Book Deal (22 page)
“What is it?” Janice said, giving Deal a puzzled look. He pulled the receiver away from his ear, held it out to her as a tinny voice droned on.
“Another machine,” Deal said. “Inviting me to make a pledge to the Worldwide Church of Light. For any number of good reasons.”
She nodded, hardly surprised. He’d already filled her in on what he’d heard when he’d dialed Sara’s home number again. This time, a computerized phone mail voice informed him that he had, in fact, reached the number he had dialed. He’d been invited to leave a message, another suggestion he’d passed up.
As the recorded message paused, Deal brought the receiver back, just in time to hear an actual person come on line. “Worldwide Church of Light,” cool and professional, not unlike the recorded voice that had urged him to donate.
“Sara Dolan, please.”
There was no acknowledgment, just a clicking sound as he was transferred, a couple of chirping rings, then another computer-generated voice. Deal listened in disbelief, then held the phone up for Janice as the message recycled itself:
“We’re sorry, but the voice mailbox you have reached is no longer in service. The party you are trying to reach may have been transferred or is no longer with the organization.”
Deal hung up, sat staring at Janice.
“You want to call back, try to talk to somebody else?”
“I don’t think it would do much good. They don’t seem much interested in conversation out there.”
“Well, what, then?”
Deal sat thinking for a moment, then noticed movement at the doorway of the kitchen. “Give your daughter a good-morning kiss?” he said, pointing.
Isabel was standing there, her eyes darting back and forth between Deal and her mother. Her hands tugged uncertainly at the hem of her nightgown. When Janice turned to give her a smile, to hold her arms out, it was like watching a dam give way.
Isabel’s face lit up, her uneasiness melting away. In an instant, she was running flat out, into her mother’s arms.
“Mommy,” she said as Janice gathered her up.
“Isabel, Tinker Bell,” Janice said, holding her close. Deal felt something slip inside him, had to turn away for a moment. When he looked again, Janice was plopping Isabel onto one of the counter stools.
“You slept a long time,” Janice said.
Isabel nodded.
“That’s good,” Janice said, giving Deal a look. She pulled down a bowl, found a box of Fruit Loops, eyed it suspiciously. “Is this what you have for breakfast these days?”
Isabel nodded. “Are you going to stay home now, Mommy?” she said, her gaze fixed on Janice’s every move.
Janice found milk in the refrigerator, turned to add it to the cereal. “Mommy’s going to come and see you lots and lots,” she said. She gave Deal another glance, this one guarded.
“I want you to stay home,” Isabel insisted, her voice rising.
Janice took a breath, looked at Deal again, finally leaned across the counter so that her gaze rested at Isabel’s level. “Listen, sweetheart, you know Mommy loves you, don’t you?”
Isabel nodded, but her lip was jutting.
“Well,” Janice said, reaching out to stroke her cheek, “that’s the most important thing right now. Mommy loves you very much and we’re going to spend lots of time together, okay?”
Isabel gave another nod, this one somewhat more assured.
“Now, come on,” Janice said. “Let’s see you eat some breakfast.”
Isabel gave her a doubtful look, scooped out a spoonful of cereal. Deal sucked in a breath of his own, turned to open the kitchen door, let the breeze in.
He was standing, staring out into the bright morning, when he felt Janice’s presence at his shoulder. He glanced at her. “Pretty tough, huh?”
She nodded. “Nothing I didn’t expect.”
“At least Daddy wasn’t in there singing harmony,” he said.
She gave him a pained smile. “It’s not a lot of fun, is it?”
He put the back of his hand to her cheek. “I seem to remember some fun.”
She managed a laugh, but there wasn’t a lot of joy in it. For a moment, they stood quietly.
“So what can we do, Deal?”
“About Sara, you mean.”
She nodded.
He ran a hand through his hair. He could forget all this, he thought. Go in to his office, get some bid letters out, let Floyd Flynn and company handle the detective work. Maybe things were just that simple: Arch had been murdered by robbers, Lightner done in by a disgruntled associate, Rosenhaus by his own hand. All the connections between the three simply coincidence, as it was simply a coincidence that Sara Dolan had chosen to take a vacation or quit her job, just vanish without telling anyone in her family where she might be going.
Too much happenstance? So what. What was he supposed to do about it? He had troubles of his own. A half-dozen building projects that needed his attention, a family to put back together, a life. Where did it say this was his responsibility? He paid taxes, his taxes supported a law enforcement system. Let the people who got paid for these things take care of it.
“We can call the police in Omaha,” he said to Janice. “Try and file a missing persons report…” He trailed off.
“Or?”
He closed his eyes. What was it inside him that couldn’t let things rest? What overweening pride, what egotistical self-centeredness allowed him to even think he ought to get involved? What on earth could he expect to accomplish?
