He stared at me. Then his eyes widened as it hit him, too, and he said while getting up, “You don’t want to use that one. Come with me. You, too, Ms. Effingham,” he added when she shot him a questioning look.
He moved fast for an old man. Morgan and I hurried after him down a hall – with Morgan protesting that the doctor didn’t have to keep calling her “Ms. Effingham, just Morgan will do” – where we came to a door that opened into a room that held bedroom furniture. I glanced at the phone on a nightstand but he shook his head and strode over to a door that turned out to be a walk-in closet.
He shoved aside clothing on a rack and behind it was a panel. He pushed what looked like a painted over nail-head and the panel slid aside. It opened into a room wider than it was long and held a lot of electronic devices including another, bigger, surveillance monitor that showed a three-eighty of the outside including an overhead view of Blue Heaven’s occluded skies. It also looked out into various places in the house. There was one of the livingroom indicating where the doctor might’ve been when he overheard Talbert. There was also a row of computers, some equipment mounted on a wall that I didn’t recognize, and several phones.
Damn.
I glanced at Morgan. Her eyes were big and her mouth had dropped open.
I swallowed my own amazement and asked, “All the phones work?”
“Yes. Hurry and make your call and I’ll explain.”
When she saw the phones, Morgan, who still hadn’t caught on, said, “Oh! May I call my sister?”
“Wait.” By then I’d already lifted the nearest receiver and was keying in the number to Madison’s hotel suite. “Don’t worry. I’m calling her now,” I said to her baffled expression.
Madison picked up after only one ring. Her voice sounded tense. “Yes?”
“Madison, Tennessee. Morgan’s fine. She’s here and wants to talk to you, but first, I want you to put your guards on alert. Do it now, then come back to the phone.”
Smart woman. She didn’t hesitate. She laid the phone down and I heard a door open and voices. A minute later she came back.
“What’s the problem?” she asked.
“Someone at Semptor Labs had Morgan kidnapped. I think they were going to try and force you into whatever deal they wanted using your sister as collateral. There is a chance that since they’ve failed to keep her, they might decide to send someone around to hassle you and your company.” By that, I meant violently. She knew it, too. I took a breath. “I’m not trying to dip into your company business, Madison, but what type of arrangement is Semptor trying to work with you that would make them do this?”
“Well, I don’t know why it would make them do this. At first, they said they wanted a contract to transport their merchandise to various retailers all over the country, which was fine with me. They said they wanted to branch out, get more goods out there to the rest of the country and ultimately to the world. Everybody knows Semptor Labs disperses some of everything and have been using their own fleet but it’s too small for the wider distribution they have in mind.
“We are the largest shippers in the country, now, so I wasn’t surprised they’d want to use us. We ship everywhere. It would be quite a lucrative contract. We hit a snag the first day because they wanted us to begin shipping right away and the negotiator got a little frustrated about the amount of time we would need to get it scheduled. After all, they’re not the only business for whom we ship. I figured we could wrangle that out, though, and he agreed to meet the next morning to work on it.
“The next day, I was dumbfounded when the first thing he brought up was the fact that they wanted my company to transport something for them without telling us what it is. Furthermore, they wanted to send one of their people with each shipment who would determine the location of the drop-off point upon arrival. That’s when our discussions began to break down. I won’t allow my people to haul unidentified, possibly illegal or dangerous materials, and furthermore, have them not know where they’ll be going? It’s unsafe enough on the road for long-haul drivers nowadays, so uh-uh. Isn’t going to happen, and I told them that.”
She was right about the hazard to truck drivers. There had been jackings by gangs and the drivers went armed and in pairs. I didn’t know much about negotiating to haul goods but I wouldn’t have agreed to carry unknown items, either. Yet, I couldn’t think of why that would make them try to force Madison into doing it.
“When was the last time you spoke with them, and did they give you any indication they were angry about it?”
“No, they didn’t seem to be. We met with them yesterday, before I came to see you after realizing Morgan had been gone for over a day, but someone came in and said something to the chief negotiator. He said an emergency had come up and he would get back in touch to rearrange the meeting. I advised him we would be leaving on Monday but that I’d be available over the weekend. Since they rented a conference room for the meetings to take place at the hotel in which I was staying – which is why I arranged for rooms there in the first place – I gave him the phone number to my room. Look, I knew they weren’t happy with my refusal of their terms, but it never occurred to me they’d try something like this!”
“Yes, it does seem extreme,” I said. Not to mention criminal.
“Okay. Let me speak with Morgs now, then I want you back on the phone.”
I handed the phone to Morgan. She eagerly clapped it to her ear and went off into a chatter with her sister. I stepped away and eyed the doctor. I indicated the room.
“What’s all this?”
He smiled. “This is my lab and just so you know, I’ve lived in this house for years, since long before I sold off most of the land to developers and it became a neighborhood. As a side item, all of this area used to be farmland and my parents left the house and property to me. My grandparents, who actually farmed the land, called the place “Blue Heaven” and when the developers learned that, they appropriated the name for the neighborhood when they started building.
“Now, Semptor doesn’t know about the lab, as I had no reason to tell them, and lately, very good ones for not doing so. I set up the lab before retiring from teaching a few years before the Event, so I could still dabble when I wanted, you see, and I’ve been observing things and running tests ever since shortly after that day.
“When Semptor Labs appeared in the neighborhood, several things occurred to make me curious about them, and so when a year ago they were looking for a distribution analyst, I hired on with them. Their operation has largely been local and getting the merchandise out hadn’t been a problem, but a month ago, they advised me that they wanted to expand their distribution so I recommended Effingham Shipping. It is, after all, not only the biggest such company around, but also the best.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t know about the fact that they wanted them to carry unknown items, and it never would have occurred to me that they’d resort to kidnapping! But, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised because within the last three weeks, I’ve discovered what’s wrong with Blue Heaven, why everyone gets lost, why there’s always a film hanging up in the sky, and what Semptor Labs really is.”
“Excuse me? I thought Semptor was a company that distributes goods all over the place.”
“Well, yes, they do. However, they have an agenda, an ulterior motive.”
“All right, what are they, then?”