “There’s no camping equipment in the car. In fact, there’s
almost nothing in the car.”

“It does look suspicious.”

“I’m not going back to the tent.” The
thought of being inside that cramped space in the dark, without
knowing who was prowling around outside, engulfed her with a
feeling of claustrophobia.

“But what can we do?”

“We’ve got to call Detective Landon.”

“It’s night. He won’t be working.”

“Somebody will be working. He said to call
anytime.”

Penny looked pleadingly at Gary, but she
couldn’t see his face very well. He was silent for a moment. She
knew she’d never be able to sleep in the tent.

“There’s a phone booth at the campground
office,” Gary said. “We can call from there.”

Penny clung to Gary’s hand as they walked
toward the entrance to the campground. He wouldn’t let them be
hurt. Her imagination magnified every sound they heard. When a bear
crossed the road in front of them, she was grateful that it wasn’t
something worse.

Gary made the collect call. Penny listened
as he explained the situation to whomever was on duty. He talked
for about five minutes. Before he hung up, he agreed several times
with whatever the other person was saying.

“What does he want us to do?” Penny asked,
not waiting for Gary to speak.

“He agrees that the situation is suspicious.
He’s coordinating with local law enforcement to get somebody out
here. He said under no circumstances should we return to our
campsite. We have to wait here. He’s going to get us a ride to
Grant Village. We’ll stay in the hotel there.”

“What about our car?”

“He said not to move the car. If it is
Alfred, we don’t want to do anything that might alert him to the
fact that we know he’s here. We’re supposed to stay at the entrance
to the campground until our ride comes.”

“And try to keep warm.”

“And try to keep warm. I’ll race you to that
pine tree.”

“Forget it. Just sit on that bench and
snuggle with me.”

***

Alfred backed out of the tent and stood up.
What had been a trim-looking tent collapsed completely and became a
disorganized pile of canvas. Was this a trap? Was that why someone
had come by and shone a flashlight into the campsite at intervals?
They must have found his car. He couldn’t return to it. What should
he do?

He shouldn’t be walking through the
campground alone at midnight. If whoever was looking for him was
still prowling around, they might spot him. He had to hide
somewhere until morning, when he could blend in with the other
campers. But where?

Certainly not at this campsite. He had to
walk somewhere, being careful to hide if a car came along. He had
already hidden among the trees for a couple of hours. He was cold
and angry. He didn’t want to get caught before he completed his
mission. If that meant hiding for the rest of the night, he would
do it.

He could take the VW and get out of here.
No, that car was too conspicuous. He couldn’t steal a car from the
campground, with all the campers around, even if he could get it
started. He would figure out what to do in the morning.

He walked along the campground road until he
had put some distance between himself and the campsite belonging to
Penny and Gary. He wasn’t even worried about bears anymore. He
finally decided he had gone far enough. He found a convenient grove
of trees in an isolated area. He sat down in the middle of them,
leaned his back against one, and tried to get comfortable and warm.
It was a losing battle.

CHAPTER 21

Gary and Penny were having breakfast in the
hotel in Grant Village when a National Park Service employee in
uniform, complete with the arrowhead shoulder patch and Smokey the
Bear felt hat, came up to their table and introduced himself.

“I’m Roger Barth,” he said, shaking hands
with them in turn. “Mind if I sit down?”

“Can you fill us in on what’s happening?”
Gary asked.

“I’ll tell you what I know. The Ford Falcon
that you found was stolen. The plates have been switched with
another car.”

“Did you get Alfred?” Penny asked.

“Not yet. But we have reason to believe he
was active last night.”

“What did he do?”

“Well, sometime after midnight when we
checked your campsite, we saw that the tent was down. So we got out
and investigated.”

“And?” Gary prompted when he paused.

“Well, it appeared that somebody had gone
inside the tent.”

“A bear?”

“It wasn’t a bear. Did you leave a hunting
knife in your tent?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so. And bears don’t use
knives. Well, we found a knife inside the tent. We kept it for
evidence, because there were slashes in the sleeping bag.”

Penny gasped and gripped Gary’s hand.

“So Alfred was there,” Gary said slowly.
“And he tried to kill us. It’s a good thing—”

“The prints on the knife will be matched
with the prints on the stolen car and a car found abandoned in
Montana. That’s what I’ve been told. I believe you have a contact
in Montana—a Detective Landon?”

“Yes,” Penny managed to say.

“Stay in touch with him. He’ll be able to
tell you the results of the fingerprint tests. Meanwhile, I’ll
drive you back to your campsite. You’re not planning to stay here
another night, are you?”

“No,” Gary said. “We’re going on to the
Tetons.”

“Good.”

“Where do you think Alfred is?” Penny asked.
“Did he steal another car?”

“There haven’t been any car thefts reported
in or around Yellowstone. Of course, we’re on the lookout for
him.”

“Do you think he’s still in the
campground?”

“If so, he must have had a cold night.”

That didn’t sound very comforting to Penny.
They weren’t able to catch Alfred, even when they knew where he
was, or at least where he had been. And Alfred was trying to kill
them both. In spite of how much she was enjoying the beauty of
Yellowstone, she was glad they were leaving.

***

The cold woke Alfred about the time the
first rays of the morning sun penetrated the grove of pine trees in
which he was sitting. He had never felt this miserable in his life.
His joints were so stiff he didn’t know whether he could move at
all. He also wasn’t sure whether the resulting pain would be worth
the effort. It might have been better if he had frozen to death
during the night. Unfortunately, it wasn’t that cold.

