by JoAnna Carl
“Sure. We can’t let him go to a motel, and I can’t see shipping him back to Dallas.”
“I’ll check in with Alicia.”
“And I’ll head to the office for an hour or so. Then I’ll be back to give you a break.”
Hogan nodded. “Right. I don’t think Jeff should be left alone at this point. For one thing, Tess might call him.”
We split up then. I peeked in at Jeff, then asked the nurse when the doctor was likely to make an appearance. She thought that just after lunch was likely.
Then I went to the waiting room across the hall. At that hour of the morning, it was empty except for the off-duty cop, and I told him this might be a good time to take a break. I pulled out my cell phone and punched in Alicia’s number.
After I gave her a report on Jeff—leaving out Tess’ escapade with the mysterious package—I took a deep breath. “Alicia, I seem to remember that Tess had been working for you.”
“Right. She’s real good help, Lee. Gives great telephone. Accurate with the forms. And always pleasant.”
“We’ve lost her again.”
“Drat the girl! I’m sure she thinks she’s helping Jeff.”
“I’m sure she does, too, but she’s not. Alicia, did she have any close friends in the office?”
There was a long silence before Alicia answered, “Maybe.”
“I wondered if she told anybody anything about this trip.”
“Let me ask around. I’ll call you back.”
I paced the floor for half an hour. I tried to sit patiently in the waiting room; then I’d go across the hall to check on Jeff. Back to the waiting room. Across the hall. I nearly put a hole in the tile.
When my phone rang I jumped. “Alicia?”
“Right.”
“Did you find anyone who knew anything?”
“Yes and no. Last spring we got in sort of a hole for a receptionist, and Tess found someone in her dorm who could fill in. Patricia Parker.”
“Can I talk to her?”
“She’s not here, Lee. She’s gone for the summer.”
“Darn!”
Alicia kept talking. “Lee, she’s gone to Michigan. Summer job.”
“Alicia! Wow! That’s fantastic! You’re a marvel. I don’t suppose you have an address for her.”
“Not a Michigan one, I’m afraid. Have you got a pen?”
When I heard the address, my “Wow!” turned to “Ow.” It was a Dallas apartment complex near SMU.
“Dadgum!” I said. “I bet she let her apartment go for the summer. Does anybody know where she is in Michigan right now?”
“Nobody in the office does. But they think it was a job in summer theater.”
“Oh?”
“She’s a drama major. Her main talent is voices.”
“Voices?”
“Yes, she used to do stuff for us in the break room. She can imitate anybody. Ellen DeGeneres. Tina Fey. Even guys. Her Eddie Murphy is a hoot. And, yes, ma’am, she can do me. I didn’t know I was so funny.”
“Thanks, Alicia. If you find out any more, let me know.”
“Surely she won’t be hard to find.” She could tell that I was let down. “How many summer theaters are there in Michigan?”
I chuckled, though I didn’t think there was much humor in my effort. “Not more than a hundred, Alicia. This is a big tourist state.”
“Oh. One at every crossroads, huh?”
“Not quite, but almost.”
Alicia and I said good-bye, with her repeating her pledge to keep looking for information on Patricia Parker. In turn I said I’d quiz Jeff.
Or, maybe, a miracle would happen and Tess would call one of us.
I first asked Jeff if he knew Patricia Parker and had any idea of where she was. He said he knew who she was but had no idea where she was working. Then I called Hogan and passed on the information about Patricia Parker.
“If I had a directory of Michigan theaters, I guess I could make some calls,” I said. “Or maybe someone could contact the SMU drama department.” I didn’t feel enthusiastic about that, and I was sure I didn’t sound enthusiastic either.
Hogan chuckled. “No, Lee. If you get away from the hospital, you need to concentrate on chocolate, or my name’s mud with Nettie. I’ll find somebody else to call all the theaters. And SMU.”
I breathed a sigh of relief and went back into the waiting area. The guard had returned, so I went down to the coffee shop to get some caffeine.
