Worth the Trip (24 page)

Hollie crossed her arms, not completely ready to accept that one yet.

“And you really ought to think about why you’re following us,” Norah added, glancing at Trip again, practically vibrating with impatience now. “Is it about me or the story?”

“Oh, it’s about the story,” Hollie said, no doubt, no hesitation, “especially now that you’ve cleared my mind about Raymond.”

“Great.” Norah blew out a sigh. “Let’s keep that between us, okay?”

Trip came to join them. “If the bitch session is over—” They both turned on him, and he clamped his mouth shut over the rest of that crankiness. “Unfortunate turn of phrase,” he said. “Can we go now?”

“Are you good?” Norah asked Hollie.

“Let me put it this way,” Trip put in, not giving Hollie the floor, “we leave now or I unleash Lurch on you.”

Sure enough, Lurch was a few feet behind Trip, sending Norah dirty looks. She dropped her eyes to his crotch and he half hunched.

“Damn it, Norah”—Trip took her by the elbow and pulled her away from Hollie, lowering his voice—“don’t you have any sense of urgency?”

“Of course I do. I just don’t like to be threatened.”

He grinned. “I wouldn’t really have set him loose.”

“I know.” She headed off toward the train station, Lurch and Hollie following along behind.

“Fuck,” he said, “the least you could have done with all that jawing is talk her down from stalker mode.”

“I tried. She’s persistent.”

“Great, let’s all have tea and finger sandwiches to celebrate.”

“More like cosmos at a club opening. Don’t you watch
Sex and the City
?”

“No heterosexual male watches
Sex and the City
—at least not with the volume up.”

They arrived at the station, and since the wait was about fifteen minutes Norah went back to the cafeteria for takeout and soft drinks. Hollie tagged along.

When the train came they all hopped on board, Norah and Trip in front, eating pretzels and slurping Coke, Hollie and Lurch a few seats behind them—far enough that Lurch couldn’t wrap his hands around Norah’s neck. They all trooped through the exit, and crossed the street to the parking structure. Hollie’s rental car, a white Ford Focus, was parked right next to Trip’s silver sedan. The sedan’s tires were flat as pancakes.

“Wow, that’s too bad,” Hollie said, grinning from ear to ear.

Trip opened the trunk of his car, pulled out the tire iron, and lifted it above the rear window of Hollie’s rental.

“Hey,” she screeched, yelling, “do something” at Lurch.

Lurch shrugged his shoulders, which technically followed Hollie’s instructions, but didn’t go very far toward stopping Trip, who held out his free hand and said, “Keys,” the tire iron still poised to strike.

“No way.”

“Hand them over or you can pony up for a new window on this car, and then I’m going to hotwire it, so you’ll be buying a new steering column, too.”

Hollie opened her purse, but she pulled out her cell phone. “I’m calling the police.”

“Go ahead,” Trip said. “Call the local news while you’re at it. Let’s tell everyone you’re following us around while we search for fifty million dollars in stolen goods. I always wanted to be the grand marshal of my own private parade.”

Hollie’s face turned red, a vein in her forehead throbbing. She glared at Lurch, who did a great job of standing in place and ignoring her. “Fine,” she finally huffed out, handing Trip the keys to the Focus.

Trip beeped it open and got in. Norah sent Hollie an apologetic look and got in, too, or tried to. She had to take the package out from under her shirt before she could bend in the middle.

“Don’t tell me you’re buying that pathetic act she’s putting on.”

“Not entirely, but I can tell you she knows enough about Raymond for me to believe she was involved with him. And it answers a lot of questions, like why she was angry with me from the start, and why she’s following us around now. She thinks she’s helping Raymond get the loot for the college.”

Trip started the car and pulled away, Hollie giving Lurch an earful. “Did she say that?”

“No, but all he had to do was mention it to her. When he wants something he’ll use whatever leverage he can get. Manipulation is the least of what he’d do.”

Trip glanced over at her, one eyebrow lifted above a slight smile. “Being passive aggressive, are we?”

“You’re not manipulative. You came right out and told me you were after the loot and everything else took a backseat to finding it. And I don’t do passive-aggressive. I do the regular kind of aggressive.”

