The Note

by Hunt, Angela

  When the doors slid open, Peyton stepped out of the elevator with long strides, leaving Nora in the shadows. The marble lobby gleamed with the rosy glow of afternoon. The floors, walls, and even the circular stone reception desk seemed alive with light.

  A group of men huddled near the desk—Carter Cummings, Bill Elliott, Tom Guthrie—all sports-writers, Peyton noticed, and King’s friends. Bill was holding his month-old baby, a foolishly proud grin on his face, and something in the cozy tableau set Peyton’s heart to pounding within her rib cage. Lowering her head, she walked swiftly toward the revolving doors.

  “Miss MacGruder!”

  She had expected to hear Carter or Bill call her name, so the sound of a female voice made Peyton start. She looked up, hearing the echo of her name above the clacking sound of wood-soled shoes.

  Then she remembered the phone call. A woman had wanted to see her . . . Gabriella somebody-or-other. Drat! Why had she told Anita she was on her way out? The receptionist must have relayed the information, because the woman had obviously decided to stick around for an ambush.

  Peyton kept walking in time with her pounding heart, but knew she wouldn’t be able to outrun the woman she saw from the corner of her eye. Why did the paper have to include a photo with the byline of every columnist? There’d be no getting out of this one.

  “Miss MacGruder, wait, please!”

  Peyton came to a dead stop and cast a longing glance toward the door. Monday she’d make it a top priority to find a back way out—through the pressroom, perhaps. Or maybe she could park by the loading docks—

  No, the others would think she was being pretentious. Better to stand and face the downside that accompanied even a dribble of fame.

  Pasting on a small smile, Peyton took a deep breath, then turned. The approaching woman was young, probably in her early to mid-thirties, with clipped blonde hair and a slight frame. Blue eyes dominated her face, and a heavy shoulder bag swung with every step, seeming to tilt the petite woman to one side.

  “I’m sorry,” Peyton began, lifting her hand. “I’m in a bit of a hurry. Can we chat next week?”

  “This won’t take long.” Breathless, the woman stopped by Peyton’s side, one hand clutching the leather strap of her shoulder bag as if she feared purse snatchers haunted the Times lobby. “Please, Miss MacGruder, I’ve fretted all night about what to do, and I think you’re the one. I mean, I think you’d know how to handle this.”

  Caution and curiosity warred for a moment in Peyton’s brain. Curiosity won. “Know how to handle what?”

  The woman pressed her lips together as her eyes filled with tears. “I scarcely know where to begin. But I know this is a big story—huge—and I believe you can do it justice. I wouldn’t want to give this to anyone but the Heart Healer.”

  Peyton inhaled deeply, her heart warmed by the praise even as her brain warned her against swallowing wholesale flattery. “Walk me to my car, then,” she said, giving the woman a final head-to-toe glance. She didn’t seem deranged or dangerous, but it wouldn’t hurt to keep the conversation in a public place. As long as the security guard stood in the shack at the entrance to the employee parking lot, this ought to be okay.

  “Thank you.” Smiling in what looked like sincere relief, the woman pushed her way through the revolving door, and for an instant Peyton was tempted to beat a hasty retreat back to the elevator, leaving this woman blinking in the sun outside.

  But she moved through the door and met the woman on the sidewalk. “So what’s this about?” Peyton asked, not breaking her forward stride.

  The woman hurried to keep up. “It’s about Flight 848.”

  Peyton threw up her hand. “It’s been covered, I’m afraid. Extensively. We’ll run follow-up stories once the FAA publishes their findings on the exact cause of the crash, but for now that story is finished.”

  “This isn’t about the crash.” The woman’s voice held a note of disappointment, as though Peyton had failed her somehow. “It’s about the people on board that plane. It’s about a broken heart . . . and that’s why I thought of you.”

