The Escape Artist Read online

  There was a little container of crayons on the table and the placemat was a line drawing of a clown. She put the placemat on the table in front of Cody and filled in the drawing, while he tried to stick the crayons in his mouth. She kept her concentration on her son, but she was keenly aware of the two men across the aisle.

  The waitress delivered her spaghetti, with an extra plate for Cody, and Kim began cutting his portion into short pieces.

  "So where are you two from?" the waitress asked.

  Kim wondered if the policemen had heard the question. The young officer caught her eye again, and she looked up at the waitress.

  "Oh, we've been visiting my mother in Owensboro." She remembered seeing a sign for Owensboro on the highway. "But we want to get home to Daddy in St. Louis by tomorrow because it's his birthday. We still have to get him a present, right Cody?" She was glad that most of what she said to her son went right over his head. She could not imagine living this dishonest sort of life with an older child who would have to be party to the deception.

  "What are you getting him?" the waitress asked.

  It took Kim a minute to understand the question. "Oh! For my husband, you mean?"

  The waitress nodded with a smile.

  "I still don't have any idea, would you believe?" Kim said.

  "Well, what does he like?" The waitress seemed to think that helping her pick a gift was part of her job description. "Is he into sports?"

  "Oh." She thought of Jim. Watching back to back football games was his idea of heaven. On the other hand, Linc thought dog-walking was a sport. "No, he's not really a sports fan. I thought we'd get him some CDs. He loves music."

  "Good idea. There's a great record store in Henderson. Doesn't open till ten tomorrow, though. You'll probably be on your way by then, huh?"

  "Right," Kim said. "We'll find something, thanks."

  "No problem."

  She watched the waitress walk away. If the cops asked her about the lady and the baby, the waitress would tell them she was on her way home to St. Louis to celebrate her husband's birthday, and the cops would think to themselves, well she only looks a little like that woman and baby everyone's looking for.

  Paranoid, she told herself. People are not hanging on your every word.

  Back in the hotel room, she got her first good look at herself since leaving Boulder. No one would recognize her. She barely recognized herself. Except for the road-weary eyes and the unkempt hair, she looked good. Copper glow was a pretty shade. Too pretty, perhaps. She should have picked a mousier color that would let her fade into the woodwork. No wonder that young cop had been looking at her. She didn't look half bad.

  The room had a king-sized bed, and she lay down next to her exhausted son.

  She wished she'd thought to pack a few of his favorite books. She sang him a couple of songs instead, "Froggie Went a-Courtin'" and "The Old Woman Who Swallowed a Fly," songs Linc liked to sing to him. Then she sang "The Name Game," using Cody as the name. "Cody, Cody, Fo Fody …" until the little boy could barely stop giggling. She wanted him to get used to his new name. She needed to get used to it herself.

  Toward the end of her pregnancy, she and Linc had often sat up late into the night with the baby name book. They'd usually be at his house, with its spacious rooms and its unobstructed view of Boulder. She'd been feeling stronger about herself then, able to talk about Jim with anger rather than self-recrimination. She'd felt buoyed up by Linc's strength and caring, two things she had known nearly all her life. They hadn't started sleeping together yet; that didn't begin until Cody was a few months old, even though once they started it seemed as if they had always been lovers. But their friendship had been deep and abiding, nonetheless.

  Linc had loved the name Cody. He'd leave little slips of paper around his house and hers, "Cody Miller" written on them so she could see how good it looked. But she hadn't been able to get the name Tyler out of her head. Her son was nearly six months old when she finally realized why she'd given him that name: Jim had once said he liked it. If they ever had a male child, he'd said, he would like to name him Tyler.

  "Still trying to please Jim," Linc admonished her.

  Kim stared at the ceiling above her hotel room bed. She did not want to think about Linc. Imagining how he'd felt when he discovered her disappearance this morning was the only thing that could destroy her resolve right now. She could not allow that to happen.

