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  The two hundred bucks or so she had left could have been substantially less.

  Still, two hundred wouldn’t last long.

  Even if she shoplifted some of the items she’d need, it would be gone within a couple of days.

  Her options were limited.

  She could head up to Atlanta, but she’d worn out her welcome last time she was there and wouldn’t find any old friends to help her.

  Panama City was another option, but the cops knew her only too well there and wouldn’t cut her any slack.

  Plus, she didn’t know enough about the streets in Panama City during the off-season to make any money. She’d only been there during spring break, staying with friends and relieving college kids of their parents’ hard-earned cash.

  Spring break was months away.

  Or months past, depending on how one wanted to look at it.

  And her friends were locked up, often as not.

  If she diverted to Panama City and couldn’t find them, she’d use too much money to get her back to Ohio.

  No, like it or not, she’d have to make her way back to Toledo.

  And this time she wouldn’t be able to contact Bob.

  For Bob was the only one who could have pointed the men in black toward Orlando.

  She’d never told her sister she was headed for Orlando to work as a maid.

  She’d never told any of her other friends, as far as she could remember.

  She’d only told Bob.

  She cursed him and swore she’d never see him or trust him again.

  Just like she’d said half a dozen times before.

  She took the West Kaley exit and followed the road to Orange Blossom Trail.

  It wasn’t until she was four short blocks from her sitter’s house that she panicked.

  Maybe it wasn’t Bob who’d told Rebecca’s men about the maid job.

  Maybe it was her roommate.

  Maybe she also told them where the baby was.

  When she turned onto 24th Street she held her breath.

  There were no Crown Vics anywhere in sight.

  No panel vans either.

  She let out one breath and drew in another.

  So far so good. But she wasn’t free and clear just yet.

  She parked against traffic, hoping against hope a local cop wouldn’t come along and ticket her for it.

  She ran up the steps to the house, knocked once and walked in.

  The sitter was a bit surprised at Marilyn’s impatience, but had just finished changing the baby and was preparing to feed him.

  “I’ll feed him. I’m kinda in a hurry.”

  The woman had dealt with shady characters like Marilyn before.

  She asked no questions, made no demands.

  She merely handed over the baby.

  Marilyn grabbed the diaper bag and flew out the door, saying, “See ya later,” over her shoulder.

  The nanny suspected she’d never see Marilyn again.

  It was a good thing she’d paid for the whole week in advance.

  Chapter 7

  Marilyn and Samson, AKA Jacob, weren’t the only ones making a road trip.

  Darrell and Rocki were filling up the tank of their Winnebago Minnie just outside of Pruitt, New Mexico.

  Rocki stepped out of the RV as Darrell removed the gas cap.

  “I’m gonna grab a case of water and some potato chips. You want anything?”

  “See if they have any ibuprofen, will you? Driving into that sun is starting to give me a headache.”

  “Want me to drive for awhile?”

  “No, I’d rather suffer through the headache, but thanks anyway.”

  She walked into the Historic Route 66 Travel Center and couldn’t resist the urge to ask a woman stocking the shelves.

  “How come everything along Route 66 has historic in front of its name?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you guys are the Historic Route 66 Travel Center. We just passed the Historic Route 66 Motor Lodge and the Historic Route 66 Roadside Museum.

  “I was just wondering if anyplace was just the Route 66 this or that, instead of being historic.”

  The woman seemed a bit irked, as though Rocki were making fun of their name.

  “I don’t know, honey. That’s just the way it is, I guess.”

  Actually, Rocki meant nothing by it. She was just curious and thought it was a valid question.

  She thanked the woman and went about her shopping.

  At the checkout counter she grabbed a stick of beef jerky.

  Not for her, and certainly not for Darrell.

  No, this was for Penny.

  Penny Fourpaws was the roly-poly dachshund waiting patiently inside the RV.

  Actually, “patiently” is a very subjective word.

  As she exited the vehicle Rocki told Penny she’d be back with a snack for her and the dog had been in the passenger seat, looking out the window, tail wagging at forty knots an hour, every second since.

  People think dogs are dumb, but they’re actually very smart.

  Smarter than many humans.

  Smart enough to understand the English language, even though they have no ability to speak it.

  Okay, not all of it.

  But every dog, given a bit of time, learns to recognize certain words. Words like “outside?” “Eat.” “Go for a walk.” And unfortunately, “Vet.”

  The words “snack” or “treat” immediately send a dog into hyperactivity mode.

  Such mode continues until they are awarded something delectable.

  Failure to provide a yummy snack after promising to do so constitutes a severe betrayal of trust and ensures a dog will never believe his or her human again.

  Penny loved beef jerky because… well, because it was beef jerky.

  She deserved it because… well, because her humans were slightly nuts and because she had to tolerate them twenty four seven, locked up with them in a rolling tin can.

  She had to listen to them constantly debating the most inane things.

  Like, for the last twenty miles before they got to Pruitt, Darrell’s contention that dogs loved their humans way more than their humans loved their dogs.