It was when I reached into my purse for money to pay for the coffee that I found the little falcon with glittering rhinestone eyes. It was mine, the one Grossman had given me. Hogan had taken the one with green eyes, the one we found in Jeff’s pants pocket.
Yesterday Jeff had muttered something about getting one for Tess. But he hadn’t been in a state to tell us where he got it.
“Now maybe Jeff can give me some answers,” I said.
But he said he couldn’t.
In fact, Jeff claimed he had never seen such a falcon before.
Chapter 15
I pointed out that the previous day he had recognized it, but he just shook his head.
“I’m sorry, Lee. I don’t doubt I said something like that. But any memory of it is gone.” He sighed and leaned back to rest his head on his pillow. He closed his eyes and looked slightly pained.
I stared narrowly at Jeff. Then I sighed more deeply than he had, sat down, and played FreeCell on my phone.
An hour crawled by. I walked to the waiting area. The off-duty cop offered me a game of gin rummy. I tried to play, but couldn’t concentrate and wound up down by two hundred points. Luckily I had refused to play for money. Jeff kept napping. Joe called and said he was stuck at his office for a while. At eleven thirty Jeff’s lunch tray came. I saw that he had a good appetite.
It was one of the longest mornings of my life.
The neurologist showed up at twelve twenty-two. He was youngish, with colorless hair and a thin face. He looked Jeff over and asked him if he’d ever had a head injury before.
Jeff said no. “When can I leave?” he asked.
“Tomorrow or the next day. If you keep having good nights.”
I could tell Jeff wasn’t happy with that answer. He also didn’t seem thrilled when I told the doctor my husband and I planned to take him to our home.
“Aw, Lee, I don’t have to impose on you all,” Jeff said. “I can just go to a motel.”
“Nope,” the doctor said. “Jeff, you shouldn’t stay alone for a couple of nights even after you leave the hospital. If you won’t have someone with you, you’re not leaving.”
Jeff’s face fell.
I stayed in Jeff’s room while the off-duty cop went to get some lunch. I liked Jeff fine, but I want to go on record as saying that he had lousy taste in television. Game shows. Yuck.
Joe finally showed up a little after one, and as soon as the off-duty guy came back, the two of us went to the hospital cafeteria.
Finally I got to discuss things with Joe. I told him that Jeff claimed to have no memory of the miniature falcon, the same one he’d appeared to recognize the previous day.
“I guess his memory has lots of gaps in it right now,” Joe said.
“I’m sure it does, Joe. But I’m also certain that Jeff is taking advantage of the situation.”
“How?”
“If he doesn’t want to answer a question, everything just gets vague.”
Joe grinned. “You’re one suspicious stepmom, Lee.”
I rested my head in my hands. “Jeff and his dad taught me to recognize sneaky. I can even act sneaky.”
“Hey! You’re never sneaky with me.”
“With you it doesn’t work. You respond better to honest and open. And actually neither Jeff nor Rich was sneaky with me very often. O
h, Jeff tried it, but I was smart enough to catch on to what he was up to most of the time. So he figured out that a frontal approach worked better, and we usually got along on that basis. That’s how I finally handled the kidnapping threat.”
“Kidnapping? Oh. You mean your fear that Jeff would be kidnapped?”
“Yes. I couldn’t get Rich to take it seriously. He’d just say, ‘Aw, Lee, there’re lots of guys in Dallas who are richer than me. And Jeff’s not dumb.’ But of course Jeff was dumb. Not unintelligent. Just inexperienced and innocent. The way a thirteen-year-old kid should be. We finally did some role-playing about how and when to be suspicious. Being careful not to tell too much about your family at school, such as bragging about your dad’s money. Jeff called it ‘pretending to be modest.’”
Joe laughed, and I went on. “But Jeff could manipulate his dad like a marionette. Classic behavior of the child of divorce. He played one parent against the other, and in those days Dina and Rich were still mad enough at each other for him to get away with it.”
