“No, you’ve helped a lot. Can I call them?”
Edie’s face relaxed. “Of course you can. I’ll get you the number.”
“Thanks.” Now—now—she could find out where he was.
As soon as she had the number, written on a Post-it bearing the Voyager logo, Fiona retreated to a seat in the arrivals lounge. The waiting area was once again full. Evidently, flights were still arriving from other cities.
The area code she pressed in was unfamiliar, but a cheerful voice informed her that the corporate offices in Santa Fe were closed on weekends and would reopen tomorrow morning at ten o’clock.
No! I have to talk to you now! Didn’t they have an emergency contact number? Maybe it was on their website. But if she sent an e-mail, would somebody read it before Monday morning?
This can’t be happening. They had plans for the evening, a life to get on with. How could she wait until tomorrow morning to find anything out? But maybe she wouldn’t have to. She imagined him leaving his phone on the shuttle flight, realizing it when he got to Denver, and running back desperately to retrieve it. The airline couldn’t find the phone, and Flight 886 had departed in the meantime. The next flight from Denver was already full.
So now he was headed for LaGuardia Airport without his phone to let her know. And if her cell number was stored on his lost phone . . . he probably wouldn’t know it from memory, since he had never had to dial it. He knew her apartment landline, but of course she wasn’t there.
That jerked her up in her seat. There were probably messages, multiple messages, waiting for her back in Sydney Beach. She cursed herself for never bothering to learn the retrieval code to pick up her messages remotely. But between e-mails and texts to her iPhone, no calls to her apartment phone ever seemed that urgent.
Until now.
Chapter Seven
STALLED AT A traffic light in Eastport, Fiona realized she had forgotten about their dinner reservations. No chance of making those now. Would the Diligent Farmer restaurant give them a second chance later if they just didn’t show up? No, they had her landline number. She had to be the one to cancel.
If Lee was landing at La Guardia, would there be enough time to shoot over to Brooklyn? But it was a large airport and she had no idea what airline they might put him on. No, it was better to go home.
As the light changed, Fiona considered something else. Lee traveled widely, both for his own photography and on assignment, and had never lived a workaday life. For the last four years, she hadn’t either. If he woke up, as he had in April, and decided they should drive to Jekyll Island in Georgia, he knew that she would be happy to go too.
Was it possible that in the airport he had heard about some unbelievably beautiful place to photograph, a spot that he could not miss, especially since he was already out there? Perhaps he had rented a car and headed out impulsively, thinking he would just get a later plane. She saw him lost, running out of gas in the mountains where there was no phone service. Even now he was waiting by the side of the road, desperate, hoping that someone would come by . . .
Fiona turned onto Sunrise Highway. A year ago they hadn’t even known each other, though he had read her travel writing and she had seen his photographs in magazines. They met at a reception when Gusto! was moving to larger quarters, and hit it off immediately. Afterward they had gone for a drink, and that had been that. Lee had been born in South Africa and sent to school in England and had a repertoire of stories. By the next morning, he had known everything worth knowing about her as well.
Fiona parked her Toyota in its numbered space. It was due for its state inspection next month, and God knew what problems might show up this year. She still had some money saved from her law firm days, money she had used to finance her travels until her blog had become successful, but now there was only the money from Gusto! coming in.
Fortunately, rents in Sydney Beach were low. Though the town was located on the south shore of Long Island, not far from the Hamptons, it had none of their cachet. When she’d moved into the studio at Mario’s Vacation Apartments last December, the manager had warned her that prices would skyrocket in summer.
But when June came, she cajoled the manager into letting her stay on at the same price, pointing out that she was a responsible tenant and would still be there next winter when other units were vacant. Yet now she realized guiltily that she wouldn’t. There would be no reason to stay here once she was settled in Brooklyn. Lee was currently subletting an apartment, and she was there much of the time. But living together would be different.
She hadn’t yet broken the news to the manager.
Fiona grabbed her bag from the passenger seat and locked the doors, then clattered up the outside wooden stairs to the second floor. She had no doubt that there would be multiple messages from Lee, and as she entered the dim foyer, she saw that her machine light was blinking. Yes.
Quickly she pressed “Play.”
The message had come in at 5:26 p.m.
“Good evening, Ms. Reina. I’m calling from the Diligent Farmer to confirm your reservation for seven o’clock this evening. If there are any changes or modifications, please let us know.” The number followed.
Damn! That couldn’t be all.
The Diligent Farmer could go fuck himself.
HOW COULD SHE make the time pass until tomorrow morning? It seemed an intolerable wait. She didn’t dare leave the apartment in case Lee called; eventually, she slathered peanut butter on a handful of Triscuits and finished a bottle of cabernet sauvignon. At eleven, when the phone still hadn’t rung, she took two Valium to make herself sleep.
She woke up for good at 6:20 a.m. Monday morning. Her “Via Venezia” sleep shirt was clinging to her, the day’s heat already creeping into the apartment. Consciousness returned with a slap. Lee wasn’t lying in bed beside her. She had no idea where he was.
