Layover

by David Bell

  “What things are you reluctant to talk about?” Kimberly asked.

  Hatfield rubbed his hands together. “A couple of female employees have complained about Giles.”

  “Oh?”

  “Not in that way. Not . . . sexual. They complained that Giles, when he got angry or frustrated with them, he could be aggressive.”

  “Aggressive how? Yelling?”

  “That, yes. But more than that. Almost . . . almost physically abusive. Now, none of them ever said he hit them. But they feared for their safety to some extent. He seemed like he was almost out of control.”

  “What did the company do about it?”

  “I talked to Giles,” Hatfield said. “We tried to dial back his interactions with people, make him more hands-off. We didn’t want to make a big deal and alarm the employees. Most don’t know about it.”

  “That’s all you did?”

  Hatfield looked offended. “I said he never harmed anyone. He just didn’t know how to act. His behavior hurt feelings more than anything else. Bruised them.”

  “Bruised them? How about Morgan Reynolds? Did she get bruised?”

  “Oh, no.” Hatfield leaned forward, letting his forehead rest in the palm of one of his hands. “I saw that on Facebook. And the news. I saw all of that, her being missing or whatever. Are you telling me . . . I mean, why are you bringing her up? Do you think there’s a connection?”

  “What was her departure from the company like?” Kimberly asked.

  Hatfield looked pained. “I knew that would come up.”

  “What would?”

  “Morgan. And her bonus.”

  “What bonus?” Kimberly asked.

  “She thinks she wasn’t paid what she should have been for her work on an app. It’s not true.”

  “We’ve been talking to your other employees, but why don’t you tell me all about it?”

  Some of his professorial demeanor slipped. The businessman underneath that façade stepped forward. “She got paid the way she was supposed to be paid. Nothing more, nothing less.”

  “But no bonus? Did other employees receive bonuses when they did that kind of work?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Other employees who were men?” Kimberly asked.

  “Okay, look, I don’t like that. You’re implying something there.”

  “I don’t think I’m implying at all. You said Giles acted aggressively toward women. Did that extend to bonuses? Did men receive bonuses that Morgan Reynolds didn’t?”

  “Did someone say that?”

  “Can you just answer me?”

  “We’re expanding now. . . . It’s hard. It’s about cash flow. We’re a very fair company. We treat our . . . we treat everyone . . . The company’s diverse. You can see that, can’t you? You were here yesterday and talked to people? Look around.”

  Kimberly had. And she knew he was right—they did have a diverse workforce. She saw that when she looked around the room. Not much diversity in age, she guessed. Lots of twentysomethings, but that seemed inevitable in the tech world. Kimberly also knew being diverse wasn’t the same as being fair.

  “Back to Morgan,” Kimberly said.

  “Morgan. Right. She’ll get it, the bonus—would have gotten it. Probably.”

  “But?”

  “She quit. She had a family emergency, something back home. She left us. Months ago. As far as we knew, she wasn’t even in the business anymore. And that was the end of our connection to her. I haven’t seen or heard anything from her.”

  “Did she make any threats?” Kimberly asked.

  “Morgan? No. Not to me.”

  “To others?”

  “Not that I know of,” he said. He scratched his curly head. “Damn.”

  “Morgan Reynolds called Giles three times in the last few weeks. And they exchanged some e-mails. She wanted to meet with him.”

  Kimberly withheld the information about Morgan being seen in town right before Giles disappeared. No need to color what the man thought too much.

  “He didn’t tell me.”

  “Now, why wouldn’t he tell you?” Kimberly asked. “If you’re the people person, wouldn’t he want you to deal with an unhappy employee?”

  “Former employee. And I don’t know why he didn’t tell me. Like I said, Giles has his own mind. Maybe he saw it as a business decision more than a people issue. . . .”

  “Did he do that often?” she asked.

  Hatfield looked confused, uncertain. “Not that I know of. It would be strange. Do you really think those two things might be related? The two of them disappearing?”

