Layover

by David Bell

  “Yes. And that woman got my number from someone so she could tell me to knock it off. I almost laughed. A grown woman being defended by her mother? Are you serious?”

  “You’re surprised a mother would be protective?” Kimberly asked.

  Again, Simon flicked his hand. “Here’s the thing I want you to understand. I didn’t know she was dying. She calls me and tells me off a little bit and then hangs up. But her number comes up on my caller ID. So I look up the address and find out it’s a hospice facility. River Glen in Nashville. I figured the woman was a nurse, not a patient.”

  “So, what did you do with that information?” Kimberly asked.

  “I went down there. Only when I arrived did I find out she’s a patient. And she was pretty coherent at first. She told me how Morgan came to live with her when she was in high school. I guess her birth mother was having trouble. Drugs? Booze?” Simon shook his head. “Something like that. So Morgan goes into foster care. And really gets along with this woman in hospice. The woman says they just clicked, that she felt like Morgan was her own child, even though she’d just met her. Valerie Woodward. That’s her name. But, of course, when the real mom gets her act straightened out, what happens to the kid?”

  “She has to go back.”

  “Exactly. Courts always want that, right?”

  “For the most part,” Kimberly said.

  “Fast-forward a few years. The real mom dies. Liver failure, from what I can gather. So I guess Morgan feels like she wants to have a relationship with the foster mom. Maybe she feels freer to do that once her real mom is dead and can’t be jealous. Maybe she just wants a mother figure in her life. Who knows?”

  Simon paused. Something showed in his eyes, a glistening hint of real emotion. Kimberly held her tongue, waited for him to go on.

  “It stinks,” he said. “Now the foster mom is sick too. I know what that’s like, to lose your mom.”

  “And a brother,” Kimberly said.

  He looked at her a moment before he said, “Yes, a brother too.”

  “Why did she say you threatened her?” Kimberly asked.

  Simon gave a half-hearted shrug. “Let’s just say . . . maybe I was a little overzealous. To be honest, she slipped away while I was there. She started out clear, but then she lost her focus. The pain, I guess. And the medication. By the end of the conversation, I didn’t know what she was talking about. So I left. She must have remembered, because at some point she told her daughter I’d been there.” His face brightened, as though an idea had just come to mind. “Hell, I can just claim she was delirious. Who would believe anything a dying, delusional woman would say?”

  “I’m really glad you figured that out,” Kimberly said.

  “Hey,” he said, leaning forward. “I told you all of this. Okay? I came clean. I listened. I want this over with as much as anyone else.”

  Kimberly agreed. She wholeheartedly agreed.

  63

  I expected to feel relieved when I walked through the door of my apartment in Chicago for the first time in a week. And for a moment I did.

  I welcomed the familiar sights and smells. The spot on the couch shaped to my body. The window I sat by with my computer and coffee.

  But I pretty quickly found myself looking at the place with a different set of eyes. Maybe it was everything I’d been through. Maybe it was giving voice to my concerns about my life to Morgan. Maybe it was coming face-to-face with a snarling, living, breathing madman who wanted to bash the life out of me.

  Maybe it was all of the above.

  I picked up my stack of mail, mostly junk and bills and magazines I never read. I opened my refrigerator to a few bottles of beer, a jar of pickles, and some Chinese takeout that had gone bad weeks earlier. I saw the unmade double bed. A gust of wind rattled the windows, reminding me that time was passing, that the dark, cold Chicago winter would set in soon and stretch ahead of me seemingly forever.

  I called Morgan a few times.

  Since she’d called me when I was in Wyckoff, it was easy enough to call her back. But she never answered. The phone rang and rang and rang. And I had no idea what I’d say if she did answer. So, you really were a murderer. . . . Imagine that! And you lied about your mother!

  I checked in with Renee the first night back. I’ll be honest—I simply didn’t want to be alone. She answered, her voice laced with cold caution. I told her I was home and hinted at the insane experiences I’d had in Kentucky.

  Renee wasn’t impressed. “You’re just calling me because you’re lonely. You just want me to come over so you can have a warm body in your bed.”

  She was right. So I said nothing.

  “You want me to fall in next to you tonight. And then what, Joshua?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I think I want to quit my job.”

  “Then do it,” she said. “You’ve been talking about it for years. I think you’ve stayed at that job as much for me as for your dad. At some point, just do what you want to do and quit talking about it.”

  I knew she was right. About everything. And I told her so.

  When I invited her over, she came. We fell into bed pretty quickly and didn’t waste any time discussing my adventures. When I tried to bring them up, Renee placed her finger over my lips, shutting me up. It sounds like a cliché, but the sex was amazing. It felt like the exorcising of a need more than anything else, but I think we both enjoyed the release of tension that had built up between us.

  When I came out of the bathroom, Renee was sitting on the edge of the bed, pulling on her clothes. She went about the task with a businesslike efficiency, not even bothering to look up.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “I’m not spending the night,” she said, pulling on her boots. “I agreed to come over because I wanted to do that. And only that. I don’t want to wake up here tomorrow.”