She willed herself to get up and make coffee, but did not move. What was the point? She couldn’t call the airline in New Mexico until noon Eastern time. On the other hand, the column for Gusto! was due Thursday.
Right. But how could she care about the horrors of cosmetics when her life felt upside down? Another glance at the clock. At least she should go to the gym. If she left now, she could see Karl and find out if he had any other ideas. They had been friends since her first law job; he would never soften the truth to make her feel better. A reality check was what she needed.
Besides, exercise would help fill the time. She would not do a class; she would talk to Karl and then use the machines. Quickly she made coffee, then headed out.
SHE FOUND KARL getting set up for a spin class, already wearing his narrow plastic glasses and red sweatband over his large forehead.
“I have to talk to you,” she said breathlessly.
“What’s up?” He abandoned the bike and followed her out of the room.
They sat down at a wire table in the small café area, not bothering to order anything.
“It’s Lee. He was coming home from Santa Fe yesterday, but he wasn’t on the plane. And I haven’t heard from him since!”
Karl nodded. “How long have you guys been together?”
“It’s not that! Things were great between us. We talked for a long time Saturday night. I’m worried that something’s happened to him.”
“Like what?”
“I’m not sure. He may have gotten sidetracked taking photos and gotten lost in the mountains. But it’s odd; there were other people at the airport waiting for passengers who didn’t get there either. And didn’t text or call.” She leaned earnestly across the table and told him everything that had happened, including the older man who said he had been on the shuttle but couldn’t remember Lee. “It’s driving me crazy!”
“Well, let’s look at the facts.” Karl was brisk, in attorney mode. “You’ve established that there wasn’t a problem with the flights. At least one person who was on Lee’s plane arrived in New York. For some reason, he’s choosing not to communicate wit
h you. You have to decide why.”
Fiona sat silent.
Why would he stop communicating with her? He was either incapacitated and couldn’t—or he was letting her know their relationship was over. Was he slipping out of her life as easily as he had moved into it? At forty-one, he had never been married. Maybe, in the months they had been inseparable, he felt that they were heading down a road he did not want to be on. Fiona had told the Voyager representative that he was her fiancé in order to be taken more seriously, but they had never talked about marriage.
But it couldn’t be true! When they had talked on their phones Saturday night—using FaceTime for the pleasure of seeing each other—everything had been normal. They made jokes about what they would do to each other when he was back: love talk.
He hadn’t sounded like a man about to disappear from her life.
Karl gave her the look that had calmed many clients. “It’s probably not as bad as you think. There’s some reasonable explanation. I bet by tonight it’s all worked out.”
“Really?”
“In the meantime, what about these other people waiting for passengers? Can you get in touch with any of them and see if those people ever arrived? Or contacted them? If they got here, they might know something about Lee.”
“That’s true. I’m sure I could find some of them. And I’ll see what Day Star has to tell me when they open, about whether he was on the plane.”
Karl tilted his head delicately. “If it’s his way of ending things, it’s better to know now.” He pushed up, his large hands almost tipping the table.
“Are you in court today?” Fiona asked.
“Yes. Yes, I am. Judge Callaghan.”
“Yikes.”
Thank God. Thank God I never have to do that again.
“Everybody misses you, Fee. Your wonderful stories about what could have happened. Even the judges were amused.”
“That’s the trouble with law: it’s so cut-and-dried. There are so many rules.”
Karl laughed.
She wasn’t sorry she had gone to law school. After her junior year at Iowa State, she was running low on funds. She had attended on scholarships, and her family, the Jensens, had ponied up the rest, but she knew she could not travel the world—still her dream—without money. Her grades were not outstanding, but she remembered her conversation with her high school guidance counselor.
Mrs. Malloy had insisted she apply for status as a Native American. The father listed on her original birth certificate, Leonard Charley, was a Chippewa Indian who had worked in Lamb’s Tongue for a few months on his way east.
Fiona brought Mrs. Malloy the document. “But I never lived on the reservation or anything.”
“That’s hardly the point.” Mrs. Malloy peered at her over her half-glasses and demanded to know what else Fiona had going for her. “You’re bright enough, but so are a million other seventeen-year-olds.”
“Maybe I should be a doctor.” That seemed a good way to earn money fast.
The guidance counselor laughed. “With your grades? Lawyer, maybe; I could see you arguing in court. Trying to make people see things your way.”
Fiona’s Native American roots hadn’t gotten her into Columbia or Yale, but Hofstra Law School on Long Island had given her a scholarship and enough work-study opportunities to survive. They had even helped her find a job at Legal Aid. It wasn’t their fault that she had tired of the law.
Pressing Fiona’s shoulder, Karl strode off.
Fiona went upstairs to the treadmills and set the machine for twenty minutes. Could Lee have gotten food poisoning and be too sick to phone? Maybe the planes were overbooked in Denver and he kept giving up his seat to pile on credits for future flights, embarrassed to tell her. Right. He was just as likely to be trapped in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in a time-warp and surface in a hundred years, wondering if his dinner reservation was still good.
Maybe Karl’s right: Lee just hates me.
