Highway to Hell Read online

  “Nerd.” She placed the coin near the mini dinosaur track, which really wasn't that mini, except when compared with a T. rex.

  I took several pictures, then lowered the camera. “Gila monster?” suggested Lisa.

  “Iguana, maybe.” Except the print was the same size as my own foot. A five-foot-two iguana, then.

  “Touch it,” she said. “Maybe you'll See something.”

  “Geez, Lisa. Are you ever going to let me live that down?”

  “I'm serious.” She crouched, facing me with the track between us. “Maybe you'll See what kind of animal made it.”

  She was serious, all right. Her gray eyes were alight with studied curiosity. The kind of curiosity that made Ben Franklin tie a key to a kite string. Now I knew how the kite felt.

  “You do remember there was barfing involved the last time I touched something icky?”

  “How do you even know this footprint is connected with Bessie's untimely end?” Lisa's voice was reason itself. So much so that it made me seem unreasonable for being such a wuss.

  “I've never even tried a footprint before, only objects that have a long association with someone.”

  “There are a lot of sympathetic magic spells associated with footprints. They're very symbolic.”

  “Nice for them.”

  “Come on. Aren't you even curious?”

  Of course I was. And of course she knew it.

  The tow truck started up with a bang. I jumped and Lisa did, too. She fell on her butt, her foot shooting out and obliterating the track. The chugging of the tow truck's winch, the creak of winding chain as it hoisted the Jeep, covered her curse and my laughter.

  “What are you girls doing?” Zeke had to yell over the noise of the truck.

  Lisa shot me a look I couldn't interpret, so I ignored her. “We found a weird-looking track. Doesn't look like a coyote.”

  He left the fence and came over to peer at the ground. “I don't see anything.”

  I thumbed back through the pictures, and held the camera out to him. Shading it with his gloved hand, he squinted at the view screen. “It's hard to tell from this. Could be anything.”

  “It looked kind of like a lizard, but it was too big.”

  He handed the camera back to me, his expression friendly but a little too careful. “Are you sure it wasn't a bird? It could have been a hawk, or a vulture looking for leftovers.”

  On that lovely mental image, I let the matter drop, and Zeke went back to work on the fence. Lisa watched him go, then turned to me, her voice covered by the engine of the tow truck.

  “What are you thinking, Mags?”

  I turned off the camera and looped the strap around my neck. “I don't know. I have a weird feeling about this.”

  She gazed at me, her face inscrutable. “You mean, weirder than us getting stranded by two tons of hamburger in the first place?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Come on, Mags.” She made a gesture that encompassed the track and the gory spot on the road. “Some animal killed that cow. If not a coyote, then something else. This might be ranch land, but it's still wilderness. Just look around us.”

  The highway had plenty of traffic, and there were clusters of houses dotted about, set far back from the road. But there was a lot of open ground, too, where anything could live.

  The winch on the truck had stopped, and Buck was securing the Jeep in place. I lowered my voice so he and Zeke wouldn't hear. “I had a dream last night. I'm not sure how the cow ties in, but there is something going on.”

  She pursed her lips. “You mean … magic?”

  “Maybe.”

  The crunch of Buck's boots on the dry grass stopped me from saying anything else. “You girls want to ride back with me, or stick around with Mr. Zeke?”

  “We'll stay, I guess. Unless you need me to sign anything?”

  “Nah.” He rearranged the toothpick in his mouth. “I figure you're not going anywhere.”

  He certainly had that right.

  5

  “Hey, Mom.”

  “Hey, Magpie!” Mom's voice was cheerful. I could hear Brigid wailing in the background. Astronauts in orbit could probably hear her, too. “How is South Padre? Did you get a room with a view of the beach?”

  I took in the scenic view from the balcony of the Artesian Manor—the highway, the Duck Inn, the town square, with its dilapidated gazebo, and the water tower looming over all of it. “Not exactly.”

