your mother.”
And give Melody some piece of mind.
“I want to call my mum and see if she’s all right.”
“I don’t know if we can make overseas calls from the motel. Fred should be able to set it up for us. If necessary, he can patch it through Giganticorp. We can tell him your mother’s been sick. I don’t think we should tell him about the note yet until we have some more information about who it’s from. The writer said not to.”
When they had worked together fighting Communism, they had operated on the premise that they couldn’t trust anyone. That was probably a good approach to follow here.
“How are we going to get that information?”
“After we get to our next stop, I’ll call a guy in D.C. I worked with, see if he’s familiar with any betting syndicates. He’s the only one still working there that I trust.”
“I wish we’d been able to reach my mum.”
“She was probably out in her garden. She has such a beautiful garden. We’ll try again this afternoon.”
“Not too late. There’s an eight-hour time difference. If we call at four it’ll be midnight in England. She likes to get her sleep. If I wake her, she’ll think I’m in trouble.”
Drake was trying to keep Melody from worrying about her mother. Just because she didn’t answer her phone didn’t mean that something had happened to her. However, he wished that she had been home.
It was another beautiful day in Southern California. They ran close to the water because the sand was firmer where the high tide had packed it down. Drake’s back had loosened up just a hair, and they were moving faster today than they had yesterday. Flocks of seagulls rose into the air as they approached, and sandpipers scooted out of the way.
They still weren’t close to the other runners. After Grace started them at the bottom of the cliff-Fred had declined to walk down it-the other nine teams quickly ran away from them and eventually disappeared from view. They ran in a posse, as Fred had said, apparently content to stay together for the time being.
Melody glanced at Drake. “You look a bit more like your old self with the bandage off. Your nose is discolored and swollen, though. I don’t know whether you’ll ever be as beautiful as you were.”
He had taken the bandage off before they started the run. “I was tired of wearing that damned thing. I felt like a cripple. That’s a luxury I can’t afford now. Just don’t hit me in the nose.”
“I really appreciate you not quitting. As least we’re abiding by the terms of the letter. I hope it isn’t too hard on you.”
“I’ll survive. I don’t want anything to happen to your mother. Unfortunately, it’s not a long-term solution. Either of us could twist an ankle at any time and not be able to run at all.” Drake was silent for a minute. “One way to keep my mind off my body is to see what we can deduce. For example, the letter is full of grammatical and spelling errors. It was written by somebody whose English isn’t great. A foreigner.”
“Be careful how you speak about us foreigners. Or, it could be somebody who wants us to think he’s a foreigner. Did you notice the incongruity? Even with all the errors, the typing itself is perfect.”
“No typos except the spelling errors, which are consistent. No cross-outs. No evidence that the typist even used that white liquid they use to cover errors. An experienced typist did it, but not necessarily one who knows proper English. And it looks like it’s been typed on a good typewriter, like an IBM Selectric.”
“You mean the one with the bouncing ball?”
“Right. Most business offices use them.”
“He knew where my mum lives.”
“He knows a lot about you. He’s got connections, whoever he is. He knows where we’re staying. This is not a fly-by-night operation.”
“What about fingerprints?”
“Well, yours and mine are all over the letter. Mine are on the envelope, and I even took notes on it. We didn’t exactly follow good evidence procedure. There may be others, but we can’t go to the police.”
“What did you find out about the messenger?”
“Not much. Not even sex.”
“Like yes or no?”
“Like boy or girl. Whoever it was was apparently young-and nimble. Got away before the desk clerk could note any identifying characteristics.”
CHAPTER 7
Drake and Melody decided that if they were going to find out anything, they needed to get better acquainted with the other people associated with Running California. When they arrived at the motel-courtesy of Peaches, who met them, noted their time when they finished the run, and drove them to the motel, all without saying more than five words-the first people they saw were Tom Batson and his running partner, Jerry Kidd.
Drake invited them to have dinner with Melody and him. They accepted and agreed to meet after Drake had his appointment with a chiropractor. Thirty minutes later Drake returned to the lobby, having showered and changed his clothes. He was able to move a little better-he was becoming slightly less stiff. By the time they finished the run, he might be in the kind of shape he should be in right now-if it didn’t kill him before then. Peaches, his driver, was sitting in the lobby reading a magazine about martial arts.
They walked out to the company car. Drake sat in the passenger side of the front seat. In a nod to the warm weather, Peaches was wearing a summer-weight suit with the jacket on to hide his gun, Drake was sure. Although not as tall as Drake, he was broader, with a bull neck and large head topped with short, dark hair. Drake decided to see if he could get Peaches to talk.
In a conversational tone he asked, “How long have you worked for Giganticorp?”
Peaches made a turn onto the street in front of the motel and glanced at Drake. “Long enough.”
That wasn’t a promising start. “Are you stationed in San Jose?”
“That’s what it looks like.”
“How many employees does Giganticorp have there?”
Peaches looked at Drake as if he thought Drake were trying to pry company secrets from him. Was Giganticorp so private that they didn’t even release employment figures? What could he ask Peaches that wouldn’t be considered confidential? He wanted to ask his real name, but that would sound like an interrogation.
“I guess Giganticorp is a good company to work for.”
When Peaches didn’t say anything at first, Drake wondered whether he had used up his quota of words for the day.
Finally, he said, “It’s a job. Better than some, worse than others, but it keeps beer in the cooler.”
Encouraged that Peaches had uttered more than one sentence at a time, Drake was going to try to keep the conversation going, but at that moment they arrived at the chiropractor’s office. When Peaches drove him back to the motel an hour later, he had retreated into his shell and only grunted in response to Drake’s questions.
“Fred tried to call my mum at noon, but there was still no answer. That would have been eight o’clock at night her time. She should have been home.”
Melody and Drake were waiting in the motel lobby for Tom and Jerry, the runners they were going to have dinner with.
“Did you try again from here?”
“It was too late. I don’t want to call her in the middle of the night there. It would scare her to death. When I was working for the agency, although she didn’t know exactly what I was doing, she suspected enough that she said what she feared most was that call in the middle of the night because something had happened to me.”
