Tried & True (Mayfield Cozy Mystery Book 5) (5 page)

It was possible that Matt had been relying on metadata only for the assumptions he’d made about my call to Robbie—the two phone numbers involved, the time and date, and the duration, maybe the cell tower coordinates at both ends, but not the content.

Maybe my (false) accusations would provide Robbie with a little grace period from his FBI surveillance team too, a little breathing room for him to run the errands I’d requested—if he hadn’t had a chance to do them yet.

I hoped my contact with Robbie would be interpreted as only a little friendly interference. It was better that the FBI not realize it was about to turn into much more than that. No matter what, I’d have to act very quickly tomorrow. The moment my flight booking was placed, I’d be working under a rapid deadline.

CHAPTER 8

Aside from the fact that I was rusty from lack of sleep and hyped on caffeine, my departure from Mayfield was uneventful. There was no point in trying to sneak out cross-country and borrow someone else’s vehicle as I had done in the past—an online plane ticket purchase had made that a moot issue.

But there was also no point in publicly advertising my journey either. I really had no idea exactly how observant or concerned my FBI surveillance team was. They’d let me be pretty freewheeling and had not hampered my movements in the past.

I also hoped they were still swamped with writing up the reports about the disposition of Giuseppe Ricardo Solano’s body which we’d found in Mayfield’s cemetery. Not the resting place I’d have chosen for my Numero Tres, but then I hadn’t been consulted in the matter. Although the FBI occasionally seemed to hint that they thought maybe I had been. We were all waiting for the lab results to come back.

Dawn came—from behind a thick bank of clouds on the eastern horizon—while I drove. The last stars winked out and sunbeams streaked across the crystalline sky in a multicolored transparency that put all watercolor washes I’d ever seen to shame. It took my breath away. And lasted all of three minutes.

But the scene was one of those snapshots that’ll be engraved in my memory forever—at least as long as my mind was fully functioning. Why is it that the sweetest things in life are often snippets and so very easy to miss? I mourned over my dad’s loss of this indescribable joy and beauty—the access to all his snippets that Alzheimer’s had stolen.

I sat in a traffic clog comprised of all the Vancouver commuters heading in to their jobs in Portland on the Glenn Jackson Memorial Bridge for a while. But that vantage point presented a spectacular view of Mt. Hood in all her snowbound glory, so the time wasn’t wasted. We crept along, bumper-to-bumper, and slowly crossed the Columbia River, transitioning from Washington to Oregon.

Then I zipped down the exit to Airport Way, turned onto 82nd Avenue, and was occupied with looking for the sign to the private parking lot Clarice had selected for me.

Everything went like clockwork due to her meticulous planning. A short shuttle ride and a tip for the driver for unloading my one small bag, stride through the entrance to the airport and straight into a security checkpoint line, listen to the chatter of those waiting around me, shuffle forward, heft my bag onto the conveyor belt, take my shoes off and dump them in a plastic tub, walk through the scanner, pick up my stuff on the other side. The faces of the TSA employees manning my line never once lost their bored flaccidity.

That’s when I exhaled. Either the FBI weren’t early risers and hadn’t noticed my movements yet, or they didn’t care what I was doing, or they were watching but staying out of my way. I really didn’t need to know which reason as long as they didn’t interfere.

I hustled down the concourse and pulled one of my new phones out of my tote bag.

Clarice answered on the first ring. “You’re there? Good. Now listen. Change of plans.”

I swerved toward a coffee kiosk that had several tall tables scattered in front of it for customers’ convenience. I plunked my bag on an open table and pulled out a notebook and pencil. “Okay. Shoot.”

“Zimmermann’s employees are giving me the runaround. Truth—I think he’s being extra cautious since his girlfriend didn’t return from her little jewelry-buying expedition. I’m not going to be able to get you an appointment with him. But rumor has it he’s always at his flagship store at closing time, where he reviews that day’s take, if you know what I mean.”

I did, indeed, know what she meant. So he was a hands-on manager. That was a difficult habit to break. I scribbled down the address to the store.

“Get a bottle of water. Stay hydrated. Dump the old phones. Remember what Josh told you.” Clarice barked each command, and I could picture her running a gnarled finger down her own checklist. I grinned. It was the best sound, like the good old days. I hadn’t realized how much I’d enjoyed—and missed—our working relationship.

“Just keep your wits about you, girl,” Clarice continued. “Turn your phone back on as soon as you land.” She hung up.

I did exactly what she’d said, in precisely the order she’d listed. I grabbed a wad of napkins along with my two water bottles, opened one bottle to start sipping, and proceeded to quietly wrap phone parts in the napkins and drop them in trash cans along the length of the terminal. I popped in and out of restrooms, visited the food outlets and newsstands, bought a magazine here, a candy bar there, and left little electronic pieces behind.

