by Kendel Lynn
From outside the office, floorboards creaked. Heavy. Steps moving quick. Faint at first, then right at the door.
I pushed the wheeled office chair aside and squeezed under the desk, wedged between the plastic garbage pail and the solid side panel of the desk. I had just reached for the chair’s swivel leg to pull it toward me to use as cover when the door handled squeaked.
I whipped my hand back and held my breath.
“Wait, Brad, I haven’t told you about the turtles,” Sid said, her voice three octaves higher than normal. “There are nests everywhere on that beach.”
Papers shuffled on the desktop. “We’re good,” he said. “I know who you’re talking about.”
More papers shuffled. Closer this time. Right above my head.
If he stepped farther into the office, he’d see me.
I closed my eyes.
A floorboard squeaked as his weight shifted.
“Really, it’s important,” Sid said. “The turtles—”
“It’s here somewhere,” he said.
I held my breath.
“The dust is horrible back here,” she said, her voice another octave higher. “I have asthma. Chronic, we really—”
“You can wait up—”
“I wanted to show you another angle of the damage,” Sid said. “I have it on my phone.”
“Give me a minute,” he said. “It’s here someplace. Unless he filed it.”
“It’s vital you look at it,” Sid nearly screeched.
“Found it,” he said.
Papers rustled above me as they shifted. A paperclipped sheet floated down and settled onto the desk chair.
“Let’s see that photo,” he said.
“My phone’s up front,” she said. “Was that the door? Sounded like a bell.”
Floorboards squeaked and the door shut with a thud.
I exhaled as if I’d been drowning and rested against the desk’s inner side panel. The hallway foot squeaks slowly faded.
I crawled out and smacked my head on the desk drawer. It rattled open, slammed into the chair. I slapped my hand over my mouth out of instinct and gagged. I needed better instincts.
Hunched between standing, sitting, and injured, I waited.
The hallway remained silent. Brad didn’t return.
I quietly snapped off my gloves, brushed dust and webs and bleck from my face, then opened the door with the same innocent ditzy face I entered with. Ready to exclaim a whoops, not the bathroom.
No one was in the hall.
I walked straight to the front, caught Sid’s eye. She distracted Brad with a friendly shoulder shove for doing such a great job as I slipped under the counter, sneaking my way toward the door.
“Well, isn’t that something,” Sid said. “I’d have sworn it was one of your ATVs. But thanks anyway.”
“Wait, you’re sure,” Brad said. “I have the—”
“Positive. Now that we’re talking, I think it was more of a Jeep. Like an actual Jeep. Probably the lifeguard. It was red. I’ll call them. You have a good night, now.”
Two guys with snorkel gear held the door open for Sid as they were entering and she was leaving. I followed her out.
We had parked in a remote spot on the far side of the lot, almost next door. We debriefed while I bathed in hand-sani beside her car.
“Sorry about that,” Sid said. “He was fast on his feet. I blinked and he started down the hall.”
“I’m good.” After my bottle was nearly empty, I brushed and patted away as much grime from my clothes as possible, then re-bathed my hands, arms, and face.
“There’s no corporate office, right?” Sid said.
I stopped washing my hands.
“I asked if I needed to file a complaint with the corporate office and he laughed. Said this is it. One shop. His shop.”
“Good to know,” I said. “I’d figured as much, since every single sheet of the two thousand papers I just handled all had this Sugar Hill address on them. Nothing about a chain or other locations.”
“So what’s next? I know you well enough to know a simple office search will not suffice.”
“We go to Charlotte. Alex lied about a corporate office. Definitely to me. Maybe to Daphne. He’s flying there for some reason, and I’m guessing it’s an important one.”
