If Wishing Made It So (26 page)

‘‘What?’’ Mike asked.

‘‘Oh, nothing. Is your partner hurt badly?’’ Her concern was palpable. She hadn’t thought to include Jake specifically in the wish either.

‘‘No. Nothing life-threatening. He may have dislocated his shoulder and sprained an ankle. He’s in some pain and he can’t walk. The two guys that attacked us are out cold though. It was the weirdest damned thing. They kept shooting at us, but they couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn.’’

‘‘Well, did you shoot them?’’ she asked innocently.

‘‘No, my gun wouldn’t fire. It’s brand-new. Must have been defective or something.’’ By that time they had reached Jake, who sat on the grass; the light of the flames backlit him with an orange glow.

‘‘Hey Jake, you’ll never believe this. Guess who I flagged down. It’s Hildy! She was passing right by.’’

Jake looked at the blond young woman dressed entirely in black who stood in front of him. He looked at Mike. ‘‘Come again?’’

‘‘I just happened to be driving by,’’ Hildy said. ‘‘It was an amazing coincidence.’’

Jake gave her a funny look. ‘‘Yeah, it sure was.’’

‘‘Mike,’’ she said, staring intently at Jake, aware at once that Mike’s partner didn’t believe her at all. ‘‘Let me go back to my car and drive it up here as close to Jake as I can get it. It will make it easier to get him inside without him moving much.’’ With that she whirled around and escaped from Jake’s suspicious glare by running down the driveway as fast as she could.

When she got to the dark, narrow highway, she stopped. She tried to make sense of what she was seeing . . . which was nothing. The road was empty. Her car was gone, and with it, the genie in his bottle hidden under the seat was gone too.

Mike heard Hildy scream. He spun around and went running to see what had happened. He knew right away her car had been stolen and that Jimmy the Bug, who had fled the scene, must have taken it.

When he explained that to Hildy, she became hysterical, babbling about some bottle she had left in the car. He did everything he could to calm her down. He told her the police would look for her car, and if they didn’t find it, he’d buy her one, he promised.

His words didn’t help. She wailed louder.

He assured her that she didn’t need to worry. Help was coming. He could hear fire engines in the distance.

She sniffed and calmed down, but she appeared to be thoroughly distraught. She took his outstretched hand and walked back to the burning lodge.

When they got to Jake, his partner was adamant that Mike go around to the back of the motel to see if any of the stolen construction equipment was stashed back there. Mike said sure and started to leave.

‘‘Take a goddamn pad and pencil with you to write down the VIN numbers. I didn’t go through all this bullshit for nothing,’’ Jake shouted angrily at Mike.

Mike mouthed at Hildy,
He’s in a lot of pain.
Aloud he said, ‘‘I’ll be back in a couple minutes. Keep your eye on those guys.’’ He nodded at Sal and Joey, the two unconscious men. ‘‘I don’t think they’re anything to worry about though.’’ Then he trotted off.

Keeping her distance, Hildy tried to avoid Jake’s probing scrutiny, but he spoke to her anyway, his anger pouring out.

‘‘What are you really doing here, sweetheart? Don’t give me whatever phony story you gave Mike. He doesn’t think straight when it comes to you.’’

Hildy turned to Jake with stricken eyes. ‘‘You won’t believe me if I tell you the truth.’’

‘‘Try me.’’

‘‘Okay.’’ Hildy began talking as fast as she could. ‘‘I found a genie in a bottle that really belonged to Jimmy the Bug. And the genie knew all about this place being booby-trapped, so when I found out from my sister that you and Mike might follow those thieves back here, I thought Mike was going to be killed and I got in the car and the genie came with me and you and Mike showed up and walked right into the booby traps so I wished that your guns wouldn’t work and the explosives wouldn’t blow up and Mike wouldn’t get hurt. Then the genie and I ran back to my car and I was going to get out of here but Mike was in the middle of the road, flagging me down. What could I do?’’

‘‘You’re right,’’ Jake said. ‘‘I don’t believe you. I don’t know what you’re pulling or how you got here, but I’m going to find out. I promise you that.’’ He glared at her.

Hildy looked at him and said, ‘‘I knew you wouldn’t believe me and I’m sorry you got hurt. You weren’t supposed to. I didn’t wish carefully enough.’’