  “What do you think? Were Giles and Morgan . . . involved in any way?”

  Hatfield looked like he’d swallowed a bad oyster. “Oh, no. I can’t imagine anything like that. It would be inappropriate.”

  “Not if she wasn’t an employee anymore. Did you know everything about Giles’s personal life? Or Morgan’s?”

  “Giles?” He shook his head. “He was divorced. For years. I never knew him to have a date. We didn’t talk about such things. Morgan? Who knows? We have a lot of employees. So you think they’re connected in some way? Even if it wasn’t romantic?”

  “Giles’s brother thinks the two things are connected.”

  “Oh. Him.” Hatfield slumped in his seat. His shoulders slackened, and his butt slid forward. “Simon. Oh, Simon.”

  “You know him?”

  “Of course. Very well. And for many years.”

  “Is there something we should know about him?” Kimberly asked.

  “There’s so much to know about him. Where do you want me to start?”

  34

  When I was a kid, living with my dad, a bat got into the house through the attic. It flew around in spastic panic, bouncing off ceilings and walls while my dad pursued it with a pillowcase, trying to corral it.

  My eight-year-old self watched my highly competent father with a mixture of fear and awe as he calmly approached the job of removing the invasive, careening animal from the house. I always felt safe and protected with him around.

  In the hotel room with Simon, I felt like I’d been invaded again. By something I couldn’t predict or fully understand.

  “I think you better go,” I said. “I have a plane to catch and—”

  Simon wore a smug, self-satisfied look. Like a smart kid who knew all the answers even better than the teacher. “You don’t want to hear this, do you?” he asked. “You’re taken in by her. Hey, I get it. She’s a pretty girl. If I were younger, a guy like you, I’d go for it.”

  “I’m calling the police if you don’t go.”

  Simon wasn’t put off. “You’re not going to make that call.” He pointed at me, punctuating his words. “You’re not going to call, because you’ve been asking yourself all of these questions. What exactly is she up to, running around the country from flight to flight, town to town? Why would someone do that?”

  “I know why.”

  “I do too.” He pointed at me again, and waved his hand in the general direction of my phone. “You know she’s missing?”

  “I do.”

  My eyes trailed past him in the direction of the door. If I made a quick move, as sudden and darting as the bat from my childhood, I would stand a pretty good chance of getting out. Given his size and age, I had to be faster and more agile. But if he did grab hold of me, if it came to a struggle . . . Well, I just didn’t know. Given his superior size. Given that I hadn’t been in a fight since ninth grade. And I’d lost that one.

  Besides . . . did I really want to turn tail and run?

  I gave Simon credit for being right about something. He knew how much I wanted to know anything about Morgan. Anything and everything. And the list of unanswered questions kept growing.

  “You know what?” h
e said. “Google my brother. Go ahead.”

  I didn’t move. I hated being ordered around.

  “What did she tell you about him?” Simon asked. “My brother, Giles? Did she say he refused to pay her bonus? That she got cheated out of money from that app she helped develop?”

  “If you know, why are you asking me?”

  “Go ahead and Google him. Giles Caldwell.”

  Again, I didn’t move—except my hand twitched. I clutched the phone tight, and I wanted to raise it in front of my face and search. But a part of me feared what I might learn. Simon spoke with the confidence of a man holding all the aces from the deck, and his certainty held me back.

  “Look, Joshua, my brother was a bastard.” He pursed his lips and turned his head toward the window. He looked like a man contemplating a tough problem. “Is a bastard. I hope he still is a bastard.” He gave his attention back to me. “How do you think he made all that money? How do you think he built that company? Not by being nice. And not by giving his money away when he didn’t have to.”

  But something about his words stood out to me.

  “Hold on,” I said. “You said your brother is missing. Maybe Morgan had nothing to do with it. Maybe he’s alive and well somewhere. Maybe he’s on a fishing trip.”