  Cody was sound asleep, his beloved monkey tight in his arms, and Kim turned on the television, keeping the volume low. David Letterman was on, and his guest was a musician who looked undeniably like Linc. Kim held the remote in the air between herself and the TV, trying to cover part of the man's face to see which features most resembled Linc's. The blue eyes, definitely. Not the eyebrows, though. The hair, of course, was totally wrong.

  This was torture. Why was she doing this to herself? She turned off the TV and closed her eyes.

  She would never be able to touch him again. Never make love to him, or hold him all night long. Never pick up the phone to hear his voice on the other end, joking with her, making her laugh. Telling her he loved her.

  She would be able to listen to him, though. Sunday night. On the radio. At least she could still have that much of him.

  –7–

  For two more days, Kim drove east. The pace she set was slow and easy, with plenty of rest stops for herself and Cody. It was impossible to rush when you had no idea where you were going. On Thursday, she bought herself an inexpensive bathing suit, and both Thursday and Friday checked into motels early so that she and Cody could play in the swimming pools. It wasn't until late Friday night when she was lying alone in bed that she began to feel the inescapable awareness of her homelessness. She could head east only a little longer. Sometime tomorrow, she was going to run out of country. Maybe that was fine. She'd keep going until she ran out of road, and then she'd plant herself wherever she'd landed.

  Then how was she going to support herself? She couldn't get a job in a bank; that would be the first place anyone would look for her. She should never even tell anyone she'd worked in a bank. Maybe she could get a different sort of secretarial position, but she'd be able to offer no references. And then she'd need day care, and she was nowhere near ready to let Cody out of her sight. Maybe she could take in word processing jobs. She was a great typist. Hated it, but did it well. She could work out of her home—wherever "home" turned out to be. She hoped it would not be the back seat of the Toyota. If things were ever that bad for her, she would take Cody back. She had no right to him if she couldn't provide for him any better than that.

  From behind the steering wheel of the car Saturday morning, she knew she was hitting civilization in a major way The traffic was wild, and before she knew it, she'd been dumped onto the Capital Beltway—the wide, fast, frightening highway that looped around Washington, D.C. She'd heard somewhere that if you were trying to hide, a big city would be your best bet, but the thought chilled her. If she got sucked into the mass of buildings and cars inside the beltway, it would be like being in prison. So she continued circling Washington, taking the first exit east she could find, Route 50.

  It was nearly time for lunch, and Cody was assertive in letting her know it. He kicked his legs out from the car seat as though trying to escape. She couldn't blame him. Poor baby, trapped on the road for—she'd lost track—five days? He was entitled to kick. She sang "The Name Game" again for what seemed like the zillionth time in the past few days, but he was having none of it. It was food or nothing.

  She pulled off the road at Annapolis. Annapolis was the capital of Maryland, she was quite certain, and she expected a large city to greet her, but instead found herself driving through a quaint little town. The streets were narrow, and she felt as if she'd stepped back in time. A tall gray and white dome rose high above the city from a large brick building, and the rest of the town seemed to fall away from that dome in all directions. She drove around, enchanted, until she came to water, a
river or a bay perhaps, and it seemed that she had stumbled upon the heart of the city. She was in a large square surrounding an enormous dock filled with boats and activity. People dotted the square, walking, taking pictures, eating at sidewalk cafes, or simply sitting on benches overlooking the water.

  There was a parking lot and she managed to pull into a space as someone was leaving. The sun was warm and bright as she lowered Cody into the stroller. She was smiling to herself, but Cody whimpered with hunger. Her first stop had to be for something to eat. One of the buildings edging the square was filled with a variety of take-out restaurants. The smell of fish was strong inside and not at all unpleasant, and she bought fish and chips for herself and a container of strawberry yogurt for Cody.

  As she walked toward one of the benches overlooking the dock, she passed the side of a restaurant and was immediately captivated by a mural painted on the windowless brick. She stepped back to look at it.

