Christor regularly browsed mail-order catalogs and made purchases over the phone. He used her credit card number but had the purchases sent to various homeless shelters. To date, Laynie’s card had provided shipments of blankets, pillows, coats, or other necessary items as one-time gifts to homeless shelters in nineteen states—after which, the accountant paid off the card. The ruse had kept Laynie’s card, under her present name, in good standing.
“It will take a few minutes to set up your account and signature cards. Once the account is in the system, we will request the transfer. Full funding requires a minimum of 48 hours. Unfortunately, because today is Thursday and we are closed weekends, the full amount will not be available until Monday morning. Would you like to sit and enjoy a cup of coffee while I am preparing your signature cards?”
Monday! Four wasted, precarious days. Laynie had not planned to remain in Montreal so long. The longer she stayed in any one place, the greater the danger that someone would recognize or, if questioned, remember her.
I want to lose myself in Canada for a while before dropping down into the States. I can’t do that without money to buy a car. I’ll just have to move from one hotel to another until Monday. Even then, when I have cash to buy a car, I need to be careful where I buy it.
To the clerk she replied, “Yes. Thank you. Is there a minimum amount I can withdraw before Monday?”
“We can cash a check up to five hundred dollars.”
“Thank you.”
Laynie did as the teller suggested. She indulged in her third cup of coffee and sat down in a grouping of chairs and sofas to wait. While she waited, she planned how she would hide in the city for an additional four days.
Ten minutes later, the teller called, “Elaine Granger, please.”
Laynie returned to the counter and signed two signature cards. The teller compared the signatures with the one on her American passport and driver’s license.
“How is the weather in Washington, D.C.?” the teller asked as she finalized Laynie’s account.
“Goodness. I really wouldn’t know. I haven’t been home in weeks. I was in Canada on business, and now I’m stuck here like everyone else until the planes can fly again. I thought I would use the forced downtime to do some sightseeing.”
“A wonderful idea. Now, please fill out and sign this form to authorize the wire transfer.”
Laynie filled out the form, asking for a transfer of $40,000.
“Thank you, Ms. Granger.” The teller produced a blank check. “As I said, we can approve a cash withdrawal of up to five hundred Canadian dollars.”
Laynie wrote the check and received the money, folding it into her wallet.
“Thank you.”
“Have a good day, Ms. Granger.”
Laynie turned away, then back, as though she’d forgotten something. “Say, can you recommend a hotel nearby? One with a business center?”
“Try the Fontainebleau. A bit pricy, but worth it. Turn left at the corner. I believe it is six blocks farther.”
Perfect. Because I need a new hotel.
Feeling flush, Laynie went back to the department store and purchased more casual clothing—jeans, T-shirts, a sweater, jogging pants, running shoes, more socks, and sundry items.
She returned to the Westmount and called the Fontainebleau. “Hello. Yes, I’d like a room for the night. Oh, and I will not be able to check in until late this evening.”
She provided her credit card information to secure the room, then she called the front desk of her own hotel. “Hello, this is room 5018. I’ll be checking out early tomorrow. Yes, everything has been lovely, thank you.”
She made a third call. “Good morning, I’d like to rent a car. You’re out of cars? Oh. I see. Because of the planes being grounded.”
She called every car rental agency listed in the phone book. The result was the same until she reached a local rental place far down on the list.
“You do? Yes, I understand—for local use only. Five days, please. I’ll pick up the car shortly.”
Laynie called a cab. When it arrived, she gave the driver the name of the rental company. The rental agency’s lot was several miles away, and the cabbie had to meander through an older residential area to arrive at a fenced lot that was home to more junked cars than working ones.
She paid the driver and walked to the office.
“These are the two rentals we have available today,” the owner told her. “All we’ve got left, I’m afraid.”
Laynie’s choice was between a five-year-old sedan with a dented rear fender and a newer van. She took the less conspicuous sedan and paid for the rental with her credit card.
As she drove away, she retraced the exact route the taxi had taken. She’d seen something she wanted to examine more closely. Halfway through the residential area, she pulled over and parked.