At that moment a fire truck, its siren blaring, pulled up the Sleep-E-Z Motor Lodge’s driveway. Firemen in heavy gear jumped off and started pulling on hoses. One of them came running over, yelling to somebody behind him, ‘‘We’ve got injured over here!’’

Two ambulances came screaming up the driveway a little while later. Jake and Jimmy the Bug’s men were scooped up and taken away. The state police had arrived as well. Mike and Hildy spent the next several hours at the local barracks, giving statements about what happened.

Hildy didn’t have much to say, except that her car got stolen. They promised to put out an APB on the little red Volkswagen being driven by a notorious criminal. They told her not to get her hopes up though.

She had to hope. She had to find her car and get Tony G. back. She prayed too. She prayed that Jimmy the Bug wouldn’t ever look under the front seat. She thought he might not. She couldn’t bear to think what would happen if he did.

Anxiety warred with grief and worry over the genie’s fate and her own future, but there wasn’t anything more she could do tonight. She’d have to worry about the bottle tomorrow. Finally fatigue overtook her; all she wanted was to get back to her cottage and her cats. She wouldn’t rest until she knew everything was safe and that Jimmy the Bug hadn’t gone to Ship Bottom to lie in wait.

A young officer was kind enough to take Mike and Hildy all the way back to Atlantic City. She dropped them off in front of the Hertz car rental office at Midlantic Jet Aviation, out on Tilton Road, the only rental agency within a hundred miles that was open twenty-four/seven.

Mike had suggested that Hildy stay with him at the hotel, but she insisted she needed to get to Long Beach Island. She appeared fragile and distraught, in a way he had never seen her before.

Since it was close to four a.m., the baggy-eyed clerk appeared to be functioning courtesy of constant refills of his coffee cup. He told them the only vehicle available was a four-wheel-drive Chevy Suburban—at a premium price.

Beggars can’t be choosers. Mike took it without a complaint.

On the drive back to Ship Bottom, neither of them talked much. Mike did tell Hildy he had broken up with Kiki. She nodded and gave him a small smile. He pulled her close to him, his left hand on the steering wheel, his right arm around her shoulders, as he did when they were teens. He suggested she put her head on his shoulder and sleep.

She felt warm and protected, but she couldn’t rest. Instead she said to Mike, ‘‘Mike, you trust me, don’t you?’’

‘‘Of course I do. I’ve never known you to lie, not to me, not to anyone.’’

She sighed. ‘‘Then you need to listen to me. The bottle that was in my car, I have to get it back. You’re a detective now, right?’’

‘‘Yep, I’m official. I have a license and everything.’’

‘‘Then I want to hire you to recover my bottle. I don’t care about the car. Just get the bottle back.’’

He gave her a squeeze and kissed her on the temple. ‘‘Hildy, you don’t need to hire me. I’ll do what I can to find it. Why is it so important to you?’’

‘‘That’s why I need you to trust me. I can’t tell you. It’s . . . it’s a secret. It involves somebody else, whose life depends on finding that bottle. Mike, I mean that—a life literally depends on my getting that bottle back.’’ Her throat closed up as she spoke. She felt close to tears and held them back. Crying would accomplish nothing. She had to be strong, not fall apart.

‘‘I hope you trust me enough to share your secret, Hildy. Isn’t that the way it has to be if we’re going to spend the rest of our lives together?’’

Hildy pulled back enough so she could look at Mike. ‘‘Are we going to spend the rest of our lives together?’’

‘‘If you’re willing.’’ He hugged her close again.

She reached up and held the hand he had put around her shoulder. ‘‘Mike, I’ve been willing for the past ten years.’’

‘‘You’re a funny kid, Hildy Caldwell. I still can’t believe how we found each other again. It almost makes me believe in magic,’’ Mike said.

Hildy didn’t protest. She didn’t comment. She didn’t say a word.

When they arrived at the cottage, Mike walked her to the door. She hesitated and asked him to look around inside before she went in.

Thinking about the attempted purse snatching just days ago, he believed her apprehension about entering the dark cottage was completely normal. He flipped on the lights and walked from room to room, making sure the windows were secure and no one lurked inside.

The cats followed at his heels, then jumped up on the kitchen counter, protesting that they hadn’t been fed. It was nearly dawn. Their meows clearly conveyed that they had been starved.

