Donovan, no doubt realizing that decoding shorthand was a one-person job and he wasn’t that person, meandered to another section of the library and left me in peace.
I spread out the pages I’d copied from Treak’s notes and opened the Gregg shorthand book to the quick reference chart. Squiggle by tedious squiggle, I matched the lines on the notes with the corresponding sounds from the chart. I knew it wouldn’t be exact, but I hoped I’d get close enough to figure out most of the words.
Eventually, Donovan strode back in to check on my progress. He squinted over my shoulder at the sheet of notebook paper where I’d been writing the words down as I decoded them. “What’s a ‘halchaney’?” he asked.
“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “At this point, I’m just trying to get all the major sounds written down so I can look at Treak’s notes as a whole. Then I’ll scan for patterns, sentence breaks and anything that might be meaningful.”
He ran his fingers along his hairline and, then, down his sideburns. Pausing. Thinking. Evaluating. “You like this kind of thing, don’t you?”
“What do you mean? I don’t know anything about shorthand,” I said. “I know I probably should’ve taken it in high school, but it was an elective and I was pretty distracted my last couple of years, so I wasn’t—”
“Not what I’m saying, Aurora.” He crossed his arms and tapped his fingertips near each elbow, slapping the skin. “I meant the code part. The solving of the mystery. Your brother’s journal with all its weird little clues. The big puzzle behind it. You like that sort of stuff.”
He didn’t say it like an accusation—not exactly—but it was clear he didn’t share my interest in problem solving as a form of entertainment. I wasn’t about to tell him how I used to love reading mysteries or the thousand times Gideon and I wrote in code to each other when we were kids. He already thought I was strange enough.
“Swear to God, Donovan, if you start in again on the Nancy Drew name calling—”
“Did I say anything about that?” He shot me an irritated look. “Listen, it was just an observation. Seems to me it’s the kind of thing someone who should go to college would like. You know, it fits you. Shows you’re bright. That’s all.” Then, before I could manage any kind of reply, he spun on his sneaker sole and said, “I’ll be back in another half hour.”
By the time he returned, I had most of Treak’s shorthand symbols decoded into sounds, and what I saw on the page was starting to take shape into something almost recognizable.
“It seems like a list of names,” I told Donovan. “See this first one?” I pointed to the word halchaney, which he’d seen before. “It looks like there’s a space between the ‘l’ and the ‘c.’ So, maybe, it’s actually Hal Chaney. The reason I think so is, also, because of what comes after it. There’s the phrase Americana Trucking, like it’s a company he owns or works for. And, after that, it’s Cres Cove, Chic, MO, TX, NM, which I’m betting is ‘Crescent Cove, Chicago, Missouri, Texas and New Mexico.’ Does that make sense to you?”
Donovan nodded. “But Hal Chaney?” he said. “Why does that name sound familiar?”
“I don’t know. Below it are some other names and places that follow.” I whispered the full list to him aloud.
Hal Chaney - Americana Trucking - Cres Cove, Chic, MO, TX, NM
Vincent Leto - Chic
Rick Brice - Chic
Sebastian James - Chic
Timothy Wick - Americana Trucking, Jop, Amar
Billy Neville - Albuq
Julian Carello – Chic
“I’ve never heard of any of these people,” he said. “They can’t be famous. At least not to an average American.”
“Maybe not. But for some reason they were important to Treak. We should check every reference source we can lay our hands on to try to figure out who at least a few of them are and what they do,” I said. “Microfilm. Phonebooks. Newspapers. Periodical indexes. Anything at our disposal.”
“Is this everything Treak had listed?” he asked.
I shook my head. “There was one more section.” I showed him the last page. “It’s mostly numbers, as you can see in this left-hand column. The shorthand words to the right vary, but each of them is a city. There were several mentions of Chicago and St. Louis, a few of Joplin and Amarillo, an Oklahoma City and an Albuquerque.”
“All places along Route 66.”
