Why Isn't Becky Twitchell Dead? Read Online Free Page B

if you’d talk to them. See if you can find anything out.
    I told him I’d give it a try.
    Mrs. Trask drove me home. I assured her that I’d help Jeff. When she stopped to let me out, she reached over and gave me an awkward hug. I told her I would talk to her the next day.
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    I strolled between icy patches to the mailbox at the edge of the road. I could see Scott’s car up the driveway fifty feet, next to the house.
    Moonlight reflected off the windows of a car parked a hundred yards past my place. Cold night for kids to be out necking, I thought. The car’s lights flicked on. I pulled open the mailbox: bills and junk mail. The car moved forward. Our arrival probably scared them off. Kids like to use the unlighted roads around my place for trysting. As long as they don’t leave beer cans, used condoms, and other signs of teenage activity, I don’t care. Usually, they drive past my place to the dimmer shadows of the cul de sac formed by the intersection with Interstate 80, a mile farther down my road.
    The car shot forward. I eased a little farther off the pavement
toward the mailbox. The car lights came straight at me and didn’t slow down. I turned to dive for the ditch at the side of the road. My feet caught on an icy patch; I slipped, fell, scrambled to move. The oncoming lights blinded me for an instant. On hands and knees, I lurched toward the ditch. I couldn’t get a grip because of the ice.

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    Horn blaring, engine roaring, the car flew by me. I’m still not sure how it missed. I got up, brushed myself off, and swore at the goddamn teenagers. The red taillights bobbed in the distance. I saw the car turn onto 183rd Street and race toward LaGrange Road. By the time I got in the house, found Scott’s keys, and gave chase, it would have been too late.
    Except for a couple scrapes on my hands, I wasn’t hurt. The incident shook me a little. It had to be an innocent accident, I thought, hoped. A couple kids surprised necking or drinking beer, getting a little revenge. I tried to shrug it off. But the driver had long blond hair, and for an instant, although I couldn’t testify to it, I thought it might have been Becky Twitchell. As I walked up the driveway, I decided I was paranoid.
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    I live in a farmhouse in the middle of one of the last cornfields in southwestern Cook County. The subdivisions creep closer every year. Soon I’ll want to sell. I like the quiet. I own the house and two acres around it. The fields belong to a farmer I’ve seen only at a distance as he works the land.
    Faint tapping sounds led me to the top of the basement steps. A variety of large and small engine parts lay scattered on the carpeted stairs. The taps became bangs as I maneuvered my
way to the bottom of the steps. I found Scott visible from the waist down, under the washing machine.
    I sat on the workout bench. My basement contains a furnace, a washer and dryer, two sets of weights, and a sump pump—all of which sit surrounded by four unadorned cinder-block walls. We need most of the room for our workouts. I heard a bang, a clatter, and a satisfied grunt. He can fix anything. I’ve known him to take machines declared terminally ill by a team of certified mechanics, place his hands over them, and the damn things heal. Until Eric Trask, Scott always worked on my cars.
    A hand with a rust-encrusted jumble of metal, followed by a grime-shrouded arm, emerged from beneath the machine. “Take this, please,” he said.
    â€œI didn’t know you heard me.” I grabbed the thing and placed it on a pile of newspapers. “Anything else I can do?”
    He gave me a muffled no. I retreated to the stairs.
    â€œGot your message on the machine,” he said.
    â€œGood. I had to accompany Mrs. Trask to the police station.”
    Several hammer bangs clanged out. “Eric stealing cars again?”
    â€œNo, Jeff, the younger brother, this time. They think he