Mike offered to stay with Hildy, but he had mixed feelings about it. He almost hoped she’d say no. He had already decided not to go to bed; it was nearly daybreak. Although he might get a nap later, his mind was sifting through the things he had to do, from checking on Jake in the hospital to getting a truck back to the Sleep-E-Z Motor Lodge to pick up the stolen machines.

Seeing his distraction, Hildy said she needed to get some rest. She wanted him to leave more than she wanted him to stay and snuggle with her in bed. Finally, she insisted that he go, but not before she asked him again to look for her bottle as soon as he could. She clutched his hands and made him promise. He swore he would. She kissed his cheek.

He kissed her back, on the lips, not the cheek, sending her head spinning. He promised to call her, but after he knew she had gotten some rest. He’d try in the afternoon. She promised, Boy Scouts’ honor, to answer the phone. They both laughed, and he left.

As she watched him pull out onto the street and drive away, Hildy noticed that the sky appeared lighter. Dawn was fast approaching.

She fed the cats. She filled the Mr. Coffee machine and set the timer for three p.m., since she was determined not to wake sooner. Then she yawned and climbed up into the sleeping loft. She turned off her clock radio alarm. She paused for a moment, then shut off the phone. She knew Corrine would be calling her first thing in the morning; she didn’t want the theme song from
Gilligan’s Island
waking her up. She had brain fog, she was so tired.

Her head hit the pillow. The cats dashed up the ladder, leaped onto the bed, and curled up next to her legs. Her thoughts turned to Tony G., stashed in the bottle and still, hopefully, under the Volkswagen’s front seat. She wasn’t going to give up on getting him back and hoped he knew she’d be looking for him, that she’d never willingly abandon him to an uncertain fate.

Then drowsiness lulled her into a misty place between wakefulness and slumber. The last thing she remembered was a vague awareness that the air temperature must have dropped. She didn’t feel the humidity anymore. Then she slept the sleep of the innocent, unconscious and insensate, more deeply asleep than she had ever been before.

When dawn did arrive it wasn’t with rosy fingers or clouds edged with bands of gold. An angry splash of deep red crossed the eastern sky behind an aerial ledge of high, flat, and inky black stratus clouds. A change in the weather was coming, and it wasn’t for the better.

During the island’s early morning drive-time radio show, Sonny Somers gave his six a.m. forecast with an urgency in his voice he had never used on the air before. Hurricane Angie had picked up speed and now was a category three storm, he reported. It had charged forward and was raging in the South Atlantic, churning its way through the Bermuda Triangle and heading northwest.

His voice became even more excited when he reported that the first hurricane of the season was defying all the best computer projections, zigging and zagging and changing course hourly. The National Weather Center had the entire Atlantic coastline on a storm alert. This hurricane threatened to travel fast and pack a punch. Long Beach Island was not in any immediate danger, but Sonny warned listeners to stay tuned for updates. This was a storm to watch.

Hildy wasn’t watching. She was sleeping unaware of anything, even the cats behind her knees.

At ten o’clock, the daytime programs on television and radio were interrupted by a National Weather Center storm warning. People living in low-lying coastal areas from Newport News, Virginia, to Sandy Hook, New Jersey, were being asked to voluntarily move to higher ground. It was a precautionary move, but a recommended one.

Old-timers in the Carolinas groused that the media turned every rain cloud into a major news story. They weren’t moving for this little storm. It wasn’t like Hurricane Hugo, back in ’eighty-nine, at least not yet.

By eleven o’clock Angie had become a category four hurricane that was now, unexpectedly, taking aim on southern New Jersey. Evacuation of coastal areas was being ordered, effective immediately. This was a mandatory evacuation, not a choice.

In Ship Bottom, police cruisers went block to block with loudspeakers, telling residents to take only their valuables and their pets and leave the island. But with only one road leading off the island, the evacuation was the First Responders’ worst nightmare. They wanted people to begin leaving their houses immediately, not to wait even an hour.

By eleven thirty, the causeway was at a standstill with bumper-to-bumper traffic. The inbound lane had been closed, and all lanes now led in only one direction—off the island.

Hildy did not hear the bullhorns. She never noticed when the cats moved off the bed or when the gulls stopped crying overhead. She slept soundly, lost in dreams while the barometer continued to drop, and gray clouds skittered quickly across the sky. Then the wind picked up and tossed the surface of the sea into whitecaps. Hildy never stirred.