Chapter 11

"So, Mr. Williams," the posh chauffeur said, leaning on the truck Williams was working on, "tell me about this little town of yours."

"Well, what'd y'all want to know?" Williams said with his veneer of geniality laid over impatience.

"Well, what I really want to know is, who'd live here? I mean, pretty place, but you barely got a grocery store. You got two gas pumps. How do you exist?"

Williams' temper flared. He wasn't an American, not really, but if there was one thing he loved about America, it was his town, and his garage in his town, and these city slickers didn't need to come looking down their noses at it. "Now you listen good, young man. You from Las Vegas? Las Vegas isn't real! This here's real. This here little town is what this country's all about."

Barney grinned to himself and let the garage man treat him to a lecture. Inside the garage, the phone rang, but Williams was too heated to hear it.


The phone rang. Cinnamon and Rollin both started and stared at it, then each other. It rang again, and again. Rollin sighed and reached over to pick it up.

"Hello?" he said in Doc's voice. He hadn't had a chance to practice it, but sometimes a voice got into his head and just came out of his mouth when he needed it.

"Doc? Marty."

He hesitated. Better pretend like he had company so he could speak generically and not betray himself. "Yellow!" he said genially. "Yellow."

He heard the man's voice on the other end whispering, "Yellow!" then aloud, "How long a hold?"

"I don't know. We're waiting on this end as well."

"Well, what's wrong?"

"Well, now, young man, you just keep your wife resting for a few days, and she'll be fine."

"Is somebody there with you?"

"Precisely," he chuckled.

"Shall I get back to you, or will you contact me?"

"Well, you just stay with your wife if you have to. I'll look in later."

"OK, Doc. We'll sit tight."

Rollin sighed with relief as he hung up and exchanged a glance with Cinnamon. Better hurry. "Cinnamon, I'll have to look sixty pounds heavier."

She nodded, looked around the office, found a medical jacket, and began experimenting with it and bandages.


"Funeral parlor, yeah, got it," Willy said, scrawling quickly. "I'll tell them." He got up and checked on Liz, who was beginning to make struggling noises on the cot behind him. "Sorry, ma'am, but you'll have to go back to sleep." He picked up Cinnamon's handkerchief and her little bottle of chloroform and gently knocked the nurse out again.

"Willy!" came a call up the stairs. He hurried to the head of the stairs.

"Yeah?"

"Need you to stow the doc," Rollin said.

"Right." He hurried down the stairs and accompanied Rollin into the office. "Jim's been telling me more—not talking yet, but he can move a little. He says the doc planned to kill him with some kind of drug and make it look like a stroke. That's what his other people expect. If we fake his death, we can get a hearse from Bakersfield and get him and the doc out in that. Means you'll have to stay in as the doc until we get the police in."

"Got it," Rollin nodded. "Take the doctor upstairs and secure him and then fix your truck and go to the funeral home in Bakersfield. Is there only one?" He rifled quickly through the doctor's phone book. "Looks like it. Cinnamon and I will arrange Jim's death. Alert the cops, and when we call for the hearse, have them be ready."

"Will do." Willy bent and lifted the unconscious doctor, slung him over his shoulder, and slowly slogged upstairs. He carried him into the room next to Jim's and found, to his mingled gladness and disconcertion, that the bed had restraints. In a few moments he had the friendly small-town doctor restrained very thoroughly, with a little extra ether shoved under his nose, just in case. Then he went back into Jim's room.

"Just about ready now, Jim. You'll be dying here pretty soon."

The edges of Jim's mouth stretched a little. "Goo…" he slurred out of a not-quite-cooperating mouth.

Willy took a glance out of the window as he had been doing periodically all afternoon. "Williams is coming. Better get myself bandaged up."

He hurried downstairs. Rollin and Cinnamon nearly had Rollin's makeup complete.

"Williams is coming. Barney'll stall him, but no telling how long. You better get upstairs with your sick husband, Cinnamon."

She gave him a quick grin, finished affixing Rollin's hair, grabbed as much as she could of the detritus of mask-making, and disappeared upstairs.


Barney was leaning against the car again. He'd stopped tormenting Williams a while ago. Suddenly he heard an exclamation from over at the garage and saw Williams coming over with a too-casual stroll. Just noticed it was past five, huh? He ducked into his car and turned the key so that it made a grinding sound. Earlier, when Williams had been thoroughly buried in some work or other, he'd opened up the hood and made a quick adjustment, the sort calculated to make noise but not do anything serious. He made the car grind unpleasantly several times. Williams had no choice but to come strolling over, or else he wouldn't look like the genial mechanic he made himself out to be.

"Y'all having trouble?"

"It won't start."

"Huh. I'll have a look at it. Say, how's that truck driver fella? How's he doing?"

It really had been a long time since Barney had taken Willy inside. "Getting stitched up. It was a really deep cut."

Williams nodded and went around to the front of the car, popped the hood. Barney got out and took a look with a blank expression.

"What do you think it could be?"

"I don't know. Might be the fuel pump. Lookit. Why don't you take it apart and check it?" He was a little too eager.

"I—uh—I just drive 'em. I don't' fix 'em."

Williams plunked his wrench into Barney's hand. "Well, I gotta get in there, check and see how that truck driver fella's doin. He's been in there a long time." And he marched away, and Barney couldn't stop him without blowing his cover.

A moment's thought, and he leaned down into the engine and activated the car horn. Williams started and swung back.

"I—uh—musta touched the wrong thing!" Barney called.

Williams shrugged and veritably ran into the house.