by Amy Vansant
Declan’s gaze snapped to Frank. “He sees his mailman naked?”
Frank waved away his question. “Long story. Later.”
Andrew looked as confused as Declan. “What are you talking about?”
Mac waved his open palms like slow-motion jazz hands. “Your father and his secretary taught me everything I know about sex. Which, I have to tell you, has caused me more than a little trouble with the ladies over the years. Turns out pretending to have shrapnel in your thigh isn’t the norm.”
Andrew’s cheeks flashed crimson. “You’re lying.”
“No. It’s true. They didn’t teach sex education back then,” said Bob.
The other Gophers shook their heads. “Nope.”
Declan ran a hand through his hair. “I have so many questions.”
Andrew Hepper appeared as though something had lodged in his throat. He covered his ears with his hands, his mouth lipping what looked to Frank like, “No, no, no, no...” over and over.
Declan leaned toward Mac. “I think you might have hit a raw nerve there.”
Frank overheard and grunted. It looked as though Mac wasn’t the only person Major Hepper’s sexual predilections had sent to therapy.
Andrew lowered his hands from his ears and swallowed. He smoothed his tie against his chest and lifted his chin to cast a beady gaze in Tommy’s direction. “Who are you?”
“We’re the kids whose names your father painted on bomb targets to scare us away from these dummy bombs,” said Tommy. He cupped his hands and pointed toward the crowd behind them. “This guy’s Major Hepper’s son!”
Tommy’s announcement had no effect.
“They’re too young to remember Major Hepper,” muttered Frank.
Tommy sighed, shoulders slouching. “When did we get so old?”
Foliage turned back to the crowd, his expression twisting with what looked like horror. “What are they singing?”
Frank realized the crowd was in the middle of a round of ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat.’
Before he could return to his conversation with Andrew, Hepper’s son huffed, lifted his hands in the air and dropped them to his sides with a slap. “Why am I even talking to you people?” He turned on his heel and marched back to the bulldozer to climb to his spot hanging from the driver’s cage. “This place is as good as gone. You’ve got no papers and no right to stop us.”
He tapped the driver’s shoulder and the tractor roared to life again.
“Are you sure those bombs ain’t real?” Frank heard the driver scream over the tractor’s rumble.
“Fake!” answered Andrew, thrusting his hand into the air like a fascist dictator punctuating a speech.
The Gophers, Declan and Foliage fell back a few steps as the bulldozer lurched forward.
“Now what?” asked Tommy.
One of the children ran up and threw a tomato at the tractor. It struck the top of the front grill, splattering the driver with mist of red slime and seeds.
“Take that!” the child arced around and slipped between two bombs, presumably to find another missile in the field.
Frank and the others watched the child go, their gazes settling on the plants beyond the bombs, each bursting with red and green fruit.
“You thinking what I’m thinking?” asked Mac.
Frank checked his watch. “Well, we do need to kill about fifteen minutes before that injunction gets here.”
Mac grinned and led the charge into the field. His first tomato hit the bulldozer driver square on the forehead, covering him with tomato blood.
“I’m not doing this,” screamed the driver as he cut the engine.
“What?” shrieked Andrew, his voice too loud as the engine shuddered to a halt.
“I don’t like it and I don’t need it.” The driver slid from his seat to the opposite side of the tractor to avoid flying produce, and jogged away.
Holding up his arm to block flying tomatoes, Andrew took the driver’s seat and restarted the tractor. He shifted some levers and the bulldozer jerked forward, its shovel knocking over three dummy bombs. Two more fell like dominos.
Declan picked up a child and scooted him out of harm’s way.
From his location in the field, Frank spotted a small group of militia men advance from the collection of protesters. They lined up like British soldiers, shotguns aimed at the bulldozer.
Frank frowned.
Crap.
“You can’t shoot me, you idiots!” Hepper shrieked. “You can’t murder people over gardens, in front of witnesses!”