  The painting was of a tall ship, white sails billowing, set against a midnight blue sky dotted with white stars and a full moon. The artist's name, Adam Soria, was painted in the lower right-hand side, below the white-capped sea. There was something surrealistic about the painting, and until Cody started his I-am-terminally-hungry wailing, she could not tear herself away.

  She pushed the stroller to a vacant bench by the water and began feeding her hungry son. A sense of calm surrounded her as she sat there. This beautiful little town was a capital city? There were plenty of people around, to be sure, but no one seemed rushed or harried. Seagulls swooped through the air over the water and pecked at crumbs on the wharf. The air was filled with the sound of lapping water and the scent of brine. She had lived in landlocked Boulder all her life. She'd had no idea what she was missing.

  She poured juice into Cody's bottle and handed it to him. An older couple walked by and smiled at the two of them. She smiled back.

  "Oh, Cody," she said. "Does this feel like the end of the road to you?" Her excitement was edged with trepidation. Once she actually stopped traveling, she would have plenty of time to think about what she'd done—and what she'd lost in the process.

  She lifted Cody out of the stroller when he finished eating and let him toddle around, holding on to the bench or her knees. He was fascinated by the seagulls, jumping up and down as though he wanted to be up in the air with them, flying.

  Kim spotted a newspaper vending machine a few feet away, dug a quarter from her purse, and bought a paper. She kept one eye on Cody as she turned to the classified ads. There were only a few rooms for rent in Annapolis proper and several apartments. One of the apartments, though, claimed to have a view of the Naval Academy and the Severn River, and that was enough to intrigue her. It was partly furnished, and rented for four hundred and fifty dollars a month.

  A man dressed in a gray suit walked past the bench, and she asked him if he knew where Maryland Street was.

  "You go up Randall Street and make a left on Prince George," he said, and when he saw her look of confusion, added, "You can get a map from the visitor center over there." He pointed to the opposite side of the parking lot.

  "Thanks." She put Cody back in the stroller and began walking toward the visitor center, where she got a map. She opened it on the hood of her car. Spread out in front of her, the town looked as small and manageable as she'd guessed it would be. She found Maryland Street. It looked like an easy walk, and she turned the stroller in that direction.

  The houses were small and packed tightly against one another. Some were brick, some wood, and all of them were very, very old. Older than anything she'd ever seen in Colorado.

  Maryland Street, though, was lined with tiny shops. Antique shops, gift shops, book stores. Peering ahead, she could see nothing that resembled an apartment building. She checked the address, wondering if the apartment might be above one of the shops. She continued walking, and the shops gave way to small homes and a church. Soon, she spotted a large house standing alone on what was, comparatively speaking, a huge lot graced by a lone towering maple tree. Where the other houses hugged the brick sidewalks, this house was set back from the street a good thirty feet or so. It was obviously quite old, but its yellow siding and white shutters looked freshly painted. Jutting from the front lawn, an Apartment For Rent sign beckoned. She checked the address. Apparently, the apartment was in the house. She hadn't expected that, but she liked the idea. It would be like having a real home of her own rather than a little cell in a huge apartment complex like she'd had in Boulder.

  A wide front porch was graced by four rocking chairs and a glider. "Hey, Cody," she said as she pushed the stroller up the walk. "I think this is it."

  She left the stroller on the sidewalk and carried Cody onto the porch with her. The window on her left was open, and music—well, sounds, really—trickled from the house inside. It sounded like a waterfall or maybe the ocean. She could hear the cawing of seagulls in the background.

  She knocked on the door, and after a moment, a woman opened it.

  "Hi." The woman smiled. She was partly in shadow, but she looked young, maybe in her thirties, and she glanced at her watch. "Are you here for an appointment?"

  Maybe she should have called first. "No, I'm sorry," she said. "I guess I should have called. But I'm very interested in seeing the apartment you have for rent."