  “How so?” Rocki argued. “I’ll have you know that I love Penny Fourpaws way more than I love you.”

  “Oh, I already knew that,” Darrell retorted. “But let me finish.”

  “Only if you must.”

  “Oh, I must. I must.

  “The point I was trying to make is that we are made of meat, you and I. It’s a rather simplistic way of describing living, breathing human beings. But it’s absolutely true.”

  “Okay. I’ll play along with your silly argument. So what?”

  “I’ll tell you so what. Even though we are made of meat, our dogs will never eat us. No matter how much they love meat and no matter how defenseless we are compared to most other animals because we have neither claws nor fangs.

  “I mean, they’ll kill a cat, but a cat has a means to resist that we don’t have.

  “They’ll kill a rabbit, but a rabbit has a means to resist that we don’t have.

  “They’ll even kill raccoons and possums and bobcats. They’ll get pretty beat up in the process, but they’ll kill them and eat them. But they won’t kill and eat a human.

  “Do you know why that is?”

  “No. And I can’t wait for you to tell me, oh wise one.”

  “Oh wise one. I like that.”

  “I was being sarcastic.”

  “I know.”

  “So are you gonna tell me or not?”

  “Tell you what? I forgot what I was arguing about.”

  “You were going to extremely great lengths to explain why a dog will not eat his human.”

  “Oh yeah. It’s because a dog is more loyal to his human than his human is to the dog.

  “In some cultures it is perfectly acceptable to eat a dog. And in some cultures families raise a family dog until it is jui
cy and plump just so they can butcher and devour it.

  “A dog would never do that to a human.”

  “So what’s your point?”

  “That dogs are more loyal than humans. And that makes them better than humans.”

  “You know what really makes them better than humans?”

  “What?”

  “They don’t jabber on and on about the stupidest things.”

  Darrell, for a change, got the point.

  He stopped talking for a minute or two.

  Then he asked, as he pulled up to the gas pumps at the Historic Route 66 Travel Center, “Do you really love Penny Fourpaws more than you love me?”

  Penny laid her long nose upon the floor of the RV and placed her paw over it.

  She hoped beyond hope they’d find something else to talk about when they got back on the road.

  The door opened and the pair reentered.

  Rocki tore open the package of jerky and gave Penny her treat, which she lugged to the back of the vehicle.

  It dragged the floor every step of the way but she didn’t care.

  In the sleeper cabin she used the small steps Darrell made her to climb atop the bed and curled up in the center.

  There she chewed happily away, glad she was no longer a part of whatever insane conversation her walking talking pieces of meat would enter into next.

  The trio was going to stop for the night at a campsite just east of Gallup, New Mexico.

  The next morning, at nine a.m., they were to meet a man for breakfast.

  In exchange for their buying him an Egg McMuffin and hash browns he’d promised to regale them with an intriguing tale of annual visits he received from the ghost of Pancho Villa.

  On the roof of his house.

  At five p.m. sharp on Cinco de Mayo.

  And he claimed to have video evidence.

  Chapter 8

  They stayed the night at a KOA campground just outside of Gallup.

  Not because they had to, necessarily. Their RV was completely self-contained, with a kitchen and bathroom facilities. It even sported a shower large enough for Darrell to stand up in.

  They could have pulled over to the side of the highway or found an abandoned gas station to park for the night.

  Route 66 was full of abandoned businesses from the 1950s.

  When Interstate 40 was built on top of America’s most famous highway most of the businesses went bankrupt. Cars were moving faster then, and Eisenhower’s interstate system made it possible to cross several states in a single day.

  A highway trip ceased to be an adventure, and became simply a means of getting from one place to another.

  There were plenty of places they could have stopped for the night, sure.

  But they loved stopping at campgrounds two or three nights a week for something they couldn’t get at an abandoned Shamrock station or the ruins of a roadside rattlesnake attraction.

  Camaraderie. Human interaction.

  Most people don’t know it but RVers, or those who travel full time across the country by recreational vehicle, are a breed of their own.

  They’re modern nomads who live on the road and love it.

  They’ve got their own habits, their own traditions and customs.

  To a certain extent they’ve even got their own language. Anyone who doesn’t understand the difference between gray and black water or the difference between a “puller” and a “pusher” hasn’t spent a lot of time roading in an RV.

  And that’s okay. It’s not for everybody.

  It does have its drawbacks.

  There are some sections of road in the United States which are desolate and boring… and which go on for hundreds of miles.

  And breaking down a hundred miles from the nearest town is nobody’s idea of fun.

  But there are a lot of good times too.

  Only one thing can beat the beauty of a desert sunset.

  And that’s the beauty of a desert sunrise.

  RVers tend to be outgoing and friendly. They greet every other RVer as they would a long-lost friend.

  And if one RVs long enough to start bumping into the same people over and over again, they’re just that: they really are friends who haven’t crossed paths in awhile.

  Modern-day highway nomads love pulling into a campground an hour or two before sunset.