  Still walking, the woman opened her bulging purse. Some primal instinct urged Peyton to run—the woman could be pulling a gun from that bag—but another impulse forced her to slow her steps, then stop. The woman stopped, too. After withdrawing a square of white cloth—a linen napkin, Peyton thought—she dropped the purse and let it tilt her shoulders again. Silently, with the reverence of one participating in a religious ritual, the woman placed the folded cloth on her open palm.

  “We live on Mariner Drive, on the southern side of the Howard Frankland Bridge,” the woman said, her voice trembling as her fingers gingerly lifted the fabric. “Yesterday morning I was sitting in my backyard, watching the water and thinking about all those poor people, and I saw this. It was stuck to the barnacles on one of the posts of our dock.”

  She nodded at the object within the linen cloth. Peyton looked and saw a clear plastic bag—a sandwich bag, apparently, one with a zip-lock top.

  Her mouth twisted as she looked up. “You found a baggie?”

  The woman bit her lip and nodded, then gently turned the bag over. Peyton hadn’t noticed when the plastic lay on the white cloth, but now she could see a sheet of white paper and words scrawled upon the page.

  “It’s a note. And I believe it came from someone on that plane.”

  Fascinated, Peyton lifted the bag by a corner. The paper inside appeared perfectly dry—Zippup bags lock freshness in and odors out—and the blue ink unblurred.

  And the message, though scrawled, was legible:

  T—

  I love you. All is forgiven.

  Dad

  Peyton threw the woman a sidelong glance. “You really think this is from one of the victims?”

  The woman spread her hands. “I don’t know what it is. But of all the writers working for this paper, I knew you’d know how to discover the truth. If this really is from a father on that plane, then somewhere there’s a son or daughter who needs to hear this message.”

  Her voice dropped to a softer tone as she pressed the linen cloth into Peyton’s free hand. “You’re the Heart Healer, aren’t you?”

  Peyton couldn’t answer. She stared wordlessly at the woman, her heart pounding, the plastic bag hanging between her fingers like a dead thing. What if this note had survived the fiery crash? So far the woman’s story seemed credible—Mariner Drive did lie south of the Howard Frankland, and a row of houses with boat docks did line that street; Peyton gazed over into those lush backyards every time she took the bridge to Pinellas County. So if this woman really did find this note in the water, it could be genuine . . . or it could be a malicious ruse. Was there any way to completely rule out either scenario?

  “What do you want me to do with this?” she finally asked. She suspected the answer, but still needed to hear it from this stranger. If this woman had forged the note and invented the story, she could be one of those people who got a kick out of seeing her name in print. If so, Peyton wasn’t inclined to grant her even two seconds of celebrity.

  The woman took a hasty half-step back. “I don’t know what you should do with it. I’m only a housewife, I don’t know anything about newspapers or airplanes or the FAA. But I read your column all the time, so I feel like I know you. I was sure you’d know what to do.”

  Peyton gingerly wrapped the bag in its linen covering, then tucked it into a pocket of her backpack. “I’ll need your name,” she said, fumbling within her bag in search of her notebook. “And a phone number, in case I need to contact you. And I’ll need your exact address, and the time of day you found this—I have to have all the details.”

  The woman took another half-step back, her expression tight. “I really don’t want to become involved, not publicly. But I do want to help.”

  Peyton pulled a pencil from her bag, then flipped her notebook open. If the woman had written the note and didn’t want publicity, then she might be the worst kind of sic
ko—the kind who savored maliciousness in private.

  Pausing with her pencil above the page, Peyton lifted a brow and looked at the woman. “I’m ready— name, address, phone number?”

  The woman opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again. “Okay. I’m Gabriella Cohen, I live at 10899 Mariner Drive, and the number’s in the book— my husband is Dr. Eli Cohen, but we’re listed under my name.” She lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “We try not to have patients calling the house.”

  Peyton jotted down the details. “What kind of doctor?”

  “Family practice,” Gabriella answered. “His office is in east Tampa.”

  “Thanks.” Looking at the information, Peyton racked her brain for other questions, but Gabriella Cohen had already begun to back toward the parking lot. “Can I call you if I think of something else?” Peyton asked, raising her voice.

