Another dip and she came up with the paper she had taken from Rosa’s bag. She unfolded it then stared at it, uncomprehending. Instead of the list, it was Rosa’s flight information, which she must have printed out from her computer after making the reservations. Chilled, Fiona dumped the rest of her purse’s contents across the white bedspread. Her notebook, a cosmetic bag, wallet, rental car key, phone, five or six pens, tampons, her used boarding pass—and nothing else. Panicked, she put her hand inside her purse and flailed around.
No other papers.
Where was the list? It had to be here. Dropping to her knees, she raised the corner of the spread and looked under the bed, then jumped up and went to her dresser. Except for her deodorant, toothpaste, and a silver hair clip, the polished oak top was bare. She had been groggy last night, but she remembered walking down the hallway of the inn and reaching into her purse to touch the paper again for reassurance.
Except . . . she had been touching the wrong piece of paper.
Don’t panic. Knowing how important it was, Rosa had probably stuffed it down further inside her bag or even taken it with her to the piano.
But Fiona knew she would not be able to eat anything, would not be able to think about anything, until she knew for sure.
Reaching for her phone on the bed, she found Rosa’s cell number and punched it in.
“Fiona? Good morning! Want to have breakfast?”
“Thanks, but I’m meeting the guys. Do you have the list of passengers?” She closed her eyes. Please, please, please.
Rosa seemed to be thinking. “I overdid it a little last night, I was just so happy to be somewhere congenial. But let’s see. The last I noticed, it was on the table where you showed it to me. When I didn’t see it later, I thought you had taken it with you.”
“No.”
“But it has to be around. Why would anyone take it? I left my purse at the table, and it was fine.”
Fiona could not think of anything to say that didn’t sound paranoid. “Could the waiter have picked it up? Can you ask him?”
“I can try. I haven’t seen him this morning, but I don’t know if I’d know him if I did. I’ll ask around, though. I’m coming over; I want to take the Explorer to Susan’s.”
“If you find the list, call me!”
Fiona was too upset to shower now. Dressing rapidly, she created another scenario. She had had more to drink than usual; she must have picked up the list from the table automatically and stuffed it in her bag. Perhaps Greg had come into her room last night when she was in the bathroom and taken it to show Dominick. He was like that: personal boundaries meant little. She remembered how he had simply announced that he would share Dominick’s room.
It could not have simply disappeared.
When she came into the breakfast room, Greg and Dominick were already at a table, bending over compotes of bananas and vanilla yogurt. A pile of orange-blossom muffins waited in a basket between them.
Fiona pulled out the chair on Greg’s right, breathless. “Did you take the list last night?”
“The list? The passenger list? You took it to show Rosa, remember?”
“No, I mean after that. You didn’t come in my room last night and take it?”
He looked at her. “You think I’d just barge into your room and take something?”
Dominick chuckled.
“You never came back to the bar either. I was waiting for you!”
She slumped against the yellow ladder-back chair. “I can’t find the list anywhere. Rosa doesn’t have it, you don’t have it.” She recognized the panic in her voice.
“Well, someone has to.” Dominick was using that voice meant to calm a child again. “We’ll look for it after breakfast.”
“Where? I’ve looked everywhere it could be. I’m sure it was in my purse when I went to bed.”
“Do you sleepwalk or anything?” Greg asked.
“What?”
“Maybe you ate it in a dream by mistake.”
She stared at him until he shrugged.
“Good morning!” A young woman Fiona had never seen before set the banana-yogurt cup in front of her with a flourish. “Care for a Mexican omelet this morning?”
“No.”
“Get this girl some black coffee,” Greg said genially. “Set it down on the table and back away slowly.”
“She’s upset about something,” Dominick said apologetically.
Stop being my father.
Why weren’t they as upset as she was? “You don’t understand,” she said slowly. “I either left the list on the table last night when I was with Rosa, or I took it from her purse and brought it to my room, where someone took it. Either way, it’s gone. And Will Dunlea knew I was staying here.” She had a sudden memory of leaving the French doors open when she went to wash.
Dominick was shaking his head good-humoredly. “I don’t know, Fiona. From a plane disaster the authorities say never happened to people following you and breaking into your room, you’ve got some imagination. Greg was telling me that you think it could be a hostage situation.”
“I think it could. It’s the only thing that fits. Homeland Security could be the ones watching us.” She didn’t know if that would make her feel better or worse.
The young blonde woman cautiously set a cup of coffee near her elbow. Fiona muttered, “Thanks.”
Then she thought of something else. Frantically she reached into her purse and brought out a pen and her used boarding pass. “We’ve got to write down the names and addresses of everyone we can remember!”
“I know Dimitri’s.”
God save me from idiots. “Not the addresses of people we know, the names of people we don’t know. There was that professor from the University of Cincinnati, Sealand, or something like that.” She turned the pass over and scribbled the name down.
Greg finally understood. “There was some dude with an African name from Alabama.”
“You don’t remember his name?”
“Why should I?”
“That family from Germany, I couldn’t even pronounce their name.”
“A couple of guys from the rez.”