At the gate, I scanned the other waiting passengers and immediately spotted a young mom with a wriggly toddler. It was hard not to notice her. She seemed to be on her own with the little girl—no husband or grandma as traveling companion. And she’d already pulled both Cheerios and Goldfish crackers out of a humongous diaper bag in an effort to placate the child. There were crumbs all over her, the little girl, and the empty seats to either side of them. And the child was now ramping up to full-blown screaming.

I wasn’t enjoying the mom’s misery, but she was possibly my ticket to accomplishing the first of Josh’s instructions. I went and bought a second candy bar and a bag of peppermint patties.

I waited to board until the final call. This was a completely different flying situation than the last time I was up in the air. I’d returned from my honeymoon alone, except for the pilots and steward, on a chartered Learjet. Now I was crowded in with all the other weary passengers in the economy class of a regional airline.

I heard the toddler long before I saw her. I hefted my carry-on bag into the first open spot I found in the overhead bins. I passed by my assigned middle seat—the uncomfortable result of a last-minute booking—and headed to the row where the frazzled mom was wrestling her squirmy, red-faced, tear-streaked child on her lap. I smiled at the businessman next to her who had obviously intentionally booked an aisle seat so he would have a minuscule amount of extra room to work.

He had his laptop and a sheaf of papers clamped against his chest, poised for action the moment he’d be allowed to drop the seat-back table after takeoff. But he hadn’t been able to control who his seatmate was or the volume at which she operated. Beads of sweat dotted his hairline, and he was flushed to the shade of a ripe strawberry.

I leaned down and flapped my arm behind me, gesturing. “I have a seat up there. It’s in the middle, but it’s—well—” I shrugged. “I don’t mind babies. Do you wanna—?”

“Yes. Yes,” he blurted so eagerly a fine spray of spittle flew out of his mouth. “Yes.” He tried to stand, bucked against his seatbelt, and slammed back into the seat. He hurriedly unclasped the belt and did the awkward, cramped aisle shuffle with me so I could squeeze into his spot. I yelled my original seat number to him.

“God bless you, lady,” he hollered near my ear. “You have no idea. This presentation. It’ll be career ending if I flub it.” He eased down the aisle.

I heaved a sigh and wished I’d packed earplugs. Instead, I pulled the candy and my knitting out of my tote bag before wedging it under the seat in front of me with my feet.

I turned and smiled at the mom. “I’m Betsy. Your little girl is adorable.” I’d chosen to use my mother’s name since it would be easy to remember.

My neighbor returned my smile, if somewhat wanly. I’m sure she also agreed that her daughter was adorable—usually—but was hesitant to admit it at the moment, fearing the wrath of a couple hundred suffering people trapped inside a tin can with that lusty set of lungs.

“Maybe her tummy’s upset. Peppermint can really help. I always eat peppermint when I fly.” Another lie. But it was for a good cause—two good causes, actually—one selfish and one altruistic. I tore open the bag of peppermint patties and offered one to the mom.

The little girl instantly stopped screaming and eyed the shiny goody. “More,” she said, lunging forward with her fat little hand outstretched.

“I don’t think—” the woman started.

“Calms everything down. Soothing for the throat and the digestive tract.” I kept babbling about the health benefits of peppermint, eighty percent of which I was making up, while I unwrapped another pattie and stuffed it in my mouth.

This drove the little girl to new heights of insistence, and her mother had no chance. The child and I both knew healthy snacks just weren’t going to cut it. I surrendered the rest of the bag.

The miraculous thing was, it worked. The candy bars had been my backup plan, and they weren’t needed. Three or four patties, and the child had slumped against her mother’s chest, pink and still a little damp from the histrionics, chocolate smudges on her face and fingers and dress, her static-y blonde hair drooping and her eyes glazed over. A few minutes later, she was snoring softly.

She’d probably worn herself out. Throwing such an exemplary tantrum certainly qualified as aerobic exercise. But I’ll still chalk one up for peppermint patties.

Apparently the effect was contagious, because within another few minutes, the mom had also wilted, chin on her collarbone, slumbering over her baby.

I had the next hour to myself without the need for small talk. I got a lot of knitting done. Mainly because my fingers were moving at the same speed my brain was as it raced through scenario after scenario of what might come next.

CHAPTER 9

Stage Two. Per Josh’s instructions, I was introducing as much irrationality and unpredictability into my movements as possible. I’m all for using utter confusion as a defense mechanism.

When the plane pulled to the gate, I sat quietly while all the other passengers whose destination was San Jose crowded the aisle and bonked each other with their luggage. As the line slowly straggled out of the plane, I joined the end. I needed to be part of the group so I wasn’t memorable, but I also needed to give the impression that I was traveling to Los Angeles as long as possible.

