False Memory

Dusty fell silent at once, but now in spite of the hoofbeat thunder of Martie’s own galloping heart, she realized the car was idling. Clock-work engine. Heavy, damping muffler: just a soft, low whump-whump-whump.

Nevertheless, there was enough noise to mask any sounds Kevin might make if he was lying, wounded, in the car.

Wiping laces of snow off her eyelashes, she rose slightly from her crouch, squinting, and saw that the front door on the passenger’s side of the BMW was open. She hadn’t noticed it before. Whether wounded or not, Kevin was out of the car and on the move.

Arriving at Green Acres well ahead of the unsuspecting Jennifer and the two idiot nephews of Miss Jane Marple, Dr. Ahriman went into the restaurant to select a takeout snack to curb his appetite until dinner, which he would most likely have to postpone until late this evening, depending on events.

The corn-pone decor stunned his sensibilities, and he felt as though someone had rapped a shiny steel reflex hammer lightly against the exposed surface of the frontal lobe of his cerebrum. Oak-plank flooring. Country-plaid fabrics. Striped gingham curtains. Horrid stained-glass depictions of wheat sheaves, ears of corn, green beans, carrots, broccoli, and other examples of Mother Nature’s vast bounty separated one booth from another. When he saw the waitresses wearing blue-denim, bib-style culottes and red-and-white checkered shirts, with small straw hats barely larger than skullcaps, he nearly fled.

He stood by the cashier’s station, reading the menu, which he found more gruesome than any set of autopsy photographs he had ever perused. He would have thought that a restaurant offering such grim fare must go bankrupt in a month, but even at this early hour, the place had business. Diners were stuffing their flushed faces with enormous green salads glistening with yogurt dressing, steaming bowls of meatless soup, egg-white omelets with stacks of dry cracked-wheat toast, veggie burgers as appetizing as peat moss, and gloppy masses of tofu-potato casserole.

Appalled, he wanted to ask the hostess why the restaurant didn’t carry this insane theme one step further, to its logical fulfillment. Simply line the customers up at a trough or scatter their meals on the floor and allow them to graze barefoot at their leisure, baaing and mooing as they pleased.

Preferring to be ravaged by hunger rather than to eat anything on this menu, the doctor hopefully turned his attention to the big, individually wrapped cookies displayed near the cash register. A hand-lettered sign proudly proclaimed that they were HOMEMADE AND WHOLESOME. Rhubarb-apple crisps. No. Bean-nut butter macaroons. No. Sweet carrot gingersnaps. No. He was so excited by the very sight of the fourth and last variety that he had his wallet out of his pocket before he realized they were not chocolate-chip cookies but were made instead of carob morsels, goat’s milk, and rye flour.

“We have this one other” the hostess said, sheepishly producing a basket of cellophane-wrapped cookies that had been hidden behind a display of dried fruit. “They don’t sell very well. We’re going to stop carrying them.” She held the basket at arm’s length, blushing as though she were pushing pornographic videos. “Chocolate-coconut bars.”

“Real chocolate, real coconut?” he asked suspiciously.

“Yes, but I assure you — no butter, margarine, or hydrogenated vegetable shortening.”

“Nevertheless, I’ll take them all,” he said.

“But there are nine here.”

“Yes, fine, all nine,” he said, scattering money on the counter in his haste to make the purchase. “And a bottle of apple juice if that’s the best you’ve got.”

The chocolate-coconut bars were three dollars apiece, but the hostess was so relieved to be shed of them that she let the doctor have all nine for eighteen dollars, and he returned to his El Camino more exuberant than he could have imagined being only moments ago.

Ahriman had positioned himself so that he enjoyed a clear view of both the entrance to the parking lot and the front door of Green Acres. He was settled behind the wheel, slumped in his seat, working on the second cookie, when Jennifer strode out of the rapidly fading afternoon.

Her stride was as quick and impressively long as it had been at the start of her trek, and her arms swung with undiminished vigor. Her ponytail bounced cheerily. Looking as though she had not raised the slightest sweat, she churned toward Green Acres, shiny-eyed and clearly eager to sit down to the finest of fodder and slops.