A Joseph Sterling Mystery Novel

Perhaps it was the blue-collar atmosphere of truckers and travelers mingling together, dressed in casual, comfortable clothing with no concern whatsoever for style or fashion. Perhaps it was the cool, professional, but friendly waitresses rushing back and forth with trays laden with oversized, working-man sized meals. Maybe it was the place's sheer busyness and human vitality.

Whatever the reason, Sterling liked the truck stop. It was one of the minor disappointments of his life that none of his friends did. He was forced to come there alone, or occasionally to drag along an unwilling victim who agreed to accompany him just to be polite.

In fact that was why he was there today, though his potential dinner mate was hardly someone who would put herself out just to make him happy. Jessica Olvand, the love of his life back when he had been young enough to think in such paperback-romance terminology, would never do anything to make anybody happy. Except herself, of course. If all the world was a stage Jessica knew who the star actor was, and she wasn't about to share the spotlight with anyone.

Normally Jessica would never have lowered herself to come anywhere near a mere truckstop, but in her phone call she had sounded desperate to see him (a novelty in itself), and Sterling was human enough to want to needle her, at least a little bit. So he had insisted he would meet her there or nowhere, and after a slight hesitation Jessica had agreed. Which in itself was a sign of how serious she considered her current problem to be.

Sterling allowed himself to take satisfaction in his slight victory, but he wasn't really a cruel man, and he couldn't help but feel uncomfortable at the idea that he was abusing Jessica's need for him. He didn't mind putting her at a disadvantage if he could, but if she had any really serious problem she wanted to talk about perhaps he shouldn't have insisted that she come to a place that was totally antithetical to everything she found good, necessary and proper in life. Jessica was definitely not a blue-collar woman, and the idea of sitting down in a crowd of uncouth truckers would have caused her to shudder with distaste.

Sterling told himself he was just being soft. Again. Jessica had always managed to make him feel guilty and uncomfortable and vaguely low-class any time he had actually dared suggest doing anything he wanted to do instead of just letting her have her way all of the time. She had a special knack of making other people (or Sterling, at least) feel like she was doing him a favor by allowing him to do what she wanted him to do. There were times Sterling had resented it, and it had led to more than one break-up when her demands had finally become impossible to bear, as they usually did sooner or later. But somehow Jessica had managed to smooth things over (when she wanted to), just enough to make him come back and let her have her way yet again. Until the time came for the next breakup.

Sterling shook his head and glanced at his wristwatch. She was a half-hour late, which meant she'd be there in another fifteen minutes or so, if past experience was any guide. Jessica didn't bother to be fashionably late. That would have required keeping track of time, something she just never bothered to do. She came when she felt like it. And if she changed her mind in the meantime she just didn't come at all and never bothered to let anyone know. It was another of her traits some people found charming. Even Sterling, once upon a time.

Sterling had already eaten two pieces of pie - one peach, which wasn't bad at all, and one banana cream, which was - and had drunk too many cups of acidic, overstimulating coffee. He saw the waitress sizing him up from across the room, clearly trying to decide if he were one of those customers who ordered as little as possible and stayed as long as they could, wasting good booth space and depriving her of tips she might have made from a flock of hefty eaters sitting there instead. He was wondering if he could force down another piece of pie, or maybe a bowl of soup, when there was movement by the door and a man and woman pushed into the crowded, bustling room.

At first Sterling paid them no attention. He was looking for a single woman, after all, not a couple. The man was walking in front, and wore an orange and white checked suit jacket that had obviously been bought second hand, tan slacks that didn't match the jacket (or much of anything else) and grubby sneakers. His black hair was cut in an early Elvis style, so long out of fashion that it might as well never have been in, and though he was clean, somehow he looked as if he weren't. His face looked vaguely like a photograph of Abraham Lincoln that no one had had the decency to touch up, with a thin neck and an oversized adam's apple. But he didn't look bad, evil or stupid. He just looked poor, as if he had been poor for so much of his life that it was just ground right into his bones like an indelible stain on a carpet.

Sterling picked up all of this at one glance and then looked away indifferently. But then the man paused uncertainly, his eyes running over the crowd seated at the booths and table, as if searching for someone. The woman stepped from behind him so that Sterling was able to get a better look at her. She was Jessica Olvand.

Sterling's eyes widened in surprise even as he stood slightly and waved the couple in his direction. At one time it would have hurt - would have hurt a lot - to see Jessica with another man. But though she was definitely insensitive enough to bring her current boyfriend along on a date with an old one, he couldn't take this one seriously as a rival. He just wasn't Jessica's type. He was tall and lean, true, and Jessica had always had a weakness for the rangy type. But he was obviously lower-class, financially and probably every other way as well, and Jessica limited herself exclusively to lawyers, doctors, bankers, and the inherited rich. Not that she was a snob. She just liked money.

Squinting slightly through the faint blue haze of cigarette smoke, she saw him waving at her and lifted her chin in what might have passed for a greeting. She took her companion by the somewhat frayed elbow and guided him across the room as if he weren't quite able to make it so far by himself without her help. And judging by the worried, slightly confused expression on his face, Sterling wasn't sure he could have.