She studied the house across the street and the two vehicles in the driveway. The compact car was twice as old as the sedan she was driving, but it had been recently washed and waxed. Even the tires shone. And although the house needed paint, the yard, too, was tidy.
Senior citizens, Laynie hypothesized. Limited income but making the most of what they have to work with. Not able to travel as they did in their earlier years?
The second vehicle had added to her assumptions. The aging motor home with the FOR SALE sign in its rear window was well cared for. Its tires were chocked and leveled, the windows were clean, the chrome ladder and roof rack gleamed.
Laynie’s heavy weight of problems seemed suddenly lighter.
She stepped from her car and walked across the street to give the motor home a closer going over. She hadn’t been in the drive more than a minute when the house’s front door opened.
“She’s a champ, I can tell you that.”
Laynie turned a smile on the old man. “I can see you’ve taken wonderful care of her.”
“Well, she was pretty wonderful to us. Took us on some grand adventures, she did. Hate to say goodbye.”
He blinked at the end of his sentence, and Laynie spotted a sheen of moisture over his eyes.
She didn’t understand why her next words were, “Would you share some of your adventures with me?”
He nodded as if it was the most normal and expected request. “Come on in, miss. Kettle’s on. We’ll have a cuppa tea and tell you all about her.”
He leaned inside the house. “Bessie-gal, we got company!”
Extending a calloused hand to Laynie, he said, “George Bradshaw, miss. Nobody calls me George though. Go by Shaw.”
Laynie took his hand—a hand still strong from regular labor. “Elaine Granger.”
“Well, Miss Granger, you are welcome in our home.”
Stepping inside was like falling back thirty years in time—olive-green shag carpeting, dark wood paneling, two worn recliners, and a sofa kept in pristine condition by a yellowing plastic cover.
“Miss Granger, this here’s my bride, Bessie. Bessie, this is Miss Granger. She’s a-looking at Daisy.”
Daisy? “Please call me Elaine,” Laynie said softly.
Bessie was rotund and soft, her smile dimpling up the wealth of wrinkles in her cheeks and under her eyes. “Will you set with us in the kitchen, Elaine? Can I tempt you with fresh-baked pecan cinnamon buns to go with your tea?”
Laynie’s nose twitched and caught the aroma of warm . . . bliss. “I would love to be tempted by your, er, fresh-baked pecan cinnamon buns.” She was salivating already.
Laynie sat at the homey kitchen table while Bessie brewed the tea in an old-fashioned china pot.
Laynie devoured one of the sticky pastries while she sipped her tea. She eyed a second one but told herself “no.” Petroff would never have allowed her even the first bun. He was forever critiquing her figure, cruel in his criticism if he thought she’d gained an ounce.
A chuckle burst from Laynie’s mouth, and she reached for a second sticky roll. You do not own me any longer, Vassili Aleksandrovich. She s
miled her audacity wider as she bit into the bun’s sugary goodness.
All the while, Bessie and Shaw pattered along, reliving thirty-five years of traveling the country—initially, with a tent and their three children. Later, when the kids had left home, in the motor home they’d named Daisy. They had traipsed across Canada, visiting the grown children and a passel of grandchildren, camped near the glaciers of the Rockies, and toured the Pacific Ocean coast of British Columbia all the way into Alaska.
“How did you two meet?” Laynie asked.
“Why, Shaw and I met each other when we were little ’uns. Started school together, we did, and by the time we hit high school, we were always in cahoots, catching the dickens for one thing or another,” Bessie laughed. “See, we grew up in the aftermath of the Great Depression. Our folks lost what money they had saved when the markets crashed and the banks failed. My dad lost his job and couldn’t find another one. We lost our home. Had to live with his parents. Those were hard years.”
“Similar story, here,” Shaw confirmed. “In our family, we kids never knew if we’d see food on the table, let alone any of the fun some lucky youngsters had, like the cinema or when the circus came to town. Had to make our own fun those days—but we made a peck o’ trouble, too. Fact is, the only thing free in our neighborhood was church. Our parents, Bessie’s and mine, made sure we were in church three, sometimes four times a week.”