“Right!” She gave him an approving look. “I wondered about that. One last name was Black Arrow or something like that.” She wrote it down. “And one of them was a flight attendant; there was an F. A. after his name. The pilot and the copilot had F. O.”
Dominick, who was rubbing his chin as he listened to them, said, “Can’t we just get another list?”
Greg pantomimed choking on his muffin.
“Not in this lifetime,” Fiona said. “They’ll really be on guard now.”
“Assuming they even know you took it.” Dominick didn’t hide his skepticism.
“Oh, they know. They know exactly why we’re here. Who else would be following us? They even sent me a text Wednesday night that was supposed to be from Lee. That means they have his phone.”
Both men stared at her.
“Didn’t I tell you? After I had dinner with Will Dunlea, I came back and my phone dinged with a text. It said something like, ‘Don’t worry about me. Go home and I’ll explain everything later.’ But I know it wasn’t from him.”
“Wait a minute.” Dominick looked ready to shake her. “He sent you a text Wednesday night? From his phone?”
“It was from his phone, but it wasn’t from him. I’m sure of that. When I called right back, he didn’t pick up and talk to me. And it wasn’t . . . personal. He always writes something at the end like ‘Love ya’ or some joke that only we would get. Okay, maybe he wouldn’t make a joke now. Except”—she thought of something else—“if he was being held hostage, maybe that’s all they’d let him write!”
One more piece that fit. “And to think, I was about to go home. Thank God the receptionist gave me that note!”
Dominick shook his head. “You’re pinning too much on that note.”
“No, I’m not. As soon as the office opens, I’m going to talk
to her.”
“I’ll go with you. I want to see if Coral really was on the plane—which I doubt. Then I have to go to Taos and find a way to get in touch with Eve. We’ll search your room after breakfast for that list,” he said. “If it’s that important, we’ll find it.”
Fiona reached for her coffee cup, not bothering to challenge his logic.
The Mexican omelet was filled with ham, jack cheese, onions, and jalapeño peppers. She watched silently as the others ate.
“You ought to get one,” Greg told her. “It’s free.”
He was right. Why starve herself to death for being careless? If she ate a big breakfast, she wouldn’t have to take time for lunch. She raised her hand and the young woman was there immediately, happy to bring her breakfast after all.
“When you went to the Day Star offices Wednesday, did the people seem upset?” Dominick asked. “Like they were in the middle of a hostage situation?”
Fiona thought about Ginger Lee bursting in with revenue reports and the receptionist joking with Will. “Not really.”
“Don’t you think if they were in the middle of an emergency, you’d know it? There’d be officials checking you before you even went into the door.”
“Maybe. We’ll see how they act today. I’m going to make some calls now. To Maggie, of course, and this professor, Sealand. I want to go to Taos too, to find the ones from the reservation.”
“I’ve got things to do in Santa Fe,” Greg said mysteriously, mopping up the last of his omelet with a corner of toast. “I’ll see you when I see you.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
FIONA TRIED MAGGIE several times and let the phone keep ringing in case she was busy with Derek. Maybe she was driving him to one of his programs. But there was never any answer and no machine picked up.
As soon as she hung up, “La Marseillaise” began and she answered quickly without looking. It could be Maggie just reaching the phone, it could be Rosa saying she had found the list. It could be . . . But it was Will Dunlea.
“Good morning, Fiona,” he said cheerfully. “Good day sightseeing yesterday?”
“Yes.” Was it time to confront him? “I went to two of the museums. Very interesting.”
“Well, good. The Folk Art Museum is spectacular. I just wanted to wish you a safe trip this morning.” His voice was warm and she felt herself responding just a little.
“Well, I’m not going back quite yet. My friends came in last night. We thought we’d drive up and take a look at the Pueblo.”
“Los Alamos is interesting too. I’m afraid I can’t offer you another voucher, though, until we open again on Monday.”
“You’re closed today?”
“We close on Fridays in the summer. A lot of businesses around here do.”
“Even in tourist season?”
“Well, not restaurants or hotels. And we still take reservations and handle cancellations by phone or on the website. So we don’t shut down completely. But it’s summer vacation for our employees too.”
Fiona cast around frantically for a way to ask him Priss’s last name. “Listen, I really liked your—”
But he cut her off. “I’m leaving for the mountains in a minute myself. But I’ll keep in touch, in case you have any free time . . . ” He clicked off.
She sat there stunned on the side of her unmade bed. Concentrate. Focus.
Picking up her laptop, she went to the University of Cincinnati website. There was no one named Sealand on the faculty, but she found a Dr. Martin Seelander in the anthropology department. Close enough? Several more clicks and she had his home phone from whitepages.com.
What had people done before the Internet?
She pressed in the number quickly, and a woman answered.
“Mrs. Seelander?” Why aren’t you out in New Mexico searching for your husband?
“Speaking.” She sounded older than Fiona had expected, cheerful and self-possessed.
“I’m—uh, calling from Santa Fe. Is Dr. Seelander available?”
“Is this a work call? It doesn’t matter, I’ll put him on.”
“He’s there?”
