Wisdom Spring (14 page)

“They going to take them out, you think?” I asked.

“It’s probably too open here, and noisy from the trucks. It would scare the horses. If they got away, they could end up on the highway. They’re probably just checking their hay, and giving them some water. I’m hoping they’re going in for a bite to eat and they’ll leave some of it open for air. Then I can sneak in and find someplace to hide.”

The idea showed promise. “We don’t know how far they’re going, but I can just stay within distance of the trailer. You know the number of this phone in case we get separated?”

“I do. If they end up going to a ranch, just park someplace near the entrance in an inconspicuous spot and I’ll find you.”

“You’re sure about this?”

“Absolutely. Those horse thoughts were definitely preparing me for this.”

I reached under the seat and pulled out the .380. “Take it. You just never know.”

“And if the customs people find me?”

“Ditch it before they come in. Put it under some hay or something. If they find you, they’re not going to be interested in looking any further.”

She put it in the pocket of her jeans.

We watched and waited. Eventually the woman came out of the trailer and they locked a half door. It was high enough so that the horses could get air, but too high for them to get out. The couple stretched, then walked over to the restaurant.

“Here goes,” said Jess.

I kissed her. “Good luck. Keep your head down.”

I watched as she looked around. Seeing nobody, she sauntered over, as if taking a walk. When she reached the trailer, I saw her talking to the horses. Then she looked around again and climbed over the door. The horses moved restlessly with a strange presence among them. Slowly though, they calmed down. I could imagine Jess in there talking to them. Soon, all was quiet.

I took that time to get rid of any traces of Jess from the interior of the car. Anything that didn’t need to be there I put in the trunk, including my gun and ammo, which I buried deep in my suitcase. I was so intent on my project, I didn’t hear the SUV pull up.

“Howdy,” came the voice from behind me. I jumped six inches, then turned and found myself facing the two from the diner. They wore basically the same clothes, were about the same height and weight, and both had black hair. They could have been brothers, except for their complexion. One was of Latin descent, and the other was a pasty white guy.

“Sorry, you startled me,” I said, inwardly swearing because I had just packed my gun away.

“Sorry to bother you. We’re looking for a woman, and we realized that she looked amazingly like the woman you were with at the diner in Great Falls.”

I hesitated a fraction of a second. “I wasn’t with a woman.”
Think fast! Think fast!

“Well, yeah, you were. We saw you.”

Then it came to me. My only possible way out.

“Are you cops?”

They looked at each other then back at me. The pasty guy said, “No, of course not.” I knew what they were thinking, that I was about to give Jess up and make some excuse for being with her. They were almost salivating as they sensed their prize within their grasp.

“Well, that girl…”

“The one from the news?” asked the pasty guy again.

I looked at them, cocked my head, and gave an expression of incomprehension.

“What girl from the news?”

They looked deflated. “Well, who were you with?” asked the other guy.

I looked around, leaned in close, and said, “A hooker.”

“A hooker?” asked the white guy in a loud voice.

I tried to shush him while acting uncomfortable.

“Yeah, that’s why I thought you were cops. I picked her up at the diner, and came out here where we, uh, did it.”

“So where is she now?” asked the one with the darker complexion.

“I don’t know. I paid her and she left. Went into the restaurant, I think. My guess is if you look for a truck rocking, you’ll find her.”

I think I had convinced them. “You say she was on the news?”

“No,” said Pasty. “She just looked like someone else. Sorry to bother you.” He started walking back to the car, then turned. “Was she any good?”

I just gave him a big wide smile.

They got in their car and drove away and I almost collapsed, my legs were shaking so much. We had dodged a bullet that day. We couldn’t keep getting lucky.

Chapter 14

While I was talking to the two goons, the horse trailer couple had come out of the restaurant. I watched them now as they made preparations to leave. The woman went into the trailer to look around. Satisfied that all was in place, she came out and they locked the trailer and put up the ramp. A minute later they were pulling out of the lot. I waited to see what direction they took, my fingers crossed. I wasn’t overly worried. Nothing bad would happen if they headed south, it would just delay us getting to Homer. But I didn’t know if we would find such a perfect hiding place for Jess again.