The businessman I’d traded places with was still hunched in my seat, peering at his laptop, mouth moving silently as he reviewed whatever he was going to pitch to his prospective clients. So he really was going on to Los Angeles the way I was scheduled to. Perfect. That seat would be occupied as the flight manifest said it should be. Different gender, but I couldn’t help that.

I retrieved my carry-on bag and hustled along the ramp to the terminal. Alaska Airlines’ gates were grouped in Terminal B. I veered left, away from the main traffic flow toward the baggage claim area and the public exit. I tried to walk slowly as though I were stretching my legs before another prolonged bout of sitting stuffed in a plane seat.

I found the employees-only door between the meditation room and the defibrillator station—exactly as Josh had described. I squared my shoulders, resisted the urge to glance around nervously to see if anyone was watching, and pushed through it purposefully, as though I knew what I was doing. No one yelled at me, and no alarms sounded.

I clattered down the concrete stairwell. I’d always wondered what airports look like behind the scenes—from an employee’s perspective instead of from a passenger’s perspective. But I didn’t have a chance for occupational observation. I barged through another door at the bottom of the stairs and emerged into an open area under the terminal.

“Nora,” Josh hissed, and I nearly levitated out of my shoes. “You made good time.” He grinned at me and grabbed the handles to my carry-on bag, pulling it off my shoulder. “This way.” He had a black knit cap pulled down over his ears and was dressed in a bland gray set of coveralls with a laminated ID card clipped to a patch pocket on his chest. His picture was on the card, but the type was too small for me to read what name he was claiming as his own.

I had to trot to keep up with him.

“You swapped seats?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I huffed.

“Good. We’ve done everything we can. I’d give us a couple hours at most before we have a tail.” He led me through a gate in a high chain link fence and to a parking lot dotted with battered sedans and minivans—employees’ vehicles. He popped the trunk of a generic, tan-colored four-door Kia and tossed my bag inside. “How’s our appointment roster?” he called over the top of the car.

I climbed into the front passenger seat where my knees pressed into the dashboard. I found the lever and slid the seat back. “Zimmermann’s a no-go, at least officially. But Clarice says we might be able to catch up with him after eight p.m. at his flagship Roman & Bernard store.”

Josh slipped on a pair of sunglasses and stuffed his ID card in the center console while also nosing the car out onto one of the many access roads that looped around the airport complex.

“Then I have a surprise for you. Hungry?” Josh shot a glance at the rearview mirror and accelerated.

“Of course,” I said, even though I wasn’t. My stomach was dealing with too much nervous upheaval to think about food.

We were approaching the arrivals and departures lanes in front of the terminals. “Tilt your seat back,” Josh said. “So you’re behind the B-pillar.”

“Huh?”

“Lean back. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a few FBI agents out on the sidewalk. I don’t want them to catch you in profile.”

I found the right lever just in time and also rested my elbow on the windowsill to crowd the visual space even more. I turned and faced Josh.

“Good,” he muttered. “We’re just a couple tourists.”

“In San Jose?” I bantered.

“Yeah. Well.” He chuckled and put the Kia through its paces. Soon we were flying down the freeway.

He changed lanes a lot, sped the way most Californians do, taking the speed limit as a suggestion for during inclement weather only, but didn’t behave in a way that stood out. We were just another set of people with important places to go and things to do without much tolerance for the slowpokes.

As scenes zipped by which I recognized, places I’d formerly considered part of my home turf, I realized how little—if any—I’d missed living in the city. Josh, still actively checking all the mirrors and sliding in and out of traffic, seemed to be in the same frame of mind.

“It’s weird,” he said, “seeing all this with a different set of eyes now. It’s kind of like progressing through a video game that is Skip’s life—what I know of his life, anyway. Who knew freeway exits could be a map to your memories, huh?” He tilted a little smile at me.

“In what way?” I asked.

“They’re like gateways to things we did together. We used to come down here sometimes on breaks from UC Davis, just goof around in the city. Skip would visit his mom, and I’d hang out. Concerts, the occasional Giants—back when they weren’t very good—or A’s or Sharks game. We couldn’t afford NFL games.”

Josh emitted a low chuckle and shook his head. “We just passed the exit to the hospital where he had surgery right before spring term started. I drove like a maniac to get him back to class on a Monday morning. Crazy times. The all-nighters we used to pull.”

“Surgery?” I sat up straighter and levered the seat back up with me.

Josh shot me a puzzled look, as least as much as I could tell from behind the sunglasses. “Oh right. Before you knew him. No biggie, though. Some hernia thing. I didn’t even know he was going in for surgery until he called me to pick him up, but he said it was elective and he thought he might as well do it during spring break. Sounded like a last-minute decision. Didn’t seem to lay him up any, except he quit playing flag football after that.”