Shaw slapped his thigh. “Oh, man! We had Jesus served up every Wednesday night, once a month on Saturday for fellowship supper, and two times on Sunday! We had so much Jesus that, truth be told, we couldn’t wait to grow up and move away. Escape, you might say.”
I can relate, Laynie thought, momentarily drifting back to a time and place far distant from Bessie and Shaw’s kitchen table.
“Then the war started, and I got drafted.”
“He was gone close to four years, but I waited for him, I did.”
Bessie and Shaw beamed at each other.
“Yup. When I came home from the war, Bessie and I got married, had some kids. We worked hard, both of us—me making a living at two jobs, Bessie making a home for us. And because we never had much as children, we were determined to make sure our kids had everything we didn’t—a nice house with a big yard, plenty of food on the table, and new clothes, not hand-me-downs.”
“But it wasn’t enough,” Bessie murmured.
Laynie, caught up in their tale, was surprised out of it. “Hmm? What?”
“We weren’t happy. Not really,” Shaw explained. “Bessie and I, we started quarreling and bickering. And our kids were spoiled, they—”
“They had everything we missed out on handed to them, and they were selfish. Lazy. Ungrateful. Our happy home wasn’t happy a’tall. Turned into a real mess, so—”
“So, we decided to go back to church.”
Laynie shifted with discomfort. Uh-oh.
“Turns out we’d missed the point about church from the get-go,” Bessie declared. “Yes, we’d heard that it was all about Jesus, but we’d been so focused on what we didn’t have at home, that we missed seeing what we didn’t have in our hearts. Took us a few months to get it figured out after we started hearing the Gospel with open ears, but then we let Jesus in.”
“Turned us around, he did,” Shaw said. “For the first time in our lives, we were happy—happy with what we had, happy with what we didn’t have, content no matter what. Our kids saw the difference in us, too.”
“H’ain’t all been roses, Elaine. We wouldn’t want you to think that,” Bessie said, “but Jesus was what we’d been missing all our lives.”
“Right you are, love. Jesus was the key.”
“We’ve had a good life, raised fine kids after all, and had more’n our share of adventures.”
“’Fraid our adventuring days are over, though,” Shaw concluded. “I got to have dialysis twice a week now, and the hours of driving to get where we’d want t’ go adventuring are too hard on my hips.”
“On me, too, Shaw,” Bessie insisted. But Laynie suspected Bessie didn’t want her husband to feel that the curtailment of their “adventures” was all on him.
“I’m sorry to hear about your health problems,” Laynie whispered. She’d been spellbound, reliving their travels and their recollections with them.
What would it be like, to share a lifetime with someone you love? A lifetime to make memories so real that a stranger could see them?
But without the Jesus rubbish.
“Well, now, there’s no need to be sorry,” Bessie said, patting Laynie’s hand. Her multiple chins wagged as she shook her head. “If you buy Daisy from us, we can fix up a few things around here, things that we’ve let go a while. Will be a real blessing for us. And perhaps you need Daisy to do some adventuring of your own, eh?”
“Yes, I’m interested.”
Bessie and Shaw smiled at each other.
“Let me show you Daisy’s inside,” Shaw said. “She’s got a few quirks, I grant you, but I’ve listed them out and you’ll have no problems with her if you follow my instructions.”
He took her out to the driveway and walked her around the motor home. “This is what they called a Class C RV, meaning it’s got the cab-over bed above the driver and passenger seats. Twenty-three feet in length, not too long nor too hard to park or handle on the highway.”
He unlocked the side door and gestured for Laynie to step up and in. He followed behind her.
Laynie found herself staring at yellow, orange, and rusty-brown flower-patterned upholstery on the driver and passenger seats, the bench seats across a tiny table—even the window valances. And a beaded curtain hung between the camper’s living quarters and the cab, completing the hippy, flower-power décor.