However, I needn’t have worried. The truck took the northerly route, heading for the border. I waited a few minutes, then followed. The border was only a half an hour away, so I figured I had given them the right head start in order to arrive there at about the same time.

When we got to the border post, I was directly in back of them. They seemed to know the guard who stopped them, as they spent a lot of the time laughing. He moved them on and they waved to him. It was my turn. I was nervous, but other than the gun in the trunk, I had no reason to be. I pulled up.

“Could I see your passport please?” The guard still had a smile on his face from the horse people.

“Sure.” I handed it to him.

“Your reason for going into Canada? Business or pleasure.”

“I’m heading to Homer, Alaska, to visit my brother. Certainly not business. We’ll have to see if it’s pleasure when I get there.”

He laughed. “Yeah, I have two brothers.” He handed me back my passport. “Good luck!”

I waved to him as I took off, now that I was as good a friend as the horse people. I took my time, knowing that the trailer would be going a lot slower. I didn’t want to get too close and have it seem obvious that I was following them. I pulled over in the rest area of the border post just to kill a few minutes. I looked cautiously around, but there was no sign of the SUV. I gave it ten minutes, but then was too antsy to wait any longer, and started on my way.

I caught up with the horse trailer fifteen miles up the road. They were moving at a faster clip than I expected, and when I didn’t see them at the ten mile mark, I started to panic and found myself speeding up to catch up with them. I was just starting to wonder if they had pulled off somewhere when I saw them in the distance. I breathed a sigh of relief and slowed down to a reasonable speed. We continued like that for a long time. The road was flat, but I could see mountains in the distance to the west. We passed by Lethbridge and merged onto Route 2 toward Calgary. They stopped for gas once but didn’t open the back of the trailer, so Jess had no opportunity to escape.

Somewhere outside of Calgary their turn signal went on and they slowed to a crawl. I accelerated and passed them on the left and watched them in my rearview mirror turn down a dusty road. Jess was right, they were going back to their ranch.

A half a mile past the ranch entrance was a pull-off on the side of the highway. Not a rest area, per se, but enough space to be officially off the road. I pulled onto it and parked as far from the tarmac as possible and turned off the engine. What now? We hadn’t really thought it out very well. Jess had suggested I wait at the entrance to the ranch, but that was impossible. The ranch entrance was right off the highway and the ranch buildings were a half mile down a very flat and exposed driveway. I’d be too conspicuous sitting at the end of the driveway and Jess would be out in the open trying to walk back up to the highway. No, there was only one solution.

I started the car and went about a mile, where I took an exit onto a crossroad. I crossed the highway and got back on, this time heading south. A couple of miles later I did the same thing in reverse, going back in the direction I was originally headed, but now south of the ranch. When I reached the driveway, I turned down and headed for the ranch buildings, all the while trying to figure out what I would say when I got there.

I pulled into the ranch yard just as the woman was leading a horse from the trailer into an enormous barn. I snuck a glance into the trailer. It was empty. Either Jess had already gotten out, or she was hiding under something waiting for her opportunity.

I turned off the engine and got out of the car, where I was immediately met by the husband. He looked to be about my age.

“Howdy. Can I help you?” He was friendly, but also a bit wary. “I saw you following me. Was kind of wondering if I was going to see you.”

I tried to look embarrassed. “I’m really sorry about that. I actually wasn’t following you. I’m headed to Alaska to visit family. I found myself driving a little too fast so I decided to slow down and start enjoying the ride. It just happened that I slowed down in back of you, so we ended up going the same speed. As I was driving behind you I started thinking about how this is supposed to be great horse country. Well, when you turned off, I passed you, but pulled over a little way up trying to muster the courage.”

“The courage for what?” He was a little friendlier, but the wariness was still there. His wife had joined him.

“My name is Bill Miller. I’m from Boston—born and brought up there, so the only horses I’ve come in contact with are the police horses on Boston Common. So I got to thinking how nice it would be to see a real live horse ranch. Might sound weird to you, but this is a life so far out of my realm of experience, I thought, ‘what the heck, maybe they’d show me around so I can at least say that I experienced a real ranch’. And as I say it, I realize how stupid it sounds.”

