Dying Embers (11 page)

“Marry a detective,” I told her.

“Maybe I'll just buy a cat,” she said. “Don't you worry about Wendy?”

“Sure,” I said, “but I married a detective and it's still hard. I can't imagine being married to a civilian.”

The ticket agent asked for my driver's license. I had to assure him that I had packed my own bags and that they had not been out of my sight.

“No, I wasn't carrying a bag for anyone else,” I told him, but he stopped sleepwalking when I said, “Yes, I'm transporting a firearm.” The low buzz of conversation around me stopped and the ticket agents on either side of mine stopped and stared at us both.

“It's unloaded and locked in a steel case inside a locked hard sided bag,” I said. “That's what they told me to do on the telephone. Do you want me to get it out and show it to you?”

“No,” he said, his eyes wide. “Which bag is it in?”

“The green one,” I said.

“Do you have any ammunition?”

“Magazine and a couple of spares,” I said. “Locked in a steel case separate from the firearm, but in the same suitcase.”

He tagged my luggage. The green suitcase got an extra tag; a long red and white paper loop that repeated the word “
FIREARM.”

“Gate eleven,” he said. He assembled my ticket and handed it over. “Your flight is already loading.”

I departed, and the low buzz of conversation returned to the counter. I could feel the heavy weight of eyes on my back.

A man stood at the side of the check-in counter, watching the crowd instead of the attendant at the desk. He looked to be in his early forties, decked out in a white cable-knit sweater over a blue broadcloth shirt, gray slacks, and a pair of those black loafers with little tassels like attorneys wear.

“Are you Mr. Dunphy?” I asked as I approached. I switched my briefcase to my left hand and offered him my right.

“Yes,” he said as he took my hand and gave it a limp shake. “You must be Mr. Hardin. I was afraid you wouldn't make it.”

I took my hand back and gave my ticket to the check-in clerk. “Had to wrap up a few things at the office,” I said.

“I was expecting someone in western attire,” he said. A smirk washed over his face.

“They wouldn't let me bring my hoss,” I said.

“I need to see some identification,” he said as he reached through the neck of his sweater to the pocket of his shirt. I showed him my detective license, and he handed me a “Platinum” credit card with my name embossed across the bottom. “Whatever this is must be very important,” he said. “That's our corporate account.” His face flushed.

“I don't have to worry about some sales clerk cutting this in half?”

“Buy the store and fire them.”

“A dream come true.”

“What exactly is it that you are doing for us?” he asked.

“I'm sorry if this is awkward,” I said, “but I'm to report to Mr. Lambert.”

The attendant tore a page out of my ticket, put the rest back in the folder and walked over to the jetway door. “Mr. Hardin, you have to board now,” he said and held out my papers.

“Thank you for coming down,” I said.

“Yeah,” said Dunphy, grim-faced. He added, “Good luck,” and strolled off with his hands in his pants pockets.

The door shut behind me as soon as I was in the jetway. I had an aisle seat in the first class cabin. Since no one had the window, the stewardess let me switch. I watched Kent County disappear below the clouds without seeing Wendy's car.

I opened my briefcase and started through photocopies of the missing operative's daily reports. Jacob Anderson, a.k.a. Jack Anders, filed his dailies via e-mail. All were written in the third person. The first report— falsely labeled day fifty-one—began, “A new employee by the name of Jack Anders was observed working as a janitor and company messenger,” so that if some absent-minded executive left a report lying about, the operative wouldn't be toasted.

“Jack” had been under for five and a half weeks when his reports stopped. He began roping, gathering information, in the traditional fashion, bowling and drinking after hours with employees. His beginning reports detailed matters of time clock violations, petty thefts, and questions of employee morale. His assigned target was the research and development department and the leak of proprietary information to BuzzBee Batteries, which was challenging Lambert's patents.

Anders had gravitated to an engineer he identified with a cryptonym,
A4PR, by volunteering to help with a roofing job on the engineer's cottage. While doing the weekend chore he learned of the engineer's hobby, collecting old movie posters. Jack hit the library for a little background study and he and the engineer were soon spending off hours scrounging old movie houses in small-town Wisconsin.

