Finding Harmony (Katie & Annalise Book 3)

by Pamela Fagan Hutchins

  “Yup,” Kurt said. “We’ve got a lot of talking to do.”

  “I can help,” Gabriel said, his dark eyes shining from the drama of our unusual situation, but his demeanor earnest. “I will talk to the mechanics and everyone that works with the planes and the pilots.”

  I said, “Kurt, you and I can ask around in the terminal.”

  “Yup,” he said.

  “Good. Thank you,” I said to them both. “Let’s get moving. Please.”

  We all stood, and Gabriel shook our hands.

  “Wait,” he said. “I almost forgot to tell you one last piece of information. I am not sure if it is important or not.”

  “Yes?” I replied, hoping for a gold nugget.

  “When I asked about Americanos, my assistant said that someone asked her about an Americano just an hour ago.”

  “Someone else is looking for Nick?” I asked.

  Kurt said, “It was probably us.”

  “No, I don’t think so. She said this person was looking for a woman. One like you.” Gabriel looked at me like a riddle he couldn’t figure out. “A tall red-headed American woman.”

  “But why . . . how would . . . no one even knows we’re here, except my mother-in-law!” I couldn’t put words around my thoughts. Jiménez? “It’s probably a coincidence.”

  Kurt put his hand on my upper arm protectively. “Description?” he asked.

  “Oh, she didn’t have one,” Gabriel answered. “She said that it was a telephone call. A very strange call. She wondered how they got her number.”

  “Did they say why they were looking for the woman?” I asked.

  “She said they told her they had been separated from their friend, and wanted to know if she had seen her. My assistant told them she could announce the woman’s name over the loudspeakers—how do you say it?”

  “Page her,” I supplied.

  “Yes, page her. She said the man said no thank you, and hung up.”

  “That’s not much,” I said.

  “I’m sorry, but it is all that she knew,” Gabriel replied.

  Who? Who would ask about someone like me? Jiménez was my chief suspect, but there were those men asking the skycap about Elena in St. Marcos.

  “Katie, I think we should get moving,” Kurt said.

  Dazed, I checked my iPhone. It was 3:30. Crap. We needed to move fast.

  The picture of Nick in the mangled plane flashed in my mind again.

  Really fast.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The most likely stop in the terminal for Nick and the other three travelers was for food, so we headed there first. I felt like a neon sign on the Vegas strip as we made our way to the cafeteria, the private terminal’s only dining establishment.

  Patrons queued for food before a glass case of cold food and drinks. I peeked in. I hadn’t eaten anything since five a.m., but the arroz con leche looked a little sketchy and I realized I was not hungry. There were fried fish and chicken with rice and peas, and baskets of coconut biscuits, or coconetes, according to a tiny hand-lettered sign. It was a lot like the fare from the catering trucks I’d always called roach coaches.

  Kurt and I had decided that I would do the talking, since a six-foot-two-inch gruff-voiced American man might be intimidating. We surveyed the cafeteria. Three employees in pressed khaki shorts and navy shirts worked behind the counter and another bussed the red Formica tables just beyond it. Others bumped in and out of swinging doors with trays of food and plates. In my limited Spanish, I questioned every employee in the snack bar in turn. “Did you see a very sexy young woman and her mother two days ago? Maybe two men with them?”

  One after another, they answered me in the same nervous way: No. No. No. No.

  And then a yes.

  Or a sí, rather.

  A man, of course; a very young man who had cleared the table next to where our foursome lunched. He said he saw them, and what’s more, he claimed he heard their conversation. He made no apology for eavesdropping.

  “Una sexy mamí, sí,” he explained.

  Yes, I know.

  My years of soaking up the Spanish around me in Texas (and learning as little of it as I could in Spanish class) were coming back to me, and I realized I could understand most of what he was saying. His account was startling. According to him, the two women and the younger man got up from the table first. They thanked the older man and bid him adios.

  “And then they walked out of the restaurant?” In my rush, I had switched to English, so Kurt translated.

