On the Wings of Murder

by Patti Benning

  “We’ll do our best, ma'am.”

  After that, Ellie gave her version of what had happened just before discovering the crime scene. When she was done, the officer collected her contact information and gave her his card. He promised her once again that detectives would look for her grandmother, but she could tell by the look on his face that it wasn't a priority for him. What was one missing old woman, when they had a dead body on their hands? Ellie was relieved when she was finally allowed to make her escape. She retreated one floor up to her hotel room. Some part of her had half hoped to find the older woman waiting for her in the room, but she had no such luck.

  At last, Ellie had the chance to do the thing that she had wanted to do since discovering their grandmother was missing. Pulling her cellphone out, she called Russell. The sheriff might not have any power down here in Miami, but he could do one thing that no one else could; he would be able to comfort her. Not only that, but he would be able to tell her what she could do to help find the older woman.

  “Hey,” he said when he answered. “I was just about to send you a text asking how your vacation is going. I’m sure you’re having more fun than I am.”

  “Russell, Nonna is missing.” In his shocked silence, she began to speak, telling him everything that happened over the last couple of hours. “I just don't know what to do,” she finished. “I feel so lost, Russ, she’s not answering her phone, and the last room she was in has a dead man in it right now. No one would kill an old woman like her, would they? Has she been kidnapped?”

  “Ellie, the first thing you need to do is breathe. I know it's hard, but panicking won't help anything. You're a brilliant, capable woman. You just need to focus. None of us are at our best under stress. First, do you want me to fly down there and help you? I would be happy to if that’s what you want.”

  “No… I don't think so, not at the moment. I keep telling myself that she’ll turn up at any time. I wouldn't want you to fly down here for nothing. Besides, you don't have any jurisdiction down here. I’m sure you’ll be able to help more in Kittiport, where you have all of the resources of the sheriff’s department.”

  “Okay. I'll let you make that decision. Just know that I'm here. Second, what sort of cellphone does she have? You might be able to call her carrier and see if they can track her.”

  “I don’t know. It's just an old flip phone. I don't think it has any GPS capabilities at all. Besides, it's off, so even if it did I don’t think it would help.”

  “In that case, I think you should go out and walk the area around the hotel, and physically look for her. I know that she does a very good job of taking care of herself, but the fact is that she is older. If she found herself in a room with a dead body, regardless of how the body came to be there, she might have fled without thinking. She could be confused and wandering around a block away from you, and you would never know.” He hesitated, then continued with, “If that doesn’t work, then in the morning you should call the hospitals, and sorry to say it, the morgues, to see if anyone has found the woman of her description. You should also print off missing person posters with a picture of her and hang them in the area. I’m sure you’ll find her, Ellie. Your nonna is a tough woman.”

  “I'll do all of that. I'll grab better walking shoes and leave right now to go and look for her. Thank you, Russell. I hope you’re right. I have to find her, I just have to.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  * * *

  Ellie slipped out the front doors of the hotel, ignoring the police vehicles still crowded around the entrance. She kept her eyes up, scanning the pedestrians on the sidewalk for a familiar face. If only it could be that simple, if only she could find her grandmother out here, looking on with the rest of the curious bystanders, wondering what had happened inside the hotel.

  Of course, it wasn’t that simple. She didn’t see her grandmother anywhere. Biting her lip and trying to keep the panic from rising again, she started down the sidewalk. The truth was, she had no idea where to start. Where would her grandmother go if she was alone, frightened, and had just come face to face with a dead body? Surely she would try to find Ellie, but she must have somehow gotten turned around.

  She felt like she was wandering aimlessly as she stopped in the little shops along the street. She asked each of the shopkeepers if they had seen an older woman matching her grandmother’s description, but no one had. The more she looked, the more hopeless she felt. After a good hour of fruitless inquiries, the stores all began to close, so she returned to the hotel. Instead of going inside, she walked around behind it. There were a couple of other exits around the back of the building, and she wanted to check each of them in case her grandmother had gotten locked out and was simply waiting for someone to open the door and let her inside.

  She almost missed it. The light on the side of the building was out, and she wouldn’t have seen the silver band if the clouds hadn’t moved at just that moment to allow the moonlight to glint off it. She bent to pick up her grandmother’s wristwatch.

  She held it in her hands, turning it back and forth in hopes that there might be something on it, something to tell her what had happened to her grandmother. There was nothing. No note, but thankfully no blood. She slipped the watch into her pocket and began to examine the ground outside the door more thoroughly. Her grandmother didn’t seem to have dropped anything else. Had the watch been an accident, or had she left on purpose, to show Ellie where she had gone?

  She turned her attention to the door, and saw the security camera above it. Her pulse quickened. She had to find Billy. With luck, he would be able to help her once again.

  The security room was locked when she got to it, and there was no answer when she knocked. She retreated to the front desk, where she was told that Billy was still with the police. Ellie didn’t even know if Billy was supposed to be sharing the security footage with her, and she wasn’t about to ask him to break any rules in front of the detective.

