A Penny for Your Thoughts

by Mindy Starns Clark

  “Were you watching the TV just now?” I asked.

  “My goodness, yes!”

  “I think Carlos is here somewhere, Marion,” I said. “I think he’s scared, and he’s hiding. Call Derek and Sidra and tell them to come here. Maybe if he hears them calling for him, he’ll come out.”

  She agreed to call them right away and we disconnected. Glancing to the side, I realized that Angelina was watching me anxiously.

  “I cannot believe Alan tricked me into stealing a priceless treasure,” she said, obviously thinking again about the Jefferson shirt. “Mrs. Smythe will never, ever forgive me for that.”

  “At the time, you thought it was nearly worthless,” I replied. “A memento for the man you loved.”

  “I was a fool.”

  I put my hands on Angelina’s shoulders and looked her right in the eye.

  “Better a fool who goes to her boss and owns up to her crime and apologizes for it,” I said softly, “than a proud but unemployed maid who’s been cut off from friends and family over a stupid incident with a truffatore.”

  She nodded and pulled away, wiping tears from her face.

  “Maybe you are right,” she said.

  “Now go help those people find our boy.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Angelina ran to join the others as I folded my phone and tucked it into my pocket. I was just trying to decide where to begin my own search when the old tower behind the main building caught my eye, and I stared at it long and hard.

  Forty-Nine

  The tower was behind the main building, a dilapidated old structure that looked as though it had once been a control tower or a lookout post. Now it appeared to be abandoned. I grabbed a flashlight from the pile and walked closer to it, peering up at it in the near-darkness.

  There was a chance that Carlos could’ve sprinted up these stairs and out of sight after sabotaging the plane. It would’ve been the perfect hideout, a place where he could observe the action at the airport without being seen. Kind of like the tree house he had used at home.

  I was no great lover of heights, but at least these were stairs and not a ladder. I climbed up one flight and turned, climbed up the next flight and turned, continuing on up, counting as I went, until I was five stories up in the air. As I reached the top, I tried very hard not to look down.

  There was a door in front of me that opened easily in my hand. I slowly swung it wide and shined the flashlight around the room, expecting to see lots of spiders or bats. Instead, what I found was a little boy, huddled in the corner against the wall, shivering.

  I went to him without a word, slid down next to him, and gathered him in my arms. He cried with his head buried against my shoulder as I whispered soothing noises in his ear and smoothed his hair away from his face. We stayed that way for a long time, his ragged breathing contrasting with the distant call of people shouting his name. Finally, I spoke, my voice echoing in the empty room.

  “A lot of people have been looking for you, Carlos,” I said.

  He grabbed my shirt collar into his hands and pressed it against his eyes.

  “Am I going to be arrested?” he whimpered.

  “Arrested?” I asked. “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “The police were here all afternoon, and then they were trying to find me. I didn’t know what to do, Callie. I was only trying to help.”

  “Carlos,” I said gently, “the police were looking for you because we were worried about you.”

  “But I ran away and I skipped school and I broke that guy’s plane…”

  “Thank goodness you did break the plane,” I said. “You stopped Alan from getting away.”

  “But Mr. Bennet got shot,” Carlos cried. “That was my fault. If I hadn’t messed up the plane, he wouldn’t have been standing there, and that guy wouldn’t have shot him.”

  I felt a pang in my heart, knowing that he had witnessed a horrible act of violence, something no child should have to see.

  “We’re all sorry Alan got shot, honey, but that wasn’t your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong. In fact, you’re a hero.”

  Carlos pulled back, wiped his nose on his sleeve, then looked at me.

  “I am?”

  “Yes, you are,” I said. “I know Alan is a friend of your family, but he’s done some very bad things. By stopping that airplane, you kept him from leaving. You helped the police catch a criminal.”

  He looked at me, wide-eyed.

  “But you’ve scared your poor parents to death, honey. You’ve got to come down and let them know you’re okay.”

  “Do we have to tell them about the water in the plane?”

  “Yes,” I said. “But your daddy will pay the man to fix it, and the people on the news will talk about how smart you were to think of that.”

  “They will? Are there news people out there now?”

  “Lots.”

  “They got cameras?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then we have to wait a minute before we go down,” he said. “I don’t want them to know I was crying.”

  I smiled, watching him rub his face fiercely with his hands.

  “Okay,” I said. “We can wait a minute.”

  “Thanks, Callie.”

  I dug through my pockets until I came up with half of a Kleenex; I handed it to him, and he took it gratefully, blowing his nose.

  “Why don’t you tell me what happened today, Carlos. Start with when you hid yourself inside your Aunt Judith’s car. That was a very stupid thing to do, by the way.”

  “I know that now,” he said. “I got in her trunk, and we drove for a while, and then we stopped. I heard her get out of the car, so I waited a minute, and then I kicked through to the backseat and climbed out.”

  “She didn’t see you?”

  “She was already gone. I was in the parking lot of apartments. Then all of a sudden I could hear arguing, and she was coming back. I didn’t have time to get back in the car, so I hid behind some bushes.”

  “She was arguing with Alan?”

