“Like I need the extra pressure,” she said.
“You don’t feel pressure.”
“It’s imagined. I create scenarios for myself. Helps me hold onto the illusion of reality.”
“You mean the illusion of being human.”
“Same difference.”
Rosey took the first napping session. He had to be a little tired after that long road trip. Sam and I stayed awake and waiting on Rogers to find something that would help us locate the proverbial needle. In this case, it was more along the lines of searching for the haystack. The needle would be next.
I waited almost an hour before Rogers reported her findings.
“One flight leaving for Dominica, Melville Hall at 6:22 p.m. today.”
“And why did you select that island for Marvin’s destination?”
“When I was delving into Betty Jones’ affairs and discovered the coffee connection with Marvin, I remembered that he had placed an online order for airplane tickets. So, I went back to his computer and found the ticket order. By the way, it is confirmed.”
She provided all of the necessary details, including the gate number where he and Laurel would be boarding.
“I owe you.”
“True. Your indebtedness to my proficiency is mounting.”
“Yeah, that too. And is Marvin staying at a nearby hotel?”
“Harder to ascertain quickly since there are so many hotels and motels close by. Also, I suspect that Marvin is using an alias. Let me do some rambling around and I’ll call you back.”
Rosey woke up two hours later. He said he was rested. He offered to let me sleep while he watched, but I told him I would rather eat a hearty breakfast first, and then sleep.
We found a café inside the airport. Sam waited patiently in the truck for our return. I promised to bring him some eggs and bacon. I managed to inform him of what Rogers had discovered about the tickets, the destination, and the departure gate number.
Rosey stayed alert while we ate our breakfast fare. Even though it was still morning, he thought it possible that Marvin might show up just to be certain everything was in order. He said something about it going to his personality type.
Sam wolfed down his eggs and bacon in short order. I slept as did Sam, I think. Rosey stayed inside the airport and roamed about looking for Marvin. He called me around one o’clock to be sure I was okay.
“You awake, Sleeping Beauty?” he said in his baritone voice.
“I am now.”
“Sorry about that. Wanted to be sure you and the truck were okay.”
“The truck is fine. Anything exciting happening with you?”
“You jest.”
“The movies sometimes make it seem so exhilarating. Chases, gun battles, fights, up and down the escalators, running hither and yon.”
“Hither and yon, yep, there’s plenty of running hither and yon, but it’s not the exciting kind of hither and yon. Mainly people trying to catch their flights. No sign of Marvin or Laurel as yet.”
“Doubt that he would walk around with her before the scheduled flight,” I said.
“I get that. You wanna meet for lunch?”
“After I take Sam on a walk around, I’ll meet you in the same café that served our delicious breakfast.”
Sam and I stayed in the parking lot where the Silverado was secure. It was a massive lot so we had plenty of room to get our exercise. After my nap and the walk with Sam, I felt somewhat invigorated. I was ready to do battle with the wily little weasel named Marvin K. Dillingham. I think my surprise at this turn of events was affecting the quality of my anger against him. And the quantity. I felt as if my anger towards Marvin was ever expanding.
I put Sam back in the truck, fixed the windows so he could breathe or escape if need be. I knew the vehicle to be safe with him inside it. I also promised him a few burgers for his next meal.
Hamburgers and French fries provided some noticeable energy for me. Rosey ate a Chef Salad the size of Kansas. I ordered the usually plain hamburgers to go for Sam. I ordered him three this time. A reward for good behavior and his unspoken nobility.
At four minutes after four, Rogers called again.
“Found something suspicious. Took me a while to check it out. A man and his daughter were registered at the Hilton for one night. His name was Karol Jones, Karol with a k. The daughters’ name was given as Betty Jones. Ain’t that curious?” Rogers said.
“Quite. I think you be onto something.”
“Did some further checking and he is flying out at 6:22 p.m. to Dominica with his daughter. Too much coincidence to suit me.”
I shared the information with Rosey. We decided to head for the gate for the Dominica flight leaving in less than two hours. We were betting that Marvin would already be there with Laurel. Our hopes were that we could surprise him and free Laurel before he could harm her.
I certainly did not trust my wily adversary to go easily nor gently into that good night.
66
Rosey was the first to spot the gate number. The airport sirens sounded immediately and the people at our destination gate were running towards us. Some of them were screaming, some seemed too shocked to utter any word. Fear showed itself clearly on the faces of the majority who ran by us in the opposite direction.
My heart sank. I had the sickening feeling that something bad had happened and that we were too late in stopping it. Rosey began to run towards the commotion. I followed immediately in his wake.
As we were running to see what had happened, my peripheral vision caught sight of a woman in a flowing cape run past us along the windows of the airport. She was moving quickly in the midst of the mass of people fleeing the scene. She was a blur for the most part at first, but her fluid motion along with her flowing garment captured my attention despite the fact that she was contained within the small crowd of people moving slower than she was.
