Honeymoon for Three

CHAPTER 21

Gary and Penny were having breakfast in the hotel in Grant Village when a National Park Service employee in uniform, complete with the arrowhead shoulder patch and Smokey the Bear felt hat, came up to their table and introduced himself.

“I’m Roger Barth,” he said, shaking hands with them in turn. “Mind if I sit down?”

“Can you fill us in on what’s happening?” Gary asked.

“I’ll tell you what I know. The Ford Falcon that you found was stolen. The plates have been switched with another car.”

“Did you get Alfred?” Penny asked.

“Not yet. But we have reason to believe he was active last night.”

“What did he do?”

“Well, sometime after midnight when we checked your campsite, we saw that the tent was down. So we got out and investigated.”

“And?” Gary prompted when he paused.

“Well, it appeared that somebody had gone inside the tent.”

“A bear?”

“It wasn’t a bear. Did you leave a hunting knife in your tent?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so. And bears don’t use knives. Well, we found a knife inside the tent. We kept it for evidence, because there were slashes in the sleeping bag.”

Penny gasped and gripped Gary’s hand.

“So Alfred was there,” Gary said slowly. “And he tried to kill us. It’s a good thing-”

“The prints on the knife will be matched with the prints on the stolen car and a car found abandoned in Montana. That’s what I’ve been told. I believe you have a contact in Montana-a Detective Landon?”

“Yes,” Penny managed to say.

“Stay in touch with him. He’ll be able to tell you the results of the fingerprint tests. Meanwhile, I’ll drive you back to your campsite. You’re not planning to stay here another night, are you?”

“No,” Gary said. “We’re going on to the Tetons.”

“Good.”

“Where do you think Alfred is?” Penny asked. “Did he steal another car?”

“There haven’t been any car thefts reported in or around Yellowstone. Of course, we’re on the lookout for him.”

“Do you think he’s still in the campground?”

“If so, he must have had a cold night.”

That didn’t sound very comforting to Penny. They weren’t able to catch Alfred, even when they knew where he was, or at least where he had been. And Alfred was trying to kill them both. In spite of how much she was enjoying the beauty of Yellowstone, she was glad they were leaving.

The cold woke Alfred about the time the first rays of the morning sun penetrated the grove of pine trees in which he was sitting. He had never felt this miserable in his life. His joints were so stiff he didn’t know whether he could move at all. He also wasn’t sure whether the resulting pain would be worth the effort. It might have been better if he had frozen to death during the night. Unfortunately, it wasn’t that cold.

The good news, if it could be called such, was that he had almost no feeling in his hands and feet. At least they didn’t hurt. He pulled his hands out of his pockets and started exploratory movements of his fingers. He rubbed his hands together. Eventually his fingers started to tingle and then to ache. As other muscles grudgingly came into play, he found that he couldn’t stand. He had to spend a while on his knees before enough blood reached his feet to allow him to rise to the vertical position favored by humans.

He came out of the grove of trees and headed toward the nearest restroom, trying to look nonchalant, but his legs didn’t want to obey the instructions from his brain, and his gait was labored, as if he had a bad case of arthritis. He had read that walking on two legs was controlled falling. Not very comforting, but that’s certainly what he was doing now. The question was whether he could maintain control.

A few other campers were up and headed in the same direction. He attempted to unfreeze his frozen facial muscles enough to smile at them and say good morning. Of course, there was no hot water, so his hands remained ice cold when he washed them. He stumbled out of the restroom and realized that he had no place to go. Along with no food and no transportation. He could walk to the restaurant and eat breakfast. But then what?

He strolled at random along one of the primitive roads of the campground, trying to warm up and observing the early risers as they heated coffee on their Coleman stoves. He could use a cup of hot coffee right now. The hotter the better.

A white Volkswagen camper with a customized bubble-top was parked at one of the campsites. It had a California license plate. A middle-aged woman tended a stove, which was set on the wooden picnic table. She was cooking bacon in a frying pan. Alfred’s taste buds started to work overtime. He’d better get to the restaurant.

As he passed the camper, he saw a man crouched in front of the rear-mounted engine. The engine door was open, and he was fiddling with something on the engine itself. From his look of puzzlement, Alfred concluded that he probably didn’t know what he was doing.