Chapter Eight
BACK AT THE apartment, Fiona drank more coffee. She didn’t think she could face writing about the perils of poisoned lipstick, but she reminded herself that she didn’t have the financial luxury of not working. She was much too scattered to concentrate on her serious project, a series of guidebooks to destination cities. Her first, Paris’s Brightest Lights, had already been accepted by a publisher, and she was starting work on New York’s Best Apples.
The second book would detail the restaurant with the best cappuccino, the salon with the cheapest haircut, the friendliest Irish bar, and so on. She and Lee had planned a trip to sushi bars later this week. Living right in Brooklyn would make it easy to research the city. But how could she do it without him?
Meanwhile, Karl’s idea was a good one. Fiona got a yellow-lined pad from her desk to make notes. True, there were three million people on Long Island, but like DNA, everyone had left traces of who they were.
The easiest was the editor whose author was reading at a mystery bookstore last night. How many of those could there be? Checking her laptop, Fiona found only one in Suffolk County, over in Sayville. She could call, but she was suddenly too restless to stay in the apartment any longer. It was not that long a drive.
AT TEN O’CLOCK, Fiona reached the Black Cat Bookshop, a large Victorian house with a black wrought-iron fence and black shutters. Orange paint on the front window announced a “Back-to-Ghoul sale.” Cute. She wondered if she should use the ghost-shaped brass knocker, but it was a store, after all, so she turned the knob and walked in, stopping in a foyer that was papered with author-signing announcements.
A bony woman in a blue-striped sundress was kneeling on the bare wooden floor, removing books from a carton. She turned and grinned at Fiona. “More goodies! On the other hand, more bills.”
Fiona laughed.
Then something stirred on the counter, and she turned quickly. It was the largest cat she had ever seen, stretched out next to the cash register. Black, of course, and wearing a red collar with rhinestones. “My God!”
The woman nodded. “The owner. Twenty-eight pounds and counting. Was there something specific, or did you want to browse?”
“I’m looking for a true-crime book that just came out. It has ‘blood’ in the title,” she said, proud that she had remembered.
The woman put back her head and laughed. “Honey, they all do. Can you tell me anything else about it?”
“How about a college professor killing a student? The president’s daughter or something.”
“You mean Examination in Blood. What a shame you weren’t here last night; we had an author reading.” She pushed herself up and moved toward the counter. “We may still have a few copies put aside for people who couldn’t make it.”
Fiona felt her heart jump. “The author was here?” Did that mean the editor had picked her up in the city after all?
“Not exactly.” The woman was now fishing under the wide oak counter. “Her flight was delayed, so her editor came instead. Kind of odd, but she read from the book. A real ham! She couldn’t give many details about the writing of it or sign autographs, but it was better than nothing. Aha!” Triumphantly she brought out a book with a black and red cover, a dust jacket with a photograph of a smiling family jaggedly torn in half.
Fiona hesitated. Considering her finances, she really shouldn’t buy a hardcover book. But the woman felt like a kindred spirit, and the cat, who was watching her with wise yellow eyes, probably needed the money. “Okay, great. You wouldn’t happen to have the editor’s number, would you?”
The brown eyes narrowed. “Actually, I think I do. But why?”
“I’m getting the book for my mother. If I could arrange to have it inscribed when the author arrives, it would mean the world to her.”
“Oh, of course! Let me track it down.”
It was an interesting lie. Her real mother had drowned herself when Fiona was two, and her aunt—her mother’s oldest sister, Karen Jensen—was not a reader. Her passions were
the Lamb’s Tongue Community Church and the Jasper County Fair. A tale of bloody body parts would be just the ticket. “To Aunt Karen—Enjoy!”
But looking down at the lurid cover, she felt a frisson of guilt. She really needed to get back to Iowa for a visit. They had tried to do their best by her. It wasn’t the Jensens’ fault that she had always wanted to leave.
BACK IN HER car, Fiona called the number the bookshop owner had given her.
“Hi there!” The answering machine voice was perky. “You have reached the estate of Rosa Cooper. I’m either at the gym or out doing good deeds. If you have my office number, you can reach me there. But do leave a message.”
That was the woman. Fiona left a message, then wondered if she might be at the airport right now, meeting Susan’s plane. Or at the gym.
What next? She decided to go back to her apartment. There was always the chance Lee had called, and it would be easier to try to reach the other people from there. With a last look at the haunted bookstore, she slipped her phone in her bag. As she did, she realized she had stopped checking it for a text from Lee.
Chapter Nine
SETTLED ON THE green velour sofa, Fiona checked her laptop for “Swimming Pool Maintenance, Suffolk County.” There weren’t as many results as she had feared, but far too many to call. Yellow pad in hand, she began a list. She could discount Irish names; he had definitely been Italian. She also did not bother writing down the numbers of large companies or those with cute names like Blue Enchantment or Pools-R-Us. That didn’t seem like the man she had met.
Next she considered the geography. She discounted locations in the Hamptons. Too pricey for someone who thought he would never be able to retire. Too close to the Nassau County line, and he would have just used LaGuardia. But everywhere else was fair game.
She was connected mostly to voice mail asking her to leave a message and promising to call right back. She did get a receptionist once. “DiPenna Pool Service.”
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