Unlike my hosts, he had the decency to let me get cleaned up and take me over to the Waffle Steak for breakfast as he questioned me.
It was less than an hour until lunchtime when I remembered that it was Thanksgiving Day. Using his phone-my battery was dead from use the night before-I called my family, told them I wasn't feeling too well, and was staying behind in Indiana. I apologized for not calling sooner. I did not mention my stolen car, my stitches, or my hijacker.
"What's this number you're calling from on the caller ID, Maggie?" my dad--currently obsessed with this new bit of technology--asked. "This area code looks like you're all the way up in Chicago."
"It's nothing, Dad," I told him. "Must be a crossed wire somewhere."
I didn't like lying to my parents. Especially not in front of a near-stranger, a police officer who was counting on my telling the truth in other matters. I didn't like it, but I liked it a lot better than coming clean about the entire incident, spoiling their dinner and inciting them to hop in the car and drive across country to see if they could help the situation. Which of course they couldn't.
"I'll tell them later," I felt compelled to say to Vecchio after I hung up.
"I don't blame you," he said. "It's not the greatest day to be dealing with crime."
His response and expression made me realize that he had probably pulled himself away from a family somewhere of his own to deal with me and the can of worms my incident seemed to have opened up.
He had driven down especially from Chicago to see me, and as he was taking Interstate 65 back north, the Shelbyville police asked if he would take me back to Battle Ground with him. It was on the way. I think they were relieved to be rid of me.
We rode for almost an hour in his classic Riviera without speaking, when he started to talk. I had been looking out the side window, my head propped on the seat, careful of my stitches, and for a moment I was sure he thought that I was asleep, and that he was talking to himself.
He told me the story, as he knew it, about Victoria, and the man in the hospital. He wasn't eloquent by any means, but I was curious enough not to mind. Turned out that she hadn't shot Ray's partner after all, but even so that didn't leave much to exonerate her.
I kept quiet, knowing that he wasn't really talking to me, he was just talking. His words seemed to cast a spell over us and around the car. There was almost no one on the highway, just us and the snowy cornfields, and the radio station playing so quietly I couldn't tell what type of music was even on. Occasionally we passed a silo, or a lonesome farm house.
We reached Battle Ground, the small town where I lived, by mid-afternoon. He didn't say anything, but I don't think it was as near to the interstate as the Shelbyville police had led Vecchio to believe. Neither of us had had any lunch, and when we turned onto Tippecanoe Run-knowing that very little would be open and serving lunch-I invited him in. He accepted, and we walked into the house.
He looked curiously at everything he saw, from the front porch swing to the wide expanse of yard and surrounding trees that kept my neighbors out of sight. And when the Saint (my St. Bernard) bounded down the stairs, pleased to see me back so soon, I felt the first urge to laugh since Victoria and I had been together. Vecchio put out his hand, which the Saint accepted with his usual friendly lick.
Almost nervously, Vecchio asked for directions to the bathroom. "You do have something indoors, right?"
"Yeah," I let his mild crack at country life go. "Upstairs and to the right. When you're done," I subtly teased, "be sure to pull the chain, and put the Sears and Roebuck back where you found it for the next person."
He looked a little leery at my suggestion, and I assured him, "a joke. Only a joke. But do shut the door when you leave. The Saint has an unnatural fascination with that particular room."
"Oh, yeah," he began to commiserate, "my sister used to have a dog that drank out of the toilet."
"No," I interrupted him, "it's the mirrors that he's fascinated with. If I don't keep the door shut, he stares at himself in the full length all day."
Vecchio's eyebrows showed his doubt.
"He's a little self-centered," I explained. "Naturally, he's a good looking dog, but I am trying to break him of it."
While Vecchio was upstairs, I tried to think of something for us to eat. Problem was, I had been planning to be gone almost a week, and the cupboards and refrigerator were bare. Someone was coming in to look after the Saint and feed him, so there was plenty of dry dog food but nothing for humans.
I quickly mixed up some powdered Country Time Lemonade, and added extra sugar to compensate for the fact that I was making something instant on the food god's holiday. Coupling that with a half a gallon of milk that I had been unable to make myself throw out before I left, we sat down to a dinner of Golden Grahams. It was a good meal.
"This place looks like something out of a book," he said. "Like Grandma's house in the song. Over the river, and all that."
"It is," I told him. "Not from the song, but it is my grandmother's house, all her things, really. I inherited when she died."