I think I had finally won them over. After all, people proud of what they have like to show it off.

“We’d be happy to. Come on inside the barn. We were just taking care of the horses we had in the trailer.”

“Do you race them?” I asked as we walked across the parking lot, trying to sound as much like a city slicker as possible.

They laughed. “No, we breed them, and some we take to shows. That’s where we were coming back from—a show in Idaho. I’m Norman and this is my wife Suzanne. If we visited you in Boston we’d be the same as you—fish out of water. We’ll go into a city if we have to, but we could never live there. We need the open space as much as our horses do.”

For the next hour, I learned more about horses that I ever wanted to. But to their credit, they made it interesting. It was a fascinating—but very hard—life. Long hours and a lot of work. But they’d been successful at it, not worried about money and thoroughly enjoying their life. We sat on their porch for a while after they showed me around, and they plied me with lemonade and cookies.

Finally we said our goodbyes and I got back in my car, turned around, and headed up the driveway. I hadn’t looked in the back seat, but just assumed.

“Comfy back there?”

“Not really,” came her muffled voice. I had left a blanket on the back seat to cover herself with. “I’ve been on your back floor for over an hour. I doubt if I’ll ever walk again. What took you so long?”

“They offered me lemonade and cookies. Who can pass that up?”

“Did you get a doggie bag? I’m starving.”

“Sorry.”

We reached the highway. When we were out of sight of the ranch, I gave Jess the all-clear and she poked her head up.

“Whew, fresh air,” she said.

“Maybe for you. You’re smelling a bit, um, horsey.” Getting serious, I asked, “So, how was it?”

“It was okay,” she answered, climbing into the passenger seat. She leaned over and gave me a quick kiss on the lips. “We made it.”

“We did.”

“I think the horses accepted me there pretty quickly. I would have enjoyed interacting more with them, but I think I was too worried about how I was going to get out of there. How did it go with you? I heard those guys come by and could hear some of what was said, but I think I missed a lot.”

I caught her up with their “visit.”

“So I’m your whore now?” she asked at the end.

“Yup. And you were good, too.”

“Well, I know that.” She changed the subject. “Any way we could get something to eat? I wasn’t kidding back there. I haven’t had anything to eat all day. The hay in the trailer was starting to look pretty tasty. ”

We were close to Red Deer, and as soon as I found a promising exit, we got off the highway. Jess still didn’t want to eat in the car, but after the morning’s escapade, was gun shy about trying a restaurant again. Since it was already late afternoon, we went ahead and found a hotel. I asked Jess what she wanted to eat, and she responded with, “a lot.” So I went for Chinese while she showered the horse smell off.

While we were eating, she told me of her experience in the trailer.

“I’ve always cursed the fact that I’m short. It’s a negative when you are trying to find a guy. It’s also a negative in job hunting. People don’t seem to respect you if you’re short. I wasn’t wishing I was tall, just normal. You know, five-five or five-six.”

“So what you’re saying is you were a short dumb blonde. That’s two strikes against you right there.”

“Yeah, I know. In the scheme of things it’s a petty complaint. People have it a lot worse. But I guess what I was getting to is that today I thanked my lucky stars that I was short. The owners of that trailer were clean-freaks. Once I got in the trailer there was nowhere to hide. I was really panicking. I almost came running back out.”

She continued,  “I looked up and saw a wire mesh storage shelf with a four or five inch lip on the side so things wouldn’t fall down on the horses. It just had some blankets on it. It looked like it might be sturdy enough, so I figured I’d give it a try. It must have been not much more than five feet, because I just fit. The blankets were under me, so she couldn’t see me through the mesh, and I kind of built them up around the lip. I figured if she didn’t look up or need to store anything on it, I’d be okay. I was also crossing my fingers that it would hold my weight, but I figured The Voice wouldn’t steer me wrong. It worked. She was so intent on getting the horses secure, she didn’t look up. Once we were on our way I took my time getting down so the horses would get used to me.”