“Deal…” It was Janice’s voice, bringing him back.
He opened his eyes, blinking in the bright light. There was a talk show on the television, a young man yanking off articles of clothing while a female guest and female host stared in mock horror and the audience went wild with applause. Isabel was watching in fascination, spooning in her Fruit Loops mechanically.
Deal held up a finger to Janice, went to the television, punched buttons until the reassuring, geeky image of Mr. Rogers swam into view. He gave Isabel a pat on the head, glanced back at Janice.
“If I went out there…” he began before Janice cut him off.
“We,” Janice said, her voice calm, but firm.
“Excuse me?”
“You meant to say if
we
went out there.”
“No I didn’t,” Deal said. “I started to say if
I
went out there, maybe I’d stand a better chance of getting someone to look into Sara’s disappearance. It’d also give me a chance to check out this Carver Construction business.”
She pursed her lips. “You really think there’s a connection?”
He shrugged his Driscoll shrug. “Hard to say.”
She nodded. “I’m going with you,” she said.
Deal shook his head. “Stay here, take care of Isabel.”
She glanced into the nook, where Isabel was engrossed in Mr. Rogers’s account of how mail got to be delivered, then beckoned Deal out into the hallway. When he had joined her, she turned on him, her voice subdued but fierce.
“Arch Dolan was my friend,” she said. “
I
was the only one who was willing to believe what had really happened, and now that it’s starting to look like I was right, you want to shuttle me off to the sidelines…”
“Janice…” he began.
“Don’t ‘Janice’ me,” she said. “I am sorry that I haven’t been here to be with my daughter. It kills me what I’ve missed. But a couple of more days aren’t going to make a whole hell of a lot of difference now.” She closed her eyes momentarily, then turned back to him. “I am a functioning, capable human being, Deal. This matters a great deal to me. I’m just as able as you are to light a fire under some disinterested policeman, maybe more so. If you’re going to look for a woman, you can use a woman’s help.”
He stared at her in frustration. “You’ve seen what’s happened already,” he said. “There’s no telling what might happen…”
“It could happen to me while you’re away,” she said. It stopped him cold.
“If they’re out there, doing what we think, it could happen anytime,” she continued. “Unless we do something to stop them.”
They turned as one, stared through the kitchen pass-through at their daughter. Deal took a deep breath, finally. “Mrs. Suarez could take her to her relatives in Hialeah,” Deal said. “Nobody could find them there.”
Janice nodded.
“You ever been to Omaha?” he asked. He gestured out the open doorway, as if it were just over the line of banyan trees that hid the neighboring yards.
She followed his gesture, turned back to him. “Is this an invitation?” she asked.
“Straight to the hotel, a trip to the police station with me, that’s it, agreed?”
“If that’s what it takes…” she began.
But by that time, Deal was on the phone again.
“Kinda like riding in the train, isn’t it?”
The tall man sat catty-corner opposite Deal and Janice, his legs jutting out into the narrow aisle. There were four of them in an odd little cabin at the back of the half-filled plane, a space between the main cabin and the crew galley that actually did resemble a train compartment.
Strange configuration, strange airline for that matter. No food service, no seat assignments, just pile on and grab a spot. Air America, one he’d never heard of, but the timing was right. They’d had an hour to pack and brief Mrs. Suarez—
no problema, señor
, Isabel is
muy contenta conmigo
, nobody find us, you go with your wife—then they would run by Janice’s apartment for a few things on the way to the airport.
Going to Omaha required connections, they had discovered: the next flight out of Miami would have stranded them overnight in St. Louis. They’d just managed to make the flight, had found their way to these seats when they had been joined by the two, another pair of last-minute arrivals.
As Deal nodded absently, the man reached to pat the arm of his wife, who was engrossed in a crossword puzzle on her lap. The pair looked familiar to him somehow, but he couldn’t imagine where he’d have met them. It was probably their very typicality, he thought. They just looked like familiar people.
“Iris’d like it a lot better if it was, wouldn’t you, hon?”
The woman flicked her eyes up at her husband, held her gaze there a moment, her lips pressed together as if she were considering some annoying stranger. Finally, she went back to her crossword without comment. The tall man leaned toward him, speaking in a nasal Mid-western twang that carried easily above the roaring engines of the plane.
“She hates to fly. I showed her all the statistics, how you could get killed a lot sooner riding in a car, but it doesn’t mean anything to her. All she can think about is how far it is to fall.”
The woman glanced at her husband again, her eyes widening momentarily. It might have been fear, Deal thought, but the expression could have as easily been a flash of fury.
“Leave the people alone, Dexter,” she said. Something in her tone suggested that a death threat lurked just behind the words.
“It’s all right,” Deal said.