The scene was surreal. Much like a slow motion camera filming only one object – this woman – amid the rest of the people running along at a normal pace.
Too many people, too much turmoil. Chaos adversely affects my thinking processes too much. Too many distractions, to be sure. I was drawn back to the crowd around me.
I let the moment pass and I began running once more. I joined Rosey who had stopped at a point where he could see the body lying on the terminal floor. One of the security personnel was standing nearby keeping people back from the man on the floor who appeared to be dead. At the very least, the man on the floor was not moving at all.
And there was a pool of blood. The blood pool seemed to be increasing as I stared at the man lying deathly still on the airport floor.
“Do you know what happened?” I said to the security person guarding the roped-off section where the body was lying.
“Stay back, ma’am. We’ve called the police. You need to stay back.”
“I’m staying back. Did you see what happened?”
“All I know is that a man was stabbed. Too many conflicting stories from those who saw whatever they saw. The police will sort it out. Now, get back,” he said.
The man on the floor lying in a large pool of blood was Marvin K. Dillingham. No doubt he was dead, I surmised. Too much blood, too much stillness.
Despite my relief, it all seemed to be too anti-climatic. Or maybe just bizarre.
Rosey and I scanned the gate section in search of Laurel Shelton. I shifted my vision from left to right, then back again. Rosey was likely doing the same on his side of the gate. She was not there. I called Rogers.
“Need the room number of that Karol Jones you found.”
“666.”
“No kidding.”
“It happens.”
“Maybe. I thought motels and hotels were superstitious about stuff like that.”
“Not this one.”
Rosey and I waited for the police to arrive and watched the scene unfold. We stood at a safe distance so we could watch them inspect the body and take their n
otes. However, we were too far away to hear anything that was said. Two uniformed Newark policemen walked by us after they had been next to the body and close to the investigators. We heard the two of them talking about it, so we followed behind them in order to eavesdrop.
“Strange world, Joe,” I overheard him say to his companion.
“Reckon so. Stabbing in an airport in the middle of the day,” Joe said.
“And some witnesses saw a woman do it,” his friend said.
“I got the same word. Some said the woman had a sword. Can you believe that?” Joe said as the two of them turned off the main thoroughfare. We stopped following and watched them walk away from us.
Rosey looked at me with that pensive stare I had seen so many times before. I shook my head without comment.
“Let’s go explore the Hilton,” I said.
We found Room 666. The door was opened. The cleaning lady was already changing the sheets and tidying up the place. I flashed my credentials as if they held any sway in New Jersey, as if the cleaning lady would be impressed by my little detective ID card for the state of Virginia. We looked inside the closets and the bathroom. There was no Laurel to be found. No clues.
Back down at the main desk in the lobby, I spoke with the man behind the counter.
“Looking for a young girl you might have seen in the last twenty-four hours here. About, say, five feet five inches. She’s twelve but might appear to be a little older.”
“You relatives?” he said.
There was something about the way he said it that made me suspect that he had seen Laurel.
“Yeah. I’m her sister. What do you know about her?”
“Security found her hiding in the linen closet on the third floor, and she’s in the manager’s office right now. We called the police when she wouldn’t give us any information. Say, did they contact you?”
“Not yet. We’ve been searching for her.”
“Runaway, huh? Follow me. I’ll take you back.”
Rosey and I played along with the runaway story in hopes that the person in protective custody would in fact be our Laurel Shelton.
We followed the man to the manager’s office. He knocked on the door. Someone said to come in. All three of us entered.
Laurel was sitting in a chair across from a person I assumed to be the manager. It was a woman. They were playing chess. Laurel smiled when she saw me. I expected her to run and hug me. Tender movie scene. It didn’t happen. She was busy beating the woman at chess. Let’s call it being focused upon the situation at hand.
“She’s pretty good,” Laurel said as she gestured toward the woman sitting across from her.
The lady smiled.
“She’s told me a wild story,” the manager lady said. “Are you family?”
“Close enough, you know … sisters,” I said. “We’ve been searching for her.”
“Not sure about her story,” she said. “But we decided to keep her here until we could verify who she was and what was going on.”
“Wait until you see the evening news regarding an incident at the airport across the way,” I said.
It took a few hours after the police arrived to convince them that we were friends and that she had been kidnapped. We called Laura Beth who told the police who we were and that we were friends searching for her daughter. After more thorough checking, they released Laurel to us and we all headed home. It was late at night. We were all exhausted.
Rosey said he was too tired to make the return trip straight through, so we stopped in Harrisburg and paid for a couple of rooms to rest and unwind. Laurel and I shared a room. Rosey and Sam took the other room.
It was after two o’clock when my phone rang. Laurel was sound asleep so the obnoxious ring of Starnes’ phone didn’t awaken her. I stumbled around in the dark, retrieved the ringing phone, and then stepped outside to talk. It was one of those restricted numbers. Again.
