True-Life Adventure

back?”
    “Sure.”
    She was good at it. Not only that, she obviously enjoyed it. I could tell she was getting aroused; I wasn’t, but I wanted to be. Making love, I thought, would make us both forget this whole mess for a while. All I needed was a little encouragement. I rolled over on my back to give her the idea, and she was quite a quick study. She got the idea and she encouraged. But nothing happened. Meaning, to put it bluntly, I couldn’t get it up. A most embarrassing situation.
    “Uh, gee,” I said, or something along those lines. “I guess I’m kind of under pressure. I mean, this has never happened before.”
    Only with Maureen, anyway.
    “It’s nothing,” she said. “Don’t you ever have writer’s block?”
    “What does that have to do with it?”
    “Well, it’s the same thing. You’ve got lover’s block.”
    “Oh.” Oddly, I was relieved. “Does it ever go away?”
    “Sometimes.” She put her head on my chest and closed her eyes.
    I couldn’t go to sleep, so I thought about the case. It was a way to keep from thinking about what had just happened. I thought the whole thing through, going over each separate incident, right from the moment Jack told me about it.
    My mind kept going back to something that had happened the day before. It was something to do with the case, but it was an incident so trivial I couldn’t believe it meant anything. It had to, though— otherwise, why would it keep coming back?
    I fell asleep.

CHAPTER 21
    I slept about three minutes. I woke up because Sardis was beating on my chest and saying my name. I knew, of course, what had happened. The murderer had somehow got into the apartment. This was making Sardis nervous, which was why she was waking me up, but I knew, naturally, that there was nothing to fear, as he was making love with Maureen. I tried to tell this to Sardis, but she kept saying, “Wake up.”
    So I woke up even more and she said, “I know where she is.”
    “Lindsay?”
    “Who’d you think?”
    I couldn’t say “Maureen,” so I kept quiet.
    “We have an old friend from college who owns a dude ranch.”
    “A dude ranch?”
    “Wouldn’t that be a natural place to take a kid? You said so yourself.”
    “Did I?” I come awake fairly slowly.
    “Yes, when we were thinking of places they might have gone. You said it and I forgot about it and then something kept bothering me. I couldn’t get to sleep.”
    “I can understand that.”
    “Well, it was what you said. About a dude ranch.”
    “Oh.”
    “Our friend Rachel Carroll, from Newcombe, lives on one. And she has a kid about Terry’s age. And here’s the best part— the place is practically inaccessible.”
    “Oh again.”
    “I was thinking that even if she’s traveling around to every amusement park in the country, she has to have a sort of home base. Rachel’s the person she’d go to. I’m sure of it.”
    “Was she close to Rachel in college?”
    “Like that.” Sardis crossed her fingers. That night she was big on hand signals.
    “Where is this place, anyway?”
    “Lassen County.”
    “Why don’t we call her?”
    “Now?” Sardis looked at her bedside digital clock. “It’s one-fifteen.”
    “Okay, let’s wait till morning. Three people have been killed, but probably no one else’ll buy the farm for the next few hours.”
    She was already dialing. I listened.
    “Rachel? Darling, it’s Sardis. No, nothing’s wrong. I mean, a lot of things are wrong, but I’m not sick or anything. Listen, I have a very important question to ask you. It really is a matter of life and death, okay? Rachel, is Lindsay there?… She’s not.” There was a pause. “I need to know because things are very fucked up here. I’ve really got to talk to her…. Okay, dear, I know you’d help if you could.”
    Sardis hung up. “She’s there.”
    “I thought she wasn’t.”
    “Rachel didn’t sound like herself at all. Lindsay must have told her under no circumstances to tell anybody where she is. All Rachel asked was why I needed to know, not why I thought she’d be there or what was going on or anything. I think she thought Jacob was holding me hostage or something.”
    “You should have told her about Brissette and Tillman.” She pondered. “Maybe. But look, in the morning Rachel will tell Lindsay I called and she’ll probably call me.”
    “We can’t take the chance. How long does it take to get there?”
    “About six or eight hours. The roads are