  “Yeah, they were talking about going on a trip, and she wanted to take his car, and he wanted to meet her later and all this stuff. Finally, she got in her car and drove away. I didn’t know what to do, but when I saw Mr. Bennet loading some suitcases and things into his car, I decided to hide in there. He left the hatchback open and went back in the building for a minute, so I climbed in and got under a hanging bag and he never even saw me.”

  “Were you scared?”

  “Petrified. But then I got mad.”

  “Mad, why?”

  “Because when we were driving, the hanging bag slipped open a little and I could see inside. Do you know what he had?”

  “The shirt?” I asked. “Thomas Jefferson’s shirt?”

  “Yes! How did you know?”

  “Lucky guess. So what happened when you got here at the airport?”

  “I did the same thing. I waited until Mr. Bennet was gone, and then I climbed out of my hiding place and got out of the car. Just in time, too, because the next thing I knew, he had the back open, and he was unloading all this stuff and putting it on an airplane. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but I knew something wasn’t right. He wasn’t doing what he told Aunt Judith he was gonna do. And he had the shirt. I had to stop him.”

  “So you waited until he and the pilot went inside, and then you stuck the hose into the gas tank.”

  “I figured if water could stop a bus, it could stop a plane.”

  “That was very quick thinking.”

  “Then after I did it, I got scared. So I ran up here to watch. And the next thing I knew, there were cops here and sirens and everybody was yelling, and then they were shooting!”

  I could see him tearing up again.

  “Don’t start crying again, Carlos. We have to get down from here.”

  He took a ragged breath, staring up at the ceiling, willing himself not to cry.

  “I was scared,” he squeake
d. “Then after they took him away, they started looking for me. I thought they were gonna arrest me, too.”

  “Didn’t you see me down there?”

  “Yeah,” he said, “At least, I thought it was you. But I couldn’t look for too long because I was scared someone would see me. I figured I would come down once everyone left, but they never did. Then when I looked again, you were gone. I didn’t know what to do.”

  I pulled him back in for a long hug. The poor thing. He had spent the afternoon huddled up in this tower, not knowing what to do next, terrified as the long afternoon stretched on into evening.

  “I tried to pray,” he whispered, “but God didn’t hear me.”

  I pulled away and looked at him, smoothing his hair. He was still a mess, but at least now he could go down and face everyone.

  “Of course He did,” I replied, smiling. “He sent me here to get you, didn’t He?”

  We got up off of the floor, and I gingerly walked to the front of the room. It wasn’t a window, actually, just a framed-out open space through which I could look down at all of the happenings on the ground.

  I shouted and started waving my flashlight. Soon, one person heard me, then the word seemed to spread. Like ants, they all began to head our way.

  “Are you ready?” I asked Carlos as I turned from the window.

  “Yeah,” he said, but it wasn’t until I swung the beam of the flashlight toward him that I realized he was hurt, with a makeshift bandage around his leg.

  “What happened to you?” I gasped, kneeling in front of him to see where he had rolled his pants up and tied a sock around a wound on his shin.

  “I cut myself,” he said. “Climbing up here, I tripped on one of the steps. It was bleeding pretty bad.”

  “Can you walk?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “No problem.”

  “Let’s get down there, then. We can take care of it at the bottom.”

  We headed out, Carlos in front, as I shined the light on the stairs. His leg wasn’t a problem, but it was slow going for me—much harder than coming up had been. I tried not to look over the edge of the stairs as we walked, tried not to think how high up we were or how unsafe the tower might be. Halfway down, we could hear the shouts of Derek and Sidra from the bottom, and Carlos took off then, running the rest of the way. I stopped and leaned over to the right, training the beam of my flashlight on the stairs in front of him for as long as I could. When he was out of sight, I continued down. Below me, I could hear the joyous shouts of a child reunited with his parents. I continued walking slowly down, my heart light, my eyes filled with tears.

  Fifty

  By the time I reached the bottom, I realized the airport was once again swarming with cops. This time, however, they weren’t holding out guns but handshakes. Legs trembling, I waved off their congratulations and sat on the bottom step, trying to catch my breath.

  I let the confusion swirl around me for a while, watching Carlos reunite with his sobbing parents, declining interviews with newscasters who were thrusting microphones in my face. Right now, I just wanted to get somewhere quiet and lie down. Searching the crowd, I caught the eye of Martin Van Buren, who gave me a strong thumbs up. Tears quickly filling my eyes, I gave the same signal back to him as cameras flashed. I had a feeling that’s the photo that would make the morning papers.

  According to emergency personnel on the scene, the cut on Carlos’ leg was deep enough to require stitches. They were also concerned about dehydration and exposure, so they helped him into the back of an ambulance and started an IV as he chattered excitedly about taking a high-speed ride to the hospital. Sidra climbed in next to him, assuring him that they had plenty of time to get there and could go at the regular speed. They were just about to shut the door when Carlos held out his arms, reaching for me. I leaned inside and gave him another hug, opening my eyes to see Sidra over his shoulder.

  “Thank you,” she mouthed silently, her eyes also filled with tears. We shared a meaningful look, and then they were gone, Derek following along behind in his car.