  “Oh. That's too bad.” I could tell she'd gone to pick Brigid up; the baby's cries were even louder, and Mom's voice came in spurts, like she was bouncing her while she talked. “I love the beach. It was such a shame that you never did. After that one trip, we never tried to go again.”

  I hate deep water. My folks found this out the hard way after they'd shelled out for a Florida vacation when I was six and someone had had to stay onshore with me at all times.

  “Well, it's not going to be a problem here.”

  “Too much other fun stuff to do, I'll bet.”

  I could see Buck's garage, where the Jeep was up on the rack like a surgery patient. “Here's the thing, Mom. I don't want you to panic. Everyone is okay.”

  Brigid started crying louder, as if I needed a barometer of Mom's escalating tension. “Magdalena Lorraine Quinn. What's going on?”

  I winced at the full-name whammy. “There was a cow in the road. I tried to avoid it, but there was a lot of damage to the Jeep.”

  She took several deep breaths, audible despite the crying baby. “But you and Lisa are okay?”

  “Not a scratch.”

  “Where are you?”

  “A little town called Dulcina. Not much more than a water tower and a motel. There's a mechanic here who can fix the Jeep. I've already called the car insurance people, and the owner of the pasture—the one the cow escaped from—is going to pay the deductible.”

  I said this all as quickly as I could, trying to show her that I was responsible, that I'd thought of everything. As I talked, Brigid's cries tapered off, and I figured I'd been moderately successful.

  “You have someplace to stay?” Mom asked. “Someplace that I don't have to worry about you?”

  “Yeah.” I rattled off the address and phone number, in case she needed to get in touch and my cell wasn't working. The two-story motel was the high point in town, and reception had been decent here so far, but spotty out on the road. “We're the only guests, so they'll know who we are.”

  “Artesian Manor. How fancy.”

  “Oh, Mom. You would have to see it to believe it.”

  “Well …” She floundered for a moment, as if finding her bearings. “I feel like I should be more upset, but it sounds as if you've already got things under control.”

  Her subtext was strangely poignant. “Why do you say that like it's a bad thing?”

  “I don't know.” I could hear a sad smile in her voice. “Because you didn't need your dad or me to fix this.”

  Guilt closed my throat. I had carefully avoided telling her that the accident had happened in the middle of the night, which would mean confessing my initial lie. “Say that again when the car insurance rates go up.”

  “You can't help hitting a cow.” She sighed. “So, what are you going to do in that tiny town?”

  “I might try and take some pictures, poke around.” I didn't mention anything about investigating weird footprints. “Since I can't write about South Padre, maybe I can get a regional or historical article on this place.”

  “Or you could have the Jeep towed to the nearest city. At least you'd have things to do there.”

  On Monday, the garages in Kingsville or Corpus Christi would be open. For that matter, we could continue down to Brownsville and still get to Padre Island. I hadn't seriously considered the option to decamp, though, for practical reasons. “The insurance won't pay for a tow that far.”

  “Well, I will, sweetie. This is your first college spring break, and you should enjoy it.”

 
; Mom's deep denial regarding the weirdness that happens around me forces her to cling to the idea that I should have normal coming-of-age experiences, like parties and dates and things. This completely overlooks the fact that I never did have parties and dates and things, even before I encountered the forces of darkness.

  Her next words proved I had accurately followed her train of thought. “I suppose I'm relieved it was just an accident, and not anything weird this time.” A pause, while the baby made a gurgling sound. “It is just an accident, right?”

  “What else would it be?”

  She took the evasive question as rhetorical. “Your dad just came in. Do you want to tell him yourself?”

  “Uh, no.” I wouldn't be able to keep Dad completely in the dark about my suspicions that there was something going on here. It isn't that my dad is any smarter than my mom— they're both sharp—but Mom is more determined to think the world is a reasonable place.

  “Then just keep us posted. And you and Lisa be careful.”

  “We will. Love you, Mom.”

  “You too, Magpie.”

  Lisa came back from the Stop & Shop with Zeke, her arms loaded with plastic bags. He'd lent us an ice chest so that we could keep sustenance—mainly Diet Coke—in the room, and now he carried, with impressively little effort, a ten-pound bag of ice, which he dumped into the Igloo.