More yellow-grey bombs tumbled passively to the ground as Andrew’s lemon-hued mount leapt forward again.
“My father knew you were watching him with his secretary! I watched him too!”
“Ooh, boy. There it is. Thirty years of therapy gone in a heartbeat.” said Bob. “He’s crazy as a jay bird.”
The protest party’s voices swelled.
“Eighty bottles of beer on the wall, eighty bottles of beer.”
Foliage spun and threw a tomato in the direction of the crowd. “That’s not what I told you to sing!” He stomped back toward the yard, waving his hands above his head. “Stop! Stop!”
Andrew and the tractor continued up the row of bombs, knocking them flat and rolling over a few, laughing maniacally as tomatoes exploded around him.
“He’s going to tear up the place before we can stop him,” said Frank.
Declan looked up, shielding his eyes from the sun with his palm. “What’s that?”
A second engine’s roar buzzed above them. Frank squinted skyward and spotted a crop-dusting plane, its blue wings tilting back and forth like a levitating see-saw.
Fierce goblin tomato faces, painted on the wings after The Great Tomato War, caught the sunlight in their angry eyes and flashed furious warnings at the bulldozer.
Mac turned his attention to the sky and then looked at Frank, his eyes wide.
“It’s T.K.!”
Chapter Twenty
Charlotte took the elevator to the lobby to find Angelina. The concierge desk sat unoccupied. Croix was at her station with her back turned, so Charlotte headed down the hallway to Angelina’s door. She knocked, but no one answered.
Shoot.
She’d hoped to go over her findings.
Turning to head back to the lobby, she nearly plowed into Croix, who’d somehow walked down the hall without Charlotte hearing her and now stood right beside her. The experience felt a little like a haunted house statue that followed people when they weren’t looking.
Charlotte took a step back to catch her balance and focus on the creeper.
“Where’d you come from?” she asked without taking the time to think of a cooler response. Her nervous giggle didn’t help her cool factor one iota.
“Pennsylvania,” said Croix without smiling. “Looking for Angelina?”
Charlotte cleared her throat. “Yes. I have some information for her.”
“She’s not in yet.”
“She doesn’t live here?”
Croix turned and headed back down the hall. “She’ll be in soon.”
Charlotte watched her go.
That wasn’t what I asked.
Charlotte looked at the door again and thought she saw a shadow pass by the peephole on the inside.
“Fine,” she said as if she were calling out to Croix. “I’ll tell her I figured out where Siofra is when she gets back.”
If Angelina was lurking behind the door, she had to have heard her.
She wandered back down the hall and into the continental breakfast room to see if the coffee there tasted any better than the stuff made by her miniature coffee pot back in the room. It was, so she took a cup and a Danish to the lobby and found a seat by the concierge desk. Fifteen minutes later, Angelina appeared at the end of the hall leading to her bedroom with Harley tucked under her arm.
“I knew you were in there,” said Charlotte.
Angelina blinked at her, bleary-eyed. “It’
s a little early for me.”
Harley squiggled, her eyes locked on Charlotte, begging for attention. Charlotte scratched her beneath her ear. “But you wanted to know what I figured out about Siofra?”
Angelina shook her head. “Not until I’ve had some coffee.” She shuffled into the breakfast room and then reappeared to take her seat behind the concierge desk.
“Okay. Hit me,” she said.
Charlotte crossed her arms against her chest. “Not until you take me to see my grandfather.”
Ha ha! Who has the power now?
She tried not to look smug.
Angelina tilted back her head and let her mouth hang open. “Come on. I got up early to hear this.”
“So take me to see him and then I’ll tell you.”
“It’s barely eight o’clock.”
“So? You said he’s in a coma. What does he care what time it is?”
“Excellent point.” Angelina lowered her chin again. “He would have appreciated the dark humor of that.”
She stood and headed toward the elevator. Charlotte jumped to her feet to follow.
