answer he was seeking.
“Yeah, Roy?” he said after a moment. “Yeah, it’s Ben Storm. Not much, you?… Yeah, so listen, I need a favor. Can you check somethin’ for me? Yeah, I need status on an inmate… No, don’t have his number, but you’ll probably remember ‘im. Uh-huh… Name’s Eldon Andrew Porter… Yeah, thought you would… Yeah. Not a problem. Yeah, on my cell. Great. Bye.”
As Ben ended the call, the waitress came toward the table, expertly maneuvering through the crowd with a drink-burdened serving tray held above her shoulder. In a practiced motion, she swooped it down and plucked a tumbler full of whisky from it then slid the glass in front of Felicity. Next, she placed a pint glass of beer in front of Ben. In a reverse motion, she hefted the platter back up to her shoulder and regarded my friend.
“Cold, fizzy, and well, yellow-colored,” she said, reaching with her free hand into the change pouch around her waist and withdrawing a straw. She tossed it in front of Ben and shot him a smile as she walked off. “Enjoy.”
“Jeez…” he muttered, shaking his head at me.
“So you don’t really think Porter has escaped or something do you?” I asked abruptly, the edginess in my voice was obvious even to me.
“Don’t know,” he replied. “But we’ll know shortly. Roy’s an old friend of mine, and he works for the Missouri Department of Corrections.”
“But wouldn’t there have been some kind of bulletin or alert or something if he’d escaped?” I pressed.
“Depends, Row.”
“That doesn’t make me feel very secure, Ben.”
“Listen, Kemosabe, don’t get all worked up,” he told me. “I’m just checkin’ to be sure. C-Y-A and all that shit.”
“Yeah, okay.”
I knew that my tone was less than convincing. My friend shook his head then brushed the straw out of the way and lifted the pint of beer. After a long swallow, he rested it back on the coaster and watched it intently as he slowly spun the glass.
“So you said on the phone that you were movin’ when Felicity went all la-la,” he finally said, bludgeoning the stalled conversation in a new direction with a blunt segue.
“Yeah.” I nodded. “Kind of. When she seized, her foot slipped off the brake, and we started into the intersection.”
“Not too fast then?”
“Not really I don’t guess.” I shrugged. “But I still probably didn’t do the transmission any favors.”
“How so?”
“When I popped it into gear.”
“I don’t follow.”
“To stop the Jeep,” I explained. “I switched off the key and then popped it into gear. Kind of an abrupt stop, but it worked.”
“I thought you said you weren’t movin’ too fast?”
“We weren’t really. Just rolling more or less.”
“Just rollin’?”
“Yeah, why?”
He creased his forehead. “Then why didn’t ya’ just pull the emergency brake?”
I closed my eyes and hung my head in sudden embarrassment as the mental picture of the Jeep’s center console painted itself in my brain.
Ben looked back at me, his face spread into a grin, and I could tell that he was already formulating a wisecrack. Fortunately for me, his cell phone began its low warble, cutting him off before he could utter the taunt. He motioned me to wait and answered it. “Storm. Yeah. That was fast. Yeah. Yeah… You’re sure? Okay, thanks, Roy. I owe you one… Uh-yeah,” my friend hesitated for a moment before continuing, “Yeah, I’ll tell ‘er. Bye.”
A slightly pained look crept in to replace his grin, and I wasn’t sure why, but for some reason, I could tell that it came from something other than the query about Eldon Porter.
I raised an eyebrow and dipped my head at him. “All good?”
“Yeah,” he replied as he fumbled to put the cell phone back on his belt, finally giving up and dropping it on the table in front of him. “Porter is locked away safe and sound, preaching to all the other wingnuts in the population.”
“Great.” I frowned.
“Hey, a coupl’a minutes ago you were getting’ ready to panic on me,” he observed. “What’s up?”
“No I wasn’t.”
“Yeah, right. What’s the deal?”
“Okay, maybe I was,” I admitted. “A little. But I guess maybe I was still just hoping for an easy explanation to all of this.”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “Woulda been nice, but look at it this way; at least he’s not on the street.”
“True. So since we’ve ruled that out, maybe it is the Brittany Larson thing after all,” I offered with a shake of my head, not really believing it myself. “But that wouldn’t explain why I was having the seizures in January.”
“No, it wouldn’t,” he agreed.
I picked up my pint of Stout and took a sip then set it back on the table. The murmur of the crowd was ramping up to a dull roar now, and I looked out of the booth, glancing around at the milling bodies.
Across the way, the bar itself was stacked two deep with people waiting for drinks or simply inhabiting their claimed bit of real estate at the polished, wooden counter. I knew it should be approaching eight, and the band would be playing soon. At that point, we would be unable to carry on any kind of worthwhile conversation, not to mention the fact that I was in no mood for singing along with drinking songs. I suspected that Felicity no longer was either.
I scanned the wall, looking for a clock, and my eyes came to rest on the television set perched on a shelf above the rows of liquor bottles. I watched as a news update filled the screen, absently taking note of the ever- changing price of gasoline.
When the tube flickered and displayed the picture of a twenty-something young woman inset over the shoulder of the anchor, my heart skipped a beat. Beneath the photo was the caption, Tamara Linwood.
Neurons fired in rapid succession, flooding my brain with a not-so-distant memory as I stared at the picture.
Gruesome discovery.
Badly decomposed human arm.
Shallow grave.
Body may be that of Tamara Linwood, the grade school teacher who disappeared from the parking lot of Westview Shopping Mall back in January…
The memory of the phantom metallic tang tickled the back of my tongue, and I closed my eyes. I definitely wasn’t going to call it easy, but there it was- the explanation for at least a part of my day.
And, I was absolutely certain that I didn’t like it.
CHAPTER 9:
“Tamara Linwood,” I said aloud, turning my attention back to Ben.
“Do what?” he asked with a puzzled look.
“Tamara Linwood,” I repeated, pointing at the screen across the room. “On the TV.”
He twisted in his seat and shot a quick glance over his shoulder. The news anchor had already moved on to the next story, but my friend managed to pick up on what I’d meant anyway. “What? You mean the missing teacher?” he asked. “So, what about ‘er?”
“That’s why the seizures. She’s got to be what this is all about.”
“How do you figure?”