“Yeah.”
“But no idea what the numbers mean?”
“Not yet,” I said. They had to mean something, though, and the quicker I could figure out little details like these, the quicker we might be able to track down Gideon.
Donovan was staring at the list of names again. “I’m thinking the thing to start with is the trucking company because that, at least, gives us a jumping off point. We can look them up. See where they’re based. Try to find something on Hal Chaney and Timothy Wick through them, since Americana Trucking was listed after both of their names.”
Something tugged at my memory. I looked at Hal’s name again and the places Treak had written after it: Cres Cove, Chic, MO, TX, NM. “Didn’t somebody in Crescent Cove know a guy named Hal?”
Donovan remembered an instant before I did. “Kim.”
“That’s right. Our waitress at the bar. The desperate Cher lookalike chick who was drooling all over you.”
“What?”
“Never mind,” I said. “Didn’t she say her old boyfriend was a trucker? A guy named Hal. The one she’d moved to Crescent Cove to be with…”
“But then he left her.”
“Or, maybe, he just left.”
“Kim didn’t say a last name, though. She might’ve been talking about another Hal,” he said.
“Right. Because there would be so many truckers named ‘Hal’ in a town with a population of 949.” I sighed. Donovan was so damn unwilling to let his mind take any leaps at all.
He jabbed my shoulder with his index finger. “Stop it with the snottiness. I’m just trying to make sure we don’t overlook anything.”
I shrugged. “Fine. Let’s just go to the reference room and get started.”
He followed me, though several paces behind, as I collected my papers and speed-walked through the first floor and the general reading room so we could enter the connected reference area. Just as I’d done at the public library in Ashburn Falls, I took a quick scan of the available staff members to gather impressions about them and to see which one might be the best to approach. Who looked both knowledgeable and trustworthy?
There was a white-haired librarian with a warm smile, and she seemed like a good prospect to me, but she was busy helping a group of four teenage girls find something. I heard one of the girls ask, “And can we get Donny Osmond’s address, too?”
It was going to be a long wait.
There was a somewhat younger staff woman, but she had an angry crease between her brows and wore a grim expression on her lips. She was filing cards in the card catalog and gave off the distinct vibe that she didn’t want to be disturbed.
Finally, there was a third librarian—the youngest of them all and a guy—who was filling out forms at the reference desk. He looked to be just out of college, so about Donovan’s age. He had sandy-colored hair, circular wire-rimmed glasses that made him look studious, but also a playful grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. Cute. I made a beeline for him.
“Hi,” I said, slightly breathless from my hike across the library. “I was hoping you could help me locate some articles.”
He looked up at me. “I’d be happy to.” He smiled, showing off his dimples. Wow. Really cute.
I smiled back just as brightly. I couldn’t help it.
Then I felt Donovan’s shadow over my shoulder and realized he’d finally caught up. I didn’t need to look behind me to know that Donovan must have been scowling. The librarian’s smile dimmed a few watts.
“Uh, what’s your topic?” Cute Librarian Guy asked.
“Oh, right.” I took a quick glanc
e at my notes. “We were looking into local trucking companies. The kind of routes they take. The kind of cargo they carry. The ones with the best safety records in the area.”
He nodded. “Sure. I think I can get you started. Do you know the names of any of the companies?”
“Americana Trucking,” Donovan piped up. “That’s the first one on the list. Alphabetical, you know.”
Cute Librarian Guy eyed him with curiosity. “Great. So, you’re both working on this? Together?”
“Yes,” I said cheerfully. “But it’s really my brother’s project.” I hooked my thumb in Donovan’s direction but kept beaming my warmest, most flirtatious smile at the librarian. I leaned in a little closer and lowered my voice. “He needs the help,” I added, just like a snotty younger sister might.
This earned me a chuckle from Cute Librarian Guy and another flash of his dimples. He stood up and turned his back on us so he could grab one of the periodical indexes.