  “Sure, I’m trying to be optimistic.”

  My thoughts raced. What had Morgan not told me? Was she involved with Giles Caldwell in some romantic way? Or were they united by something sinister?

  Simon was grinning. It looked like the corners of his mouth were being forced to move with piano wire. “Google Giles. Please. It’s important, Joshua. For both of us. After all, how do I know you’re not involved in this? How do I know you didn’t conspire with Morgan to harm my brother? And how do you know the police won’t ask the same thing?”

  He grinned again. It looked no more natural or comforting than it had before, like a grizzly bear trying to blend in to a kid’s birthday party.

  I brought my phone up where I could see it. I froze for a moment. I remembered the missed calls and messages from earlier. I needed to check them. Maybe it was work. Or maybe Morgan had called. But I couldn’t check in front of Simon.

  So I tapped in the name “Giles Caldwell” and waited for the results.

  I watched Simon while Google did its thing. He met my eye, refusing to look away, the sick smile still in place.

  When I looked down, I saw the results. All of them.

  I clicked on the most recent news, a story from the Laurel Falls Times.

  Simon was right.

  Giles Caldwell hadn’t been seen since Thursday evening.

  35

  “What about him?” Kimberly asked. “Simon.”

  Hatfield rubbed his forehead again. The gesture looked painful. If he rubbed any harder, his skin might start to come off.

  “Do you know him?” Hatfield asked.

  “He’s come to the station,” Kimberly said. “And he’s called on the phone. Repeatedly.”

  “He came here yesterday when I was still away,” Hatfield said. “Apparently he stopped a few employees in the parking lot and asked them about Giles. If I’d been here I would have asked him to tone it down.”

  “He’s . . . intense. Understandable. He’s worried about his brother. I get that it’s distressing when a loved one is unaccounted for.”

  “Yeah. Simon in distress . . .” His words trailed off.

  “What about it?” Kimberly asked. “What happens when he’s in distress?”

  Hatfield shook his head. He looked weary, and it seemed to be about more than just jet lag. “I met those guys in college. Simon and Giles. That’s how long I’ve known them. We all went to Vanderbilt together. Giles is older by a year. And they’re very different on the surface. You heard what I said about Giles. Well, Simon isn’t like that. He can be warm. Affable. That’s the impression he can make on people. That’s the guy I became friends with.”

  “But he’s not part of the business.”

  “Oh, no. He wanted to be in on it when we founded the company. He was around, offering ideas. But his presence concerned me.”

  “Because?”

  “Simon didn’t seem like someone who would work well in a company like the one we envisioned. We were in college when the Gulf War started. The first one. He quit Vanderbilt and enlisted, got sent to Iraq for a year. He finished his degree later, but I had already graduated by then. He went on to law school, but he doesn’t really practice anymore. He works for a financial firm now.”

  “You still haven’t told me the problem with him. A Vanderbilt graduate who volunteered for the Gulf War? What’s the issue?”

  “Okay. In college, Simon had a girlfriend. Not even a very serious one. We went to a party one night, something off campus, and some guy we didn’t know, some frat boy, started hitting on her. With Simon right there. It was really disrespectful. To him and to the young woman.”

  Kimberly assumed she knew where the story was going. She expected to hear about a fight, Simon Caldwell administering a beating to the poor sap who had the bad judgment to hit on his girlfriend at a party more than twenty-five years earlier. She’d seen the macho mating rituals. Like animals in a wildlife program on TV, men sometimes needed to butt their heads together and lock horns until someone rolled onto his back and offered up an unprotected throat.

  But Hatfield surprised her with the rest of the tale. “Simon didn’t do anything in the moment. He didn’t even step in and steer the girl away from this guy. He acted like he didn’t care. If she wanted to talk to the guy, then so be it. He was indifferent enough that she was mad at him. We all walked home together, and admittedly we were kind of drunk, but the young woman—I forget her name after all these years—laid into Simon pretty good, telling him she felt uncomfortable and he should have done something. I have to be honest, Detective, I agreed with her. I didn’t get his behavior, but I didn’t have the balls to say anything to Simon. But his date did.”