He saw with a strange dispassion that Jessica herself was as well-groomed as ever. Her hair, seldom the same color twice, was now a deep, brick red, hanging in long, heavy, loose folds over her shoulders and down her back as if it were a sheet of half-melted honey. Her white blouse, jade colored skirt and matching jacket looked simple but probably cost more than Sterling's car. (Most things did, when it came right down to it.) Though she was still on the far side of the long, low room, Sterling could almost smell her perfume. Something expensive and exotic, no doubt, the kind of fragrance you don't notice at first but for some reason just can't get out of your mind afterward.

He sighed and remained on his feet as the odd couple reached him. The strange man towered over him, and his large, bony grip was surprisingly firm as Sterling took it in his own somewhat pudgy, always-sweating hand. He wished for an instant that he had worn something other than the loose windbreaker jacket that made his overhanging, overweight stomach seem to protrude even more than necessity required. But he told himself that he was bring foolish. The fact was that he was short and overweight and balding. There was nothing he could do about that. Though in this case he considered that he lost nothing in comparison to the greasy-haired specimen who was presently looming over him with a somewhat foolish, uncertain grin on his face. Some hair was a definite disadvantage.

Sterling had long since resigning himself to the fact that he would never be a model for anything except perhaps the 'before' specimen for various types of body-improvement ads. But just being around Jessica usually made him painfully aware of his shortcomings.

Or did it? As she came up to him with her slight and yet somehow sensual smile of greeting he found himself strangely unmoved, both by her beauty and the memories of what they had had together. He took her delicate, thin hand for a moment and then waved them to the seats opposite his at the table, so distracted for a moment by his lack of feelings for the woman who had dominated so much of his life that he missed the first few lines of her greeting.

The strange man made a clumsy, almost painful attempt at gallantry by holding the chair for Jessica, but the truckstop wasn't made for such refined manners and all he did was tangle its protruding metal legs in those of the table. After much jockeying and squirming Jessica finally waved him away with a hint of irritation and pulled up the chair herself. Crestfallen and even more awkward from embarrassment, the man sat down next to her, pulling his own chair just as close to hers as possible. By that alone Sterling decided that he was her latest conquest. Whether or not she returned his affections Sterling was unable to tell. Jessica had always been am expert at hiding her emotions. Or faking them when she thought it was to her advantage.

Sterling couldn't believe she was attracted to this greasemonkey specimen, but he couldn't deny the possibility. He certainly seemed smitten, and she was there with him. And Jessica wasn't the type of woman to lead a man on to no purpose. If she didn't like someone she let him know, usually with bloodthirsty ruthlessness.

The amazing thing was that Sterling found that he didn't care. As they spoke softly back and forth, adjusting their chairs and feet and elbows, Jessica's purse and the man's big, clumsy hands, Sterling realized with a shock that he really didn't care. Jessica was Jessica, as beautiful and magnetic and desirable as ever. And yet he didn't desire her at all. He felt nothing for her whatsoever - or no more than he felt for the waitress, who was now approaching with her pad and pencil at the ready, clearly excited to be in pursuit of some real paying customers at last.

In that she was disappointed, however, for the strange man just asked for a cup of coffee and Jessica herself ordered tea. As she spoke she curled her lip slightly, as if reluctant to trust the place even to boil water properly. Watching her, Sterling had to hide a smile. Perhaps she had lost her appeal, and she might be hanging out with a crude hillbilly of no charm, intelligence, or wealth, but she was still Jessica.

For just a moment he felt a barely contained satisfaction at having succeeded in forcing her to come to a place she obviously despised. A petty pleasure, but after all the humiliation she had put him through over the years he would hardly have been human if he didn't savor his ability to return the favor.

But Jessica was an expert at putting people in their place, and she had had long years of practice with Sterling. "Well," she said briskly when the disappointed waitress left with a dissatisfied frown, "are you going to sit there staring all night or are you going to listen to what we have to say?"

Sterling blinked. He almost denied that he had been staring but just in time he realized that that would sound petulant and childish, putting him in an even worse position, so he just spread his hands in invitation. "Talk away."

"Good." Jessica settled herself down more comfortably on her seat, bumping the man crowding up against her in the process. She glanced at him from the corner of her eyes with a look Sterling was unable to interpret.

"Jackie has uncovered something very important, Joseph," she told him, leaning across the table with very un-Jessica-like intensity. "And you seemed just the person to tell." She paused and looked at him doubtfully. "You still hang out with all of those cultists and kooks and weirdoes, don't you?"

Sterling shrugged. "I don't know about 'hanging out.' I write about eccentric and unusual people, yes," he told her. "That's how I make my living. Why? Does that bother you?"

"Usually yes, it does," she said frankly. "I don't know how you can stand such people, Joseph. I really don't. But - well, never mind all that. This time your ability to give publicity to someone with unusual ideas can be very helpful to us."

"Yes, that's right," the man said, speaking for the first time in a high-pitched whine that had just a hint of a regional accent Sterling couldn't place, though it definitely wasn't from anyplace north of the Ohio River. The man glanced back and forth uncertainly between Sterling and Jessica, then he fixed his watery, thin-blue eyes exclusively on the man seated across from him.

"You can tell everybody," he said earnestly. "I've uncovered the greatest treachery in the history of mankind, a conspiracy that will spell the end of the world if people don't wake up and stop it! Really! The end of the world!"