TEN
(Day #6: Thursday Morning)
In order to properly recreate the Daphne/Alex travel tour, I needed to take Daphne’s same scheduled flight to Atlanta, look around, see if anything popped as important, then switch gears and beat Alex to Charlotte to pick up his trail. Which meant waking before the sun shone over the Atlantic to catch the 7:12 to Atlanta. As I’m not one prone to rise before the roosters, I required a double Pepsi with a Pepsi chaser to fully embrace the bright side: I didn’t have to pack a single garment, and the airport was less than seven minutes from my cottage.
Sid waited for me in an Adirondack rocker, a grande something in her hand, a beautiful travel satchel at her feet. I parked in short-term, pulled my messenger from the passenger seat, and joined her. We checked-in at the counter. The agent, Jeanine Gurly, handed us boarding passes, and other than a friendly hello and a wink, she didn’t acknowledge our previous discussion regarding this particular flight.
“Sheriff Hill is acting suspiciously,” I said to Sid as I settled into a cushioned chair near the boarding gate. There were only two, marked Gate 1 and Gate 2, on opposite sides of a room measuring about twenty-five feet wide. “He’s being all cagey and friendly. Helpful in a distinctly not very helpful way.”
“Maybe he’s flirting with you,” Sid said.
“Flirting? That’s absurd. I have Ransom.”
“He doesn’t know that. You don’t wear a ring.”
“A ring isn’t necessary,” I said. “It’s not normal to assume just because I don’t wear a ring, I don’t have a life partner.”
“Life partner?”
“Boyfriend sounds silly over forty.”
“Do you want a ring?”
“I want a Post-it. You know, like Derek and Meredith. Can’t we just commit our vows to each other? We say them and keep them, but we don’t need to go to the courthouse. It makes it messy. I like clean.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t live your life according to an episode of Grey’s Anatomy,” she said. “As for me, I want it all. The romance, the engagement, the wedding on the sand, and the always-be-my-person ending.”
“I’m your person.”
“I need a backup. One who isn’t afraid to go all in and doesn’t settle for a Post-it.”
Before I could reply, the agent announced our flight. We followed the line of people through the doorway directly onto the runway. Outside was breezy and bright and smelled of oceany air and oily fuel. A small jet, loud and rumbly, waited with its built-in stairway lowered and its uniformed attendant greeting us as we ducked inside. We took our seats in turn, me at the window, Sid on the aisle. It was a tight fit, and once we took to the sky, nearly impossible for either of us to be heard over the engine without shouting.
Our hour-long flight was entirely uneventful. Usually how one hoped to travel. But as I said, I’d also been hoping for something to pop. The plane taxied to the gate in Atlanta. We deplaned, used the facilities, and sat in the waiting area for the connection to Charlotte.
“Where did Daphne go when she was here?” Sid asked.
I leaned in close, keeping my voice low to match hers. “I wouldn’t even know where to start looking.”
The airport buzzed with activity. Early commuters, vacationing families, tour groups, random strangers, all in various stages of hustle. To gates, to coffee, to places exotic, familiar and unknown.
“You think she stayed inside the terminal?” Sid said.
“Why would she? She wasn’t flying anywh
ere. That’s what Jeanine Gurly told me, that Daphne landed in Atlanta, never connected, then flew home from Atlanta the next day. This is a monster huge airport, and she could move freely between terminals. Maybe she didn’t need to fly anywhere.”
“Let’s assume she wasn’t interested in shopping for overpriced snacks and neck pillows and actually left the building. But why? To visit friends? Why keep it a secret? Why not just tell Alex she’s visiting friends in Atlanta?”
“Excellent point. He specifically said she flew to Nashville, which we know she did not. Was he lying?”
“Was she?”
“Maybe she had another boyfriend here in Atlanta,” I said. “One she could only see when Alex was out of town.”
“Which assumes he knew of the Atlanta connection, right? Like, he would’ve put it together she was seeing another guy in Atlanta. Otherwise, why disguise it with a trip to Nashville?”
“Right,” I said. “And that’s a lot of assuming. She could’ve grabbed a local bus to anywhere or met someone inside the terminal or at a hotel nearby.”