Angelina pulled a key hanging from a chain from the nest of her bosom and used it to unlock the top floor elevator button. When the lift’s doors opened again, Charlotte found herself facing a hallway with only three doors along the opposite wall. Angelina knocked on the one directly across from the elevator and then let herself in with a code. The door featured the same keypad as Angelina’s own room.
The apartment inside was expansive. Someone had bashed away the walls to the individual hotel rooms to create one giant open-plan suite, featuring a large living room and kitchen to the right of the entrance. Style-wise, nothing appeared terribly modern or updated beyond the open-plan itself, but neither was it hopelessly out of date. Furniture, walls and floors were all variations of brown, black and white—the overall vibe felt too dark for Florida, but it didn’t seem unusual for a bachelor’s apartment. Charlotte guessed her grandfather didn’t have a current wife. A woman would have included a splash of color or warmth somewhere.
A woman much too young to be Mick’s wife and dressed in nurse’s scrubs sat on a black leather sofa. Her loose-fitting clothes were covered in tiny teddy bears wearing Santa hats, making her easily the most festive thing in the room. She looked up from her book as they entered.
“I’ve brought a visitor,” said Angelina. “You can stay. Martisha, this is Charlotte. You might see her again. She’s one of us.”
The woman smiled in Charlotte’s direction. “Ow yuh do?” she asked in a thick Jamaican accent.
Charlotte smiled back. “Nice to meet you.”
The woman nodded and returned to her reading.
Angelina led Charlotte through a partially opened door into a bedroom decorated in much the same style, but whatever bed might have once sat between the two dark wooden bedside tables had been replaced by a hospital bed complete with chrome side rails and an adjustable base. A thin, wiry man lay in the bed looking both tan and ashen at the same time. His salt-and-pepper hair had been cropped short. Charlotte could tell he’d been handsome, and still was, she supposed, for a seventy-plus-year-old man in a coma. Taped to his arms were tubes of various thicknesses and colors.
“There he is,” said Angelina, her usual steady expression softened by what looked to Charlotte to be genuine sadness. She motioned to Mick, urging Charlotte to get as close as she needed.
Charlotte moved to the edge of the bed and rested her fingers on the bed rails to peer down at Mick, unsure what to do now that she’d confirmed he existed.
“He’s not much of a conversationalist lately,” said Angelina, effectively breaking the ice.
“Can he hear anything?”
“I don’t know. Probably not. It doesn’t stop me from talking to him.”
Charlotte swallowed and turned her attention back to Mick.
What should I say?
“Hi, I’m not sure what to call you,” she said, her voice sounding weak. She wasn’t sure why she felt so moved by the quiet dignity of the man lying in the bed before her. She didn’t know him. Maybe he wasn’t even really related to her. But even if he was a total stranger, it was heartbreaking to see someone laid so low.
Angelina broke the following silence.
“He’d hate grandpa, I can tell you that,” she muttered.
“I wasn’t going to call him grandpa.”
“I’m just saying.”
Charlotte took a cleansing breath and tried again. “I’m your granddaughter, apparently. My mother was Maddie, I don’t know if you knew her or if she knew you at all. I’m not even entirely sure if you were her father. I’m going by what Angelina told me.”
Angelina sniffed. “You can’t talk about me like I’m not in the room.”
“Well, it’s true. I could be telling him all this and he could be thinking who is this crazy girl? I don’t know if he really was my mother’s father.”
“He was.”
“How do you know?”
“He told me.”
Charlotte grimaced. “Doesn’t mean it’s true.”
Angelina cocked an eyebrow. “Do you want me to ask Martisha to tap a vein so you can run some tests? Maybe you’d like to pluck a hair off his head?”
Charlotte hooked her mouth to the side, feeling guilty she’d already thought about stealing a hair.
Though maybe hair wasn’t the way to go.
She’d taken a DNA test before and all the online service needed was some spit. If Angelina left the room it might be easy enough to grab some drool without getting needles involved...
Charlotte shook her head.
