What Could Go Wrong?

by Willo Davis Roberts

  The woman in front of us spoke in agitation. “Howard, I’m not getting back on that plane, not unless they carry a bomb off and I see it! I want to change our reservations to another airplane!”

  “They’re not going to carry it off so we can see it even if they find one,” her husband told her crossly. “They’d put it in a steel box or something before they handled it. Besides, the chances are there is no bomb. Just some kooks getting their kicks by scaring people and causing a ruckus.”

  “I want you to see if you can get us on another plane,” Gladys insisted.

  “There isn’t another plane for two hours. By that time, they’ll have put us back on this one.”

  “But what if it’s not safe?”

  I didn’t like Gladys’s voice, she was so whiney, but I could sympathize with her. I felt pretty uneasy about getting back on a plane that might have a bomb on it, too.

  Charlie must have read that in my face. He shook his head. “There’s no way they’ll endanger ninety or a hundred passengers without being sure. Don’t worry. If they aren’t sure, they’ll send us on a different plane. When one’s available.”

  The woman named Gladys heard him and turned around, stricken. “You mean there might not be another one available? We might not get to San Francisco tonight? I mean, our plane was almost full. They can’t get all of us on the next plane along with the people who’ve already reserved seats on it!” She didn’t wait for Charlie to respond, but turned to her husband in dismay. “What will Julie think if we don’t show up for her wedding?”

  “We’ll show up. They’ll get us there,” her husband said, and by now he was speaking through his teeth. “I’m gonna go get a cup of coffee. You coming or you want to sit here and work yourself into a stroke?”

  She went with him, but she continued to worry in a voice that carried across the waiting area.

  Mrs. Basker passed them, saw us, and came toward us with a rueful smile to sit down beside me. “It’s rather exciting, isn’t it? You read about such things in the papers, but you don’t expect it will happen on your flight. I guess they haven’t found the bomb yet?”

  “No. Another crew just went aboard a few minutes ago. Where did you hear about it?”

  “Oh, everybody in the restaurant was talking about it. They try to keep such things quiet, but everybody knows. I thought I’d go have a sandwich, in case they don’t have time to serve us dinner when we finally get back in the air. I had a patty melt. I’d never heard of them before, and I felt adventurous. Have you ever eaten one? It was quite good, though I suppose it had too much cholesterol.”

  I nodded. “Did you hear anything about how long it might take them, before we take off again?”

  “I don’t suppose they’ll know, unless they find a bomb. But I’m sure it will be all right. My, my son thought I would be bored by my first flight, but it hasn’t been a bit boring, has it?”

  “Not really,” I admitted, and hoped my parents would be as calm about it as this old lady was.

  We sat there for another ten minutes, and nothing seemed to be happening. I saw the man in the Hawaiian shirt lounging by a pillar at one side of the waiting area and wondered guiltily if he’d gone back for his newspaper after I’d taken it. Maybe that was why he’d missed our flight and had to take a later one. I hoped, in that case, that he didn’t know I had the paper.

  The bomb squad was still on the plane. Nobody made any announcements. Suddenly Mrs. Basker spoke to me.

  “I think I’ll go to the rest room one last time before we board. And I’ll get some cough drops; my throat feels a bit scratchy. I wonder, would you mind watching my sweater and this box of chocolates I got for my son and his family? I couldn’t resist them. It’s so awkward, carrying a sweater, and it’s too warm to wear it.”

  “Sure,” I told her. “I’ll watch them.”

  She placed the parcel and the sweater carefully on the seat beside me and walked away. I hoped nobody else ran into her and knocked her purse open again. I noticed that the man in the Hawaiian shirt had decided to take a stroll, too, as had several other people. Everybody was tired of sitting still.

  Mrs. Basker had been gone probably ten minutes, and Eddie was debating whether or not to add to his food supply before we took off again when one of the airline employees picked up the microphone at her booth. I poked Charlie with my elbow. “Maybe we’re finally going to go!” I looked around for Mrs. Basker, but she was nowhere in sight.