“Having a problem?” Alfred asked in what he hoped was a friendly voice. His vocal cords had thawed to the point where he could speak almost normally.

“God damn engine has lost all its power,” the man said. “Never should have bought a Volkswagen. I had some work done a couple of days ago, before we came into the park. Haven’t been able to climb a hill at over twenty miles per hour since.”

“I might be able to help you. Want me to have a look at it?”

“Might as well. I sure as hell don’t know what the problem is.”

The man got out of the way, and Alfred crouched in front of the engine. He actually did know a little about engines, because his father was a decent amateur mechanic and had taught him how to change the oil and do other simple tasks. He had never looked at a VW engine before.

He didn’t want the man to notice his ineptness, so he said to him, “Why don’t you start ‘er up.”

The man, who had a two-day growth of beard and was wearing a cap with some sort of naval insignia on it, looked glad that he had something to do. He wasn’t big, but his movements exuded power through his jeans and flannel shirt. He strode to the cab, climbed in, and in a few seconds the engine was running.

Running, but not running very well. It sounded rough, as if it were under duress. Alfred peered at it, wishing he actually knew what he was doing. When the man stuck his head out of the doorway and looked back at Alfred in a questioning manner, Alfred yelled at him, “Rev it up.”

As the engine sped up, Alfred noticed something. There was a metal piece that moved and had a sort of hook on a spring attached to it, but the other end wasn’t attached to anything. Then he saw the eye it must go into. The problem might be a very simple one to resolve. He yelled at the man to shut off the engine. After the quiet returned, Alfred asked him whether he had a pair of pliers.

The man produced them from the vehicle’s toolkit. An idea was forming in Alfred’s mind. He couldn’t let the man see what he was doing. He took the pliers and said to him, “Be ready to start it up again when I give you the signal.”

The man returned to the cab. Alfred gripped the loose end of the spring with the pliers and fed it into the eye. Then he called for the man to start the engine. The difference was instantly noticeable. It sounded smoother. When it was revved up, it sounded even better. Alfred was sure that the problem was fixed. He was equally sure that he didn’t want to show the man what he had done.

When the man shut off the engine and returned to the rear of the VW, Alfred said, “I think that fixed your problem. Do you want to take it for a test run?”

“We’ll be leaving after breakfast. That will give us plenty of time to test it. Gotta be heading back home. Thanks for your help.”

Alfred was glad he didn’t ask what the problem was. “You live in California?”

“Northern California. Crescent City, near the Oregon border.”

The woman who had been cooking breakfast had come over to stand beside her husband. She heard the part about the engine being fixed. She was plump, but she didn’t have a bad figure. A kindly face and short, nondescript hair of an uncertain drab color. Probably in her forties. She wore a sweatshirt that said, “I survived the big one.”

Now she said, “Bless you if you’ve fixed the problem. Don is so mechanically inept, he couldn’t tie his shoes if instructions didn’t come with the laces. He thinks the solution to the world’s problems is duct tape.”

“Now, Mattie, don’t start in.” The man frowned and spoke sharply.

“Where’s your campsite?” Mattie asked Alfred.

“Uh, it’s funny you should mention that. I guess…I guess I no longer have a campsite.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Don asked.

“Well, my wife and I were camped down the road a bit. Last night we had a fight. This morning I went to the restroom. When I returned, she was gone. Lock, stock, camping equipment, everything. Just took the truck and drove off.”

“You poor thing,” Mattie said. “How long have you been married?”

“About a year. The first few months were fun, but it’s gone downhill from there.”

“Well, come and have breakfast with us. It’s the least we can do since you fixed our engine. Don’t just stand there, Don, give-”

“Alfred.”

“Give Alfred a cup of coffee.”

“Hell yes,” Don said. “Mattie makes the strongest coffee you ever tasted. Do you take it black or do you adulterate it?”

“Black.”

“Good. We’re going to get along fine.”

Although Gary had done some writing in his time, it had been mostly journalistic reporting, when he was in school, and technical writing, both for school and his job with IBM. Thus he had a hard time finding words to describe the beauty of the Tetons while writing in the log.

