“They’re right,” I told him. “Just sit quietly, Jim.”
Moments later, a Quincy police patrol car pulled up, and two officers got out. The younger one approached me after they both had heard Jim’s explanation.
“Was he drinking?”
“No, he just came to the mall to pick me up and take me back to the Winston House.”
“Amelia Winston’s rooming house?”
“Yes. We need to call her. We’re both expected for dinner.”
I reached into the car to find my purse and dig out my cell phone. While I was talking to her, the ambulance arrived. Jim tried to resist, but by now, a small crowd had gathered, and the police were insisting that he get checked out.
“You okay?” the younger policeman asked me. He looked at the exploded airbag on the passenger’s side and then at me. “You don’t have a scratch on you,” he remarked, amazed.
“Just lucky,” I said.
“Did you see the old guy in the street, too?”
“I was looking off to the right. It all happened too fast,” I said, not wanting Jim to get into trouble.
“Um. We’ll take you over to the hospital for a quick examination anyway.”
“I have things in the car,” I said.
“I’ll get them,” he offered. He looked like he was in his late twenties and gave me a flirtatious smile. While he gathered my things, the paramedics put Jim into the ambulance. Moments later, a tow truck arrived.
“They listen on a scanner,” the young patrolman told me. “This guy is always one of the first to arrive on an accident scene, but you can’t leave the car here, and that front is bashed in pretty good.”
“It’s not my car, but I’m sure Mr. Lamb wouldn’t object.”
“Couldn’t leave it on the street here, either,” the patrolman said. “I might have to turn you both over to the FBI,” he joked as he led me to the patrol car.
“Oh, and why is that?”
“Destruction of federal property, a mailbox.”
“Looks to me like you just have to stand it up again.”
He laughed and opened the door. “I’m Tom Westly,” he said, and pointed to his name tag.
“Lorelei Patio,” I said.
“Just relax for a moment, Lorelei. We’ll get you taken care of,” he said, loading my bags into the backseat with me. I watched him talking with his partner for a few moments. They watched the tow-truck driver get Jim’s car pulled away from the mailbox and lifted to be taken off. The ambulance left, and the two officers returned to the patrol car. All the while, I searched the street, the houses, and every shadowy area I could see, looking for signs of an elderly man.
In my heart, I feared who it might have been. He was too old to be active, obviously, but he could easily be the patriarch of a Renegade clan. “Nothing that happens to us,” Daddy once said, “happens by accident.”
“So, tell us again how this happened,” the older patrolman said when we were driving to the hospital.
“We were talking. I turned to the right, and the next thing I knew, we were crashing into a mailbox. Jim told me an elderly man stepped in front of the car.”
“If you were looking to the right, he would have had to come from the left. It’s a busy street. That’s no place to cross it.”
“Which is why Mr. Lamb had to turn so suddenly,” I said.
Tom turned back and smiled at me, as if he appreciated how I was defending Jim Lamb.
“Whenever you lose control, you know you’re going too fast,” the older patrolman insisted.