She laughed aloud. “This is . . . this is great. I get now why you named her Daisy.”
“Yup. Always bright and cheerful, she is. Reminds us of our youth. Here, let me show you the kitchen.”
Taking but two steps, he pointed out the miniscule sink, three-burner stove, and refrigerator on the opposite wall. He opened cupboards and showed Laynie the dishes and cookware within and the storage space for food.
Then he took her to the back. “Got you a sink, commode, and little shower here, a linen closet, and a full-size bed.”
When they returned to the front, he handed Laynie a notebook. Flipping it open, Laynie found the original owner’s manual, up-to-date vehicle registration, insurance cards, and the notes Shaw had handwritten in meticulous detail.
“I’ve documented all of Daisy’s quirks in this here binder. Maintenance records in the back. ’Course, I’ll remove the registration paperwork when she sells.”
“It’s great, Shaw. I like what I see.”
“Well, we can throw in our kitchen doodads—pots, pans, and dishes—to sweeten the deal. Won’t have need for ’em after Daisy’s gone, so we’d likely just donate ’em to the church parking lot sale, anyway.”
“That would be wonderful.” Laynie realized she’d decided to buy Daisy and that Shaw’s generous offer would be a great help.
Laynie left the Bradshaws half an hour later. Two pecan cinnamon buns, wrapped in tinfoil rested on the seat beside her, next to a bill of sale.
“I’ve just opened an account in Montreal and wired money to it,” she’d told them, “money I cannot draw upon until after the weekend. If it is agreeable to you, I will return midmorning on Monday with a cashier’s check and take Daisy away with me. Will that work?”
The couple shared their secret smile, and both of them nodded.
On her way back to the hotel, she made two stops, the first at a liquor store, the second at a drug store. She handed off the sedan to the hotel’s valet and took her purchases to her room.
It was after one o’clock when she opened one of the two bottles of Chablis she’d bought. It took a while to grind the OTC pills she’d purchased at the drug store into powder, powder she knew from her training would dissolve completely if ground fine eno
ugh.
When her preparations were complete, she packed all her belongings into the rolling suitcase and crawled into bed to take a nap.
As she drifted off, she reviewed her plans. It would be late night in Moscow when she knocked on Justin’s door, but however the evening played out, she would be fresh and prepared.
SØREN THORESEN COLLECTED the mail from the big mailbox at the end of their drive. He took the driveway and front porch steps in a few strides, opened the front door and dropped the handful of envelopes, magazines, and newspapers on Kari’s desk in the corner of the living room.
“Hey, Babe! I’m home!”
“Hi! I’m in the kitchen. Lunch is almost ready.”
Shannon and Robbie were in school. Kari was assembling sandwiches for her and Søren’s lunch to go with the soup on the stove. He came up behind her and wrapped his arm about her, nuzzling her neck with his lips.
Kari relaxed into his embrace. “Mmm. That’s nice.”
“Plowed up the north ten acres this morning.”
“Mmm. Okay.”
“I put the mail on your desk.”
“Mmm. Wonderful.”
“And my stomach is empty.”
“Mmm-hmm? Mmm. Sooo nice.”
“Hollow. As in I’m starving here.”
Kari raised her head. “Just like a man to put his stomach ahead of love. Way to spoil the mood, Thoresen.”
They laughed and separated. Søren pulled dishes from the cupboard and set them out while Kari brought their lunch to the table. While they ate, they talked, laughed together, and discussed the family’s upcoming Christmas vacation in New Orleans.
They had been spending the holidays at Kari’s house on Marlow Avenue since she and Søren married. The kids, especially, enjoyed the change of pace and scenery. This year, their trip, with some planning and careful execution, would include Gene and Polly.
“I’m so glad Max can go with us,” Kari mused. “I don’t relish the day when he tells us he has other plans.”
“He has four weeks off before classes recommence in January?”
“Something like that.”
“Well, there you go. Now, I need to get back at it. Thank you for fixing lunch.”
Laynie Portland, Retired Spy Page 21