  "Oh!" The woman laughed and stepped out onto the porch, and the fine lines around her eyes and mouth came into view. She was older than she had first appeared. Her long brown hair was subtly streaked with gray. "Forgive me," she said. "I thought you were a new client of mine. I'm a massage therapist and I—" She shook her head. "Sorry. So you're here about the apartments?"

  Kim nodded.

  The woman looked hesitantly at Cody. "I'm not sure about a baby," she said, but she reached out and stroked the back of her fingers down Cody's cheek and the little boy smiled. Kim had the feeling the battle was over before it had even begun.

  "He's good-natured," Kim said. "Quiet."

  "It's just the two of you?"

  "Yes. My husband and I are getting a divorce and he got the house."

  She knew immediately that she'd spoken the magic words.

  "Oh, I know what that's like," the woman said. "Come in."

  Kim stepped into a foyer. On her right was a table with a huge vase of daisies, and ahead of her, a long flight of stairs leading to the second story. To her left, a door stood ajar, and she could see inside to a cramped, but comfortable-looking, living room. A sweet, subtly floral scent emanated from the room.

  "It smells good in here," she said, shifting Cody to her other hip.

  "I use aromatherapy with my clients," the woman said by way of explanation.

  Kim nodded as though aromatherapy were an ordinary part of her life as well.

  "My name is Ellen King," the woman said. "I live on the ground floor, and I just turned the upstairs into two apartments. Neither is rented out yet. This was the house my husband and I lived in until our divorce."

  "Oh," Kim said. "My name's Kim Stratton, and this is Cody. That's great you could keep the house."

  "Well, it's pretty tight. But I think with the rent from the upstairs, I'll make it." She started up the stairs with Kim and Cody close behind her.

  "Do you work at home?" Kim asked. She wasn't crazy about the idea of Ellen's clients coming and going. The fewer people around her the better.

  "Uh huh."

  There were two doors at the top of the stairs, one on either side of the small landing. Ellen unlocked the door on the left.

  As soon as Kim stepped inside, she knew she wanted the apartment. The rooms had all the charm of an older home, with high ceilings and walls set at odd angles to one another. Yet despite their obvious age, the rooms were clean and fresh and sunny. The living room was spacious and was furnished with a couch and two chairs and even a small television on a table in the corner. At the opposite end of the room stood an old oak table and four chairs. The kitchen was tiny, but usable, and the
bedroom held a full-sized bed, a dresser, and just enough extra space for a crib.

  She felt Ellen's eyes on her as she explored the apartment. From the two windows in the living room, and one of the windows in the bedroom, she could see the river in the distance.

  "I would really love to live here," she said finally.

  Ellen nodded. "Great!" she said. "Come downstairs and I'll get the paperwork. And I'll need to get some credit references from you."

  "Oh," Kim said, flustered. She should have expected as much. She was tempted to tell Ellen she'd had a sudden change of heart about the apartment, but realized she would encounter the problem of a credit check no matter where she went. Ellen might be her only chance.

  "I'm just starting to build up my own credit," she said. "Everything was in my husband's name."

  Ellen wrinkled her nose. "Oh, nothing like adding insult to injury," she said. "I learned my lesson there. If I ever get married again, I'm keeping everything in my own name." Ellen looked thoughtfully out the window. "Well, let's approach this from a different angle, then. Where do you work?"

  "I'm not working at the moment." She laughed nervously. "I must sound really pathetic! I was working in a bank, but I plan to take in word processing jobs." She couldn't believe she'd told the first person she met that she'd worked in a bank. "I want to work at home so I can be with Cody."

  Ellen looked disappointed. "I really can't rent to you if you have no income."

  "Well, I get child support," she lied. "And I'm very ambitious. I expect I'll have good income very soon. Plus, I can give you two months' rent, right now. If I'm not making enough money to handle the rent by the end of next month, you can kick me out." She felt her cheeks flaming with lies and embarrassment.

  "All right," Ellen said. "I'll write up a lease for just the two months, and we'll try it out."