“ You’re kidding. I’ve been on edge ever since we left L.A.”
“ I guess I was kidding. I did see that you were pretty anxious, but you made it.”
“ Yeah, I did.” He smiled. “The plane didn’t fall out of the sky, I didn’t flip out. All in all, I guess I’m pretty pleased with myself.” Then he asked, “What’s the local time?”
“ It’s 10:45.” She squeezed his shoulder again. “I hope you enjoy your stay in New Zealand.”
“ Me too.” He started to adjust his watch.
“ Oh, and it’s Wednesday. We lost a day when we crossed the date line.”
He thanked her and she continued down the aisle, checking seatbelts and seatbacks.
“ We lost a day,” he thought. “I hadn’t counted on that.”
“ And I don’t know anything about Whangarei. It seems so hopeless.”
“ I thought you were from there?”
“ No, I’m a city girl, from Auckland. Never been to the North Country, till this.”
“ Why did you go and what’s the last thing you remember?” He asked, trying to keep his mind off of the descending plane.
“ My older brother lives in Whangarei. He and his fiancee just moved up, and they were getting married. We came for the wedding. We arrived Tuesday night and we stayed at the Park Side Motel. I had my own room. I remember going to sleep. I don’t remember waking up.”
“ Your parents must be sick with worry.”
“ I know. I thought about asking you to call them, but that would only complicate things.”
“ It seems the logical place to start looking is the motel. It’s the only clue we have.”
“ You’ll find me. I just know it.”
“ First we have to get through customs,” he thought, and they both began to worry.
The plane bucked and he grabbed on to the armrests with white knuckles.
“ Just a little turbulence,” the stewardess said as she made her way back down the aisle, “nothing to worry about.” But Jim worried all the way to the ground. He was still worrying when he was in line at Immigration and Passport control.
“ I don’t look a bit like Eddie Lambert,” he thought.
“ It feels like your heart is going to beat right out of your chest. If you don’t calm down, you’re going to have a heart attack.”
He tried to control his breathing.
“ And stop sweating. It feels like I’ve just stepped out of the shower.”
“ Next,” a voice called.
Jim looked up. He was at the head of the line. The voice wanted him. He walked ahead, presented his passport. The man opened it, glanced at the photo, turned to a middle page, stamped and returned it.
“ Next,” he said again, through with Monday.
“ He barely looked at the picture,” Monday thought, as another control officer passed with a sniffer dog. The dog passed his nose over Jim’s carry-bag and kept going. “The dog even okayed me.”
“ Let’s go,” Donna thought.
Fifteen minutes later they were driving out of the airport in a red Toyota, rented with Eddie Lambert’s Visa Card. The eye patch was back in Jim’s pocket.
“ Get over!” The thought was a screech going through his brain. “You’re on the wrong side of the street.”
“ Forgot.” He jerked the car to the left side of the road.
It was two hours later and 2:00 in the afternoon when they stopped at a Mobil Station just outside Whangarei for directions to the Park Side Motel and petrol. Jim remembered the last Mobil Station he’d stopped at, just outside of another small town, and he thought of Glenna. He was glad she was going to be okay. Then he looked in the side mirror and watched as the attendant put petrol in the car. The last time a gas jockey put gas in his car in California was sometime back in 1975.
Five minutes later he shut off the engine, grabbed his bag, locked the car and entered the lobby of the Park Side Motel.
“ Do you have a room for a few days?” he asked the man behind the desk.
“ Sure do, we’re mostly empty. It’s early.” The man had a nervous tick in his left eye and he smelled like fresh earth. “Excuse the clothes.” He handed Jim a registration card, “but I’m the gardener too.”
“ I’m looking for someone who checked in last Tuesday.” Jim noticed the dirty corner on the card as he filled it out. He used Eddie Lambert’s name.
“ And who would that be?” the man asked as Jim watched him pick at the dirt under his nails with a clean card.
“ I’m looking for some friends that came up for a wedding.”
“ The Tuhiwais?” The man set the folded card aside, tick going crazy.
“ Yeah. I was supposed to meet them here four days ago, but I missed my flight,” Jim lied. “I called their home in Auckland and there was no answer. I was wondering if they’re still in town?”
“ You don’t know?”
“ What?” Jim thought he knew, but he wanted the man to tell him.
“ Their daughter Donna went missing the night they checked in. At first they thought she might have been kidnapped, but the parents don’t have much money. Now they think she ran off.”
“ Ran off?”
“ Who knows why kids do what they do today. If you want to know anything more, you’ll have to ask the police.”
“ I’ll do that.” Jim thanked the man, whose eye was batting up a storm now.
“ Here’s your key. You have her room.” The man was trying to force his eye to stay closed and not having much success.
“ Her room?”
“ The same room Donna Tuhiwai was in last week.”
“ Coincidence, or did you do that on purpose?”
“ Just coincidence,” the man said, struggling to keep his eye slammed shut. Jim didn’t believe him.
He flopped on the bed as soon as he entered the room, stared at the ceiling and tried to think. Donna went missing from this room less than a week ago. She was being held in a windowless room somewhere, strapped to a hospital bed. There had to be more, something he was missing.
“ You need rest,” Donna thought.
“ I’ll be fine,” he thought back.
“ Nonsense, take a couple hours. You’re dead tired.”
“ Maybe you’re right. But just a few minutes.” He closed his eyes and in seconds was asleep.
He woke with a steady knocking on the door.
“ Don’t answer it,” Donna warned.
“ You’re being paranoid.” He sat up and stretched.
“ I’m not.”
“ Who is it?” Jim called out, getting out of bed.
“ Linen service,” a male voice on the other side of the door answered.
“ See, you were worried about nothing.” He turned the knob.
The door burst open and Jim had a quick look at a small man with rugged features. He staggered back from the door, but he wasn’t quick enough. A fist shot into his stomach, doubling him over, then something came down on his head and the lights went out.
He woke slouched in a chair as cold water was splashed onto his face. He sputtered and spit to keep from gagging. He tried to bring a hand to his face to wipe away the water, but his hands and arms weren’t obeying his commands.
“ How do you feel?”
Jim turned his head to the direction of the voice and found the small man seated in a chair by the door.
“ You can stop trying to move your arms, your hands are handcuffed behind your back.”
“ Why? Are you the police?”
The man laughed.
“ How’d you get the cuffs over the cast?” Jim asked, remembering how he showed the cast to Washington to get him to leave the cuffs off.
“ With difficulty.”
“ Why are you doing this? I’m not a criminal.”
“ Hey, that’s enough. I’m the one that’s supposed to be asking the questions here.”
“ Okay, ask.”
“ You came around asking questions about the missing girl.”
“ I did not,” Jim said, playing for time.
“ Phil, the desk clerk, called and said you were asking.”
“ I was not.”
The short man got up from his chair, walked to the bureau, picked up a tourist magazine, rolled it, and smacked Jim in the head.
“ I need better answers.”