  Ellie returned to her hotel room. She would wait an hour before trying to find the security guard again. In the meantime, she made a list of everything that she knew so far about her grandmother’s disappearance. The list started with her going into the wrong room, and ended with a wristwatch found in the grass outside of the back door. Tomorrow, if her grandmother still hadn’t been found, she would follow Russell’s advice and try calling the hospitals… and the morgues.

  After all of that, if her grandmother still didn’t turn up, she wasn’t sure what she could do. All she knew was that she wouldn’t rest until she found Nonna, no matter how long that took.

  She returned to the security room an hour later to find Billy about to leave for the evening. She pleaded with him to stay and help her and he agreed somewhat reluctantly. She knew that he was probably tired after everything that had happened over the last few hours, and promised herself that she’d make it up to him somehow.

  “I found this outside of one of the entrances to the hotel,” she said. She held out the wristwatch to him. “It’s my grandmother’s. It has the anniversary of her and my grandfather’s wedding on the back. There was a security camera above the door.”

  “And you want to see the footage from it. What door was it?”

  She told him the location, and waited impatiently while he brought up the footage. Her grandmother had to have gone through the door sometime between seven that evening and when they had opened the room to find the dead man around nine-thirty. That gave them two and a half hours of video to go through. Billy fast-forwarded the footage. Shortly after eight-thirty, the door opened and he paused it. Two men came out. They looked around, then gestured at someone behind them. A third man appeared. He was holding onto someone’s arm—it was Nonna. Ellie breathed out. Her grandmother had left the hotel alive. She leaned forward, gazing at the screen. She hoped that there would be some hint as to where the three men and her grandmother had gone, but there was nothing. She saw her grandmother slip the watch off her wrist and let it fall to the ground
without the men noticing, then she was jerked forward and out of view.

  “Billy, she’s been kidnapped,” she said, her voice weak.

  “We don’t know that,” he said, though she could tell by his voice that he didn’t believe it himself. “Maybe she knew them and she went with them willingly.”

  “Rewind it and look; she slipped the watch off on purpose. She wanted to leave a message for me. We have to go to the police.”

  Billy looked longingly at his messenger bag by the door, then sighed and nodded. “All right, I’ll give them a call. It looks like this is going to be a long night.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  * * *

  The security footage of her grandmother leaving with the three men spurred the police into action. A missing old woman was one thing, but a kidnapping they took very seriously. Ellie knew that they would have found the footage themselves eventually in their investigation of the murder, but Billy had sped matters up considerably.

  Unfortunately, there was only so much they could do with the limited evidence. Only one of the men looked up towards the camera, so his was the only face that they could run through their facial recognition program. Even if there was a hit, it might not be that helpful; whatever information the system had on them could be outdated. Ellie hated feeling so helpless. She knew that she should trust the police to handle the case, but she wished that she could do something useful herself.

  She paced around her hotel room late into the night. She kept her phone fully charged and made sure her ringer was turned all the way up. If her grandmother got a chance to call her, she didn’t want to miss it. She tried not to think of the worst-case scenarios, but they kept popping up in her mind. Even though she knew that it wasn’t her fault, she kept kicking herself for going on this vacation in the first place. If they had stayed in Maine, none of this would have happened.

  She wanted to call Russell, but it was as if her telling him would make all this real. She wasn’t ready to say the words out loud to him yet. It was as if she was living a nightmare, and she didn’t know how to make it go away.

  At long last, she fell into a fitful sleep on the couch, waking with the sun. The first thing she did was check her phone, but she had no missed calls, from her grandmother or from the police. She felt sick to her stomach, and knew the stress and worry was getting to her. Russell had been right about one thing. Panicking wouldn’t help her grandmother at all. She needed to focus, and her fear was making her scatterbrained.

  Take a deep breath, she told herself. Calm down. When this is all over with, then I can break down in tears. Right now, I need to keep my emotions out of this. I need to focus on doing the smart thing and finding my grandmother before it’s too late.

  She took a scalding hot shower, hoping that the water would make her feel better. After that, she got dressed, putting on her tennis shoes and grabbing her fanny pack. If she found her grandmother, she might need to move quickly, and she didn’t want to worry about her purse or her flip-flops tripping her up. She pulled the curtains open to find that the morning was beautiful and sunny. Knowing that she would likely be out for most of the day, she put on sunscreen. Finally ready to go and resume her search, she grabbed her cellphone and left the room.

  Her first call of the morning was to the police. They didn’t have any progress to report, but assured her that finding her grandmother was their focus. Ellie thanked the detective, then hung up and called Russell. It was time to tell him what was going on.

  Ellie tried to keep herself together for the conversation, but she was in tears by the end of it. She heard Russell’s soothing voice, and wished that he could be there with her, put his arms around her, and tell her that everything would be okay. However, when he offered again to fly down, she told him that he should stay in Kittiport. Having him in Florida with her might help her emotionally, but he wouldn’t have access to any of the tools that he did at the sheriff’s department. She was determined to do what she could to search for her grandmother on their own while the police did their own investigation, and she might need someone like Russell to help her run a license plate or find an address.