“She’s just unhappy to be leaving My-yam-ah,” Dexter said. “Had to pack up her bikini and head back to the snow.”
Deal stared at the woman, whose eyes were fixed on her crossword. She had a hat pinned to her head, wore a dotted Swiss dress buttoned to the neck, opaque hose, a pair of heavy black shoes. He supposed it was possible she owned a bikini, but he suspected something more on the order of a knee-and elbow-length garment from the 1920s.
“Now me,” Dexter said, “I say hold on as long as you can.” He pinched fabric at the knees of his slacks, jiggled the pantlegs for Deal to see: white polyester, some kind of design printed in primary colors. Birdie, bogey, par, he read. Red socks. White shoes. Red shirt with white piping around the sleeves and collar.
“You’re a golfer?” Janice asked, turning from the window she’d been staring out of.
“He wouldn’t know which end of the stick,” the man’s wife said. She hadn’t lifted her eyes from the puzzle.
“Club,” Dexter said. “It’s club, not stick.”
She looked up at him, tapping the puzzle with her pen. “Right here,” she said, coolly. “‘Duffer’s weapon,’ forty-two across. Five letters, starts with s, t, those are for sure. You make club work with that, I’ll
buy
you a golf course.” She turned to Deal. “He’s going through a second childhood, you’ll have to excuse him.”
“I didn’t get a chance to play any while I was down,” Dexter said, ignoring her, “but I saw plenty of it around the hotel.” He nodded pleasantly at his wife. “I told Mama it looked like a heck of a lot of fun. We’re about to retire, you see. Man’s got to look for things to keep him busy.”
“You don’t look that old,” Janice said.
“Thank you kindly.”
Deal glanced at her, then back at Dexter, who was beaming at her comment. It was true, Deal thought: when you looked closely, you realized he couldn’t be more than sixty. It was the same with his wife. They simply gave a certain appearance of age.
“Excuse me,” Iris said abruptly, snapping her seat belt open. “I’ve got to get out.” She tossed her crossword onto the empty seat across from her, started past her husband.
“It’s okay,” he said, struggling up from his seat. “Gotta go myself.” He stood aside as she brushed past, shooting him a withering glance.
Dexter waited until she had crossed the galley space, made her way into one of the tiny rest rooms at the back of the plane. “I’m sorry about Iris,” he said. “She just hates an airplane to death.”
“It’s okay,” Deal said, and watched the man make his own way off.
Janice waited until the second rest-room door had clacked shut to turn to him. “How long is this flight?” she said.
Deal checked his watch. “Another couple of hours to Chicago. We change planes there.”
“I say we change seats while they’re gone,” she said.
Deal smiled. “I thought you were enjoying the old guy.”
“Force of habit,” she said. “If you grow up in the Midwest you develop this compulsion—you’ll take any opportunity to say inane things to perfect strangers.”
She was gathering up her things: a newspaper, a package of mints, a
People
magazine she’d found in the gift shop by the gate.
“You mean it? You’re really going to move.”
She glanced up at him. “Do I mean it? It’s like being locked in a room with my parents.”
She was bending over now, rummaging under the seat opposite for her purse and carry-on.
“Janice…” Deal was still protesting as she rose and pushed past him.
“Tell them I got claustrophobic,” she said. “That’s pretty close to the truth.”
***
“I can’t believe we did this,” Deal said. He had followed Janice halfway up the main cabin of the plane, trying not to look back when he heard the rest-room doors clack open behind him.
“Get a grip,” Janice said. She’d already arranged herself, had stowed her bags, her reading materials. She offered him a mint from her package. “A train makes a lot of stops, doesn’t it? They’ll just think we got off somewhere.”
“Real funny,” he said.
“Let me ask you something,” she said. “You’d rather sit there and trade quips with old stoneface than have a conversation with me?”
“We could have had our own conversation,” he said stubbornly.
“Deal, I grew up with these people. They are insidious. You cannot ignore them. You clear your throat and they answer you. You cough and they give you the name of their doctor…”
“Okay, okay,” he said. He held up his hand, trying not to laugh.
“You don’t know them. You don’t want to know them. But they want to know you. They’re like those pod people. They won’t be happy until they’ve reduced you to the level of cornmeal, until you’re sitting there babbling like they are…”
Janice was fighting laughter now and Deal was doubled over in silent guffaws. They went on that way for minutes, like a couple of guilty kids sharing a joke during church service, until finally a stewardess leaned over to ask if she could get them anything.
Deal opened his mouth, trying to find the breath to answer, when Janice could stand it no more. She gave a shriek of laughter and Deal followed suit. “I guess you’ve already had enough,” the stewardess said, turning huffily away.