  By the time Angelina and I turned into the Smythes’ driveway, Nick and Marion were in her car about to pull out. The police were all gone and the house was dark. I parked the Lincoln along the driveway and walked over to theirs.

  “Where’s your car?” Nick asked. “Is that a Lincoln?”

  “Long story,” I replied, thinking that now that all of the brouhaha was over, I would need to get my car over to the police station where Keegan and Sollie could document its wounds as proof of my run-in with Redburn.

  “We’re headed to the hospital,” Marion said, leaning forward so I could see her around Nick. “How did Carlos look?”

  “Carlos is going to be fine,” I said. “And the cut isn’t very wide, just kind of deep. He probably won’t need more than five or six stitches.”

  I could see the relief in her face. I could also see the tension in Nick as I realized Angelina had gotten out of my car and come to stand behind me.

  “Marion,” I said, “before you go, Angelina wants to talk to you. She has some things she would like to say.”

  Marion set her jaw and looked straight ahead. I knew she was hurt about the theft of the shirt. I could only hope that the two women could work it out. It seemed a shame to me that a man like Alan with all of his schemes could come in and destroy the warm relationship between them.

  For me, I was too tired to try and help them. I looked from Marion to Angelina, who was staring at the ground, red-faced and teary-eyed. This one she would have to handle on her own. Exhaling slowly, I excused myself from the scene in the driveway and headed toward the house. Nick got out of the car and let me in with his key, disarming the alarm for me before turning to go.

  I headed upstairs, and when I reached my room, I let myself fall, fully clothed, onto the bed. I was exhausted beyond belief. I closed my eyes, wanting sleep, wishing I could just blink my eyes and wake up in my own bed in my own home. Wearily, I reached for my phone and dialed Tom’s number, knowing that his voice was the only one I felt like hearing for the rest of the night.

  He was glad I called and said that news of Alan’s theft and capture and Carlos’ disappearance and recovery had even made a two-minute blurb on the evening news in Washington.

  “They showed you climbing down that tower,” he said. “They’re calling you a hero.”

  “All in the line of duty,” I replied, smiling up at the ceiling. For a moment, I let myself admit that it felt good to save the day.

  I asked him what he had heard from the police, and not surprisingly, he was fully informed. After he fussed at me for a while about not removing myself from the case when I realized I was in danger, he calmed down and brought me up-to-date.

  According to Tom, Judith was being held by the police on charges of theft and corporate fraud for her part in stripping money from the accounts of Feed the Need.

  Alan had regained consciousness in the hospital, though he was still listed in critical condition. He had admitted to the theft from Feed the Need as well as the larger crime of trying to steal more than a million dollars from Smythe Incorporated. But he vehemently denied any involvement with Wendell Smythe’s death at all, and now he had changed his alibi. Instead of just saying he was “running errands,” at the time of Wendell’s death, Alan was now maintaining that on the morning of the murder he had left the office to run to the bank and then the post office; while in line at the post office, he had met a lovely young lady in the line in front of him with whom he shared a cup of coffee and a quick but heated session in the alley behind the coffee shop. He hadn’t gotten her name and had no way of knowing how to contact her to prove his alibi. If that were true, I thought suddenly, at least it would explain his breathless and befuddled appearance the first time we met.

  But the police seemed to think they had enough evidence to convict Alan of Wendell’s murder without a confession. Besides the fingerprint on the syringe in the trash can, they had found his hair on We
ndell’s arm. Circumstantial, yes, but when coupled with Alan’s embezzling activities and subsequent attempt to flee, the cops felt it was an airtight case.

  As for Monty Redburn, he had now committed enough crimes to keep himself locked up for quite a while, and I was glad. With 20 cops as witnesses, getting a conviction on the attempted murder of Alan Bennet should be a piece of cake.

  Needless to say, the J.O.S.H.U.A. Foundation would not be making a loan to Feed the Need now. Perhaps, Tom said, if Derek could clear up the mess and demonstrate an ability to lead the company, Tom would consider a future request for funds.

  “And, of course,” Tom said, “you’re almost free to go. As soon as you go downtown tomorrow morning and give them your full statement, the police will release you from your Pennsylvania prison.”

  I closed my eyes, thinking how good those words sounded. Free to go. Finally, in the morning, after getting my car and giving my statement, I would load up and head home. It sounded too good to be true.

  We talked for a moment longer, and then I hung up the phone, feeling oddly at loose ends. My body was wiped out, but my mind was now flying. I walked to the window and looked out at the gorgeous moonlit night. This place was so beautiful, the perfect lawn and stately trees so peaceful.

  Finally, unable to resist the call of the smooth blue water below me, I decided to go for one last nighttime swim in the Smythes’ heated pool.

  Fifty-One

  Heavenly, I thought as I leaned back in the water, letting my hair float out behind me. This water is just heavenly.

  Tonight, I decided, I wasn’t even going to do any laps. I was just going to lie here and float in the water and relax. After all that had happened, I deserved to pamper myself.

  I let my feet rise up to the surface and tilted my head back so that only my face was above the water line. Arms stretched out beside me, I closed my eyes, lying flat in the water, trying to clear my mind of everything but the soft gentle waves that surrounded me.