"Nothing. I'm still on vacation."
"Uh-huh."
"I am! I'm not canceling my week off. I'm just postponing the start of it, that's all."
"What's the new boyfriend gonna say?"
"I've told you a thousand times, there is no new boyfriend." He laughed his phlegmy, chain-smoker's laugh that said he knew she was lying, and that she knew he knew.
"Got your notepad?" he asked suddenly.
"Uh, yeah."
Whatever germs had been teeming on the telephone were probably living with her now. Reconciled to that, she propped the receiver on her shoulder and held it there with her cheek while she removed a notepad and pen from her satchel and placed them on the narrow metal ledge beneath the wall-mounted telephone.
"Shoot."
"The boy's name is Ronald Davison," Gully began.
"I heard that much on the radio."
"Goes by Ronnie. Senior year, same as the Dendy girl.
Won't graduate with any honors, but he's a solid B student.
Never in trouble until today. After homeroom this morning, he boogied out of the student parking lot in his Toyota pickup with Sabra Dendy riding shotgun."
"Russ Dendy's child."
"His one and only."
"Is the FBI on it?"
"FBI. Texas Rangers. You name it. If it wears a badge, it's working this one. Waco all over again. Everybody's claiming jurisdiction and wants in on the action."
Tiel took a moment to absorb the broad scope of this story. The short hallway in which the pay phone was located led to the public rest rooms. One had a cowgirl in a fringed skirt stenciled in blue paint on the door. The other, predictably, had a similar silhouette of a cowpoke in chaps and ten-gallon hat, twirling a lasso above his head.
Glancing down the hall, Tiel spotted the real thing coming into the store. Tall, slender, Stetson pulled down low on his forehead. He nodded toward the store's cashier, whose frizzy, over permed hair had been dyed an unflattering shade of ocher.
Nearer to Tiel was an elderly couple browsing for souvenirs, apparently in no hurry to return to their Winnebago.
At least Tiel assumed the Winnebago at the gas pumps outside belonged to them. Through bifocal eyeglasses the lady was reading the ingredients of ajar on the shelf. Tiel heard her exclaim, "Jalapeno pepper jelly? Good lord."
The couple then joined Tiel in the hallway, moving toward their respective rest rooms. "Don't dally, Gladys," the man said. His white legs were virtually hairless and looked ridiculously thin in his baggy khaki shorts and thick-soled athletic shoes.
"You mind your business, and I'll mind mine," she retorted smartly. As she moved past Tiel she gave her a men-think they're so smart but we know-better wink. Another time, Tiel would have thought the senior couple cute and endearing. But she was thoughtfully reading what she'd taken down almost verbatim from Gully.
"You said 'riding shotgun.' Strange choice of words, Gully."
"Can you keep a secret?" He lowered his voice significantly.
"Because my ass will be grass if this gets out before our next newscast. We've scooped every other station and newspaper in the state."
Tiel's scalp began to tingle, as it did when she knew she was hearing something that no other reporter had heard, when she had uncovered the element that would set her story apart from all the others, when her exclusive had the potential of winning her a journalism prize or praise from her peers. Or of guaranteeing her the coveted spot on Nine Live.
"Who would I tell, Gully? I'm sharing space with a fresh-off the-range cowboy buying a six-pack of Bud, a sassy granny lady and her husband from out of state-I'm guessing by their accents. And two non-English-speaking Mexicans." The pair had since come into the store. She'd overheard them speaking Spanish while heating packaged burritos in a microwave oven.
Gully said, "Linda-"