  Gabriella lifted her hands. “I’ve already told you all I know. But I’ll be praying you find the one . . . who should receive the note.”

  Walking slowly to her car, Peyton absently pulled the Jetta keys from her pocket and unlocked the door. She sat in the driver’s seat with the door open, letting the dry heat dissipate in a stifling wave. Moving robotically, she put the keys in the ignition and cranked the engine, then slid the AC level to maximum blast.

  As the cold air gathered strength to chase out the heat, she pulled the linen square from her backpack, then unwrapped the plastic bag and stared at it, overcome by an unanchored but strong sense that she had come to a major crossroad in her life. She had been given a gift—perhaps worthless, perhaps priceless—and the future might well depend upon what she did with it. Or if she did anything at all.

  The scrap of paper inside that baggie could either launch her to stardom or send her crashing into oblivion.

  Both prospects terrified her.

  FIVE

  SATURDAY, JUNE 23

  Peyton spent the better part of Friday night pacing and arguing with herself—the note was real; it was a sure fake; maybe only the FAA, the FBI, the CIA, or some other alphabet soup group could ever tell for sure. She should pursue the story wholeheartedly; she should toss the note in file thirteen and forget she’d ever seen it. She’d be a hero if the story played out; she’d be a laughingstock if it proved to be a hoax. If even one adversarial reporter coaxed an FAA official to say a note in plastic could never have survived the fire, the impact, and the water, she— and all her hopes—would be crushed.

  By 2:00 A.M., she’d decided to test the waters. In her initial column, she’d hint at what she’d discovered, and she would couch the premise in ambivalent terms. She’d say she’d found something that might have come from the flight, but on the chance that it had, she was following every lead, making every call, doing everything in her power to follow through. Like a dedicated and conscientious reporter, she would investigate and write, then let her readers make the final decision. They would read her columns, weigh the evidence for and against the note’s authenticity, and make up their own minds.

  Of course, as an objective reporter, she would remain impartial and uncommitted.

  As her cats, Samson and Elijah, reclined on the bed and listened with rapt attention, she moved on to the debate about Whom to Trust with the news. Nora Chilton was out. Nora would want to assign the story to a feature writer, or maybe hand it over to one of the investigative reporters in the news department. She’d take it to the publisher, Curtis DiSalvo, who’d congratulate her on finding a unique tidbit, then they’d call in experts and spend more time testing and prodding and proving than they would searching.

  But Gabriella Cohen had been excruciatingly right about one thing: if the note were genuine, then in those terrible moments when the plane spiraled down from the sky, one father had thought only of his estranged child. That child needed to know the truth.

  She briefly considered talking to Janet Boyles about the note, then cast the idea off. If Janet had been hinting that she’d like a shot at “The Heart Healer,” she’d probably jump at the chance to run with the story of the note. Karen Dolen was a good writer, and a friend, but Karen was from the news department, and she’d probably advise Peyton to feature the story in only a column or two. But you couldn’t find a needle in a haystack in only a couple of days, and this story might require much longer. It might, in fact, take up the majority of Peyton’s remaining two-week probation.

  She could talk to Mandi about the project—but the intern was about as savvy as a girl on her first date. Oh, she’d be thrilled—for her, filing expense reports was as exciting as a Chinese fire drill—but she had no real understanding. No . . . Peyton needed someone who could remind her of the risks. She needed the voice of experience, the most knowledgeable and objective newspaperman she knew . . .

  Kingston Bernard.

  She called him at 3:00 A.M. King grumbled when he answered the phone, and he grumbled more at the prospect of a 9:00 A.M. breakfast, but he showed up at Peyton’s door with her Saturday morning paper in hand—a copy of the St. Petersburg Post, the competition from across the bay.

  She accepted the paper with a smile and led him into the kitchen where the mingled scents of fresh-baked muffins, scrambled eggs, and bacon provided a warm welcome. Samson and Elijah sat under the table, staring at the approaching sneakers with undisguised curiosity.