  Out of the airport, it turned out. And the older man stayed behind, drinking café. Saying nothing.

  So which one was Nick? The old one or the young one? I pulled up a picture of my husband on my iPhone and showed it to the young man. I had taken it on Monday at Ike’s Bay, less than a week ago, a crying baby in a carrier on his front and a screaming young boy in a pack on his back.

  “Sí, drinking café,” he said, and pointed at one of the tables in the dining area.

  The older one.

  A bird chirped. I looked from the snack bar into the main room of the terminal. A bright yellow sugarbird was circling the beams of the ceiling, searching for a way out. As I watched, it ducked lower, tilted its wing and body, and darted into the sunshine. Lucky bird.

  “Drinking coffee. Anything else?” Kurt asked.

  “He had a bag. From there.” The young man pointed at the gift shop across the terminal. “He look in his bag and drink coffee. He use his phone.”

  Was this good news? Nick had stayed behind. Elena and her entourage had left. Elena had told the Petro-Mex security guard she was in Mexico when he spoke to her last night, but Nick had not gone with her. At least not from the cafeteria. Maybe not at all?

  I had believed in Nick all along. But certainty would be very nice. I wanted to know—and have everyone else know—that my husband did not traipse across the Caribbean and Mexico after a femme fatale that every man remembered with a gleam in his eye and a grin on his face.

  Kurt’s taut voice broke into my reverie. “Katie, if he didn’t go with them to Mexico, or wherever they went, that raises the chances that he didn’t make it to wherever he intended to go.”

  This broke through to me. He was right.

  “However, all we know for sure at this point is that he didn’t leave the cafeteria with them,” he continued.

  “They left the terminal,” I pointed out.

  “They might have come back,” he said.

  “That’s not what I heard,” I said.

  “You’re hearing what you want to hear, then,” Kurt said, without any change in the tone of his voice.

  My frustration overcame my good judgment. “What are you saying, Kurt? That you think Nick ran off with this woman to Mexico?”

  “Not that I think so, but that it’s possible until we rule it out.”

  I hadn’t expected this answer. I didn’t like this answer. “You think it’s possible Nick left me?”

  “A house full of babies is a lot of responsibility,” he said in a voice that sounded like he had a lot more to say.

  “The babies or me?”

  “Well, he ran off to surf a lot, and . . .”

  “And?” I said, daring him to finish his thought.

  There’s a saying that discretion is the better part of valor. Kurt abandoned discretion and braved my wrath.

  “And he really wanted you to lose the baby weight,” he said.

  He turned back to the worker and asked whether he had ever seen the women and their companion again.

  My mouth dropped. Red filled my vision. Nick had talked to his dad about me being fat? And his dad thought it was possible that he had left me? I worked my jaw, trying to get it to help me form words, words like asshole and Who do you think you are, Mr. Perfect?

  Meanwhile, the busboy shook his head back and forth.

  “Did you see where the older man went when he finished his coffee, and whether he was with anyone or alone?” Kurt asked.<
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  Again, the young man shook his head.

  Kurt looked over at me and took stock of my expression. “Pull it together, Katie. Let’s see if Gabriel has found out anything more.”

  “Pull it together?” I hissed. “After I find out you and Nick sit around talking about his terrible life and my giant fat ass?”

  “That is not what I said. Let’s go,” he said.

  I bit down so hard I wondered which would break first, my jaw or my teeth. A quick iPhone check showed me it was now 4:30 p.m. Only three hours until nightfall. I did need to pull it together. We did need to get moving. We needed to alert the FAA of the new developments. We had to get someone out there searching in the right place for Nick. Or at least around the Dominican Republic, whether that was the right place or not. I didn’t have the luxury of a temper tantrum. I filed my anger at Nick and Kurt away for later.

  But I took one last shot. “It may not be what you talked about, but it’s sure what you meant a minute ago. Message received loud and clear, Kurt.”

  He didn’t answer.

  I overcompensated with effusive thanks to the young busboy and we started back to Gabriel’s office with a wall of emotion between us. Halfway there we saw Gabriel’s back as he entered his office, and without a word passing between us, we broke into a run. I skidded to a stop at the door in my sandals.