I could think of lots of reasons not to play football—whether the contact or no-contact version—especially since Skip had been an older, and intermittent, college student. He’d paid his own way through school, one quarter at a time. And he’d never been terribly athletic, at least not in my experience. More sedate and brainy, just the way I liked my men.

I chuckled to myself. As if I’d had a ton of experience. Nope. I’d had the usual spate of silly crushes in high school and college, but after that it was work and more work, building up my résumé until I found the perfect non-profit job. Skip really had been the only man who’d attracted my serious attention, and only after he’d made it clear that he was attracted to me.

Thirty minutes later, Josh zipped down an exit ramp and navigated several turns on city streets before pulling into a parallel parking space in front of an office building.

With some rather acrobatic maneuvering and grunting, Josh peeled off the coveralls. He had a full set of business casual clothes—khakis and a button-up shirt, a gadgety watch, and phone clip on his belt—on underneath the coveralls. He looked like every other geeky male IT employee in Silicon Valley. He wadded up the coveralls and shoved them under his seat.

“He’s working the lunch shift today. I hope he can keep his cool when we walk in.”

I hopped out of the car with a worried smile on my face. “This won’t get him into even more trouble?”

“Not if we act fast.” Josh took a moment to retuck his shirt into his pants, trying to fix the rumpliness that had resulted from the struggle to shed his disguise in the car. With the current iteration of his appearance, however, I thought he’d blend in better with the other men in this particular neighborhood if he kept that couldn’t-be-bothered, just-rolled-out-of-bed look. I was tempted to offer to tousle his hair a bit to complete the impression. But he took off at a fast clip around the corner, and I jogged after him.

Robbie was indeed behind the counter in the small Subway franchise that nestled in the first retail slot next the office building’s main lobby. He had a hairnet on over his curly mop and food-safe gloves on his hands. He did a quick double take when he spotted me in line, but then his face split into a wide grin.

“What would you like, ma’am?” he asked when my turn came.

“A turkey club with cheddar and everything except onions and jalapenos.”

“Toasted?”

“No, thanks.”

“’Cause you know who else is gonna be toasted.” He winked at me.

My eyes widened. “Mission accomplished?” I whispered.

“Oh yeah.” Robbie raised his hand to give me a fist bump over the plastic shield that protected the sandwich ingredients from customers’ germs. I waved it off at the last second, waggling my finger at his glove.

Robbie scratched his ear instead, which I was pretty sure defeated the purpose of wearing the gloves, and turned to Josh. “I remember you too, man. Saw you around the office with Skip sometimes. But if you’re with Nora now, I guess you’re okay.”

“Josh has joined the dark side,” I murmured, “and is dealing with the same repercussions we are.”

Robbie whistled softly. “Condolences, man.”

We had to shuffle down the counter, moving with our sandwiches as they were assembled on the other side. But Robbie escaped his station and hovered behind the cashier for a moment as we paid. “Come see me anytime, Nora. It’s been a pleasure.” Then he scooted off to refill the tuna salad tub.

He was still such a boy, maybe a little lost in the big, bad world of commerce, even though he sure did know his way around the generally accepted accounting principles. Good thing there’d been a counter between us, because I’d wanted to hug him, or throttle him. Either way, it was a relief to see that he seemed healthy and in good spirits.

I held our wrapped sandwiches on my lap as we sped north again—to Emeryville. We were putting a lot of miles on Josh’s nondescript car. Josh found a park with a terrific view of the Bay Bridge, but it was too cold and breezy to eat at one of the picnic tables. So we huddled in our seats, and I tried to choke down some nourishment. We had less than an hour to burn before our appointment with Tank Ebersole.

I called Clarice again. No new developments on her end. She sounded even more nervous than I was—there was a tautness to her voice that I’d rarely heard. I was worried she’d been watching some of Ebersole’s interview videos online, but I didn’t bring up the subject.

“Not a peep from your federal friends,” she said. “If they’ve noticed you’re gone, they haven’t complained to me.”

“They’re not likely to. But I’m in good hands.” I glanced at Josh who was doing justice to his sandwich, chewing as if his life depended upon it. “Emmie okay?”

“Quiet this morning before I took her to the bunkhouse for school. I hate how our moods rub off on her. I don’t think we’ll ever have a completely carefree and giddy munchkin on our hands.”

But I knew Emmie could have a lighthearted side when she was free from worry. I just needed to stop giving her reasons to worry. The weight of the world—on my little girl.

Josh tapped my knee. It was time.

“Call you later,” I told Clarice and hung up.

Now things could get dicey. We’d just passed Josh’s optimistic estimate of a couple hours free of FBI awareness and observation. But no other vehicles had pulled into the park’s parking lot during our late lunch break, so if they were watching us, it was from a distance.

I could only hope that three p.m. in a tavern would be quiet and conducive to a quickly-obtained mutual understanding.