Words like beautiful and gorgeous didn’t fill the bill. He needed a new vocabulary to tell about the soaring, snow-covered peaks that rose above the meadows and lakes and were reflected in the mirror-like surface of blue water. Gently waving grasses and the ubiquitous pine trees completed the picture.

Grand Teton Mountain, at a little under 14,000 feet, was just one of a number of peaks that lined the horizon. Gary had climbed some mountains, including a 14,000 footer in Colorado, but you needed training and a guide to climb Grand Teton. It was dangerous, otherwise. He wasn’t sure he was ready for that.

“Wow,” was all he could say to Penny as they drove the loop road, stopping often to drink in the view.

“This is the way I picture a paradise like that described in Lost Horizon,” Penny said. “A place where you would be perfectly happy and where the cares of the world couldn’t penetrate.”

“That sounds good to me. May I quote you in the log?”

“Only if you give me attribution.”

Mattie knew how to cook. Bacon, eggs, and coffee had never tasted so good to Alfred. It beat his own cooking all to heck. He gathered from what they said during breakfast that they were outdoorsy people who actually enjoyed roughing it in a campground. Don worked in a lumber mill, and Mattie was a nurse in Crescent City. They didn’t have any children.

“Where do you call home?” Mattie finally asked Alfred.

He had been working on an answer to that question. “Los Angeles. We’ve got an apartment not far from the beach. Of course, I don’t know whether I’ll be welcome there when I get back. First I have to get back.”

“You’re a long way from home,” Don said.

“Yeah, and I don’t have a lot of money.”

“Well, you know what,” Mattie said. “If it would help, why don’t you ride along with us to Crescent City?”

Don said, “Mattie-” Don said.

“No, it makes sense. You can sleep on the top bunk. You can be our resident mechanic. If anything goes wrong with this crate, you can fix it. And it’s a lot easier to take a Greyhound bus from Crescent City to L.A. than it is from here.”

Don glowered into the distance, but he didn’t say anything.

“That’s a very kind offer,” Alfred said, “but I couldn’t possibly impose on you. I don’t know how I’ll do it, but I’ll find a way to get home.”

“Do you play backgammon?” Don asked.

He had played a little. At least he knew the rules. “Sure.”

“Okay, you can come with us. Mattie won’t play with me. She’s a good wife. Best cook I’ve ever known. And she’s a nurse-takes care of me when I’m sick. But she won’t play any damn games.”

“After taking care of patients and taking care of you, I’m too tired to play games.”

So that was settled. Alfred was elated. It had been easier than he had hoped. He knew that Penny and Gary were planning to drive down the coast, so they would be going through Crescent City. He would be their welcoming committee. There was another advantage to riding with Don and Mattie. It would ensure that he would make a clean getaway from here. There was no way his movements could be traced.

“Where are we going today?” Alfred asked after he had graciously accepted their invitation.

“We’re going to stay in the Tetons tonight,” Don said. “Most beautiful place in this whole fucked up world. And it’s on our way. Then we’ll hightail it home.”

Penny and Gary were eating dinner at their campsite in the Colter Bay Campground. A small black shrew played in the dirt nearby.

“Well, that’s the smallest mammal we’ve seen,” Gary said.

“Be sure to put that in the log.” Penny voiced the thought that had been worrying her more and more as bedtime approached. “Do you think we’ll be safe here?”

“I think so. The whole world’s looking for Alfred. How can he get away? If he steals a car, they’ll know who did it and figure he’ll be following us. The police have our route. They’ll keep him away from us. Maybe they’ve caught him already.”

Maybe, but somehow Penny didn’t think it was likely. He had given them the slip so far. He was smarter than she’d given him credit for, and he was certainly obsessed with her. Enough that he wanted to kill her because he couldn’t have her. He wanted to kill Gary, too, apparently because Gary did have her.

They had been shocked this morning when they saw the sleeping bag. The stuffing was coming out of the slits made by the knife that Alfred had wielded. What if they had been in the tent instead of the hotel? Penny shuddered at the thought. She didn’t hate Alfred. She was more puzzled by his actions than anything else. What had she done to lead him on? She had been nice to him in high school-but then she had been nice to everybody. She had barely seen him during the last six years.

