I turned my desk chair around, picked the phone off the floor and hit the redial button.
“I’m here,” came a familiar voice.
“Flo, it’s Lew.”
“Bad news for you, Lewis,” she said. “Bad news. She’s gone.”
“She’s gone,” I repeated.
“Got a phone call about an hour ago. Guy said you’d given him the number. Asked for Beryl. Said he was a lawyer friend of yours, that he was going to get an injunction against her husband, going to get him to tell where Adele was. I asked him if he wanted to talk to Beryl. Said no, asked me the address. That’s when it hit me.”
“He wasn’t a friend,” I said.
Dwight had probably called from my office sitting in my chair.
“That’s what hit me. You would’ve called, told me he was gonna get in touch. You would have told him where I live.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Beryl had left, gone off to a motel or somewhere. I said she got in a cab and went off, didn’t tell me where. The son of a fuckin’ bitch hung up. I told Beryl, told her to get her things together, that we were taking her someone safe. While she got ready, I got the car out of the garage, drove around front, went in to get her and-”
“She was gone,” I said, seeing if it was worth super-gluing a broken little plaster duck I kept on my desk for luck.
“Gone, walked away. I looked for her. Drove all over. Nothing. Lew, I think it’s time for the cops. That shit’s after her and she’s running scared.”
“Maybe you’re right, Flo.”
“I’m sorry, Lew. I fucked up.”
“No you didn’t,” I said, putting the two halves of the duck on my desk. “You figured it out. Flo, I think you might want to get out of there.”
“Lewis, I want that bastard to show up here,” she said. “I want it so bad I’d pay big dollars for the joy. I’m holding a very large weapon in my hand and if I see him coming to my door, I’m shooting a hole right through the door and him.”
“Not a good idea,” I said.
“Lewis, I’ve got money and one hell of a great lawyer. Lord, let him come.”
“He’s driving a pickup truck-Ford-with a tow winch,” I said.
“One more question,” she said.
“I’d say ‘shoot’ but under the circumstances…”
“You’ve got a sense of humor hiding behind that sad face, Lewis. Question is, does he have my address? Are you sure? I’m not listed in the phone book.”
I looked at my mess of address and business cards on the floor and said, “I think so.”
All Dwight Handford had to do after he read my file on Adele and found out I had taken her to Flo’s was to get the address out of the address book on my desk.
“How long does it take you to get here from your place?”
“Fifteen minutes, maybe a little more,” I said.
“He called a lot more than an hour ago. What’s keeping the bastard?”
“Good question, Flo. Maybe you should get out of there for a while.”
I knew what her answer would be.
“Beryl was scared, real scared. That man’s hurt her. He’s sure as hell hurt that kid. He is one dangerous asshole.”
That I knew, but I said,
“Lock up tonight. I’ll keep calling.”
“You going to look for Beryl?”
“I’m going to look.”
There was a sound of footsteps coming slowly along the the concrete walk outside my office. I hung up and went for my tire iron. When I had it in hand, I faced the door. Someone pushed it open. I hoped the someone didn’t have a gun. He didn’t.
“Ames,” I said.
He looked at me as unmoved as he always was and said, “I came to work on the air conditioner some more.”
He looked at the air conditioner and so did I for the first time since I had come into the office. The front of it was caved in.
“You go berserk?” Ames asked, calmly nodding at the tire iron and then looking around the room.
“No,” I said. “Someone came in. Beryl Tree’s husband. He was looking for something.”
“Find it?”
“Yes.”
Ames nodded as if it was all clear to him. Maybe it was.
“Never fix the air conditioner now,” he said. “Don’t think there was much chance of it yesterday when it was still sort of alive.”
“We’ll give it a decent burial,” I said, sitting at my desk and biting my lower lip.
“Somethin’ hurtin’?”
“Beryl’s husband. Last night. Told me to stop trying to find his daughter and to get Beryl out of town. He performed euthanasia on the air conditioner and made this mess.”
Ames nodded and said,
“I’ll have to work out what I owe you some other way than the air conditioner.”
I wanted to tell Ames again to forget it, but he couldn’t forget what he thought he owed me. He had to pay it off to keep his self-respect.
“I’ll think of-”
The phone rang. I had a pretty good idea who it might be. Once again I was wrong. I picked it up.
“Hello.”
Ames started to pick things up off the floor. I didn’t stop him.
“Fonesca,” said Harvey the computer genius. “He tell you? I wanted to be sure you got the message.”
“Who? What message?”
“Your partner,” said Harvey.
Ames held up a black oblong something. I couldn’t figure out what it was for a second. Then I remembered. It was the name plaque that had been on my wife’s office door. Ames turned it over, looked at the name, rubbed it gently against the sleeve of his well-worn flannel shirt, placed it faceup on the desk and began to clean up the room.
“My partner?”
“When I called you earlier, he answered, took the message,” Harvey said.
“Give it to me again, Harvey. That wasn’t my partner. I don’t have a partner.”
“Then who… forget it. I don’t want to know.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That I had some information on Melanie Sebastian. Her car was found at the airport. Could have been there for weeks in the long-range parking, but Carl Sebastian reported it missing. Routine check found it. I found the report on the airport computer.”
“So she flew away,” I said.
“Don’t think so,” said Harvey. “I went into the records looking for a Melanie Sebastian, or a Melanie Lennell or a Melanie anything who might have flown out anytime between this morning going back to Tuesday. Nothing. Didn’t expect to find anything. Then I tried females with the initials M. L. or M. S. Nothing. You have to show ID when you get on a plane, you know.”
“I know, but how closely do they look.”
“Some do. Some don’t. You want the rest?”
Harvey was enjoying himself. I wasn’t. But I needed him. I watched Ames and listened to Harvey.
“Then I checked all the women who had paid for their tickets in cash since no credit card of hers showed an airline ticket purchase. Nothing. You know what I did next?”
I was reasonably sure, but I didn’t want to spoil Harvey’s surprise.
“Taxis from the airport to anywhere with a woman passenger. Town this size with most people getting picked up or having their own cars waiting, business at the airport isn’t all that hot for taxis even on the best of nights or days.”
I felt like blurting out “car rentals” but I said,
“And you found nothing?”
“Nothing. Then rentals cars. I got her, pilgrim. Last Wednesday night. Lady got a red Neon from Budget. Showed an ID, left a cash deposit. You have a pen and something to write on?”
I had a green-and-white push-button pen in my pocket. The word RHINOCORT was in green against the white. I had no recollection of picking it up. Everybody advertises on pens, gives them away. I haven’t bought a pen in five years. I found an envelope in the top drawer and said,
“Ready.”
“Georgia plates. License number 66884J. Now, you’ve got three questions, right?”
“Right,” I said as Ames, with a handful of junk, stood surveying the room to see what items larger than a paper clip he might have missed.
“Gonna get a broom,” he said.
I covered the mouthpiece of the phone and said, “DQ will lend you one.”