Chapter forty
They packed and were on the road by eight in the morning. When they got to San Bernardino, they decided to spend some time car shopping and spend the night. They stopped at large used car lot on the outskirts. Sean immediately set his eye on a bright red corvette convertible, but Mandy pointed out that they were on the road and had to have room for suitcases. The salesman, not wanting to lose a sale, pointed out that there was storage behind the seats. “Of course you can’t put the top down if you have suitcases in there.” They settled on a sporty little Pontiac convertible with a small back seat, trunk space and lots of get. Sean drove the sable when they left the lot. They found a nice motel for the night. After a little afternoon delight, they went out for supper and took in a movie.
Sean and Mandy had decided the night before to go to Las Vegas, so in the morning they headed out with Sean leading in the Sable. They drove until they were well into the desert. About fifty miles from Barstow Sean spotted a sidetrack across the desert, he turned onto it and drove until he was out of sight of the highway. He pulled the Sable off the road, took out his wallet stuffed the money and all of his new ID in his jeans. He threw the wallet in the front seat letting the contents scatter. He then took out his jackknife and sliced open his thumb. He smeared blood across the seat, steering wheel and dashboard. When his thumb stopped bleeding, he squeezed it to get the blood flowing again. By the time he finished it looked like someone had been killed in the car. He even smeared blood in the trunk. He left the keys in the ignition and walked back to the Pontiac. He asked Mandy for a Kleenex, wrapped it around his thumb, and slid behind the wheel. He said, “That might not convince them that I’m dead, but it sure will give them something to think about. Lets you and me take our nice new car and your extremely cute little ass to Vegas.”
“Mister Harris, I’m starting to think that all you care about is my ass.”
“I assure you that you have plenty of other parts that I find fascinating, but lets not get on that subject or we never will make it to Vegas.”
Sean made a U-turn kicking up the desert dust and headed back toward the highway. Sean and Mandy spent the next eight months just bumming around the country, albeit in style, at least as far as Sean was concerned. He had certainly never lived as well as they were now and he was enjoying their nomadic life style. He liked Mandy a lot, but she had come to adore him. She doted on Sean more than anyone she had ever known. It had gotten so that her entire world revolved around him. She could not imagine life without him and she couldn’t think of a thing she wouldn’t do to keep him.
The only fly in the ointment was Sean’s obsession with Matt’s ball. Although he rarely mentioned it to Mandy, there was hardly a day went by that he didn’t think about it. Finally, one night in bed, he said to Mandy, “I’m going to Florida to get that ball. If you’d rather not go along, I understand. You have a lot to lose if it don’t go well.”
“If you are going, so am I.”
“You know the last time I tried to get it, it went very bad?”
“I know and I’d rather forget about it, but I know that you have your mind set on having it and I don’t think you will be happy until you do. That inheritance is important to me because it will allow me to live my life without worrying about money, or how I’m going to get by. However, I’m not sure I would even want to live without you, so if this is what you want, let’s do it.”
“I think the best way to do it is like we did at your house. Just walk in and do it. Of course, I don’t have keys to this place, which is stupid. I could have if I would have thought. Of course, in my defense I had to leave in a hurry and under some amount of stress. Anyway, I think we should walk up to the front door, ring the bell and stick a gun in the face of whoever answers. It’s been long enough that they sure as hell won’t be expecting me. A gun in the face makes most people real docile. I used to think when I took the ball I would kill them, but I’ve gotten over that.”
“That’s good, I really don’t want to kill anyone else.”
“Well, I figure that if I kill them the cops are going to be on our tail and there is no real reason to anyway. It’s not like they can go to the cops and complain that we stole their magic ball.”
They were in Oregon and figured it was time to be heading south anyway. The nights were getting cold, and it wouldn’t be long before winter set in. They decided that they would work their way toward Florida and be there well before Mandy turned eighteen.
It took them a month to get to Florida. They checked into a motel in Gulf Breeze, Just across the line from Alabama on November first. They planed on being up early and being in Crystal River about suppertime. Sean figured that way they would likely all be home. Sean explained to Mandy about the gate alarms and told her they would climb over the front wall so they wouldn’t know they were coming until they rang the doorbell. In retrospect that would turn out to be one of the worst decisions Sean had ever made.