The good news, if it could be called such,
was that he had almost no feeling in his hands and feet. At least
they didn’t hurt. He pulled his hands out of his pockets and
started exploratory movements of his fingers. He rubbed his hands
together. Eventually his fingers started to tingle and then to
ache. As other muscles grudgingly came into play, he found that he
couldn’t stand. He had to spend a while on his knees before enough
blood reached his feet to allow him to rise to the vertical
position favored by humans.

He came out of the grove of trees and headed
toward the nearest restroom, trying to look nonchalant, but his
legs didn’t want to obey the instructions from his brain, and his
gait was labored, as if he had a bad case of arthritis. He had read
that walking on two legs was controlled falling. Not very
comforting, but that’s certainly what he was doing now. The
question was whether he could maintain control.

A few other campers were up and headed in
the same direction. He attempted to unfreeze his frozen facial
muscles enough to smile at them and say good morning. Of course,
there was no hot water, so his hands remained ice cold when he
washed them. He stumbled out of the restroom and realized that he
had no place to go. Along with no food and no transportation. He
could walk to the restaurant and eat breakfast. But then what?

He strolled at random along one of the
primitive roads of the campground, trying to warm up and observing
the early risers as they heated coffee on their Coleman stoves. He
could use a cup of hot coffee right now. The hotter the better.

A white Volkswagen camper with a customized
bubble-top was parked at one of the campsites. It had a California
license plate. A middle-aged woman tended a stove, which was set on
the wooden picnic table. She was cooking bacon in a frying pan.
Alfred’s taste buds started to work overtime. He’d better get to
the restaurant.

As he passed the camper, he saw a man
crouched in front of the rear-mounted engine. The engine door was
open, and he was fiddling with something on the engine itself. From
his look of puzzlement, Alfred concluded that he probably didn’t
know what he was doing.

“Having a problem?” Alfred asked in what he
hoped was a friendly voice. His vocal cords had thawed to the point
where he could speak almost normally.

“God damn engine has lost all its power,”
the man said. “Never should have bought a Volkswagen. I had some
work done a couple of days ago, before we came into the park.
Haven’t been able to climb a hill at over twenty miles per hour
since.”

“I might be able to help you. Want me to
have a look at it?”

“Might as well. I sure as hell don’t know
what the problem is.”

The man got out of the way, and Alfred
crouched in front of the engine. He actually did know a little
about engines, because his father was a decent amateur mechanic and
had taught him how to change the oil and do other simple tasks. He
had never looked at a VW engine before.

He didn’t want the man to notice his
ineptness, so he said to him, “Why don’t you start ‘er up.”

The man, who had a two-day growth of beard
and was wearing a cap with some sort of naval insignia on it,
looked glad that he had something to do. He wasn’t big, but his
movements exuded power through his jeans and flannel shirt. He
strode to the cab, climbed in, and in a few seconds the engine was
running.

Running, but not running very well. It
sounded rough, as if it were under duress. Alfred peered at it,
wishing he actually knew what he was doing. When the man stuck his
head out of the doorway and looked back at Alfred in a questioning
manner, Alfred yelled at him, “Rev it up.”

As the engine sped up, Alfred noticed
something. There was a metal piece that moved and had a sort of
hook on a spring attached to it, but the other end wasn’t attached
to anything. Then he saw the eye it must go into. The problem might
be a very simple one to resolve. He yelled at the man to shut off
the engine. After the quiet returned, Alfred asked him whether he
had a pair of pliers.

The man produced them from the vehicle’s
toolkit. An idea was forming in Alfred’s mind. He couldn’t let the
man see what he was doing. He took the pliers and said to him, “Be
ready to start it up again when I give you the signal.”

The man returned to the cab. Alfred gripped
the loose end of the spring with the pliers and fed it into the
eye. Then he called for the man to start the engine. The difference
was instantly noticeable. It sounded smoother. When it was revved
up, it sounded even better. Alfred was sure that the problem was
fixed. He was equally sure that he didn’t want to show the man what
he had done.

When the man shut off the engine and
returned to the rear of the VW, Alfred said, “I think that fixed
your problem. Do you want to take it for a test run?”

“We’ll be leaving after breakfast. That will
give us plenty of time to test it. Gotta be heading back home.
Thanks for your help.”

Alfred was glad he didn’t ask what the
problem was. “You live in California?”

“Northern California. Crescent City, near
the Oregon border.”

The woman who had been cooking breakfast had
come over to stand beside her husband. She heard the part about the
engine being fixed. She was plump, but she didn’t have a bad
figure. A kindly face and short, nondescript hair of an uncertain
drab color. Probably in her forties. She wore a sweatshirt that
said, “I survived the big one.”

Now she said, “Bless you if you’ve fixed the
problem. Don is so mechanically inept, he couldn’t tie his shoes if
instructions didn’t come with the laces. He thinks the solution to
the world’s problems is duct tape.”

“Now, Mattie, don’t start in.” The man
frowned and spoke sharply.

“Where’s your campsite?” Mattie asked
Alfred.

“Uh, it’s funny you should mention that. I
guess…I guess I no longer have a campsite.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Don
asked.

“Well, my wife and I were camped down the
road a bit. Last night we had a fight. This morning I went to the
restroom. When I returned, she was gone. Lock, stock, camping
equipment, everything. Just took the truck and drove off.”