“The dig ended last weekend.” She laughed at Fiona’s surprise. “He’s working from home, getting over a fall. I’ll get him to pick up.”
A pause, then, “Hello?” The voice was open, Midwestern, the kind of voice Fiona had heard all her life.
“Dr. Sealand—Seelander, my name is Fiona Reina. I’m looking for people who were on the Day Star shuttle last Sunday.”
He chuckled. “Well, I started out Sunday. A month of scrambling around the rocks with no trouble, then I go and tumble down a flight of boarding steps. Or so they tell me.”
The phone was wet under her fingers. “What do you mean?”
“Evidently I lost consciousness for a while and banged up my ankle real good. They kept me overnight to check me out, then sent me on home. I’m fine if I keep my ankle elevated.”
She made herself breathe out. “But you remember the shuttle flight from Taos?”
“Remember it? What about it?”
“Nothing about any—complications?”
He laughed again. “Well, there was a rather vivid movie about a crash. I was surprised, I thought airlines kept away from movies like that. On the other hand, on a transatlantic flight once I saw one about a computer hack threatening to blow up the world. So I guess you’re no longer so sensitive, am I right? Although—”
“But you don’t think you were in a crash?” she asked, interrupting. Didn’t he know they never showed movies on short hops?
“In a crash? How could I be? Didn’t you say you were from the airline? Don’t worry, I won’t sue.”
“No, I didn’t say. But thanks.” She hung up.
Did that mean there hadn’t been a terrorist takeover? Or had they just released him after swearing him to secrecy? More troubling, why was he associating a crash with the flight?
She couldn’t make sense of any of it. But there was an answer here somewhere—there had to be.
Chapter Twenty-Six
SHE FOUND DOMINICK waiting for her in a wicker rocker on the front porch.
“They’re closed. Day Star offices are closed. Will Dunlea just called me; he thought I was leaving today. But then he said they closed Fridays in the summer. Don’t you think that’s suspicious?”
Dominick tilted his head. “No.”
“No?”
“Lots of businesses at home do that. I can’t, of course; I’m on call twenty-four-seven in the summer. Which reminds me, I have to get home by Sunday.”
“It’s already Friday.”
“I know. But once Eve confirms that she has Coral . . . ”
“Coral’s name was on the flight roster,” Fiona said gently.
“That just means she was supposed to be flying. Not that she actually did.”
The air had a crisp, unspoiled smell. “Okay, but let me tell you about Dr. Seelander.” She detailed the conversation as exactly as she could remember it. “But don’t you think it’s funny about Dr. Seelander thinking he was watching a movie?”
“Maybe he was.”
Keep calm. “It couldn’t be. They don’t show movies on short flights like that.”
“Fiona.” He looked up at her as if gauging how upset she was getting. “I’m no Einstein, but so far all you’ve done is find people who were on the flight and are okay.”
“With injuries,” she said stubbornly.
“You don’t know that. Not that man at MacArthur Airport.”
“Him? I think he was a plant. I think he was sent by Day Star to tell me that.”
Dominick shook his head. Now he was openly laughing at her. “And how did he know to tell you?”
“Because I was asking! It’s not rocket science. I was obviously waiting for someone who hadn’t come. Anyway,” she said, smiling back at him unwillingly, “let’s go to Taos. I need to see about those guys from the Pueblo.”
“And what about that te
xt from your boyfriend?”
“The one Wednesday night? I think it was a fake.”
“Fiona.” He stood up then and put his hand on her upper arm. “You’re—what does my wife call it?—you’re in denial.”
She pulled away. “I’m in denial? You’re in denial.” What an aggravating man.
“Okay, but just tell me one thing. How many survivors will it take to convince you?”
“All of them.”
“Good luck with that.”
And then, inexplicably, they started to laugh. He reached out and put his arm around her shoulder.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
AS SHE STOOD beside the Explorer, Rosa hesitated. She was registered as one of the drivers, but she didn’t like trying to maneuver anything this large, especially on unfamiliar roads. No, she would take a cab. Susan lived in a gated community overlooking the hills, so the house wouldn’t be hard for a driver to find.
Since she had not seen any taxis prowling the streets, Rosa walked around to the Turquoise Trail Inn reception desk. “I’d like a cab,” she told the young woman, a Mia Farrow waif with blonde bangs and a wistful face. “I need one that will wait for me and bring me back.”
The girl’s green eyes danced. “Good luck with that. We only have one taxi company, and people make a lot of complaints about them online. They don’t show up on time, they don’t know where they’re going, and they charge too much.”
Rosa sighed. “That bad?”
“That bad.”
“I guess I’ll just have to drive.”
“You have a car?”
“A rental car. But I don’t really know the area.”
“You have a GPS?”
“Yes.”
“There you go.” The young woman turned away and picked up a ringing phone.
There had been a time when this would not have been a concern. When had she gotten so cautious? It must be this situation that was putting her on edge: last-minute flights and the drive up from Albuquerque. Fiona’s hysterical phone call about the missing passenger list. Rosa supposed Fiona and Dominick had gone to the Day Star offices, but she didn’t want to wait to find out what they’d learned.
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