“Yeah,” Trip said, grinning full-out, “I’ve noticed.”

THE CLUE THEY’D RETRIEVED AT THE DETROIT
Zoo had been packaged for the long haul, wrapped in heavy plastic and completely sealed with duct tape, then wrapped and sealed again, packaged to keep the contents safe through Michigan’s extremes of weather. It took Norah the better part of fifty miles and Trip’s pocketknife to work her way into the package. He wasn’t happy about the wait. “You’re not very long on patience today,” she said to him.

He stopped drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. “Just anxious to know what’s in there.”

Norah reached in and pulled out a small book, setting it on the dash. Then, remembering the contents of the last packet, she held the bottom of her T-shirt out with one hand and dumped the rest of the contents into it. “Hmmmm.”

“That doesn’t sound promising.”

“Actually it is. The book,” she said, retrieving it from the dashboard. The title and name of the author were on the cover, along with a small gold rectangle showing a man sitting on what looked like bales of cotton overlooking a river, with a steamship in the background. “It’s a copy of
Life on the Mississippi
by Mark Twain. The copyright is 1883, which probably means it’s a first edition.

“There’s also an ancient photo of a Conestoga wagon, a small bronze statue of”—she brought it close so she could read the tiny lettering on the base—“Lewis and Clark, and a string of pearls.” She rubbed them on her teeth. “Real pearls.”

“What does the clue say?”

“No poetry,” Norah said, upending the package then peering inside when nothing fell out. “In fact, there’s nothing written of any kind, except the book.” She sifted through the pages, careful of its age and fragility. “No writing in the margin, no letters circled to spell out code words, no notes stuck between the pages.”

“Okay, the gems in the first packet didn’t have anything to do with the Detroit Zoo. They were likely there as an incentive to keep on the trail. Which means we can probably ignore the pearls. That leaves the Mississippi River and Mark Twain, a Conestoga wagon, and a bronze of Lewis and Clark.”

“St. Louis?” Norah said.

“Why St. Louis?”

“It just sounds right,” Norah said. “Mark Twain was born in Hannibal, Missouri, which is on the Mississippi River.”

“Maybe we should be going there.”

“It doesn’t fit with the rest of the items. St. Louis is on the Mississippi, too, and one of its nicknames is the Gateway to the West.”

“The wagon. What does the statue of Lewis and Clark mean?”

“I’m not sure, but I would hazard a guess that they went through the area on their way to the Pacific. Give me your cell.”

Trip glanced over at her.

“I’m not going to read your contact list or listen to your messages.”

He dug it out of his back pocket and handed it over.

Norah stared it for a second, at a loss. “How do you get onto the Internet?”

Trip took it back, punched a couple of buttons, and held it out. Norah typed in “Lewis and Clark + St. Louis,” sifting through the first few entries. “They spent the winter of 1803-1804 near St. Louis preparing for their expedition,” she said after a couple minutes. “More importantly there’s a life-sized statue—oh, never mind, it was dedicated in 2006. But there’s a Museum of Westward Expansion. It would fit with all the clues.”

Trip didn’t say anything, just followed the signs for I-94.

“Do you want me to punch St. Louis into the GPS?”

Trip still didn’t say anything.

Norah twisted around and looked over her shoulder because he seemed angry, and since she hadn’t done anything—lately—somebody else must be responsible for his snit. “Is Hollie following us again?”

“No.” He scowled at the road some more.

“What the heck is wrong with you?”

“We’re being conned.”

It was Norah’s turn to be at a loss for words. She wanted to disagree with Trip, even though she was tired of arguing about her father’s motivation. The problem was, she did believe Lucius would use her to give the FBI its comeuppance. But she also believed him when he said he wanted to get the loot back in the hands of those it rightfully belonged to. “We decided to follow the breadcrumbs, remember?”

“Yeah.”

“It was actually your call.”

He shot her a look. “It doesn’t feel right anymore.”

That comment struck her as strange, coming from Trip, but after mulling it for a minute Norah decided she was filtering it through her feelings, not to mention a healthy amount of wishful thinking, when all Trip referred to was the case. Trip always thought about the case first. And it was okay, as long as she remembered that. “What doesn’t feel right about going to St. Louis?”