  “Passengers for Flight 211 to San Francisco,” the attendant said, her voice sounding metallic over the speaking system, “your attention, please. Flight 211 will resume in approximately thirty minutes. You will be boarding a different aircraft, at this gate, in thirty minutes. You are urged to be ready to board with your carry-on baggage at that time. For those of you scheduled to make connecting flights in San Francisco, consult our passenger agent immediately for assistance.”

  We checked our watches. Half an hour, and on a different jet. I felt a bit relieved. “I suppose we’ll never know if they actually find a bomb,” I said.

  “Sometimes they put it on the six o’clock news,” Charlie commented. “At least we’re not going to have to sit here all night. I was beginning to wonder.”

  Eddie rustled a candy bar wrapper as he opened it. “What would happen if we had to stay here all night? Would we just sit here in these uncomfortable chairs?”

  “No, they’d send us to hotels,” Charlie assured him. “They even pay for them, and your dinner if you have to eat in a restaurant. Well, if we’ve got half an hour, why don’t we walk down to that model display? If I’ve got any money left in two weeks maybe I can find something like them before we leave San Francisco.”

  “I can’t go,” I said, when both boys stood up. “Not unless I carry Mrs. Basker’s stuff. I told her I’d watch it.”

  Charlie frowned. “How long’s she been gone? She didn’t hear the announcement. Maybe we better find her and tell her when the new plane is leaving. Anything is better than sitting in this chair any longer.”

  We ended up with Eddie carrying the box of chocolates and me stuffing Mrs. Basker’s sweater into the side pocket of my flight bag with the newspaper I hadn’t gotten around to looking at. When we left the seating area, it had worked out that I would go into the ladies’ room to find Mrs. Basker, and the boys would go take another look at the models on display farther along the corridor.

  There were a dozen or so women in the rest room, but none of them was Mrs. Basker. I even called her name, and looked under the doors for a pair of feet in sensible white shoes. She wasn’t there.

  Well, she’d said something about cough drops, too. I pushed through the heavy door and walked along to the gift shop. She wasn’t there, either.

  Frowning a little, I joined the boys, who were trying to decide which models they would buy if they had the money.

  “Find her?” Charlie asked absently. I saw that they’d each acquired a package of corn chips.

  “No. Nowhere.”

  “Maybe she went out another door or something, and back to the boarding area,” Eddie offered through a mouthful of chips.

  But when we got back there, with fifteen minutes to spare, there was no sign of Mrs. Basker.

  “Now I’m getting worried,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound like the woman named Gladys.

  “She’s not your responsibility,” Charlie said.

  “I’ve got her sweater, and Eddie has her candy. That makes us sort of responsible. What are we supposed to do if it’s time to take off and she hasn’t come back yet?”

  “She’s a grown woman,” Charlie pointed out.

  “She’s an old lady,” I countered. “Like Grandma or Aunt Sophie. And this is the first time she’s ever been in an airport. If she were Grandma, wouldn’t you want someone to look after her, if she needed it?”

  Charlie gave me a resigned look. “Okay. What do you want to do?”

  “Look for her,” I said, glad he wasn’t going to mak
e me go by myself.

  We walked the length of the main corridor nearest our gate, looking into every business establishment, even the places like the bank and the bars. There was no sign of Mrs. Basker.

  In the gift shop I asked the clerk, between customers, if she remembered an old lady in a blue-and-white striped dress, who had bought cough drops.

  The girl nodded. “Yes, I remember her. She bought cherry cough drops and a magazine. People, I think it was.”

  “We think she’s lost. Would you have noticed which way she went when she left here? Maybe she got turned around and walked away from our boarding area instead of toward it.”

  “The man she was with seemed to know where he was going. They went that way.” The girl gestured, away from our boarding area.

  “A man? She was with a man?” I asked, puzzled. “She’s traveling alone.”

  “What did he look like?” Charlie put in.

  The clerk thought a minute. I suppose it was a miracle she remembered anything about Mrs. Basker, considering the number of customers she’d waited on. “Just an ordinary man. About forty, forty-five, maybe. I think he was wearing tan slacks and a sport shirt about the same color. I’m sorry, I really can’t remember any more than that. Excuse me, I have to wait on these customers.”