  “How did the scavenging go?” I asked, looking up from the book I was reading. It was one of several scattered around me on the bed, along with my laptop.

  “We won't starve.” Lisa pulled a box of Pop-Tarts and a bag of Tostitos out of the sack. “I see your reconnoiter was equally productive.”

  “I went to the library before they closed for the day.” I neatened the books into a stack. “The librarian already knew our story, and took pity on me.”

  Zeke looked askance at the laptop. “You brought your computer on vacation?”

  I raised a quizzical brow. “Doesn't everybody?”

  Lisa was loading cans of soda into the cooler, and handed one to Zeke and one to me. “I don't think they're as addicted to their electronics down here, Mags.”

  “We have high-tech stuff.” Zeke popped the tab on his Coke. “Mostly on hunting equipment. Buck has a GPS on his four-wheeler, Gus has an electronic fish finder.”

  “How about wireless Internet?” I asked. Needless to say, the Artesian Manor wasn't set up with broadband networking. “Any hot spots in town?”

  “No. The library has a connection, but they don't open again until Tuesday. You can come into the ranch office on Monday and use our network.”

  Forty-eight hours without the Internet. I felt a little queasy. “If I'm not dead from withdrawal by then, I'll take you up on that.”

  He glanced at his watch. “I'd take you now, but I've got to get back out to the Big House. My grandmother expects everyone there for Saturday dinner.”

  “And everyone obeys the summons?” My gran only wishes she had that kind of matriarchal power. It's hard just getting my dad's brother into town for Christmas.

  “Yeah. Even my uncle comes down from Houston. His presence is required until after lunch on Sunday.”

  “From Houston?” Lisa asked. “That's got to be six hours away.”

  “He's got a private plane. There's an airstrip out by the house.” At our stares, he added defensively, “What? We need it for the helicopter, too.”

  I blinked. “I guess it only feels like we've gone back in time.”

  “Well, since Abuelita doesn't leave the property, the world has to come to her.” He went to the door, pausing to toss out a casual invitation. “Why don't y'all come out to the ranch on Monday, keep from going stir-crazy.”

  “Great,” said Lisa, my ex-goth, neo-alchemist friend. At least she sounded droll about it. “It'll be loads of fun.”

  With a grin, Zeke let himself out. I stared at Lisa. “What kind of pod person are you? D&D Lisa … on a ranch?”

  “What?” Falling onto the bed, she dropped her arm over her face. “Do you really want to test how long until I go all Jack Nicholson in The Shining?”

  “Did you get a chance to ask him what Teresa thinks killed the cow if it wasn't a coyote?”

  “It didn't come up in the conversation.”

  I flung a pillow at her, but it bounced off her shoulder and flopped limply to the floor. “What's the matter with you? Don't you want to find out what's going on?”

  She threw her own pillow at me, with much better aim. “What do you suggest? ‘By the way, my friend the psychic girl detective thinks you have a supernatural mystery on your ranch.’ You can't just drop that bomb on someone right after you meet them.”

  “You might also throw in what a complete witch you can be.” I stacked the library books—The Wild Horse Desert: South Texas History on top of Handbook of North American Desert Fauna— with more force than necessary. “I really don't under-stand why you're being such a skeptic. You were there. You saw those taillights disappear into thin air. And what happened when I touched the cow blood. Come on, Lisa.”

  Sitting up, she swung her legs off the bed and leaned toward me. Hands braced on her knees, she asked pointedly, “So what, exactly, do you think it is?”

  I had no answer, so I redirected the conversation, pointing to the desert fauna handbook. “I couldn't find any track that looked like the one by the road.”

  She shook her head in faux sympathy. “Deductive reasoning is so inefficient.”

  I sighed. “Too bad there's isn't a Field Guide to Supernatural Creatures.”

  “Now, that would be a really useful book.” She fell back onto her mattress and covered her face with a pillow. “I'm going to take a nap. Wake me up when it's time for dinner.”