She didn’t know whether she would sleep tonight. She had thought of asking Gary if they could stay at one of the lodges, but their supply of traveler’s checks was dwindling. She couldn’t go through life being afraid. Alfred couldn’t risk the noise of a gun, and he’d lost his knife. Even if he somehow found a way to get there, she knew the odds were stacked against him trying to attack them tonight. She was trying to think rationally, but rationality and emotion often didn’t see eye to eye.

She mentioned her fears to Gary.

“I’ll rig up some of our cups and utensils on a string and hang them from the front of the tent. If Alfred or anyone tries to get in they’ll hit each other and make a noise. We’ll hear it, and, hopefully, it’ll also scare him off.”

He also tied the back of the tent to a low tree branch, enabling him to free up a vertical tent post, which he placed inside the tent to use as a weapon. Penny felt a little better after seeing their defense system, which also included her screaming, if necessary, to arouse neighboring campers.

When they went to bed, Penny couldn’t feel the rips in the sleeping bag as long as she didn’t move, but she knew they were there. The first breeze started rattling the utensils. When she heard this, she started, but eventually she got used to the noise, and it became a comforting background sound, lulling her to sleep.

Alfred had to admit that the Tetons were beautiful. He took Don to be a crusty guy who didn’t show a lot of emotion, but that man enthused over them. Mattie obviously loved everything about the scenery, as well as campground life. She didn’t mind the dirt and cold water and problems with the weather. She would have made a good cave woman.

Alfred was alert when they pulled into the Colter Bay Campground. There was a very good possibility that Penny and Gary were camping here tonight. That is, unless they had been so scared by what happened last night that they had decided to stay indoors-or if the condition of the tent had completely freaked them out and they had abandoned their schedule and gone straight home.

If they did that, Alfred wouldn’t get another crack at them until he returned to L.A. He would like to know what their decision was, but he didn’t want them to see him. First, because they could identify him. He wouldn’t try anything at this campground, because he didn’t want to jeopardize his ticket out of here. He also wanted them to forget about him, as much as that was possible, so they wouldn’t be watching for him behind every tree. Then, when their paths did cross, the surprise factor would make it that much easier for him.

He spotted the green Volkswagen Beetle as Don drove the VW camper through the campground. The honeymooners had decided to tough it out. He was pleased to see that Don took a site far enough away from Penny and Gary’s that he should be able to steer clear of them. Still, he wanted to make sure. He was cautious when he used the restroom. He sat where he could check anybody coming from the direction of their campsite as Mattie served them a mouth watering steak dinner.

After dinner, he helped Mattie clean up the dishes, using water heated on the Coleman stove. Don had gone off to the restroom.

Mattie said, “Don believes that doing dishes is women’s work.”

“I need to do something to help. I’d like to help pay for the food, too.”

“Nonsense. I’m just glad to have the company and someone to talk to. Don has these moody spells when he doesn’t talk. Of course, he doesn’t say much even when he’s feeling tiptop. Not that I’m complaining. He’s a good husband in many ways.”

Don returned and got out the backgammon set. He asked Alfred whether he wanted to play at the picnic table or on the small table inside the camper. It was cooling off, but Alfred didn’t want to act like a wimp. He suspected that Don would be just as happy outdoors in the elements. There was another factor. If Gary and Penny should take a walk through the campground, they might spot him if he were outside and concentrating on the game. “Do you mind if we play inside?” he asked. “I get cold easily.” “No problem.”

They set up the board on the camper table. Mattie sat on the backseat of the camper and knitted. Don also sat on the backseat, in front of the table. Alfred sat on a small seat on the other side of the table that faced the rear of the camper. Don pulled a couple of cans of beer out of the camper’s tiny refrigerator and offered one to Alfred. Alfred had never drunk much, and the taste of beer didn’t appeal to him. However, he took it to be companionable and sipped the bitter-tasting brew occasionally.

He soon found out what he suspected-he was out of his league playing with Don. When Don suggested playing for small stakes he accepted. He figured that if he lost five dollars a night, it would keep Don interested. It would be a lot cheaper than traveling on his own.