  Gabriel sat at his desk with papers in his hand. At our abrupt entrance, he looked up, his eyes round and eyebrows in high arcs.

  “Well?” I asked, out of breath.

  “Nothing,” Gabriel said. “I found out nothing.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “I couldn’t find anyone that knew where your husband intended to go when he left here.”

  I said, “We were told that the three people he came here with left in a taxi. That means, possibly, he flew out alone. And that would mean, again, possibly, he was flying back to St. Marcos.”

  Gabriel nodded. “If you say so. I only know that he left here at 12:52.”

  “Did anyone say whether he was alone when he left?” I demanded. I didn’t like hearing my voice this shrill, but I also didn’t like how thin Gabriel’s questioning sounded, and I was raw from my interchange with Kurt. What had happened to all the questions I’d suggested he ask? Did the man not understand that yes-no questions yielded next to nothing? That you had to start there, but circle around and approach the issue from every angle?

  He looked back down at his desk and his shoulders hunched up. “No one said,” he responded.

  Kurt shot me a look that said, “Enough.”

  “All right. We’ve made some progress in the last hour, even if we still have a ways to go,” Kurt said. “Thank you, Gabriel.”

  “One other thing,” Gabriel said, addressing Kurt instead of me now. “I checked our Dominican systems for a record of a plane crash since Mr. Kovacs left Punta Cana. There is none. And I have my assistant calling the other airports in the DR looking for your plane by its tail numbers, in case he put down somewhere in our country.”

  “Excellent idea. Much appreciated,” Kurt said, even more gracious than before. Making up for his shrewish, fat daughter-in-law.

  I tried to follow his lead and aimed for firm rather than strident. Sometimes my temperament got in the way of my common sense. He’s helping us, and he doesn’t have to, Katie. Don’t run him off. I needed to accept Gabriel’s generosity rather than resent his inexperience, but I was just fuming. At everyone. Nick. His dad. This courtly nincompoop who hadn’t accomplished anything yet except to confirm that Nick’s plane had taken off and landed. I couldn’t believe that only a little while ago I’d been thinking how much I liked him. I didn’t like him. I wanted to bop him on the head.

  I raised my voice—a lot. I smacked the side of my hand in the other palm to emphasize each point. “Here it is, guys. Nick’s been missing for two days. We’ve gone to our local police. They were less than no help. We called the FAA, who called the Coast Guard. But they couldn’t do jack either, because we had no idea where Nick had gone. But he came here and he left here. And I know—I know—that if he could have contacted us, he would have. That means there’s a very high probability that his plane went down somewhere. We need people searching for him. Now.”

  Gabriel was stiff. “There is no reason to shout, Mrs. Kovacs.”

  “There is a reason to shout! My husband is missing!”

  “I don’t agree with your tone, but I agree with your point. Gabriel, can we contact the FAA together now?” Kurt said.

  Gabriel flipped a vintage Rolodex with cards gone yellow with age. I closed my eyes. Here, with the soft Caribbean air on my flushed skin, without the white noise of air conditioners, I could imagine Gabriel under a bamboo ceiling fan dialing a clunky black rotary phone. My pulse quickened. I opened my eyes to see him pressing the buttons on his cell phone.

  Someone must have answered on the other end, because Gabriel explained who he was and passed the phone to Kurt, saying, “You’re on.”

  Kurt told our story. It sounded improbable and so full of holes you could, well, fly a plane through it, but Kurt stressed the reasons we believed Nick had gone down between the Dominican Republic and St. Marcos, and soft-pedaled the Mexico angle and the world of other possibilities. He listened for a minute, said thank you, and exchanged contact information with someone. The call was far too brief for my liking.

  “What did they say?” I asked after he hung up.

  “They knew who we were from my earlier call. They agreed to search between here and St. Marcos,” he said. “He—Burt Taylor was his name—said they would coordinate it with the Coast Guard tonight, but that nothing can be done until daylight tomorrow.”

