“But what about the Jeep we saw earlier at Bojangles’? You ran the plate and also located a traffic video of it traveling east on I-64 near Richmond yesterday, remember?” as if he might not. “It has a scrape on the right front bumper,” he doesn’t need me to remind him, and immediately I’m seeing a recording captured three hours earlier.
On Patch Road near a brewery, turning onto Pullman, the Cherokee heads in the direction of the Chesapeake Bay. This was soon after Lex and I had been sitting behind the damaged SUV in the drive-through line. Presumably, it’s driven by the woman wearing pearly nail polish, a black leather coat, and flashy silver rings similar to ones the hitman had on when I saw him dead inside his car.
The Cherokee weaves in and out of dark side streets, and moments later disappears into the labyrinth of the sprawling Dog Beach Marina & Villas apartment complex. It’s not far from Fort Monroe or the Point Comfort Inn, and I suggest that ART alert Fran immediately.
“She needs to send in units to check the area for what else might be back there,” I explain, reminded of the weird man inside the Hop-In when I drove past in the snow, thinking of Neva’s dead assassin and his rental boats.
“Would you like me to contact dispatch directly?” ART asks.
“No. We don’t want anything going out over the radio,” I remind him firmly. “We don’t know who else is listening, and whoever the driver of the Cherokee is, I worry she already knows we’re watching.”
“Copy,” ART updates Fran in a text I can see in my SPIES, and I’m close enough to home that I can make out the cobalt glow from my mom’s light pollution, her LED miniblues entwining and spangling anything that doesn’t move.
She keeps them up all year long, going into overdrive at Thanksgiving, arming herself with the electric topiary shears, strapping on a tool belt, dragging out the extension ladder or cranking up the cherry picker. Memories of my childhood are accompanied by the hydraulic sounds of her rolling around, extending and retracting the boom, raising and lowering the bucket.
Forever weaving strands of miniblues through trees, shrubs, around lampposts, pilings, fences, chimneys, and the nor’easter from earlier this week didn’t deter her in the slightest. She didn’t take down a single light that I can see as I turn into our long narrow driveway that Dad named Penny Lane. My headlights slash across his handmade sign, and it’s like I’m driving into Saint Elmo’s fire.
Mom’s space-themed topiary of sculpted bushes seems to have survived the storm overall but they’re not as pristine as when I drove through 4 days ago. The rocket is a bit of a wreck. The family of blue-faced extraterrestrials is badly shaken up like crash dummies when things don’t go as planned. The roundly pruned old boxwood that’s supposed to be Pluto looks more like a tumbleweed or an unraveling ball of indigo yarn.
All that’s missing are the inflatable Jetsons around the Christmas tree, Yoda as Santa, the Star Trek Enterprise. The winds for sure would have blasted them where no one’s gone before had Mom not opened their air valves, returning them safely to their boxes in the basement.
The unpaved road that leads to my family’s modest hamlet on the river hasn’t been plowed. But I can tell there’s been plenty of traffic. Dirty snow is rutted and sloppy, with a lot of muddy patches, loose rocks, and leftover autumn leaves that still have their color.
30
“CALL MOM, please,” I say to ART, reaching the gravel walkway bordered by sapphire pathway lights, her blue Subaru in front.
“Welcome home!” my mother says cheerily when she answers the phone, and either she hears me on the driveway or sees me on the security cameras.
“I’m going to clean up first, promise I’ll be quick,” I reply. “I’ve never felt so dirty and hungry in all my life,” and up ahead, Chase Place glitters like a blue starry universe, our old farmhouse on one side of the driveway, the big barn on the other.
Electric candles are in the windows, miniblues strung along the eaves, and wrapped around lampposts, fencing and the stump of our favorite tree that got struck by lightning. The boat dock is brightly outlined as if someone went after it with a blue neon crayon, and the zip line that slopes from the barn’s top floor to the river is lit up like an endless strand of sapphires.
Across the snowy garden is the tiny tin-roofed cottage where Fran lives with Easton and sometimes Tommy, and multicolored lights glow through the living room curtain. She’s always the first to put her tree up, no later than Thanksgiving, and when I was last here 4 days ago, I noticed the front door had an evergreen wreath with a big red bow.
Dad’s white Prius is in its usual spot near the illuminated pecan tree that’s regularly raided by the neighborhood squirrels he battles. That’s if you ask him, but if you ask the rest of us and truth be told? The spreading gnarled branches are as bare as bones. There’s nothing on them this time of year except strands of miniblues, and not a nut in sight (well, maybe one).
Defending his empire has become Dad’s major preoccupation, and he baits his shiny steel cage traps with whole pecans he expensively orders off the internet. On the rare occasion that he catches a bushy-tailed offender, off he goes in the car to release it far enough away that it won’t come back (supposedly).
Parking in front of the barn, I gather my belongings and the 42 shooting journals. I cradle poor Ranger the PONG, and he’s out like a light, not making a whimper. As I near the pedestrian door, motion sensors trigger the front light to blaze on, and since I was home last, the lock has been swapped for an electronic one. And I have no code or key.
“Ummm, how am I supposed to get in . . . ?” I deliberate out loud as I think, Oh shhhh . . . !
“Would you like to program a gesture for accessing locks on your property?” ART replies in my implanted earpiece, reminding me of my new abilities.
“Yes,” and with my thumb and index finger, I make the simple motion of turning a key in a lock.
Apparently, that will do fine, and with a quiet click I open the door, another light blinking on, the burglar alarm beeping. ART instructs me to use my WAND, and I point my right finger at the keypad. The alarm is silenced, and he turns on the downstairs lights without my asking.
“Welcome home,” he says what Mom always does. “If you point your WAND, you can reset the alarm,” and I do. “Thank you,” he responds to my surprise.