The End of The Road (18 page)

She stared at it as if she was looking at a ghost and there were tears in her eyes when she looked up and nodded.

“Yes. And John took the picture. That’s easy to tell from her expression. He often took snapshots of her—had several in his office and at home.”

Then she burst into a flood of tears.

SEVENTEEN

THE TEARS LASTED ONLY THE AMOUNT OF TIME it took me to hand Amy the box of tissues I keep on the kitchen counter.

I had a feeling that she had cried herself pretty much dry of them years before and that they were at least partially inspired by the relief she was feeling in at least having answers
at the end of the road
she had followed for such a long time.

How many people would undertake such a far-reaching and dedicated search for someone they loved?

It made me sad that she couldn’t have arrived just a few days earlier.

“Have you talked with the police or the troopers? There is a trooper who was called to the scene at the Driftwood Inn.”

“No, but I should, I suppose. It really doesn’t matter now, does it? The woman at the Driftwood told me they had taken John’s body to Anchorage to try to find out who he was.”

I was a little surprised that she had not contacted law enforcement.

“Yes, you should,” I told her. “I know Trooper Nelson and can call him if you want. He can tell you much more than I can. It’s a little late now, but tomorrow morning will do, yes?”

She nodded.

“Why don’t you stay here tonight?” I asked.

“Oh, I couldn’t put you out—” she began.

I interrupted. “You won’t. I have an extra bedroom across the hall from mine upstairs and would be pleased to have you. We can make that call to Trooper Nelson in the morning and I can introduce you.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, definitely. It would make things easier for you, I think, that I’ve already talked to him. He’s really very nice. You can tell him what you’ve told me and answer most of the questions he’s been finding dead ends to.”

She agreed and went to the car to bring in a small suitcase while I called Julia Bennet at the Driftwood to let her know that Amy would be staying with me and wouldn’t need a room.

I took her upstairs and showed her to the one across the hall from mine that has always belonged to son Joe, where he and Sharon slept when they came from Seattle and would again at Christmas. When he left I had washed the sheets and pillowcases and remade the bed, so I knew it was clean and ready for a new occupant. I also gave her clean towels and showed her the upstairs bathroom.

She thanked me profusely and, though it was late, came back down for a last cup of tea, at my suggestion.

“Sleepytime Tea,” she said with a smile, reading the box the herb tea had come in, while I poured hot water onto the tea bags in our mugs. “Appropriate.”

“No caffeine, you’ll notice,” I told her as I handed her a mug of it. “Sugar?”

She took a sip. “No, thanks. This is fine as it is.”

We moved to the sofa near the now dying fire, where Stretch had already gone to lie down on his rug. I took my usual place at one end. Amy sat down at the other with a sigh of relaxation.

“You have such a sweet, cozy house,” she said. “You must love living here.”

I told her that my first husband, Joe senior, the fisherman, had built the house somewhat in the style of cottages in the fishing villages of New England, with similar two stories and a widow’s walk up top.

“You must have lived here a long time.”

“All my life, bred and born here. Not in this house, of course. Grew up, went to school here, college in Seattle, married twice—good men, both gone now. The first, Joe, left me this house, and, besides financial independence, the second, my Aussie husband, Daniel, left me Stretch, who was his dog when we met.”

At the sound of his name Stretch raised his head, gave me a look, knowing he was, as he often is, a topic of conversation, then laid it down again after a yawn.

He’s getting older now—will be nine on his next birthday in March. Dachshunds have a life expectancy of twelve to fourteen years typically, so though he’s healthy and I don’t expect him to kick the bucket anytime soon, I do conscientiously make sure that he sees the vet on a regular basis and gets enough exercise and proper food. I know I’m going to miss him dearly when he’s gone to join Daniel.

“I haven’t been here in the winter for several years,” I told Amy. “I have a motor home that I’ve taken to the Southwest in the fall, then driven back up the Alaska Highway in the spring. I’ve had the best of both worlds in terms of weather. But you mentioned New Mexico earlier. Where were you there?”

“Albuquerque and Santa Fe. But it was in Santa Fe that I showed that picture of John to people at a couple of trucking companies. One of the truckers recognized him, but said his name was Evan Williams, and the guy in the offic e who schedules and sends out the drivers agreed, but said he had left for Portland and Seattle three days earlier. He had already off-loaded the cargo he had carried to Portland and gone north, was probably making his second stop, in Seattle, pretty much as we spoke.”

“Interesting,” I commented. “Was one of the office guys in Santa Fe called Butch?”

“Yes,” she said. “The one in the office, a really nice man who told me John had driven the truck for their company to Portland and Seattle. How did you know?”

“He’s an old friend of mine,” I told her, thinking back to the last time I had talked to Butch Stringer on the phone, as we periodically keep in touch. It had been too long and I reminded myself that I should call him sometime soon.

I met Butch on the Alaskan Highway several years earlier, on my way north to Homer in the spring after spending the winter in the Southwest. He had suffered a horrible accident in purposely driving his Peterbilt cab and trailer rig off the road to avoid hitting a passenger car and a pickup towing a boat, and had been badly injured as a result. It had taken him out of distance driving and put him in the office of a trucking company.