  Twelve more hours. At least twelve more hours. A long, long time. It was a big ocean out there. The FAA and Coast Guard had the resources we did not; we had no choice but to wait for their help with the search. But there was much we could do in the meantime. That I could do.

  Hold on, Nick.

  Hold on.

  Chapter Fourteen

  By the time we’d finished with Gabriel and the FAA, the day shift at the airport had ended. Kurt had called ahead to Victor for our ride. We walked out with dusk falling around us. Sweat rolled down my inner thighs under my knee-length orange skirt that was uncomfortably snug in the waist. More sweat clung to the hair at the base of my neck. I had melted like a crayon, like the mango tango from Taylor’s giant Crayola box. My anger had melted, too, and was being replaced by a deep sadness.

  Victor pulled his white 1999 Oldsmobile Cutlass to the curb. He kept it in immaculate condition, especially considering the battle islanders fight with rust and sand. He jumped out to open the door. Kurt must have paid him well.

  “Buenas noches, señor y señora.”

  Kurt and I mumbled buenas noches back to him, and Kurt lowered himself into the front seat while I settled into the back. We hadn’t said a word to each other since we left Gabriel’s office. Victor talked to Kurt quickly and I gave up trying to understand after only a few seconds. Kurt engaged in an animated conversation with Victor, whose hands spent more time in the air than on the steering wheel.

  I let my head drop back against the tan ribbed upholstery and tried not to think of all the unwashed heads that had done so before mine. Oil. Dandruff. Dead skin. Lice. Bed bugs. I was so tired I didn’t even flinch.

  But my head jerked up when I heard Kurt say Nick’s name. Victor slowly repeated it twice.

  “Kurt, what’s up? What are you guys saying about Nick?” I asked.

  “Victor met Elena and her party,” he replied.

  “What?” I leaned forward across the front seat between them.

  “Yes, hold on, though. We’re not done talking. Let me find out everything he knows.”

  We pulled up at the passenger drop-off at the Puntacana Resort. Victor put the car in park and kept his mouth running.

  I was hanging on every word now, although I didn’t understand ha
lf of it. I bit a fingernail. How fitting that I would lose my husband and find myself looking for him in a strange land in which I, too, was lost. A flash of something burst inside me. Anger.

  If Nick had just told me where he was going, what he was up to—

  But I shut it down; now was not the time to indulge my emotions. I had already lost control once today. Victor knew something, and I wanted to know it, too.

  A hotel doorman leaned down to Victor’s open window. The best I could tell, he asked Victor to drop us off and move along. Victor waved him away with the back of his hand. “Sí, pronto”—yes, soon—and rolled up his window.

  The conversation resumed for another few minutes, and then the car grew quiet. Kurt nodded as he squeezed his lips with his thumb and forefinger.

  He turned to face me. “OK, Elena and her mama and the younger guy rode with Victor. He’s sure of it. The time of day fits, he picked them up at the right terminal, and they match the description.”

  “That’s great!” I said.

  “Victor said they were worried about someone following them, and they kept saying maybe the mafioso was on to them. He took them to catch a bus to Santo Domingo. They didn’t say anything about Nick or where they were going, but they did say that everyone would think they went back to Mexico.”

  All those words—ten minutes of talking—and Kurt could sum it up in so few. We had confirmation that Nick had not rejoined Elena’s group. No one had gone to Mexico. The universe of possible locations to search for Nick shrank by a fraction. Had he pointed his plane back towards home, to St. Marcos, to me?

  “Did he get the name of the man? Can he describe him?” I asked. I heard my voice crack. I licked my lips and swallowed.

  Kurt and Victor talked briefly. Kurt said, “No name. But Victor said he looked Mexican, too, but tall, sort of tall, with a mustache and a big gold medallion around his neck.” Victor said something else to Kurt. “Correction: He said he looked Mexican or Dominican or Puerto Rican; in other words, he looked Latino.”

  The doorman reappeared and politely rapped his knuckles on Victor’s window. Victor held up one finger and nodded without making eye contact with him.