  After the tearful call to Russell, it was time for her to do what she dreaded most. She called all the hospitals within an hour’s drive and gave them a description of her grandmother. She held her breath each time the receptionist paused to search through their list of Jane Does, and breathed out again when nothing turned up. She wanted to find her grandmother, but not in a morgue.

  It was time to start her search again. It was possible that her grandmother had left more hints for her, that she hadn’t been able to see in the darkness the night before. The sun might reveal something that she had missed.

  She was walking through the lobby towards the front doors when she saw someone that she recognized from the night before. It was Sandra, the cleaning woman who had let her grandmother into the wrong room. She changed directions and made a beeline for her. The woman’s eyes were red and puffy, and she was carrying her hotel uniform.

  “Sandra, are you okay?” Ellie asked. She was thankful for the woman’s help the night before, and no matter how worried she was about her grandmother, she knew that she had to see if she could help Sandra.

  “I got fired,” Sandra said tearfully. “The manager called me in this morning. No, don’t apologize. It’s not your fault, it’s mine. I think they would’ve let it go, if the police hadn’t been involved. They had to make it look like they were doing something. A murder is bad publicity for the hotel, after all.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Ellie said. “That is completely unfair. Is there anything I can do?”

  “I don’t think so,” Sandra said. “Not unless you can find me a new job. Who is going to hire me after this? I have my little girl at home. How am I going to make enough money to take care of her?”

  “I’m about to go outside and look for hints as to where they might have taken my grandmother She left her watch for me to find, and there might be more. After I’m done, let me take you to lunch.”

  “I’m not very hungry.”

  “Me either, but we both need to keep our strength up. Besides, having someone else to talk to is always good.”

  “Okay. I’ll drop this uniform off at the front desk, then I’ll help you look for clues. After that, we’ll go out to eat. I feel like it’s partially my fault, what happened to your grandmother, so I’m going to try to make up for it. It’s the least I can do.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  * * *

  After spending another fruitless hour searching for more clues, they got lunch at Oceanside Pizza and Wings. Ellie was trying hard not to get discouraged. How long did she have to find her grandmother? How long before her kidnappers grew tired of caring for the eighty-five-year-old woman?

  She and Sandra sat at the same booth in which she had eaten lunch the day before. It was hard to imagine that twenty-four hours ago, she had been sitting here looking forward to a nice vacation. Now, she was hoping and praying that her grandmother was still alive.

  Linda, the pizzeria owner, approached her with a smile. The look on her face shifted into a frown as she realized that something was dreadfully wrong.

  “Oh, no, did something happen?” she asked.

  “Sit down if you want, I’ll tell you about it,” Ellie said. She started at the beginning, when she had woken up from her nap the evening before to find that her grandmother hadn’t returned to the room.

  Linda was horrified by the story. “Who would do something like that? Who would kidnap an elderly person? For all they know, she could need medication every couple of hours, or the stress might be enough to give her a heart attack.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out,” Ellie said. “I need to know who has her, and where they are. Luckily, Nonna doesn’t need to take any medication regularly.”

  “Well, if there’s anything I can do, let me know. Lunch is on me today. I know it’s not much, but I hope it helps. What can I get th
e two of you?”

  “No, I can’t let you do that,” Ellie said.

  “A couple of pizzas won’t make or break me,” the woman said. “I don’t think even a hundred orders would save us now anyway. Besides, doing a good deed never hurt anyone.”

  “If you insist, but then I’m going to insist that you join us. Between the two of you, you probably know the area pretty well. We can brainstorm places where they may have taken her while we eat.”

  Half an hour later, the three women were seated at the booth sharing a large meatball pizza. Despite her worry for her grandmother, Ellie was impressed by how good the pizza was. Linda certainly had skill as a pizza chef. There must be a way for her to keep the restaurant open.

  “So, what ideas did you have about where we should start searching?” Linda asked. “Do you have any idea what sort of people took her? Or why?”

  “My guess is that she witnessed a murder,” Ellie said. “I’m not sure why they didn’t kill her when they found out she was there, but of course I’m very thankful that they didn’t. I honestly have no idea where to start. She could be anywhere.”

  “Is she the sort of person that might try to escape on her own?”

  Ellie considered this. “Yes, I think she would. I’m not sure that it would be a good idea, though. She’s had a few serious falls in the past year. She might end up hurting herself if she tried to flee.”

  “I wish I had never let her into that room,” Sandra said. “I feel terrible. This is all my fault.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Ellie said. “You couldn’t have known. If anything, it’s mine. I should have stayed with her.”

  “The hotel has that policy for a good reason,” she replied. “If I had followed the rules, your grandmother would be safe and sound in your own room right now. Of course it’s my fault. I’m going to help you as much as I can. It’s not like I have to be into work any time soon.” She gave a dry laugh.