  That put a cap on the discussion. Lisa's skepticism was both irritating and surprising. I supposed it went along with what she'd said in the car, about wanting a week of being normal. And she hadn't said she didn't believe me that there was something weird here, just that there wasn't really a way to bring up the weirdness to Zeke, who seemed to be firmly— maybe even stubbornly—rooted in normalcy.

  It didn't help that I didn't have any specific suspicions. All I could do was figure out what we weren't dealing with. And as Lisa had pointed out, deductive reasoning was definitely the long way around to a point.

  6

  The Duck Inn looked different after dark. It was crowded, for one thing. On the jukebox, a gravel-voiced man twanged about lovin' and leavin'. Patrons lined the bar and occupied the tables, and neon beer signs made auras of color in the haze of cigarette smoke.

  The song ended as Lisa and I came in, right on cue. We stood in silence broken only by the click of the pool balls and the scrape of a fork on a plate. All that was missing was the sound of crickets and a spotlight on our entrance.

  The stasis didn't last long. The next song started and the pool game resumed. People went back to eating and chatting over their beer. Lisa and I exchanged glances, then wove through the crowd. It was a bustling night at the only watering hole in town.

  Teresa, once again behind the bar, pushed a couple of grease-stained menus at us. “What'll you have, girls?”

  The menu was short, and geared toward the carnivore. “I'll have the chicken.” I wasn't going anywhere near the beef.

  Lisa perused the list a little longer. “Do you have anything without meat in it?”

  Teresa gave her a scary biology teacher look. “You want just some vegetables? They don't have any meat in them.”

  “You don't cook them with bacon?” I'd been in South Texas long enough to get a feel for the cuisine.

  “Well, yeah. But just for flavor.”

  “So bacon is just a condiment?” I asked.

  She leveled a scalpel-like stare at me, and I meekly thanked her for taking our order and retreated. All the booths were full, which left us no place but a table in the middle of the room.

  Lisa settled into the chair across from me. “And you say I'm antagonistic?”


  “I'm a slave to my wit.” I tried not to stare at the people trying to pretend they weren't staring at us. “Do you think everyone in town is here?”

  “Where else are they going to go on a Saturday night?”

  Most of the crowd blended together, with a work-hardened, sun-browned uniformity that blurred the lines of ethnicity. I recognized a group of older men, retirement age, who'd been at the same table that morning, drinking coffee. One of them nodded at me, raising his mug in greeting. I gave a little smile in return, encouraged by the friendly gesture.

  At the bar, Teresa seemed to be in conference with two men. One was a lanky guy in a cowboy hat, who gestured lazily with a bottle of Budweiser as he talked. The other guy had his back to us, but I could tell he was younger because his shirt was untucked. It seemed to be a generational thing.

  I didn't have to guess the subject of their discussion, because all three of them kept darting glances toward our table.

  Leaning sideways, I whispered to Lisa out of the side of my mouth. “Keep an eye on the door in case we have to make a run for it.”

  She sipped her iced tea, looking almost relaxed. “Does it feel like we'll have to make a run for it?”

  I realized that my deflector shields were at maximum— that was how I visualized my mental defenses. When I pictured them powering down a bit, I realized that, for all the attention we were getting, none of it was threatening. In fact, not all the buzz in the room was centered on us.

  The scrape of a chair drew my attention back to the immediate, normal five-senses situation. The younger man from the bar stood by our table, a friendly expression on his tanned face.

  “Evening, ladies. How is Dulcina treating you?”

  Lisa raised a brow. “Better than the highway did.”

  The guy chuckled. “So I heard. Word gets around.” If my smoke-bleary eyes didn't deceive me, he was kind of cute. Not young-Lou-Diamond-Phillips gorgeous like Zeke, but sort of guy-next-door good-looking. Behind him, I could see Teresa and Budweiser Man watching avidly, like his bizarro-world wingmen. “Can I buy you a beer and make amends for your lousy introduction to Velasquez County?”