  She stood up and came over to where I leaned against the doorjamb. Still naked. I wished I had a towel or a shirt or a washcloth to cover up. I felt exposed. But Renee acted nonchalant as she grabbed her purse and pecked me on the cheek on her way by.

  “I don’t know if we’ll do this again,” she said, “but it was fun tonight. Maybe if you get your act together and figure out what you want, we can do it more. Or try to . . . I don’t know. We can attempt to be something again.”

  Then she was gone, and the apartment felt even emptier than it had before she arrived.

  But I didn’t have long to think about that.

  Half an hour after Renee left, Dad called. It was good to hear his voice, and I was happy to listen to him go on about how glad he was that I’d made it home safe. I told him I agreed. Then he asked me about my health and the status of my head.

  “It’s better. Pretty much back to normal.”

  “Are you sure? Really?”

  “I feel good, Dad.”

  “Good, good. No lying, I was worried about you,” he said. “To have my kid in a hospital in another state. I was ready to get on a plane and come up there when they said you could go home.”

  “I know. I’m sorry if I scared you.”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “You got caught up in something. It happens. I know who you are. I know you’re true-blue. Maybe you just need to move on? Get back to your real life?”

  “Probably.”

  “Good call. Look, I need you to do something for me. I need you to head down to Tampa. That deal there, the one we’ve been working on with those guys, Lutz and Newberry, it’s unraveling a bit. I need you to smooth their feathers. They really want to meet you. I think it will seal things if they see your face. It’s just one night. Down there and then back.”

  I felt the emptiness return inside me upon hearing his request. It sounded to my ears like an order to go to the dentist or the tax office. I heard the merry-go-round music starting up in
the back of my head. Another flight. More Xanax.

  “Okay,” I said. “Middle of the week?”

  “Monday. It has to be.”

  “Really?”

  “Strike while the iron’s hot,” he said. “You know you’re the only one I can count on to do this. I’d go myself, but I need to be in Minneapolis at the same time. Plus, they’ve been dying to see you. They wanted to meet you the other day, but . . . well, you were wherever you were.”

  “Kentucky,” I said. “I was in Kentucky, Dad.”

  “I know. Head down there, take care of business, then come back and take a few days off. Hell, take a week. I don’t care. You’ve earned it.”

  As much as I dreaded the flight and another night in a hotel, staring at the cable TV offerings and eating a room service hamburger, I didn’t have anything keeping me at home.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll do it.”

  64

  I loathed going into the airport on Monday.

  But I went.

  I arrived at the last minute and sweated through the long security line, worried I’d miss my flight. But I made it with time to spare and managed to swallow my Xanax so it would have the desired effect. I avoided the bars and instead found a quiet, out-of-the-way spot where I could read before my flight boarded. I’d brought the novel I’d purchased in Atlanta, the one with the grizzled loner who kills in order to forget the pain of losing his wife and child. I’d reached the part of the book where the hero develops a drinking problem and then exchanges flirty banter with a female FBI agent. It interested me enough to keep reading, so I did.

  Then Detective Givens called. When I saw her name on my screen, I couldn’t answer fast enough, even though I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear whatever she had to tell me. But I couldn’t help wanting to know something. Anything.

  She sounded friendly when she asked if it was a good time to talk. I told her I was in the airport, waiting for a flight. A slight pause followed, as I’m sure we both thought immediately about how I’d met Morgan.

  Detective Givens, for her part, refused to let the moment pass. “That’s why I’m calling, Mr. Fields. I need to check in and make sure you haven’t seen any sign of Ms. Reynolds.”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “No contact of any kind? Nothing you need to tell me?”

  I thought about my attempts to call her. The phone ringing and ringing. Endlessly ringing. That didn’t count as contact, did it? “Nothing.”

  “And nothing else has come to mind about where she might be? Any thoughts, no matter how crazy?”

  “I really can’t think of anything,” I said. “I really don’t know that much about her. Has there been any kind of break in the case?” I asked, still holding out hope.

  “The investigation is ongoing,” she said, her voice switching to businesslike efficiency. “We’ve kept as close an eye as we can on places she might go, but there’s been nothing. We’ll keep looking as long as we have to.”

  “I see. What about the . . . you know, the murder investigation? I mean, is there anything going on with the Caldwells?” I wasn’t really sure what I was asking. I was just curious, I guess.

  “Mr. Caldwell’s body has been released to the family. They’re having a private memorial for him tomorrow. And he’s being buried in the family plot, just like his brother wanted. That part of their struggle is over. I’m hoping we bring them justice one of these days.”

  I wasn’t sure how to respond, since I knew bringing them justice meant arresting Morgan. I hadn’t yet been able to reconcile the idea that the Morgan I knew might be a murderer. I couldn’t force my mind to bend completely in that direction.

  “Is that all, then?” I asked as an announcement came over the speaker right above my head.

  “Since I have you on the phone, did Morgan Reynolds have anything else to say about her mother?”

  “Her dead mother.”

  “She told you she moved to Nashville to be near her because she was sick. Dying, really. Was there anything else?”