I’m turning into a ghoul.
“Your mother is the reason he took Siofra.”
Lost in her thoughts, it took Charlotte a moment to digest Angelina’s statement. “What?”
Angelina sighed. “That was the deal he made with Estelle. She kept the first kid so he got the second.”
Charlotte felt her eyes bug. “What sort of thing is that? Who has occasional children with someone and then doles them out like playing cards?” She pantomimed dealing. “One for me, one for you...”
Angelina smirked. “Estelle and Mick, apparently. I don’t think either of the kids were exactly planned.”
Charlotte lifted her hands in the air and let them slap back to her thighs. “Oh for crying out loud. Now I’m the byproduct of an oops.”
“Maybe you were an oops, too,” suggested Angelina, studying her nails.
Charlotte gaped. “What? Did you know my mother, too?”
“No. I’m just saying. It’s possible. I might have been an oops too. Maybe we’re all oopses.”
“Are you crazy? Is everyone in this hotel crazy?”
Angelina shrugged without looking up. “Open for interpretation.”
Charlotte turned back to Mick and tried to block Angelina’s presence out of her mind. “Anyway, Mick, I’m your granddaughter, according to the crazy lady behind me. And I think I might have found your other daughter, Siofra.”
Charlotte thought she saw a flick of movement near Mick’s mouth and leaned forward to watch. Nothing else happened.
“Are you going to kiss him?” asked Angelina.
Charlotte straightened. “No, I think he moved.”
“What?”
“His lip twitched when I mentioned Siofra.”
“He does that. Used to freak me out but Martisha told me it doesn’t mean anything. Tell him what you figured out about Siofra.”
Charlotte rolled her eyes. “You’re trying to trick me into telling you what I figured out.” She paused. “I was going to tell you anyway.”
“I know. I don’t think I’m tricking you.”
“You do, a little.”
Angelina bobbed her head from side to side. “Maybe a little.”
“I’m telling you. You’re not tricking me.”
“Okay.”
Charlotte took a deep breath. “The postcards are fro
m cities with sensational crimes.”
Angelina scowled. “What does that mean?”
“It means she reads about crimes, online, I assume, or seeing them on television maybe, and then she goes to wherever they’ve taken place to solve them.”
Angelina’s expression didn’t change.
“You don’t think that’s interesting?” Charlotte felt her annoyance shift to a new level.
“Sounds like Siofra. I’m more disappointed I didn’t think of it.”
“Yeah, well. I’m pretty sure that’s what she’s doing. I looked up the cities where the postcards came from and they were almost always sent the day someone cracked the case. If it was a missing child, the child was found on the day the postcard was postmarked. Etcetera, etcetera.”
“Why almost?”
“I couldn’t connect a couple of the locations to crimes, but I think that’s just lack of news about that particular event. Those postcards need more Googling.”
Angelina tapped her front teeth with her index finger. “So we have to figure out what crime she’s going to solve next and then run to that town?”
Charlotte frowned. “That’s the tough part. Thanks to the twenty-four hour news cycle, there’s a sensational new crime being reported somewhere every five minutes.”
Angelina mumbled something.
“What?”
“I said, I got another postcard from her yesterday.”
“One you didn’t give me?”
“Right. Brand new. From Concord, New Hampshire.”
Charlotte straightened. “What day was it postmarked?”
“I don’t know. We can go back to my room and check it.”
Charlotte glanced back at Mick. She wanted to get to know him, as much as she could in his condition, but she also wanted to go look at that postmark and start trying to find Siofra’s new case. It seemed a shame to leave Mick so soon. He was her only family, other than Siofra. It figured she’d finally find family members, only to have one in a coma and another lost on the road.
She touched his hand, sliding her fingers down his own until her hand covered his. His thumb branched to the right and hers to the left, creating a double-thumbed hand.
Grandpa. Pop pop? Gramps?
“Can I come visit again?” she asked.
Angelina stood. “Are you asking me or him?”