“Or at the convention center, the aquarium, or simply took in a baseball game.”
“Exactly. Which is why we’re heading to Charlotte. It’s a solid lead.”
“By solid, you mean what?”
“It’s all we have. Alex visited Charlotte on the same days Daphne flew to Atlanta. Without direction with Daphne in Atlanta, we follow Alex to Charlotte.”
“But there’s no corporate office, so we don’t know where he’s going?”
“Yep,” I said, and blew out a hefty sigh. “I know this is wild goose territory. We’ll spend a day searching for I don’t even know what a hundred miles from Daphne’s ground zero, two days before the Ballantyne BBQ. But my gut says to go. Things are swirling around Alex right now, and this feels like I’m taking action.”
“I’m with you, El,” Sid said. “How do we do this, exactly?”
“With our connection time and Alex’s direct flight, we land in Charlotte about twenty minutes before he does. I’ll hit the rental car agency, you watch the exit near baggage claim—”
“If he brought baggage,” Sid said.
“Charlotte’s airport may be larger than Sea Pine’s, but it’s relative. He’ll be funneled through baggage claim to get outside. We just need to get the car rented and to the curb before he exits the airport, or he’ll disappear into a wave of traffic.”
The universe continued to shine upon us as our flight boarded on time and landed two minutes early. Without bags to slow us, we hustled to the lower level. I left Sid at the curb and continued at a fair clip across the street to the rental car lobby.
That’s when the universe’s shine took on cloud cover.
I stood between a pair of stanchions, the front of a line of one. A friendly placard requested I wait for the next representative to assist me. There was only one representative. A salesperson in a grass green vest with a large plastic nametag bearing the word “Micah.” He was wrapping up a rental agreement with a gentleman traveler whose external foot tapping egged on my internal hurry-up hand-waving as minutes ticked loudly by, both internally and externally. The clock on the wall was comically loud.
The traveler scribbled on the bottom of a contract and hurried off, and I quickly moved to the counter, my driver’s license in hand. Micah didn’t raise his head. He gathered additional paperwork from the desktop and turned to the door behind him, casually ditching me at the counter.
“Excuse me,” I hollered. “Hello?”
I checked my watch. Nine minutes until Alex landed.
No response and no return.
Two more minutes ticked by. I searched for a bell to ring or a buzzer to push. I leaned over the counter toward the door and hollered again.
Another minute before Micah returned. “Hello, how may I assist you today?”
“Reservation for Elliott Lisbon.” I passed him my driver’s license along with Daphne’s missing person flyer. “Have you seen this girl? Her name is Daphne Fischer, and I believe she rented a car from you about two weeks ago or maybe two months ago. I’m not sure when, perhaps you could look it up?”
He didn’t so much as glimpse at the flyer. He continued his slow-tap on the keyboard. “I just started last Saturday.”
“May I speak with a manager? Perhaps another associate?” I checked my watch. Five minutes until wheels down.
“I’m the only one here,” he said.
I felt relief. I wanted to know more about Daphne and her hidden rental receipt, but I knew I could check again when I returned the car. I scribbled my phone number on the flyer and asked him to ask his associates, and then post it on the desk for customers to see.
He agreed, but his assurance underwhelmed me. He rattled off a monotone speech about gas and insurance and where to return the car.
“Sounds like you’ve said that a thousand times. Aren’t you new?”
“I worked at Piedmont-Triad for four years until they made me manager here.” He placed a pink contract in front of me. “Just sign here. Car will be in space twelve in about fifteen minutes. It was just returned, so realistically, maybe twenty before it’s out of inspection and wash. You can also wait inside.”
“Twenty minutes? I need it now. Like a literal now, not a twenty-minutes now.” If I missed Alex at the curb, I might as well fly home.
“It’s all we have—”
“You have to have something else. There’s not another soul in this building renting a car.”