  I wondered about the line of questioning. Was it meant just to humiliate me? “She didn’t tell me that whole story about her mom being sick in Nashville was fictitious. I don’t know what else I could know.”

  “Did she say anything about being in foster care?”

  “Morgan? In foster care? No, she didn’t mention that. She just told me her mom was a drunk who had some embarrassing moments when Morgan was a child.”

  “Did she ever mention the name Valerie Woodward?”

  “No. Who’s she?” I asked.

  Givens explained to me that Morgan had a foster mother, a woman she lived with for a time during high school. And that woman was currently in a hospice facility in Nashville. “We think that’s who she meant when she said Simon Caldwell threatened her mother. Simon Caldwell did visit the woman and utilized his . . . unique, delicate powers of persuasion. This woman has a different last name than Morgan Reynolds. She goes by Valerie Woodward. But we’re starting to wonder if Morgan wasn’t using the last name Woodward some of the time.”

  I’d been holding my thumb between the pages of the novel, marking my place. But when I heard the news, the book slid off the end of my hand and onto the empty seat next to me. “So what does that mean? She wasn’t lying about her mother?”

  “This gives us a plausible explanation for why she told you what she did,” Givens said. “It doesn’t change the way we feel about anything else, but she probably wasn’t lying about her mother. Her foster mother, I should say.”

  I let the information sink in. But what did it really mean? That she hadn’t lied about that one thing? One piece of the puzzle made some kind of sense? It didn’t change everything else.

  “So her mother,” I asked, “or foster mother, is in hospice in Nashville?”

  “She is. The police down there have been watching it, making sure Morgan Reynolds hasn’t been by to visit her. If she shows up, she’ll be arrested.”

  “I see.” I bent down and picked up the book. “And that’s it?” I asked.

  “That’s the latest,” she said. “How have you been doing, Mr. Fields?”

  “I’m good. Fine. I’m back to my routine.”

  “Do let me know if you hear or see anything,” she said. “Any helpful information you can provide to us going forward will allow us to look more favorably on you.”

  “I understand. Sure.”

  When we hung up, it was time for me to board. And I read my book all the way to Tampa.

  65

  I took care of everything in Tampa that Monday. I met with the investors. We went to a nice meal, capped off by drinks at the bar. I made jokes and laughed at theirs, and by the time the night ended, by the time I walked bleary-eyed back to the hotel elevator to return to my room, I felt certain the deal was saved. The alcohol and the travel—and, let’s be honest, the Xanax—made me feel wiped, but before I fell asleep I texted Dad and told him.

  Mission accomplished.

  The next morning I was back in the airport, following my old routine. Gift shop, Xanax, breakfast. I had to remind myself which city I was in and where I was headed. The thought of returning home brought little joy.

  The restaurant I chose didn’t help. While it wasn’t the Keg ’n Craft, it might as well have been. All those airport restaurants and bars blurred together in my mind, and while I sat there in Tampa, eating my tepid oatmeal and slightly blackened toast, I thought of Morgan and the first conversation we’d had.

  Had she been right about the airport? That it was a neutral space, the kind of place where you could say anything without consequence? If that was true, then I was following that dictum to the letter. I apparently must not have meant anything I’d said to her that day, because I hadn’t changed a damn thing in my life since then.

  When I finished eating, I wandered
onto the concourse, thinking of what Detective Givens had told me the day before. Morgan’s mother—or mother figure, perhaps—really was alive and maybe in fear for her life in Nashville. It sounded like the police were keeping an eye on her, both to protect her and just in case Morgan came by.

  I remembered how distraught Morgan was at the thought that something might happen to her mother. How she’d left town to find help from her aunt and learned that Simon had been by. Her fear suggested a deep bond, the kind I would expect between mother and daughter.

  Who was likely to know more about Morgan than her mother?

  I could go home and continue with the routine I’d come to despise, or I could finally make the change I wanted to make. My own future was currently without direction, so I found myself at the gate, changing my destination once again.

  Instead of returning home to Chicago, I was going to board a flight for Nashville.

  66

  Kimberly ordered a coffee and took it to a table near the back of the café. It was midmorning, half of the space filled with senior citizens slowly sipping drinks and the other half with hipsters tapping away at laptops. Kimberly watched the front door and waved when Trooper John Mattingly of the Gordon County Sheriff’s Department came in and caught her eye. He saw Kimberly and returned the wave, then pointed to the counter, where he ordered a drink. He carried his paper cup over and sat across from Kimberly, removing the Smokey Bear hat from his closely shaved head.

  “I think I’m a few minutes late,” he said.

  “Not at all. And I’m always late. I appreciate you taking the time to meet.”

  “I had to be here in Laurel Falls for something else anyway. It’s nice to get out of Wyckoff and come to the big city.” Mattingly sipped the coffee, which sent steam curling past his youthful face. “And I could use the break. I missed my coffee this morning.”

  “Then I’m glad I could help one of you Gordon County boys,” Kimberly said. She’d met Mattingly a few times before, worked on cases with him when the Laurel Falls and Gordon County police departments cooperated. She’d found him to be a reliable, by-the-book cop, thorough if unspectacular. “Did you have a chance to review your notes?”