  “A man,” I said blankly, turning away from the counter. “Why would she have gone anywhere with a man? She intended to come right back; she knew the plane would be leaving pretty soon.” I checked the time again, and saw that it was running out, yet how could I leave it at this? “What if something happened to her?”

  “Like what?” Eddie wanted to know.

  “If I knew what, I wouldn’t still be wondering. Look, I know it’s getting late, but I’m going to take a quick walk down that way and see if there’s any sign of her. If there isn’t, I guess we’ll just have to give her stuff to the passenger agent and explain she’s supposed to be on our plane and we don’t know what happened to her. Maybe she got sick or something—though if she was with a man, and seemed to be all right when she left the gift store . . .”

  My voice trailed. If she hadn’t looked so much like Dad’s aunt Letty, or somebody’s grandma, or she hadn’t asked me to watch her things, maybe I wouldn’t have bothered. But the truth was, I did feel somewhat responsible.

  “Well, come on, let’s hurry up,” Charlie said, “or we’ll miss the plane, and then your dad will finally have a real reason to think we’re irresponsible.”

  “It isn’t Gracie he thinks is irresponsible,” Eddie informed him as we half-ran along the corridor amid a group that had just come off a plane, lugging bags and bundles. “It’s you, Charlie.”

  “Thanks a heap,” Charlie told him good-naturedly. “She’s nowhere in sight, Gracie, and we’re getting farther from our gate all the time. We’ve got to turn around and go back.”

  He was right. If we didn’t turn around within the next few minutes, we’d have to run to make it. I could imagine sitting in front of Gladys and Howard and listening to her complain about our delaying the rest of our trip—if they didn’t leave without us, that was.

  To our right a stairway rose to a third level, and there was a sign that said RESTRICTED AREA; NO ADMITTANCE. Charlie saw me looking and shook his head.

  “She can read. She wouldn’t have gone up there.”

  “No,” I agreed, and turned reluctantly to retrace our steps.

  And then I saw it. A blue-and-white flight bag, just like mine, stuffed halfway into one of those refuse containers with a swinging lid on the top of it.

  I stopped, and a cold feeling swept through me.

  “It’s hers,” I said, sounding hollow. “It’s Mrs. Basker’s flight bag. Why would she throw it away? Charlie, something’s happened to her, and we’ve got to find out what it was.”

  Chapter Seven

  Eddie stared at the discarded flight bag. “How do you know it’s hers? You’ve got one just like it, Gracie, and I’ve seen some other ones the same color, too. They sell them everywhere.”

  “It’s Mrs. Basker’s,” I said with certainty. I pulled the bag out of the trash container and unzipped it. “Look! It’s got her glasses in it, the same case I picked up off the floor! She’d never have thrown away her glasses!”

  “No,” Charlie agreed. “Maybe somebody snatched the bag and took what they wanted out of it, then threw it away. She’s probably looking for it, or went to find the security guards to report it.” He looked up and down the corridor, but though there were lots of people, there was no old lady in a blue-and-white striped dress.

  “We’ve got to catch our plane in only about ten minutes,” Eddie reminded us. “We better just take her bag to a security person and take off. Let them handle it.”

  I supposed he was right—we weren’t cops, after all—but I couldn’t help being worried about Mrs. Basker. “What if she got hurt or something when the guy stole her bag? She’d probably fight to keep it.”

  I looked up the stairs that led to the third, forbidden, level. “What do you suppose is up there?”

  “Offices,” Charlie said at once. “I think the security headquarters are up there, too. There’s no reason to think she’s up there, Gracie. The signs say ‘no admittance’ and you don’t see any traffic on the stairs, do you? There’s nothing to say the cops are up there, either, so why would she go up there?”

  “I don’t know. But there’s something on the steps—”

  I shrugged off his restraining hand and ran up the off-limits stairway, snatching up what had from a distance looked like a dropped paper napkin. It wasn’t a napkin, though.