“I remember that Jeff didn’t act entirely thrilled when they got back together.”
“I remember that, too. I thought he was afraid that having parents who spoke to each other was going to limit his activities.”
We both chuckled. Then Joe spoke. “His folks aren’t here now, Lee.”
“I know, but Hogan doesn’t know Jeff as well as I do. He doesn’t push him for answers. Or maybe he’s giving Jeff lots of rope. Anyway, I think Jeff and Tess have some tricky little plan they’re still not telling any of us, and I think it centers on that miniature falcon.”
We both chewed on our lunch. “We can work on Jeff,” Joe said, “but I’d be afraid to push him too hard.”
“I agree. But maybe we could try.”
So when we went back upstairs, Joe and I sat down on opposite sides of Jeff’s bed. I took the side near the window, closest to Jeff, and Joe sat next to the little nightstand, a typical piece of hospital room furniture with wheels, a little drawer, and room for a bedpan underneath.
“Jeff,” I said, “it might be a big help to Hogan if you could remember where that little falcon came from.”
“Sorry, Lee. It’s all a blank.”
I pulled my own falcon out of my purse. “Grossman gave me this one, and he told me he had had them made, and that this was the first one he had given away.”
“I’m sorry, Lee. I just don’t remember.”
“So either he was lying or someone else had similar trinkets made.”
Jeff simply shook his head.
Joe, on the other side of the bed, leaned an elbow on the little bedside table. “It might be important,” he said. “After all, Captain Jacobs was working for Grossman. If Grossman had given someone else a falcon— What the—!”
Joe had suddenly exclaimed and jumped in his seat. He sat up straight, frowning at Jeff.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
Still frowning, Joe pulled out the little drawer in the rolling night table. He reached inside and took out a cell phone.
“Hmmm,” he said. “I thought Hogan kept your phone as evidence. This gadget just vibrated.”
Jeff’s eyes were wide, maybe with horror.
Then Joe punched some button on the phone and whispered into it, “Yes?”
Jeff popped up in bed, sitting erect, all signs of illness gone. “Joe! Give me that phone!”
Joe put the palm of his hand in the middle of Jeff’s chest and pushed gently, holding him back against the bed.
“Cool it!” Then he spoke into the phone again. “Hello. Hello?” He raised his eyebrows, gave Jeff a long look, and tossed the phone into his lap. “Nobody there. Maybe they’ll call back.”
There was a long silence. Jeff pouted. Joe sat expressionless. I steamed.
It must have been a full minute before I stood up. “I’m ashamed of you, Jeff,” I said. “If something happens to Tess, it’s on your head.”
“Nothing’s going to happen to her!”
I turned and walked out of the room. Joe followed me. We stood just outside the door.
Another two minutes went by. I heard Jeff’s voice. “Hi, Tess, I guess the whole plan is blown.” Pause.
“Yeah, they figured out it was you.” Another pause.
“Did you find anything out?” Pause.
“Well, Lee and Joe really are worried about you, and maybe they’re right.” Pause.
“Tess? Tess! Damn it! Don’t hang up!”
Joe and I went back into the room. Jeff waved the phone at us. “She hung up on me! I don’t know where she is!”
Joe crossed his arms and gave Jeff a firm look. He appeared close to angry. I tried to mimic his expression on my side of the bed.
“Okay, Jeff,” Joe said. “What was the plan?”
“Well.” Jeff sighed and his gaze bounced around the room like a searchlight. But Joe and I stood our ground, both of us glaring at him.
Jeff finally spoke again. “It was the miniature falcon. You’re right, Lee. I can remember having it, but I really don’t remember where I got it. So Tess volunteered to go out looking for the source.”
“Where was she going?” I asked.
“East of Warner Pier. She was supposed to take Big Pine Road.”
Joe and I looked at each other. He laughed. “I’ll go look for her, Lee. You can stay here.”
“No! I can go. I don’t care if there are trees.”
“Trees?” Jeff sounded completely mystified. “So what if there are trees?”
