“So far as I can.”
Gladys Baker sighed again. Behind her, the teakettle started to hiss. “There’s not much to tell really. I’m not a very good flier and without Dramamine I’m generally a nervous wreck. I thought I had one left but it wasn’t until we were in the air that I realized I didn’t. Stupid of me really. I thought I’d have to ride the whole way with my heart in my mouth but I was doing fine until a few minutes before we landed when …” Gladys Baker brought her trembling hands up over her face.
“Please go on, Mrs. Baker, I’m here to listen.”
“Well, right before we landed I started seeing double, two of everything. Then I got very dizzy, terrible spins, and I thought, ‘Well, after six smooth hours here I am about to blow it.’ So I started taking deep breaths, but it didn’t help. The double vision didn’t go away and the dizziness got worse. Everything in the plane was going crazy, turning and floating, even the people. I couldn’t find the stewardess so I turned to the nice young couple next to me — I was sitting on the aisle, you see.” Mrs. Baker took a deep breath. “They weren’t there.”
“You mean they had changed seats?”
“I mean they had disappeared.”
A shudder crept up Bane’s spine.
“A few seconds before the spell came on,” Mrs. Baker continued, “I was looking right at them. They never walked by me. They just weren’t there anymore.”
“Might you have passed out?”
Mrs. Baker shook her head. “I was too sick. I couldn’t even close my eyes without feeling like I was about to fall out of a roller coaster. Besides, a few seconds later they were there again.”
“The couple?”
The old woman nodded, ignoring the kettle which had begun to whistle its readiness. “Mr. Bane, does this all seem a bit much to you?”
“Not at all,” he said unhesitantly, glad he could be of some comfort.
“There’s more.”
“I’d like to hear it.”
“They didn’t come back all at once — the couple, I mean. They came back a little at a time, like when you focus a camera and the picture slowly takes shape. First there was just an outline. Then it started to fill in but you still couldn’t see all of them. Then they were back. About that time I realized the dizziness had subsided so I asked them if they were all right. They looked at me strangely and said ‘Of course,’ as if nothing was wrong, as if nothing had happened. But it did happen, Mr. Bane, I know it did.”
The kettle was screaming now. Gladys Baker rose, pushing herself up by pressing her palms against the smooth finish of the table. She lifted the kettle from the range and uneasily poured out two cups of boiling water, neglecting to stir up the coffee. The cups trembled in her hands and would have slipped to the floor had not Bane relieved her of the burden halfway back to the table.
“I’m not usually this nervous,” she apologized. “I haven’t been in three years. Since my husband passed on. But I’m scared now, Mr. Bane, and it all started with that flight.” She was sitting down again, trying to raise the cup of coffee to her lips. Her fingers betrayed her and the scalding liquid dripped over the rim in small waves. She gave up, returning the cup to its saucer. She looked at Bane desperately. “I need help but I’m afraid to seek it. If those relatives learn the state I’m in, they’ll start proceedings again and I’ll lose everything I have, even my home. I haven’t been sleeping well, Mr. Bane. Every day I go through long periods of depression, worse even than right after my husband passed on. Then suddenly they go away and I find myself remarkably giddy for no reason at all. The periods rotate in cycles and waves, and I’m not sure which one I dread the most. I was never like this before, Mr. Bane, you’ve got to believe that. I was never like this before in my life until that flight home. I’ve tried to pass it all off to forgetting my Dramamine, but somehow I know it was something else.” Again she tried the coffee cup, failing this time to even raise it off the saucer. “Am I going crazy, Mr. Bane? Am I cracking up?”
Bane could only look at her sympathetically, his untouched coffee steaming toward his nostrils. She had just described textbook symptoms of manic depression, symptoms she claimed had come on as a direct result of Flight 22. Davey Phelps, Renshaw, and now this.
“There’s something else I feel I should tell you, Mr. Bane,” Gladys Baker continued softly, “something else that was strange about the flight, but I didn’t pay much attention to it because of everything else. It was my watch.”
“Your watch?”
“I checked it against a clock in the terminal after we landed and found it was running forty minutes slow.”
A shudder grabbed Bane’s spine. “The spell you had, Mrs. Baker, you say it came on just before landing?”
Gladys Baker nodded.
“And it only seemed to last a few seconds after which the plane touched down?”
“That’s right.”
Bane looked down at his cup of coffee, stirred it thoughtlessly. Flight 22 had landed forty minutes after Jake Del Gennio reported it missing. Gladys Baker’s spell coincided with the moment Jake saw the jet vanish and her watch lost forty minutes somewhere in the air, a missing forty minutes which apparently had never passed inside Flight 22. What had happened to them?
“And I’ll tell you one other thing,” Mrs. Baker was saying, “it’s not just me. At least, I don’t think it is. You see, I knew a girl who was on the plane. Well, actually I know her mother, but I recognized her and said hello on board. They’re from over in New Jersey. Hillsdale, I’m pretty sure, a beautiful neighborhood. I’ve tried to call her a few times this week but every time I mention the flight to her mother, she hangs up on me and I haven’t talked to the girl yet. I know something happened to her too. I can just feel it.” Tears welled in Gladys Baker’s eyes. “You do believe me, Mr. Bane, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Bane said, and that helped Gladys Baker relax just enough to bring the cup of coffee to her lips.
The girl’s name, Bane had learned before departing, was Ginny Peretz, and she lived in a house at least twice the size of Gladys Baker’s on Mountain View Terrace in the fashionable New Jersey suburb of Hillsdale. The maid who answered the door, though, seemed determined to keep Bane outside. He persisted and she finally disappeared in search of the lady of the house.
“My lawyer’s on the way,” Mrs. Peretz, a well-groomed lady nearing fifty with only the few gray hairs that had sprung up since her last trip to the salon, said by way of introduction.
“That’s not necessary,” Bane told her.
“We don’t want any trouble.”
“I’m not here to cause any. I gave your maid my credentials.”
Mrs. Peretz scoffed. “Those mean nothing to me. My husband’s a man of considerable influence. A few phone calls by him and you will regret this day.”
A bluff, clearly. If that were so, Bane reckoned, there would have been no reason to call the lawyer. Aware the woman was lying, he seized the advantage.
“I want to see your daughter, Mrs. Peretz,” he demanded.
She glanced out behind him. “Do keep your voice down. There are neighbors to consider, you know.” She let him step far enough inside the door to let it close over the marble floor in the foyer. “Damn busybodies. All they do is talk. I’ve had to have the doctors use the rear entrance. They say it’ll pass, just temporary surely. They aren’t sure what caused it, not precisely anyway.”
Bane didn’t want to seem too eager. “Caused what?” The now familiar prickling was back at his neck hairs.
“My daughter is unable to see you,” Mrs. Peretz retreated.
“It won’t take long. Only a few questions.”
Mrs. Peretz was shaking her head. Her eyes had become moist. “You damn fool, don’t you understand?”