She gave me directions for how to end up on top of the little bluff behind Stella’s.I memorized it all as best I could and told her I’d call her back if I got lost.Then I hung up the phone and concentrated on getting to where I was going.
Because it was late and the roads were mostly clear of traffic, it took less time than I’d thought.I drove into the apartment complex just as the dashboard clock clicked over to midnight, and made my way past the buildings, between the rows of cars parked tail ends out.Most everything was dark, but here and there was the glow of a window or the blue flicker of a TV.A woman with a small dog scurried in front of us and disappeared between two cars, over to a lighted staircase.Edwina pressed her snub nose against the inside of the passenger window and rumbled deep in her throat, but she didn’t bark.
“Good girl,” I told her.
She wagged her stubby tail and turned her attention toward the front as the car rolled slowly forward.
At the very end of the development, where the parking lot ended in a grassy lawn and then a line of scrubby trees, I found Rachel’s white car.She had found a parking space that wasn’t marked with a number for a unit, and had pulled into it.The space next to her wasn’t marked either, and I slotted the Lexus in there and turned off the engine.Silence descended.
Nothing moved.The lady with the dog had gone inside.The branches of the trees rustled a little as they scraped together.And there was the far-away hum of cars down below us, on Nolensville Road.
“Stay here,” I told Edwina and opened my door.“I’ll be back.”
She wagged and watched me get out.As soon as I’d shut the door, she jumped across the middle console into my seat and pressed her nose against that window while her pop eyes watched me walk the few feet to Rachel’s car and try the door handle.
The car was locked.I bent and peered through the window.
Empty, too.
I straightened again, and peered into the trees.She must have gone off already.
Nothing for me to do but follow, I guess.
I made my way across the grass, and straightened my shoulders before I plunged into the darkness between the trees.“Rachel?”
“Over here.”Her voice came from the right of me, and I changed direction and headed that way.After a few steps, I could see her huddled against the trunk of a tree near the edge of the bluff.
I picked my way over to her, careful to put my feet on solid ground.“How long have you been here?”
“Just a few minutes,” Rachel said.She gestured.“There’s nothing going on down there.People coming and going—mostly going—but nothing to see.”
I peered over the edge of the bluff down into the parking lot behind Stella’s.
As I’d surmised, we had a perfect view of the back door from up here.The only issue was the distance.Hard to get a good look at anything when you’re a football field’s width away and thirty feet above.
Luckily Rachel had remembered her binoculars, and I had transferred mine from the glove box in the turquoise convertible I used to drive to the glove box in the Lexus when I bought it.Those binoculars had come in handy when I was skulking around behind David and Jackie-with-a-q.Now they had a chance to be useful again.
I put them to my eyes and fiddled with the knob in the middle.The back door at Stella’s sprang into view as sharply as if I’d stood ten feet away.
There was nothing going on.The door was shut, and I didn’t see anyone moving around.The parking lot was about half full.The black sedan from earlier—at least I figured it had to be the same black sedan; it looked similar—was parked a few feet away.The rest of the cars were parked mostly around the front and sides of the building.
I counted.There were seventeen cars in the lot, including the sedan.I knew that one had had five people in it when it arrived.If the others had brought between one and four people each, we were looking at a crowd of sixty or so inside the club.
Time passed slowly.Cars went by down on the road, fewer and fewer of them the later it got.Slowly, the parking lot below us emptied out.We’d hear a burst of sound as the front door opened, and a second or two later, a person—or two or three—would scurry across the parking lot to a car, get in, and drive away.From where I was sitting, it looked like they were all male.
Rachel nodded when I said so.“Looks that way.”
“Makes me worry what those poor girls are doing in there.”
“I could tell you what I think,” Rachel said, “but I’d rather not.”
I’d rather she didn’t, either.
We sat in silence as the lot emptied out.When the last car but the black sedan had driven away, Rachel got to her feet and stretched.“If I go now, I can probably get down there before they leave.”
She probably could.It wasn’t a long drive.“Don’t you want to watch them come out?”
“I assumed you wanted to know where they’re going,” Rachel said.“That means one of us has to follow them.And I figured that would be me, since you wanted to be up here with the binoculars.”