Jack's last report revealed that the engineer had been asking if security searched the trash that he carried out at night. Jack characterized the conversation as “cheap talk” over beer and reported that Jack Anders was among the persons observed at a wedding rehearsal party for the engineer's daughter.

I locked the reports back in my briefcase and walked through the curtain to get to the restroom. Seated halfway down the aisle, on the right, his seat reclined and his eyes closed, sat the Fidel Castro-looking dude who'd followed Scott Lambert out of the Yesterdog restaurant.

“O
OPS
! S
ORRY.
E
XCUSE ME
!
Pardon me. You, too, pal!”

I was the first one off the airplane—the first passenger thanked for flying Avatar Air and ordered to have a nice day.

Just past the metal detector I found a shop in a glass cubicle that sold snacks, magazines, and souvenirs. I grabbed a mint green T-shirt off a rack near the door. Looked big enough, no time to check the tag. I flopped it on the counter and handed the clerk my client's Platinum Card.

The name tag on her powder-blue smock read, “Betty.” No last name. Just plain Betty was a pear-shaped matron with rouge circles on her cheekbones, hair bleached white around her mouth and chin, and a red wig so frizzy I was afraid to look at her shoes. I pulled off my suit coat, my tie, and my shirt, and dropped them on the floor at my feet. Betty stood with the credit card in her hand and watched me with an open mouth. I pulled the T-shirt over my head.

Passengers from my airplane began walking by the shop toward the baggage carousel. Western-style straw hats teetered in misshapen stacks on the shelf to my right. I grabbed one and plopped it on my head with the
brim low over my eyes. Someone patted me lightly on the back. “What?” I asked and turned around—nobody there, but I got tapped again. I reached behind my head and found a fake ponytail sewn to the headband. Through the glass wall, I saw my bearded traveling companion coming down the hall.

I turned my head back and forth, and the ponytail brushed my back and shoulders as it wagged from side to side. The clerk flashed a bonded denture smile.

“Cool hat,” I said. “I'll take it. Got a bag?”

“Are you hiding from someone?” she asked. Her smile melted. I made quick glances to the left and right and leaned forward, beckoning her with a finger. She leaned toward me and turned her ear in my direction. I whispered, “I'm a secret agent, Darlin.'”

“Betty,” she whispered. She straightened up and studied me, her face blank. I gave her a wink and one sly nod of my head. She smiled again. I could see Fidel approaching the crowd collecting at the baggage claim area.

She asked, “Is this like one of those murder mystery tours?”

“Absolutely.”

“I went on one of those, too,” she said, “but it was a train ride.”

“Really? Where's it out of?”

“Ashland,” she said. “They do them after the fall color tours.” She swiped the Light and Energy card through the reader. “I know just what you need,” she said, and produced a pair of clip-on sunglasses from under the counter.

“I'll take 'em,” I said. I snapped them onto my wire-rimmed glasses and everything got dim and green.

“Oh, dear,” she said studying the credit card reader, “it says your card's invalid.”

“Swipe it again,” I said. “It's a brand-new card.”

She swiped. We waited. Fidel stood with his back to me, watching baggage swirl past him. My baggage was up, but no green suitcase yet.

She shook her head. “I'm sorry.” She handed the card back. “It says, ‘Try another tender.' Perhaps you have another card.”

“How much is this?”

“Forty-two eighty-seven.”

“You're putting me on!”

She shrugged. “This is an airport. It's like buying candy at the movies.”

“Disposable razors?”

“A dollar-ninety-nine.”

“I'll take it.” I put the card in my wallet, pulled my money clip out of my pocket, and peeled off two twenties and a five. I thumbed what I had left. Seven bucks. I picked my suit coat, shirt, and tie off the floor and folded them on the counter. Betty gave me my change and stashed my stuff in a big brown plastic bag. I departed, leaving my bearded friend watching the baggage swirl.