I didn’t go into all of that with Amy.

“What did you do when you knew John, or Evan Williams as they knew him, was already gone?” I asked her instead.

“Well, knowing his destination, I caught the first plane I could to Seattle, but when I got there he had left the truck and vanished again. I checked out a few cheap hotels nearby, but no one remembered or recognized him from the picture.”

“He does look quite different in the picture,” I commented. “Younger, professional, not like a trucker at all.”

“I know, but it’s the only picture I’ve had. I knew that he must have found a way to forge the identification that he needed with a more current picture, but I had to use what I had. When he started doing long-haul trucking he started using Evan Williams and had the identification to prove it. It must have tweaked his sense of humor. I imagine him just walking into the nearest liquor store when he wanted a new alias and taking one from whatever whiskey bottle he found first, or that appealed to him.”

I had to smile at that idea, knowing John had exhibited a sense of humor that would support that supposition, and also that I had done somewhat the same in collecting names from the bottles of that same kind of alcohol in my own liquor store.

Amy had finished her tea and set the mug down on the table at her end of the sofa.

She yawned, hiding it politely behind her hand.

I glanced at the clock. It was almost midnight.

“Past time for bed, I think,” I told her.

Stretch lifted his head, recognizing the word
bed
, stood up and—I have to say it—stretched.

I got up, collected the mugs, and took them to the kitchen sink. He followed and Amy followed him.

“Would you mind if I took a shower in the morning, Maxie?”

“Not at all. Help yourself whenever you wake up.”

“Thank you for asking me to stay,” she said.

“Anytime,” I told her. “We’ll call Trooper Nelson in the morning. Go ahead up, if you want. I’ll be right behind you.”

She said good night and went.

I checked to make sure the doors were securely locked and that I had turned off the outside light over the step, then followed her, carrying Stretch as usual.

In just a few minutes the house was dark and quiet.

Amy had left her door open a bit, but I shut mine, so Stretch would not go exploring and wake her in the night. He’s used to son Joe sleeping there and might assume he would be welcome company.

I was comfortable in my own bed and knowing the house was as secure as it could be, thanks to Lew and the new lock. Still, I had taken the shotgun upstairs with me, just in case, and it lay on the other side of the bed, ready for instant use, but an unusual bed companion.

I stared at the dark ceiling and thought about how determined Amy had been to spend years traveling across the country, searching for her brother, who had eluded her right up until his death. Had he even known she was looking for him? Perhaps not, I decided. How sad.

Interesting that she hadn’t asked me any questions about John, but probably she would tomorrow.

Her mention of Santa Fe reminded me again that I wanted to give Butch Stringer a call and I thought about that, closed my eyes, took a deep breath or two, and sleep overcame me almost instantly.

EIGHTEEN

AMY’S ACCOUNT OF LOVE AND LOSS for both herself and John must have gone deeper than I realized, for I dreamed of my Daniel, as I don’t do often and treasure as a gift of time.

He was walking across the yard toward where I was standing on the back deck, a younger Stretch trotting along at his side, small feet a dozen to one in his effort to keep up. Daniel was reaching a hand out toward me with a smile that brought him back so strongly that for once I knew it was a dream and that I would wake before he reached me.

And I did, in the too-early darkness of the morning hours, in a house too quiet to get up. So I lay there on my back for a few minutes with my eyes closed, picturing his smile and how much I had missed it since he passed.

Then, as if he had laid out an arm and offered encouragement and comfort, I rolled over toward what had been his side of the bed and went back to sleep with my hand on his pillow.

When I woke again it was still dark, as the year turned toward the winter solstice in our far north, but I could hear the shower running in the bathroom across the hall, remembered that Amy had asked to use it, and knew it was time to get up.

Stretch gave me an impatient look and went to the door, wanting to get out.

A glance at the clock told me it was shortly after eight, late for me, but we had stayed up late the evening before. So I swung my legs out of bed and, deciding I would shower later, got dressed in the slacks and shirt I had been wearing when I came up to bed.

“Come on, Stretch,” I suggested, as I opened the door and picked him up. “Let’s go down and I’ll let you out, which is what I know you need.”

Because dachshunds are so long they have weak backs and are libel to spinal injury in going up or down stairs, so I carried him to the bottom, set him down, let him out the back door, and put some food in his bowl before letting him in again.

It had evidently snowed for much of the night, for everything, including Amy’s car, was covered with what looked like two to three inches. The sun had come out thinly and there were patches of blue sky overhead, so I thought the snow would soon melt again.

Homer is warmer than Anchorage and most of the rest of the state, except for the southeast panhandle, so we don’t often get snow in huge amounts or on a very regular basis. This is not to say that, when the temperature drops, driving on icy roads is any fun, and we can play bumper cars in slick parking lots as well as anybody anywhere else.

I went to the kitchen to get the coffee going and make us something for breakfast and found myself humming “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas” as I put eggs to scramble in the pan with the sausage.