“Clancy here,” I said a little aggravated by a call so early in the morning.
“I could not allow his plan to succeed,” the female voice said.
I recognized the voice. It was Sai Leekpai.
“You calling from home or some place between here and there?”
“Not quite home, but I have a layover for a few hours.”
“I should thank you, but I’m not quite sure that you did what you did for me.”
“Altruism is not one of my character traits,” she said.
“An accident with just proportions,” I said.
“Sometimes it happens.”
“Apparently Laurel had already eluded him … somehow,” I said.
“Who is Laurel?” she said.
“The name of the girl you saved,” I said.
“You embellish my contribution.”
“You rescued her somehow and then took him out.”
“I admit to nothing. Besides, who will believe a twelve year old girl from some remote mountain town in North Carolina?”
67
“You didn’t tell us exactly how you managed to get away from Marvin,” I said to Laurel the next morning as we were delving into some severely delicious pancakes at a local IHOP. Those wonderful restaurants always seem to be around to satisfy my cravings for sweet calories. Rosey was even enjoying a batch of banana nut pancakes with strawberries and whipped cream on his large stack. Sam was in the truck waiting on his wonderful breakfast in the to-go box.
“Is that important?” she said between bites.
“Sort of makes your tale plausible.”
“Marvin left me tied to a chair in the room and I managed to get loose.”
“Nothing to it, huh?”
“He wasn’t very swift with knots,” she said and then took another large mouthful of pancakes.
“And no one helped you?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“So, someone did help you escape?”
“I didn’t say that either. But I will say that you have some extraordinary friends who show up out of nowhere from time to time. I might enjoy doing what you do one day.”
“I don’t recommend it, but if you succumb to my profession, you’ll require a network of good people to aid you.”
I looked at Rosey who seemed oblivious to our conversation. I had not as yet had the opportunity to tell him of my late night call from Sai. I figured he didn’t want to know anymore than he knew. Maybe that chapter in his life was behind him now. Maybe.
Laura Beth Call was elated to have her daughter back. We arrived just in time for a late supper. We had called ahead, so Beth knew we were coming. She had prepared a feast for us, so naturally Rosey and I stayed to enjoy the celebration. Sam managed to procure a large plate full of chicken and dumplings for himself.
I called Starnes to let her know that Laurel was safe and that some twisted justice had been served on Marvin. I then called Diamond to be sure that she was still healing and gaining ground after her severe ordeal. She was pleased that Marvin was no longer among the living.
“Shedding no tears for his demise?” I said.
“You jest.”
“I do.”
“The world is a better place tonight from such a loss,” she quipped.
“Waxing philosophic?”
“Stating facts.”
“And you?”
“I’ll be out in a few more days.”
“Returning home?” I was still prying into her secretive life to gain some info on her history.
“No,” she said. “Stop snooping around my life.”
“I’ll be around these hills until the hospital throws you out,” I said.
“The word is discharged, love. I’ll call you when I require my truck returned.”
I called Rogers to report the details of our New Jersey adventure. Rosey was inside helping Laurel and her mother wash and dry the dishes.
“And that pile of money, dearie … what should I do with it?” Rogers asked.
“Put it in a safe place and leave no trace of i
t. Digital fingerprints could be costly for us.”
“Us?”
“Yeah, us. If I go to prison, I will take you with me.”
“Wouldn’t be the same for me as it would be for you,” she said.
Her little AI truth dropped on me as if I need to be reminded of our differences.
Rosey and joined me on the porch while Beth and Laurel spent some quality time together. Sam was sleeping after his abundant supper. The evening was warm and calm. It was a decided change from recent times.
I finally relaxed for the first time in what seemed like forever.
“What are you going to do with the money you stole twice?” Rosey asked. He didn’t really sound curious. It was more of a conversation starter than a need to know.
“It’s a lot of money.”
“That’s a given. But that wasn’t my question.”
“Who does it belong to?”
“Now that’s a question. It came from Thailand, some seedy underworld characters of that culture.”
“I doubt if anyone will step forward to claim it,” I said.
“Someone, somewhere will mention it one of these days. Two billion dollars is a nice round figure.”
“Not so round. I did not steal two billion. I can’t count that high,” I said.
“You mince words with me. Still, someone has a nice problem, I’d say.”
“You mean those who have the money or those who lost the money?”
“Well, they didn’t exactly lose it. They paid for a device which contained a blueprint of sorts. They got what they wanted.”
“And will likely make more than a measly one point something billon dollars,” I added.
He considered my insight for a few moments but had no response.
“So what’s troubling you in all of this?” I asked after his silence was extended.
“I think that somebody on that side of the world knows you took the money.”
“And you’re worried about me?”
“I’m always worried about you. The way you live causes those of us who know you to worry.”
“I could retire with that much money and end your worries for me.”
Out Jumps Jack Death: A Clancy Evans Mystery (Clancy Evans PI Book 8) Page 34