a frown and gray eyes squinted, as if the Mercedes were an aquarium and I were the strangest fish that he had ever seen.
He was a handsome bull, I’ll give him that, even though his head was as big as a butcher’s block. Those singular eyes were not the shade of ashes, not dull but bright, almost silver, steel that flensed away the skin of deception and saw the guilt beneath.
“Do you know how fast you were going?” he asked, which I’ve heard is what they always ask, giving you the option of telling the truth and convicting yourself or lying to a cop and thereby further incriminating yourself.
I forgot that I was a mute, but before I could speak, Mrs. Fischer said, “Andy Shephorn, is that you?”
His dissecting stare cut from me to her—and softened from blade steel to velveteen rabbit. “Edie Fischer, as I live and breathe.” His smile seemed to be too full of teeth, all as large and white as piano keys. “What is it—four years?—and you don’t look a day older.”
“Because I look a decade older. How many children do you and Penny have now? Last I recall, it was five.”
“Seven,” he said, “but we intend to stop at eight.”
“Worried about your family’s carbon footprint?” she asked, and they both laughed.
Although the cop was leaning in my window, his face inches from mine, I seemed to have become invisible to him.
To Mrs. Fischer, he said, “Since the boomers didn’t bother to have enough kids to pay their Social Security for them, someone’s got to do it.”
“I’d love to see your children again—and the two new ones.”
“Come around anytime for dinner.”
“I’ll do that when this current little adventure is over.”
“Where’s Oscar—sleeping in back?”
“Dear, I’m afraid Oscar passed away four days ago.”
Tears welled in Andy Shephorn’s eyes. Proportioned to match his features, the tears seemed as large as grapes, and he was striving not to spill them.
Mrs. Fischer saw his distress and said, “Oh, dear, it wasn’t a grisly ending, not at all. Oscar and I were in a lovely restaurant. We’d had a divine dinner. He finished the last of his dessert, as good a crème brûlée as ever we’d tasted. As he put down the spoon, his eyes widened, and he said to me, ‘Oh, I think the time has come to say good-bye,’ and he slumped dead in his chair.”
Knuckling the tears out of his eyes, Shephorn said, “He was a fine man. Except for him, I’d never have met Penny.”
“He knew she was the perfect wife for you.”
I could smell the salt in his tears, I swear I could, and the spray starch in his uniform shirt, the scent of which was liberated by his body heat. The limo felt humid, a laundry on wheels.
“By the way,” Mrs. Fischer said, “this young man is my new chauffeur, Thomas.”
Officer Shephorn didn’t extend his grief-wet hand, which was almost twice the size of one of my hands. “I’m pleased to meet you, Tom.”
Pressed back in my seat to give his formidable head as much room as possible, I said, “Likewise, sir,” my voice miraculously restored to me, a mute no more.
“You’ve got big shoes to fill, Oscar’s shoes.”
“I’m aware, sir.”
“And you never will have a stroke of good fortune better than to find yourself under the wing of Edie Fischer.” Before I could reply, Shephorn said to my passenger, “Is Tom here smoothed out yet?”
“Not yet,” she said. “He’s only been with me less than an hour. And he’s not fully blue yet, either. But he’s far more blue and a lot smoother than anyone his age I’ve ever met. He’ll be fully blue and smooth in no time.”
“Good. That’s good. With the Oscar news, I’m almost afraid to ask—how’s Heathcliff?”
“Heath is still dead, dear.”
“But otherwise all right?”
“Oh, yes, he’s perfect. Listen, Andy dear, I’d love to chat all day, but we’re in something of a hurry.”
“Where do you need to be?” the cop asked.
She said, “Somewhere south of here, we don’t know where, but we’ll know the place when we get there.”
“Would you like a police escort? I can clear the way ahead of you, no problem.”
“You’re a sweetie,” Mrs. Fischer told him, “but this is a thing we have to do ourselves.”
“You always have been independent. But I guess that’s the way.”
“That’s the way,” Mrs. Fischer agreed.
When Andy Shephorn extracted his head from the driver’s window, fresh air rushed in as if a cork had been popped from a bottle. As he stepped aside, sunshine found me, and it felt good on my face.
I didn’t power up the window until we were on the highway once more, accelerating.
In the rearview mirror, Andy Shephorn stood where we had left him, looking after us. He didn’t actually raise his hand to his brow, but he seemed to be in the posture that accompanied a salute, as if my elderly passenger were a senior officer.
My psychic magnetism was engaged but not in high gear, the rhinestone cowboy lurking in the back of my mind, mostly a shadow, except for blue eyes that seemed to whirlpool like flushed water. While Mrs. Fischer and Officer Shephorn had been schmoozing, the trucker, would-be burner of helpless children, had opened a wider lead on us. Even at ninety miles an hour, we wouldn’t find him in the next few minutes. When we were closer to him, then I would need to focus more intently on the memory of his face.
I said, “How long have you known Officer Shephorn?”
“About eighteen years. We had a flat tire. That was another limousine. Oscar was seventy-four and entirely fit, but when Andy came along and saw the situation, he insisted that Oscar step aside and let him change the tire.”
“So in return, Oscar introduced him to his ideal mate?”
“Penny. She’s smart, pretty, ambitious, and loves kids. She has a degree in viniculture.”
“I’m ignorant.”
Mrs. Fischer patted my shoulder. “Child, you’re no such thing. No one can know every word in the language. Viniculture is the study of winemaking. Penny already had some land, some vines, when she met Andy Shephorn. Every year she—they—grow the place a little more, sell another hundred cases above what they sold last year. Soon it’ll be another four hundred, then another seven hundred. State police can retire after thirty years. Then he’ll work with her in the winery. By the time they turn the place over to their kids—nine, not the eight they’re planning—the
