Full Dark, No Stars

Tess drifted off, lying on her bed in a bar of sunlight.

- 22 -

The telephone was ringing far away, in some adjacent universe. Then it stopped and Tess heard her own voice, the pleasantly impersonal recording that started You have reached… This was followed by someone leaving a message. A woman. By the time Tess struggled back to wakefulness, the caller had clicked off.

She looked at the clock on the night table and saw it was quarter to ten. She’d slept another two hours. For a moment she was alarmed: maybe she’d suffered a concussion or a fracture after all. Then she relaxed. She’d had a lot of exercise the previous night. Much of it had been extremely unpleasant, but exercise was exercise. Falling asleep again was natural. She might even take another nap this afternoon (another shower for sure), but she had an errand to run first. A responsibility to fulfill.

She put on a long tweed skirt and a turtleneck that was actually too big for her; it lapped the underside of her chin. That was fine with Tess. She had applied concealer to the bruise on her cheek. It didn’t cover it completely, nor would even her biggest pair of sunglasses completely obscure her black eyes (the swollen lips were a lost cause), but the makeup helped, just the same. The very act of applying it made her feel more anchored in her life. More in charge.

Downstairs, she pushed the Play button on her answering machine, thinking the call had probably been from Ramona Norville, doing the obligatory day-after follow-up: we had fun, hope you had fun, the feedback was great, please come again (not bloody likely), blah-blah-blah. But it wasn’t Ramona. The message was from a woman who identified herself as Betsy Neal. She said she was calling from The Stagger Inn.

“As part of our effort to discourage drinking and driving, our policy is to courtesy—call people who leave their cars in our lot after closing,” Betsy Neal said. “Your Ford Expedition, Connecticut license plate 775 NSD, will be available for pickup until five PM this evening. After five it will be towed to Excellent Auto Repair, 1500 John Higgins Road, North Colewich, at your expense. Please note that we don’t have your keys, ma’am. You must have taken them with you.” Betsy Neal paused. “We have other property of yours, so please come to the office. Remember that I’ll need to see some ID. Thank you and have a nice day.”

Tess sat down on her sofa and laughed. Before listening to the Neal woman’s canned speech, she had been planning to drive her Expedition to the mall. She didn’t have her purse, she didn’t have her key-ring, she didn’t have her damn car, but she had still planned to just walk out to the driveway, climb in, and She sat back against the cushion, whooping and pounding a fist on her thigh. Fritzy was under the easy chair on the other side of the room, looking at her as if she were mad. We’re all mad here, so have another cup of tea, she thought, and laughed harder than ever.

When she finally stopped (only it felt more like running down), she played the message again. This time what she focused on was the Neal woman saying they had other property of hers. Her purse? Perhaps even her diamond earrings? But that would be too good to be true. Wouldn’t it?

Arriving at The Stagger Inn in a black car from Royal Limo might be a little too memorable, so she called Stoke Village Taxi. The dispatcher said they’d be glad to run her out to what he called “The Stagger” for a flat fifty-dollar fee. “Sorry to charge you so much,” he said, “but the driver’s got to come back empty.”

“How do you know that?” Tess asked, bemused.

“Left your car, right? Happens all the time, specially on weekends. Although we also get calls after karaoke nights. Your cab’ll be there in fifteen minutes or less.”

Tess ate a Pop-Tart (swallowing hurt, but she had lost her first try at breakfast and was hungry), then stood at the living-room window, watching for the taxi and bouncing her spare Expedition key on her palm. She decided on a change of plan. Never mind Stoke Village Mall; once she’d collected her car (and whatever other property Betsy Neal was holding), she would drive the half a mile or so to the Gas & Dash and call the police from there.

It seemed only fitting.

- 23 -

When her cab turned onto Stagg Road, Tess’s pulse began to rise. By the time they reached The Stagger Inn, it was flying along at what felt like a hundred and thirty beats a minute. The cabbie must have seen something in his rearview mirror… or maybe it was just the visible signs of the beating that prompted his question.

“Everything okay, ma’am?”

“Peachy,” she said. “It’s just that I didn’t plan on coming back here this morning.”

“Few do,” the cabbie said. He was sucking on a toothpick, which made a slow and philosophical journey from one side of his mouth to the other. “They got your keys, I suppose? Left em with the bartender?”