  “I’m guessing there’s more to the story.”

  “There is.” Hatfield tapped his thumb against the varnished tabletop. “About a month later, we hear through a mutual acquaintance that the guy, the one from the party who hit on Simon’s girlfriend, had dropped out of school. In the middle of the semester, just dropped out of school. Someone had been harassing him. Slowly. Systematically. Flat tires on his car. A stolen bike. Things missing from his apartment.”

  “Did he report this to the police?”

  “Of course. His home had been broken into, his property damaged. I heard from people who knew him that he became really anxious. Not sleeping. Struggling in classes. It was a huge stress for him. You can imagine.”

  Inwardly, Kimberly rolled her eyes. Boys. Boys and their stupid games, their stupid desire to hurt other people . . .

  “What happened finally?” Kimberly asked, knowing there had to be a “finally.”

  “About six weeks after all this harassment started, the guy’s stuff showed up on his doorstep one night. The bike, the items taken from the apartment. All of it. And . . . in the box with his stuff was a dead rat.” His shoulders rose and fell with despair. “That was it for the guy. He didn’t want to stay at Vanderbilt anymore, didn’t want to remain in the state of Tennessee anymore. He withdrew, transferred to a school somewhere across the country, and that was it.”

  “And you think Simon did all of this?” Kimberly asked.

  “I know he did.”

  “He admitted it?” Kimberly asked. “Or are you saying he was arrested?”

  “Neither. But I mentioned the story to him one day. I told him about the guy leaving, told him about all of it—the harassment, the missing things, the dead rat. I wasn’t going to accuse him. No way. But I wanted to see how he reacted.”

  “And?”

  “Simon looked smug. He just . . . smiled. And he
had a very self-satisfied air about him. And then he said something interesting. He said it sounded like justice.”

  Hatfield said nothing else. He let his story hang in the air of the cleanly appointed office like the dead rat the kid had found on his doorstep.

  But Kimberly pressed for more. “Okay. So maybe Simon just wanted you to think he’d done it. Maybe he just wanted to show off, act like he was the big man. Some people like to do that.”

  “Maybe. But . . .”

  “But what?”

  “Either Simon carried out this slow, exacting, patient punishment for a relatively small grievance. Or . . .”

  Kimberly saw where he was heading. “Or he’s a guy who wants you to think he could enact that kind of slow, exacting, patient punishment for a . . . relatively minor grievance?”

  “Right.”

  “And your point is . . . neither one sounds very appealing. Someone either commits a bizarre crime, or else they enjoy having a close friend think they committed a bizarre crime.”

  “Exactly, Detective. He and I were good friends. Why put on that show for me? None of it was healthy. Or normal. And you know what? I think Simon probably did the deed. And he loved getting credit in his own sly way.”

  “So one brother acts aggressively toward his female employees. The other acts aggressively toward . . . everyone?” Kimberly asked.

  She hadn’t eaten. The coffee made her jittery, and Hatfield’s words settled like a stone in her gut. Everything he said about Simon Caldwell made sense. It fit with her impressions of the man.

  “Does Simon know who Morgan is?” Kimberly asked.

  “I have no idea.”

  “But it’s possible that Giles told Simon about the issues with Morgan, right?”

  “It’s possible. And if that’s true, then I think you should find Morgan, wherever she is.”

  “Because she might know where Giles is?” Kimberly asked.

  “Because she might need your help if Simon is looking for her.”

  36

  I scrolled through the information on my phone as fast as I could. The words went by in a blur. Giles Caldwell, owner and founder of TechGreen, had not been seen or heard from in five days. And police had declared him a missing person on Monday, two days earlier.