“Well, I hope you’re satis—” I started to say.
Abner didn’t let me finish. He hit me in the back of the head with a porcelain water bowl, the room’s only accoutrement. A turn-of-the-century artifact, it shattered, lessening its impact on my skull, but spraying sharp pieces into the air.
I turned, swiftly, my head sore and starting to bleed. Abner ducked from the shards zinging past his own face. This made him lose his balance; I didn’t even have to push him to the floor.
He landed on his plastic bag, the tape both breaking his fall and punching him in the stomach. I stood over him, wincing from pain, relieved that he was beating himself up.
Instinctively, Abner rolled off the object stuck in his solar plexus, exposing the bag and the cassette inside. I reached down to pull it toward me. But Abner kicked it away before I could.
The tape went sailing under the vintage bed, hitting the wall it stood against. Like the steel ball in pinball, it immediately ricocheted back into the room.
“Good going,” I said, rubbing my head.
Again, I bent to retrieve the tape. But, still flat on his back, Abner kicked it again, now sending it sliding near an ancient chest of drawers.
“You’re going to break it!” I said.
“If I can’t have it, nobody will!”
Abner sounded like the crazy villain in an old sci-fi serial. Still wincing, I laughed as I stooped to get the tape.
I didn’t laugh for long.
With both feet, Abner got me in a scissors hold around my ankles. Shifting suddenly, he snapped me toward the floor. I grabbed hold of the old dresser, but it was a bad idea. The shaky furnishing crashed down with me.
The wooden chest headed directly for the prone Abner. He rolled away at the last minute, and it smashed onto the floor, directly between us. I heard a hundred years’ worth of wood crunch and collapse. I was only glad the maid wasn’t alive to see it.
Now Abner was an old Western villain. He leaned up over the chest to see me, using it like a barricade in a barroom gunfight. I jabbed a fist at him, but he darted back behind it. I waited to see his face again. In a second, he reappeared. I punched again; he dodged.
“Abner,” I said, “this is getting ridiculous.”
So I directed my attention elsewhere.
The tape was lying past our feet, as if it had fled to safety from the falling chest. I didn’t know whether, preoccupied with me, Abner had noticed.
If I scrunched down too low to be seen, using the dresser as a shield, I might be able to crawl and reach it. Then I could stand, run, and hit the door before Abner.
I flipped slowly around, so my head was pointing toward the cassette. Crawling like a soldier, all elbows and knees, I began my silent journey toward it. I might have made it, too.
Except that Abner had the same idea.
I met him there, both our heads poking out beyond the chest at the same time. Our eyes locked. Then our hands began to reach.
The tape was achingly beyond our grasp. Our fingers strained to touch it. The digits were like little tired runners, trying to cross a finish line. We were equally determined, neither one falling away.
But only one of us had recently had surgery.
“Oh, no!” Abner said and stopped. “My staples!”
I kept reaching. In one second, Clown was mine.
But I didn’t even have time to celebrate.
“What’s going on in here?”
Both of us looked up. The security guard was standing in the doorway.
I LEFT HIM TO ABNER.
One look at the fake gun on the floor froze the guy where he was. Holding the tape protectively, I scooted past him and out the door. I only caught a brief glimpse of the guard waving at me, threateningly, with his flashlight.
By the time Abner found his feet, I figured, I’d be safely out the front door. But once I’d accomplished that—escaping through the main entrance right as the CLOSED sign was being posted—I had another problem. What to do now?
A local sheriff’s car stood in the mansion driveway. A traumatized tourist was recounting his ordeal—Stanley and the ledge—to a bemused cop. I took a deep breath. I slowed my pace and ambled like a normal guest, albeit a sweaty and bleeding one. I made it by before anyone could ask a question.
Then I walked a little faster. I saw another vehicle parked a few feet away. It had been waiting.
“Just so you know, I’m not taking you to New York,” Annabelle said, starting her truck.
“That’s okay,” I said, sitting again amid her buns. “The bus station will be fine.”
—
I had considered asking if Annabelle might offer me a hayloft, or a hammock, or wherever rural people slept. But getting back had to be my priority. The overnight bus ride would give me time, at last, to relax.
Once onboard, any relief that having the Clown afforded me was shortlived. I had bought the next day’s Times and opened it to the Metro section.
ASSISTANT SOUGHT IN ACTOR’S MURDER