  “Um.” King sniffed appreciatively. “Maybe this was worth getting up for.” He stood in the kitchen doorway for a moment with his hands in his jeans pockets. “What’s the occasion? You didn’t say much earlier this morning.”

  “If I had, neither of us would remember it.” Pouring a cup of coffee, Peyton noticed with some surprise that her hand trembled. Had to be from lack of sleep.

  She glanced at her guest, then gestured toward the kitchen table. “Just move that pile of magazines off the chair and have a seat. Sorry about that. I know the place looks cluttered, but I really do know where everything is.”

  King lifted a brow. “A woman of many interests—I like that.”

  She frowned. “Just sit, will you? You make me nervous standing there.”

  Laughing softly, King lifted the stack of mingled Newsweek, Journalism Review, and People magazines, then dropped them into a third chair. He sat, then leaned back and grinned. “Okay, I’m sitting. Now are you going to tell me what this is all about?”

  “In a minute.” She wiped her hands on her shorts, then glanced around the kitchen, overwhelmed by a feeling that she’d forgotten something. The eggs were steaming in a Pyrex bowl, scrambled and ready to go, the muffins filled a basket, and the bacon waited in the microwave . . .

  Why was she nervous? Good grief, she was behaving like Mandi, and a dizzy girl was the last thing in the world she wanted to be.

  “The thing is”—she turned to pick up the coffee mugs—“as I was leaving the office Friday, a woman came up and gave me something. She’s convinced—and I’m not, not completely—that she found something from Flight 848.”

  “Another piece of debris?” King’s anticipatory smile drooped as she set one of the mugs before him. “All kinds of things have washed up, MacGruder, and most people are taking debris to the PanWorld office at TIA. That’s what she should have done. You never know what bit of evidence will be useful to the FAA guys—”

  “This wasn’t part of the plane.” She sat down, then leaned forward over the corner of the table. “It’s a note. From a passenger.”

  Amazement blossomed on his face. “But how could it—”

  “It was encased in a plastic bag—one of those with the little zipper tab. If you ever watch TV, you’ve seen the Zippup commercials. They’re the ones who feature a little dog singing about locking freshness in and odors out.”

  She leaned back, eager to watch the play of emotions on his features. Though they’d disagreed in the past, she trusted his instincts. If Kingston Bernard—veteran newsman, seasoned reporter, and exemplary editor— didn’t think the note constituted a story, it didn’t.


  He pressed his hand to his face, then lowered his elbow to the tabletop, ignoring Samson, who decided to jump into his lap. “You think,” he said, apparently thinking aloud, “someone had time to write a note? While the plane was crashing?”

  “Why not? We know the plane went down in a curving path because the pilot was trying to reach the runway. We know at least three minutes passed between the disruptive event and the explosion.” She leaned forward again, and tapped the table. “Why couldn’t someone have reached for paper and pen and written a note?”

  His eyes narrowed in the devil’s advocate expression she knew well. “But if a plane is going down, the flight attendants are busy showing people how to assume the crash position. It’s unlikely anyone would be writing a note in the face of blind panic.”

  “What if you didn’t care about your own safety?” Peyton persisted. “What if reaching out to your kid meant more than being seated properly? If you were motivated by something bigger than concern for your own safety? Why wouldn’t you try to reach out to someone who needed to hear what you had to say?”

  His eyes warmed slightly as he stroked the cat. “What did the note say?”

  Peyton pulled away and picked up her coffee mug. “That’s for me to know,” she said primly, “and for the recipient to find out.”

  He scowled, his brows knitting together. “That’s not fair, MacGruder.”

  “Yes, it is.” She stood and moved back to the counter to fetch the eggs and muffins. “I’m not going to divulge the contents of the note until I find the person for whom it was written.”

  “And that person would be?”

  “I’m not sure.” Peyton carried the bowl of eggs to the table, then leaned on her chair. “But I have clues.

  The note was signed ‘Dad,’ so I know it was written by a man who intended it for his child. The child’s first initial is T.”