He looked over at her again, the crankiness on his face replaced by mild surprise. “No comment about my feelings?”

“You don’t like being psychoanalyzed.”

“You’re catching on.”

“You have no idea.” She was getting an education in all sorts of ways.

Trip chose to leave well enough alone. “It’s been three days since we left Chicago,” he said, “the amount of time Puff had between the robbery and his arrest.”

Again she let it go. “We got stuck at the lighthouse overnight,” she reminded him, “and then there’s all the time we wasted with Hollie and the other lunatic treasure hunters. Even if you insist on Lucius being the perpetrator of this scavenger hunt, he could have fit in at least one more city, and St. Louis is only three hundred miles from Chicago.”

“Yeah,” Trip said, but Norah was done with the guessing game.

“How about you fill me in on your thought process, and spare me the twenty questions routine.”

“I’m not really sure myself why I’m having second thoughts.”

“Gut feeling?”

“I trust my gut. It’s kind of a job requirement.”

Norah didn’t have any response for that.

“And it’s not like we can’t come back and pick up this leg of the search where we left off,” Trip finished.

“So why did we take the detour to begin with?”

“It made sense at the time. The lighthouse could have been the hiding place for the entire cache of stolen loot. When we found the clue instead, the Detroit Zoo was a confirmation that we were on a treadmill. Going to St. Louis feels like chasing wild geese.”

“You think there will be another clue there.”

“I don’t think we’ll find the main cache under a loose floorboard in the Lewis and Clark museum. It’s too public, for one thing.”

“If you believe Lucius is behind it, then you have to believe he could have charmed his way in, just like he did at the bank.”

“What would be the point?”

He had her there, and the more she thought about it, the less sense it made. If the scavenger hunt was intended to keep them busy and out of Chicago, that meant her father had lied to her. She wasn’t prepared to go there.

“I’m sorry, Norah,” Trip said, too observant, as always.

She looked out the window, throat tight, willing herself not to tear up. “It’s not important,” she said.

“Yes, it is.”

“It’s not important to you.” Except in how it affected his mission. “You don’t know for a fact Lucius is behind this.”

“It’s the only logical conclusion.”

“He’s my father. I don’t have to be logical.”

“So your vote is for St. Louis.”

“Does it matter?” she asked him, knowing she was being defensive and not caring.

Trip started to respond, holding his hand out instead when his cell phone rang.

Norah handed it over, not liking the half of the conversation she could hear.

“How?” he said, biting off the word, his expression hardening, then, “the man was on his deathbed the last time we saw him,” which Norah took to mean her father, a fact Trip confirmed, snapping the phone closed and dropping it on the console between them. “Apparently Puff wasn’t as bad off as he led everyone to believe,” he said.

Norah smiled, she couldn’t help it.

“I realize it’s good news on a personal front, but it also means he conned us, just like we figured.”

“Like you figured. I’m still not convinced.”

Trip shook his head, but he also grinned, reluctantly. “I guess you have to admire the man’s style.”

“That,” Norah said, “is why he gets away with it.”

Trip met her eyes, still smiling, but with conviction. “Not this time.”

 

NORAH WOKE UP AN UNDETERMINED AMOUNT OF
time later, her cheek creased by the seat belt and a crick in her neck. She blinked a couple of times, then stretched, rubbing at her neck and trying to get her bearings. She was in the car, traveling on I-94 on the outskirts of Chicago, according to the billboards. And then it all flooded back, the zoo, Hollie, St. Louis. And Trip.

She looked over at him, driving with one hand flopped over the steering wheel, his face, strong and handsome in profile, his lean body loose, all of him still as a statue, like a blank canvas for her to paint her memories onto. She closed her eyes and could feel his skin under her hands, the ripple of muscle, the heat and strength of him, just the thought enough to have her stretching again as the need moved through her, and not just her body. Her heart flopped in her chest, and she jolted a little, thinking, of course,
I’m in love with him
. Looking back she could recognize the stages, interest, attraction, infatuation, attachment. Love.