In the restroom I wet down my moustache and shaved it off. My upper lip looked as big as a billboard. Wendy would be thrilled. She never liked my cookie duster—said it was too bristly. The T-shirt had “QUAD CITIES” emblazoned in white over a stern-wheel riverboat.

Back in the concourse Fidel loitered near the baggage carousel and pretended to ignore my luggage—which still did not include the green suitcase. I returned to the shop. Betty said, “You look younger.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Got one of those disposable cameras?”

“Do you have a computer?”

“Sure.”

“I've got just the thing,” she said, excitement in her voice. She took a carton the size of a pack of cigarettes from under the counter. “It's digital and a bargain too. They make them up in Madison. That's in Wisconsin, but not all that far from here. A good thing, too, because we sell them as fast as we get them in.”

She opened the end of the carton and pulled out a foil-wrapped object with rounded edges. Her fingers seized upon a red pull tab, but she stopped and looked up to me from the object. “I love to do this,” she said. “Are you going to buy it?”

“Is it a camera?”

“Oh, yes, and lots more. It has a clock with a travel alarm, an
AM–FM
radio, and it's a flashlight.”

“Sort of a Swiss Army camera?”

Betty grinned and said, “Since it doesn't need batteries there's room for the rest, and it's light as a feather, too.”

“How does it work without batteries?”

“That's the neat part. Are you sure you want to buy this? I can't open it unless it's sold. Once you open it, it's too big to go back in the box.”

“How much is it?”

“Nineteen ninety-five.”

A man walked up and stood behind me. His reflection was faint in the glass wall behind Betty—male, white, heavyset, and wearing a windbreaker
unzipped over a shirt and tie. He had a magazine and candy bar in his hand.

I gave her my debit card from my wallet. “I'll take it,” I said.

She swiped it through the reader and smiled when the cash register spit out a receipt.

“This is the fun part,” she said and pulled the tab with all the glee and wonder of a child opening a birthday present. Lying open, the flaps of the wrapper revealed what appeared to be a black bar of soap with a lens and shutter device stuck in it.

“That's a camera?”

“Wait,” she said. “It charges up on the light—has a little computer chip to tell it what to do.”

The black blob took on a gray patina and began to swell. I thought of the “monster eggs” I'd bought my grandchildren—drop them in water and they expanded into sponge dinosaurs. This thing rose like a muffin in the oven until it was twice the original size and took on a flat blue cast.

“Now watch,” she said. The man behind me moved to look over my shoulder. “It goes real fast outside but in here you can watch it happen.” A spider web of yellow lines appeared on the camera. The lines widened until the camera was entirely yellow. Luminescent green letters developed forming the message, “SUN POWER DIGITAL and LIGHT AND ENERGY APPLICATIONS, patent pending.”

I shot a glance from the camera to Betty.

“Like magic,” she said. “The salesman told me the company recruited blind workers because these have to be assembled in complete darkness.”

She picked the camera up, turned it over and glanced up at the back wall. I turned to see what had caught her interest, and so did the man behind me. She was studying a clock above the door next to the exit sign. When I turned back, Betty showed me she had set the clock on the back of the camera which shared the same liquid crystal display as the radio tuner.

“The buttons on the back are for the radio and travel alarm. The big one on the top is for the shutter. Isn't that just the neatest thing?”

“Yes, ma'am,” I said and picked up my purchase. It had a strange feel: almost no heft, and the texture of a clay pot. “Betty, would you keep my briefcase behind the counter for a couple of minutes while I go try my camera?”

“Sure,” she said. “You can leave your bag, too, but I go off shift in an hour. Oh, and don't drop the camera. If it chips or cracks, it doesn't work anymore. You can send it back to the manufacturer, but they just send you a new one and your pictures are lost.”

“Plenty of time,” I said. “Thanks a ton.” I put it all on the counter. She tore the receipt off the cash register, put it in the bag, and then set the rest of my stuff on the floor by her feet. I turned and walked out.

“Gimme one of those cameras,” said the man who had been standing behind me.

Fidel junior—he had no gray in his beard and a full head of dark brown hair—picked a single black athletic-style duffle bag off the baggage carousel. It was small enough to have been carried onto the airplane.