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Not that I could blame him.
“Sure thing,” Calvin said, and clapped Travis on the shoulder. “Just give me a few minutes, and then I’ll get you out of here.”
Travis shot him a relieved glance, then headed over to a large boulder on the side of the highway. He leaned up against it, hands jammed in his pockets, and stared, mouth drooping, at the wreckage of his vehicle.
Calvin walked over to me and said in an undertone, “You getting anything from all this?”
“You mean like what I felt down by the river?” I replied in a similar murmur.
He nodded. Across the way, Chief Lewis stared at us with narrowed eyes, but then his shoulders lifted, and he walked back over to his deputy, who’d been standing guard by the gurney next to an EMT the whole time. They shared a few words, and then the EMT and the deputy hefted the gurney into the back of the ambulance.
The slam of its doors seemed far too loud, and I jumped. Calvin gave me a sympathetic glance.
“Hell of a first date.”
“Is that what it was?”
A corner of his mouth lifted slightly. “Maybe. Can you come with me to Travis’s car?”
“Sure.”
I told myself I shouldn’t be feeling so happy, not when Athene Kappas lay dead a few yards away from me in the back of an ambulance. And maybe “happy” wasn’t even the correct word for the way I felt right then.
Excited…hopeful.
Calvin had called our dinner a date, not me.
We walked over to the wreckage of Travis’s Subaru. It had been pushed mostly onto the shoulder; flares surrounded it, letting passing motorists know to give the spot a wide berth. Not that there was probably much traffic coming and going on Highway 60 on a Sunday night, thankfully.
The car wasn’t brand-new, but it looked as though Travis did a good job of maintaining it, because the paint that wasn’t scratched and scraped looked clean, and the tires appeared fairly new as well. I felt a stab of pity for the poor thing ending up like this, because even my unpracticed eyes could tell the frame had been bent and the vehicle was totaled.
I didn’t think I made any kind of sound, but Calvin must have picked up something because he said, “Travis’s insurance will take care of most of it. He had to have it fully insured to be driving for Uber.”
“What about the deductible?” Somehow, I doubted Travis had an extra thousand bucks — or even five hundred — lying around to cover that sort of expense.
Calvin looked as though he wanted to reach out and give me a reassuring pat on the arm. Since we had something of an audience — Chief Lewis and his deputy still loitered on the scene, probably waiting for the tow truck to arrive — he just said, “Then Josie will organize some kind of a fundraiser. They do that in Globe. Take care of their own, I mean.”
Even though I was new to town and probably wouldn’t be classified as one of “their own”…at least not yet…I couldn’t help but be relieved by Calvin’s words. It felt good to be in a place where people looked out for each other.
“That’s good to hear,” I said.
“Not much like L.A., I’m guessing.”
“Not a lot, no.” It wasn’t that people didn’t try to look out for one another when they could, but just being neighbors usually wasn’t enough of an incentive to get involved the way it obviously was in this particular small town.
Far down the highway appeared a set of flashing lights, getting closer. Calvin glanced over at them and frowned.
“The tow truck,” he said briefly. “We need to get on this.”
The way he said “we” heartened me, although at the same time, I couldn’t help experiencing just a twinge of worry. It seemed as if he now wanted to include me as an informal member of his team.
I had to hope I wouldn’t disappoint him.
As he walked around the vehicle, snapping a series of images with his phone, I stayed off to one side. The strobing lights from the ambulance and the various cop cars didn’t do much to help my concentration, although I tried to ignore them as best I could.
I had to focus.
At first, I didn’t feel anything at all, except a certain jangly energy I guessed came from Calvin and probably Travis, who stood only a few yards away from us. Beneath that, though, there came a dark, creeping sensation, sort of like the world’s worst goosebumps marching a parade down my spine.