As soon as he did, Donovan jabbed me with his finger in between my shoulder blades. “Better be nicer to me, Sis,” he hissed in my ear.
I snickered. “Just as soon as you do the same, Bro.”
With the help of the librarian, we soon had a stack of material to sort through. It took us over three hours of digging and reading archived microfilm, but Donovan and I finally unearthed something worth saving.
In following the trail of Americana Trucking, we learned from an old Joplin newspaper clipping that one of the guys on Treak’s list—Timothy Wick—had been an executive with the Missouri-based company. That was, up until two years ago when he was arrested for the “unauthorized shipping of explosive material” that resulted in “an unfortunate accident in Amarillo, Texas.”
“Oh, God, Donovan. Look at the date.”
“August 5, 1976,” he read. “Was that…uh, when…?”
“Yes,” I said. “That’s when, according to the decoded dates in the journal, Gideon and Jeremy were in Amarillo.”
“Shit.”
We looked up another newspaper article, this time from a Texas paper. There weren’t many more details, but we did glean a few new hints from the report.
“On the outskirts of Amarillo, late Thursday, August 5th, tragedy struck as an Americana Trucking semi headed for Albuquerque caught fire and, due to the explosive nature of the cargo, was destroyed before the fire department could be called for help. The truck driver was missing from the scene, but the manager responsible for the shipment, Timothy Wick of Joplin, Missouri, is being held for questioning.”
Donovan and I exchanged nervous glances.
“This isn’t good,” he murmured.
Then there was one final article, posted about a month later, with a follow-up to the story. It recapped what had been written before, adding that Wick had been jailed for illegally ordering the transport of boxes with explosives.
But that wasn’t all.
The name of the driver was still being held in confidence by the police, pending further investigation, as there had been evidence of foul play. And the big mystery investigators had been working on was where the explosive material had been manufactured. It was rumored there were ties to Chicago mob activity, but the police didn’t know for sure where the bombs had originated…
“Although we know,” I whispered. “And so did Treak, Ben, Jeremy and Gideon.”
Donovan crossed his arms. “Probably why Ben and Treak are now dead. And who knows what happened to our brothers as a result?”
“Yeah,” I whispered.
Then, as if trying to win the Understatement of the Year Award, he added, “Aurora, if we keep driving west, we’ve got to be very careful.”
4:09 p.m.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Pasadena, California ~ Saturday, August 16, 2014
I checked Charlie’s Caller ID log, found the code to his landline’s voicemail on yet another Post-It note and shamelessly listened to his messages—half of them were from me anyway. The other half consisted of a mix of concerned phone calls from his work secretary or his brother or his father. And there was one automated alert from an oil change place nearby, announcing a customer special they had going on for the month of August. Nothing, however, that so much as hinted at where my son was.
So, I tried another obvious snooping tactic—his computer.
Unlike Jay, who password protected every one of his electronic devices like he was a freaking member of the CIA, Charlie’s computer had been left hibernating on his always-open email account. I woke it up just long enough to scan through the last few dozen emails in his inbox—both read and unread. And, while I learned some interesting new vocabulary words (with equally interesting spellings) from his college friend Matt and a collection of less-than-comprehensible financial analytics from a set of office e-memos, they were all just dead ends, too.
It was incredible to me—and unbelievably angering—that with all of the resources and instant global connections we had these days, it was apparently still impossible to find a quick and easy answer to my #1 question.
Charlie, where the hell are you?
I banged the desk chair with my fist until it ached, and then I checked my cell phone for the five-thousandth time that afternoon. Still no word from him.
Briefly, I considered hunting down the manager of the apartment complex and asking if he or she knew anything. However, I already suspected what I’d hear would be, at best, compassionate but useless. Some puffed-up thirty-year-old telling me gently that “people didn’t know their neighbors like they used to” but that I might have more luck if I “checked his Twitter account.”
Except Charlie didn’t have a stupid Twitter account. He’d made a point of telling me that at least.
