Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 40, No. 6, June, 1995

“The keys are locked up in a desk drawer in the office, and the office is locked, too.”

The phone was real quiet for a long while.

“I’m sorry, Ed,” I mumbled.

Finally he said, “How far are you from the bus station?”

“About three miles.”

The phone went quiet again. Then he said, “I’ll see if I can hitch a ride. If I can’t, I’ll walk it. Which way do I go?”

“Turn left outside the bus station. That’s Main Street heading south. Stay on it. The garage is on the right just after you pass a diner and a movie house.”

“Look for me.” He hung up the phone.

I went back to my room and looked out the back window at the parking lot behind the garage. Charlie Fenway’s old Chevy was there, and a new, fancy looking road van, the kind with little curtains on the windows and the ladder on the back. The van belonged to Mr. Spaulding, the real estate man in town. I didn’t like him much. He always looked at me like I wasn’t there.

Charlie Fenway was different. He always had a smile and a joke for me, like I was an old friend of his, which I really wasn’t but he made me feel that way anyhow. He and his wife had dropped off the Chevy for a brake job around five o’clock so she could drive him in her car to his night shift at the bridge.

Timmy, the mechanic, had gone right to work on the Chevy for Charlie ’cause he promised Charlie he could come and pick it up first thing Monday morning even though it would be ready before then, but Mr. Johnson wouldn’t open the station for anyone on Sunday. He was real strict about not working on the Lord’s day of rest, he always told us, but like I said, he probably wouldn’t have minded one little bit if he thought he could trust me and I pumped enough gas to bring in some money for him, even if it was on the Sabbath.

Timmy let me help him with the Chevy brake job. He was teaching me how to be a mechanic. Both of us knew Mr. Johnson wouldn’t ever hire me for that, but Timmy gave me lots of pointers anyhow. He told me I didn’t have to pump gas and sweep out garages all my life.

But Timmy didn’t let me help with Mr. Spaulding’s road van. He said Mr. Spaulding would have a fit if something went wrong and he knew I’d touched his fancy van. So Timmy did it all by himself. The job was just putting in some kind of liquor cabinet in the back of the van that Mr. Spaulding said he had to have done right away ’cause he was taking out some important clients on Monday. Timmy could have done the job right then and finished it before Mr. Johnson closed up for Saturday night, but Timmy told Mr. Spaulding it would take a lot of time to make sure the cabinet would fit in just right, and Timmy winked at me when no one was looking and I knew he was going to make Mr. Spaulding go without his fancy van for the whole weekend. I liked that idea.

I walked up and down in my room for a while, trying to think, but the room was small and didn’t give me much space, so I went out into the garage again and walked back and forth by the big bay door with the glass windows in it. The street light in front kept it from being real dark in there.

After a while, I went out back and walked around the parking lot, trying to think everything out. I leaned up against the side of Mr. Spaulding’s van, sort of doing it on a dare to myself, and I kept on thinking and wondering about Ed and thinking some more.

After a while, it hit me that if Ed had got a hitch, he’d be along any minute. I hurried back into the garage and stood by the bay door and waited.

It took a long while before he showed up. He was walking slow and sort of limping along, so I knew he hadn’t got a hitch. He saw me, and I waved to him and pointed for him to come around the side of the garage.

I went to my room and opened the door to the parking lot in back, and Ed came limping around the corner of the garage and looked at me kind of hardlike and pushed right past me and went into my room and sat down on the edge of my bed.

I had left the radio on all this time, and the country music was going good and loud. Ed reached down and grunted and started pulling off one of his pointy-toe cowboy boots, and he stared at me and said, “Turn that damn thing off!”

I hurried over and turned off the radio. Ed had the boot off by now and was rubbing his foot.

“Hi, Ed,” I said, trying to make it sound like I was glad to see him.

“Had to walk all the way out here,” he said.

“I’m sorry about that,” I told him.

He grunted at me and pulled the boot back on and stood up. “I’m hungry. What you got to eat?”

Mr. Johnson had let me keep a hot plate and one of those small fridges, and I pointed to them in the corner. “Not much, Ed. Just some bread and milk and a jar of jelly, and I think there’s still some coffee in the pot on the hot plate over there.”

Ed went to the fridge and yanked it open and took out the milk carton and put it to his mouth and took a big swallow. He opened the bread and grabbed a couple of slices. “Gimme something to spread the jelly,” he said, not even looking at me.