  They watch out for any other rigs which might look familiar.

  They hook up knowing that before long someone from an adjacent space will walk over, a couple of bottles of beer in hand, to greet them and ask where they’re from.

  Originally as well as recently.

  In warm weather, someone always has a barbeque grill fired up, and always has extra dogs and burgers cooking for unexpected guests.

  And frequently newfound friends sit around mosquito coils and camp lights, sharing drinks and road stories long into the night.

  Rocki and Darrell stayed at such places just to see old friends and make new ones.

  And invariably they parted with additional Facebook friends, new phone numbers and new promises to stay in touch.

  They also left with new leads.

  They always made a point to tell their new friends they were full time writers who traveled the highways collecting first-hand stories.

  “What kind of stories?” was invariably the response.

  “Oh, all kinds. Right now we’re working on a book of first-hand ghost stories. We’ve also got a book half written about UFO encounters. And a third about Americana. Road stories, stories about growing up here and there.

  “Basically if we find a story fascinating, and we think our readers will find it fascinating too, we’ll find a place in one of our books for it.”

  “And you publish the books to finance your travels?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Interesting. But what about your family?”

  “Oh, they travel with us as much as they can. Anytime the grandchildren are out of school we swing by and pick some of them up.

  “When they get tired of traveling we take them home and get some others.”

  “You know, I’ve got a cousin in Salt Lake City who saw a UFO last summer.”

  “Would you mind calling him and asking if he’d be willing to share his story? We’ll be passing by Salt Lake City in a couple of weeks.”

  “Sure. I’ll check with him.”

  “Oh,” someone else might say. “I’ve got a friend in Boise who says ghosts live in his attic. Sometimes they come downstairs at night and move things around.”

  “We’d love to talk to him too.”

  On this particular night, as Penny Fourpaws’ stomach was churning a bit from the seasoning on her beef jerky, Rocki and Darrell garnered four new leads for stories.

  And they made six new friends.

  Most they’d never cross paths with again.

  Most they’d eventually lose touch with.

  A few others would remain lifelong friends.

  The nomadic way of life wasn’t for everyone.

  But it suited these three just fine.

  Chapter 9

  Rocki and Darrell met a man named John Rodriguez at a McDonald’s in Gallup.

  They were a bit unsure of the tale he’d spread around to all his relatives and friends.

  Still, though, it was an interesting story.

  “Do I get any royalties from your book?” he asked with a sly smile.

  “Sorry, we don’t work that way.” Rocki explained. “We expect to have over a hundred contributors. If we paid them each a piece of the royalties there would be none left.”

  Darrell added, “Besides, these books typically aren’t best sellers. They typically just pay enough to cover our expenses.”

  Rodriguez smiled again.

  “Well, you can’t blame a guy for trying.”

  “No, certainly not. And we’ll buy your lunch in exchange for your story.”

  “I guess that’s not a bad deal. I’ve shared it with a lot of other p
eople and they’ve never bought me lunch.”

  “Tell us about Pancho Villa’s ghost. Why does he visit you, of all the people in the world? And why on Cinco de Mayo, of all days?”

  “I can’t say for sure why he chooses me. According to legend I am a distant cousin of his on my mother’s side. I don’t know for sure, though, because my family’s records were all destroyed in a fire in Durango, in old Mexico.

  “That’s where he was from too, Durango. Pancho Villa, I mean.”

  Rocki asked, “But why would he visit with you on Mexican Independence Day?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe to celebrate his victory or something.”

  “But Cinco de Mayo celebrates the Mexican victory over the French in 1862. Pancho Villa wasn’t even born until 1878.”

  “Hey, I don’t know. I wasn’t born until 1980 and I celebrate it. Why wouldn’t he?”

  “How does he appear to you, exactly?”

  “It’s always in the late afternoon. Right around sunset. I’m usually sitting on my couch with my friends and we’ve been drinking tequila and celebrating. And then all of a sudden I hear him.”

  “What is he saying?”

  “He’s yelling ‘Hurra Mexico’ or ‘Viva Mexico.’ He goes back and forth between the two. And he fires his pistola a lot too.”

  “What do your friends think of him?”

  “Oh, they can’t see him. Only I can. I think he only reveals himself to me because we’re related.”

  Rocki looked at Darrell as she kicked him beneath the table.

  He raised an eyebrow in agreement that this guy was a bit nuts.

  He noticed their skepticism and pleaded his case.

  “For real. I know it sounds crazy and you don’t believe me. But I have video to prove it.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Seriously. I brought it with me.”

  He reached into his pocket and produced a thumb drive.

  “It’s not real good quality. I mean, it was shot right around sundown and it’s kinda dark.”

  Rocki wanted to walk away, but Darrell’s curiosity got the best of him.

  And they’d brought their laptop into the restaurant to take notes.

  “It’ll just take a minute,” he said to Rocki and plugged it into the computer.

  He ran a quick virus scan on the drive, then played the single file that was on it.