  “This is hers!” I exclaimed, spreading out the handkerchief so they could see the embroidery in the corner. “I picked this up, too, when she spilled the stuff out of her purse!”

  For once Charlie didn’t waste time arguing about an idea just because it hadn’t been his in the first place. “Come on. I guess we’ve got time for a quick check. Maybe a security guard took her up to the offices to make a report or something.”

  We ran up the stairs. Between Mrs. Basker’s things and our own, we had about all we could carry. When we reached the third-floor level, I was breathing heavily, and it wasn’t all from the climb. I had a really anxious feeling about what had happened to Mrs. Basker.

  The longest corridor I ever saw ran off in both directions. There were no people around, and it was very quiet compared to the rest of the airport. There were open doors showing that workmen were remodeling or building, but no workmen.

  “Geez, guys, we haven’t got much time,” Eddie said uneasily. “What if we miss the plane? Everybody will be mad at us, and what if they make us pay for new tickets on another flight? We haven’t got enough money for that.” He licked salt from the corn chips off his lips. “If anybody’s folks have to drive down from Seattle to pick us up, we’re going to be in trouble for sure.”

  I knew he was right, but I didn’t take time to discuss it. “I’m going to open some of these doors and see if I can find anybody who saw her.”

  “You and Eddie go that way,” Charlie suggested. “One of you take each side of the hall. I’ll go the other way. There’s a sign that says ‘security office’ down that way. If nobody finds her, we’ll tell the guards we have to catch a plane in a few minutes. Then they can take care of it.”

  Eddie and I fairly flew along the hall, opening doors, calling out into unfurnished and unfinished rooms. We didn’t have to go very far.

  The sign said AIRLINE PERSONNEL ONLY. Some of the doors had been locked, but Eddie twisted this knob and shoved inward, and a moment later his yelp brought me back to him.

  “You were right, Gracie,” he said, his eyes practically bulging out of his head. “I think . . . I think she’s been murdered!”

  For a minute, staring past Eddie, I was afraid he was right.

  The room was some sort of lounge that didn’t look quite finished; there were tarps down where someone had been painting the walls, and a ladder and
paint cans.

  What we looked at, though, was Mrs. Basker. She was lying on her side on the floor so that we couldn’t see her face, but the blue-and-white striped dress and the comfortable white shoes were unmistakable.

  I sucked in a painful breath. Was Eddie right? I pushed past him—he stood frozen, blocking the doorway—and dropped to my knees beside the old lady. The straps of my flight bag slid off my shoulder, and something crunched under my weight, objects I recognized.

  I’d picked some of them up earlier, when her purse had been knocked out of her hands and spilled on the tiled floor.

  “It looks like somebody grabbed her purse and emptied it out,” I said, sounding choked, which was the way I felt. And scared. I was definitely scared.

  So was Eddie. His Adam’s apple was bobbing up and down and he couldn’t even talk until his second try. “Is she . . . dead?”

  I never took anybody’s pulse before, but I’d seen it done in the movies. I felt around on her wrist until I found it. “She’s alive, but I think somebody hit her on the head. See, there’s a big purple bruise. Run, Eddie, get Charlie and the cops, and tell them to call a doctor, or an ambulance!”

  Only after Eddie had fled did it occur to me that I was alone here with an unconscious old woman and that the person who hit her and robbed her might still be around. I’ll bet my own pulse was beating a mile a minute. “Mrs. Basker,” I said urgently, “can you hear me?”

  She didn’t answer me, didn’t move. I swallowed hard. Please, please, don’t let her be dead, I thought.

  And then, aloud, I said, “Hurry up, Charlie! Come with the cops!”

  I suppose it didn’t really take very long. Charlie ran, so he got there first, but the security officer was right behind him. A second officer peered in the doorway and immediately started speaking into the walkie-talkie he unclipped from his belt, calling for a medic team.

  Things were sort of a jumble then for a few minutes. The officers asked questions, and we tried to answer them. Charlie was the one who finally remembered our plane was probably already leaving. The second officer said, “Don’t worry about it, we’ll have them hold it for you,” and got on his little radio again.