He slow-tapped the keyboard again. “I have one gassed and ready, but it’ll cost you. You sure you don’t want to wait? There’s a bench.”
“Positive,” I said. “Just give me the keys.”
With my signed contract in hand, I found the car in space one. It was available because who spent nine hundred dollars to rent a convertible Ferrari Portofino at the Charlotte International Airport? Per day. The rental counter was off-brand, not a chain, and I realized as I perused their aisle that they specialized in unusual. I’d simply booked a “standard” car when I’d called. I figured a standard car was a compact sedan. Turned out it actually meant a Hummer. Did Daphne rent a Hummer? What the heck was Daphne doing in Charlotte with a Hummer? And with whom? Unless it wasn’t actually her car rental receipt.
The Portofino fired up like a dragster behind the line, reminding me of Ransom’s sleek McLaren Roadster. All power and elegance and ready to race. I didn’t disappoint it.
Once curbside, Sid hopped in. “Go, go, go! He’s in a black Camaro. Newer, souped-up. Not vintage.”
I barely glanced over my shoulder, then zipped into the darting traffic of pickups and drop-offs.
“So you were going for conspicuous?” Sid said. “Interesting tailing tactic choosing an orange racecar.”
“I was going for available. This sucker cost more than both our plane tickets combined. Also, it’s on the red side of orange. And I’ll keep the top up.”
“There he is,” Sid said. “Up on the right, maybe ten cars?”
“What did he have with him? Roller bag? Pet carrier? New girlfriend?”
“Tan backpack slung over one shoulder. That’s it. He’s alone. And the car was waiting for him at the curb without a driver. He walked straight to it and drove away.”
“That’s weird.”
“Def.”
“And strange he didn’t bring anything with him. He’s booked on the afternoon flight leaving at 6:22. That’s about eight hours to do whatever he’s doing.”
The most difficult part of driving a Ferrari was keeping the speedometer below 100 mph. I was making myself carsick with the constant ebb and flow required to maintain a reasonable distance without being seen. Conspicuous is right. Though one doesn’t suspect a Ferrari would be used for a tail. At least I hoped not.
For the next thirty minutes, w
e wound around various freeways. Majestic oaks and tall pines bordered our scenic drive on the outskirts of downtown Charlotte. Alex finally slowed when he reached the Kings Drive exit off highway 277. A large sign indicated Freedom Park was up ahead.
“What do you think?” Sid asked. “The park?”
“Definitely. And he has to be meeting someone, right?”
Sid used her phone internet skills to give us the birds-eye. “Ninety-eight acres of parkland with a lake, playground, bandshell. Multiple bridges and covered picnic areas. Your basic massive citywide park serving a community of hundreds of thousands of people.”
The Camaro pulled into the front row of spaces near the sidewalk, so I chose a spot in the third row, nestled between a minivan and a family sedan.
“You think we blend?” Sid asked.
“We don’t need to.” I pointed to Alex getting out of his car.
“I’ll follow,” Sid said. “You wait here.”
“No, I follow. I’m the PI.”
“The recognizable PI.”
“You’re six feet tall, remember? And you’ve been at all the search meetings. You’re much more recognizable.” I slipped a canvas floppy hat out of my bag and popped on oversized sunglasses before she could reply. “Be right back.”
The park was busy for a weekday afternoon in September. A yoga group stretched and breathed while kindergarteners circled around monkey bars and swing sets. Little tail-waggers chased squeaky toys and large ones leapt for frisbees. I surreptitiously glanced around for the camera crews filming this idyllic scene scripted for a meet cute in a romcom.
Alex and his low-slung backpack meandered along a brick path. I meandered about forty feet behind. He passed the bandshell and peaceful Tai Chi practitioners. He eventually stopped at the playground section with a sandbox, choosing a bench on the outer rim. Assorted toddlers waddled with buckets and shovels, their mothers bunched in twos and threes, one eye on kids, the other their phones.