I squeezed my eyes shut to force back the tears of pain, fear and utter frustration—bargaining with God all the while to look after my baby boy. To please make sure he was okay.
When I could pull myself together long enough to punch in the numbers, I called my husband again. He didn’t pick up.
So, I left a message. “Call me back as soon as you get this. No one’s been able to reach Charlie, and I’m really worried about him. I’m going to the police.”
“Well done is better than well said.”
~Ben Franklin
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Tulsa, Oklahoma ~ Thursday, June 22, 1978
We’d been in Tulsa for twenty-two hours…and arguing for a full fifteen of them. (But that was only because we’d slept for seven and neither of us talked in our sleep.) I’d managed to convince Donovan to enter the state of Oklahoma, but to say we did not see eye to eye on our next step since we’d gotten here would be an accurate deduction.
An even more accurate deduction would be to say that, less than a week into our trip, we wanted to have a lightsaber fight to the death like a Jedi Knight battling the Dark Lord of the Empire.
“What part of ‘Chicago mob activity’ makes you think poking your nose any further into this would be a good idea?” Donovan demanded, his voice rising. “Especially without police protection. Seriously, Aurora, you’ve reached the point of crazy with this road trip.”
“You know we have to go to Amarillo. Not only did Gideon send Amy Lynn a postcard from there—just a few weeks ago—but that’s where the Americana truck exploded. It happened when our brothers were there! God, Donovan, we’ve almost cracked this mystery. We’re this close to finding Gideon and Jeremy. We can’t stop now.”
“Oh, yes. Yes, we can.” He crossed his arms. “And you’re wrong, you know that? We are not close to finding our brothers. They would have shown up if they’d wanted to be found. And we are not close cracking this mystery either. Not by a long shot.”
He started pacing around the room. “With everything we find a partial answer to, there are fifty more questions that come up. Maybe Hal was our waitress’s boyfriend and he was a trucker for Americana, bringing explosives from Crescent Cove to Albuquerque via Texas. But why? And how did the Chicago mob get in
volved? And what happened to Hal? And what exactly did our brothers witness? It couldn’t have been an accident that they were in Amarillo at the very same time this happened, could it?”
He shook his head and gave his sideburns an agitated rub. “Listen to me. This is not some little hick-town scheme gone wrong. This is major stuff. Maybe with a crime boss, just like in The Sting. ‘Just like real life,’ your brother wrote. Remember?”
“I remember. And there was a dirty cop in Gideon’s movie reference, too, if you’re going to go that way with it. Police can’t be trusted,” I shot back. I shoved the journal at Donovan. “Look at this. We’ve got so much more information now, even if new questions have arisen.”
He snorted. “You always say—”
“Gideon wrote on July 27, 1976, ‘Tulsa with J.’ And below that he wrote, ‘Andy Reggio is OK, OK.’ And finally he wrote, ‘Bikes at 100N.’ These are valid leads! Names I can look up. Places and things I can find.” I was already pulling out the motel phonebook to search for this new name when Donovan all but ripped it out of my hands. He flipped to the R’s himself, his jaw clenched as he studied the page.
“Reggio, huh?” he said. “Well, see for yourself. There is no Reggio listed in the Tulsa phonebook. Not an Andy or an Andrew. Not anyone with that last name. It’s just another puzzle. Another stupid clue in code. The next part of some new game your manipulative brother, or whoever’s impersonating him, is playing. And I’ve had enough.” He waited until I’d looked at the phonebook page myself. He was right. There was no one by that name listed.
“Maybe it’s unlisted—” I began.
But Donovan wasn’t going to indulge me with any more conjecturing.
“People have died already. Other people are missing,” he said. “Most, if not all, of them were doing illegal things. It’s not our job to bring them to justice. We need to get back home and get on with our lives and our own jobs. If any more answers are out there—”
Road and Beyond: The Expanded Book-Club Edition of The Road to You Page 21