Joe was still grinning. “Surely you know Lee is scared of trees.”
Jeff shrugged. “I never knew that. But anyway, Tess isn’t scared of trees. Heck, her dad worked in timber before they moved to Waco. She’s been around trees all her life.”
“See?” I said to Joe. “I keep telling you Texas is full of great big trees. Only they’re not in the part of the state where I grew up.” Then I turned to Jeff. “What did Tess say when you called her?”
“She wanted to know if I could remember any landmarks, any way she could find the place.”
Joe and I exchanged looks again. “It sounds like the place you and Aunt Nettie found yesterday,” he said. I nodded.
That alerted Jeff, of course. “Where? What did you find?”
I described Valk Souvenirs, but he shook his head. “I don’t remember being there.”
“I suspect you were, however,” I said. “Now, what about the package?”
“Package?” Jeff looked a little too innocent.
“The package Captain Jacobs brought to our house last night. The package that disappeared at almost the same time Tess did.”
“Oh, the package was junk,” Jeff said. “Just a plastic falcon you can order from the Internet.”
Joe frowned. “So why did Jacobs bring it to our house? That’s the real question.”
Using the cell phone from his bedside drawer—Jeff said it was a throwaway Tess had bought him the day before—he pulled up a Web site that sold Maltese Falcon souvenirs. And there it was. A fake Maltese falcon wrapped 1930s-style, in brown paper and packing material that looked like grass.
“Tess didn’t say how she got hold of it, but I told her I hoped she didn’t pay much. They’re all over the Internet.”
We stood over Jeff while he used the cell phone to call Tess. Her phone immediately went to the voice mail function. “She’s not picking up,” Jeff said.
I turned to Joe. “Maybe it would be smart to go out Big Pine Road and look for Tess.”
We made sure Jeff’s phone was charged. Then we headed out. As soon as we were on the road, I called Hogan to tell him what we had found out about Tess’ activities. He okayed our plan to check at Valk’s Souvenirs.
Then he kept talking. “Hey, we think we’ve found where Jeff had the wreck.”
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br /> “Sure. Out at the end of Big Pine Road.”
“That’s where the car was. But that’s not where Jeff had an accident.”
“It isn’t?”
“No, I think he had the accident much closer to your house. That’s a much better explanation of how he got where you found him! I imagine he was shoved off the road over on Lake Shore Drive. I think he was able to get out of the car, and he ran for your house.”
“That makes sense, in a weird way, Hogan. If he knew someone was after him, and he recognized the neighborhood . . .”
“Sure. He would have snuck into your house.”
“And if he thought they were still after him, he would have hidden in the attic.”
“I guess the bad guys finally gave up looking for him. But they took his car, drove it back to Big Pine Road, and tried to hide it by sending it off the road there. And it nearly worked.”
I laughed. “One mystery solved.”
Joe and I didn’t drive as fast going back to Warner Pier as we had driven when we followed Hogan into Holland, but we didn’t waste time. In twenty-two minutes—eight minutes short of the usual time—Joe was turning his truck onto Big Pine Road.
Almost immediately we were swallowed by trees. But I didn’t complain once. I just kept looking ahead as we drove east. Of course, we were going to look for the turn into Valk Souvenirs, but I also kept an eye on the road, just in case Tess’ little red Ford came toward us or was parked on the narrow shoulder.
The turning into Valk’s was hard to find. I pictured Tess someplace ahead of us, driving up and down Big Pine Road, edging along slowly, looking for the entrance.
I’d guess my imaginary picture was what made me so surprised when we did meet Tess.
Because Tess wasn’t looking into the woods carefully or even driving carefully. She was driving like a Texas tornado. She was wheeling down the narrow gravel road at no less than seventy miles an hour. Maybe faster.
“Joe!” I yelped his name. “I think that’s Tess coming toward us. Why is she going so fast?”
“I imagine it has something to do with the guy right behind her,” he said. “It looks like he’s trying to chase her down!”