It only egged them on further, and it was a good five minutes before Deal could turn to Janice without exploding into laughter. His sides ached, and he wiped tears from his eyes.
“Christ,” he said, still fighting to get his breathing under control. “I don’t know how long it’s been since I laughed like that.”
“A long time,” she said, nodding in agreement. She blew her nose heartily, dabbed at her eyes. The stewardess was moving down the aisle, her gaze studiously averted. Janice reached out, caught her by the arm.
“Could we have something after all—a couple glasses of seltzer, maybe?” She turned to Deal for confirmation and he nodded.
“Of course,” the stewardess said, all smiles again.
“She just wanted to be of service,” Janice said, watching the woman walk off.
“We have to get off in front of those people, Janice.”
Janice nodded absently. “It is a difference between you and me,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“You do like to please people.”
“You say it like it’s a fault.”
She shrugged. “Not always. But sometimes you have to put yourself first.”
Deal wondered if it was bait. Was he supposed to pick up on it, grind on her as if she’d walked out on them…or perhaps give her the chance to explain once more why she’d had to leave? Neither possibility enticed him. “My old man was the champ at that,” Deal said. “I guess I just got in the habit of working the other way.”
She nodded, gave him the hint of a smile. Maybe he’d passed the test. “That’s what it comes down to, isn’t it?” she said. “Our parents. Still controlling us, right from the grave.”
“Not my old man,” he said. “He’s got a gin game going somewhere, a drink in one hand, the other on some babe. He couldn’t care less what I was up to.”
“Keep talking, Deal. You’re proving my point.”
“You think I’m on my way to Omaha because I want to please somebody?” He stared at her, daring her to rise, this time.
She dropped her gaze. “I think you’re doing it because it’s the right thing to do,” she said quietly.
“Good,” Deal said. “That makes two of us, then.”
***
As it turned out, they were off the plane and lost in the bowels of the Chicago airport without another glimpse of the couple. Deal imagined them making their way along an ever-narrowing route, from airline, to commuter, to rail or bus connections, until they were finally bumping down a gravel road in a round-fendered pickup, Dexter in his golf getup, Iris still working her crossword in the failing light, a Gothic farmhouse looming up ahead.
Meanwhile, he and Janice had to change terminals, ride an underground tram to do it, cruise along an otherworldly conveyor walkway past some kind of neon sculpture on the walls, an assemblage that pulsed and wavered, hidden speakers pumping out random gongs and chimes and unintelligible mutterings as they whisked along.
“And people think Miami is weird?” Deal said. “I thought this was the Midwest, for Chrissakes.”
Janice rolled her eyes. “Everywhere is weird, Deal. You’ve been working too hard.”
“What do you think something like that costs?” he said, pointing at the neon sculpture. They’d come to the end of the moving walkway and Janice had to guide him off, pull him toward a steep escalator up ahead.
“It’s an example of art in a public place,” she said. “Your tax dollars hard at work.”
He was still staring over his shoulder when she pulled him onto the escalator.
***
“Well, look who’s here,” Dexter said. He turned from the boarding counter, pointing as Deal and Janice hurried from the concourse. “Iris, lookee here.”
Iris glanced up from a pamphlet she was reading, gave a cursory nod. “You folks headed to Omaha?” Dexter said. “’Fraid we’ve got one of those puddle-jumpers to ride in,” he added. He nodded out a window where a tiny propeller-driven plane sat, old snow and dust kicking up in swirls.
“Might as well hold off a bit,” Dexter said as Deal and Janice headed toward the gate, where an attendant was already sending passengers through. “I like to sit in back, case of we go down.”
“We don’t mind,” Deal said, guiding Janice on ahead. “We’re not afraid of flying.”
***
He might have spoken too soon, Deal thought as he clutched the armrest of his cramped seat tightly. They were climbing through a bank of solid gray clouds, and he watched in disbelief as ice steadily accreted on the wings outside. It built up to an eight-inch sheet before huge chunks began to shear away, bouncing off the fuselage with heavy thumps.
“Good Lord,” Janice hissed, her hand clamping his arm tightly.
Deal could see Dexter at the corner of his vision, one row back and across the aisle, legs and arms jutting from the tiny single seat. No telling where Iris had ended up, though she’d be on a bus if she had any sense.
Dexter grinned and nodded in his direction. If there was any comfort in it, the roar of the engines and the pounding outside made any thought of conversation absurd.
Before the ice could build up appreciably again, they popped out of the clouds and the roar of the engines abated. Janice turned to him, relieved. “I remember now why I moved to Florida,” she said.
Deal nodded, clasping her hand in his. She glanced down, and for a moment he wondered if she was going to pull away. Then she gave him a wan smile and settled back in her seat, closing her eyes. It was a picture, he thought—just looking, you’d have to think all was well.