Showed an ID, left a cash deposit. You have a pen and something to write on?”
I had a green-and-white push-button pen in my pocket. The word RHINOCORT was in green against the white. I had no recollection of picking it up. Everybody advertises on pens, gives them away. I haven’t bought a pen in five years. I found an envelope in the top drawer and said,
“Ready.”
“Georgia plates. License number 66884J. Now, you’ve got three questions, right?”
“Right,” I said as Ames, with a handful of junk, stood surveying the room to see what items larger than a paper clip he might have missed.
“Gonna get a broom,” he said.
I covered the mouthpiece of the phone and said, “DQ will lend you one.”
Ames nodded and left as Harvey said,
“Question one: How many days did she rent it for? Answer: Ten days. Question two: Where did she plan to return it? Answer: Back at the airport right here in town. Question three: Whose ID did she show? Answer: Caroline Wilkerson. Driver’s license. You ever see a photo of Caroline Wilkerson in the Herald- Tribune?”
“I’ve seen the woman up close, this morning.”
“I matched computer images from IDs of the two women,” said Harvey. “You’d have to be blind to think it was the same woman.”
“So,” I said, looking at my watch.
“So, someone with the touch, knowledge and a halfway powerful computer and a color printer could strip in a photograph of Melanie Sebastian over Caroline Wilkerson’s and then relaminate.”
“You know people who could do it?” I asked.
“I know some and I’m sure there are a lot more out there. I don’t think we’ll track her that way.”
“Thanks, Harvey.”
“I’ll keep looking,” he said.
“You’ve done enough.”
“This is fun. I need fun.”
“Then have fun. Call me if you turn anything up.”
We hung up and I looked at my wife’s nameplate. I remembered it on her door. I remembered her walking out to greet me with a smile, her hair pulled back, her… Question: How did Melanie get Caroline Wilkerson’s driver’s license?
I did know a lot now. Melanie Sebastian was driving a new red Neon. She was probably still within driving range of Sarasota unless she planned to: (a) drive back from somewhere two or three days away; or (b) return the car to some other Budget office. I was sure Harvey would keep track of that. And (c) was my favorite: She was still in the immediate area. Why?
I reached for the phone and the Melanie Sebastian file, which Dwight had gone through and dumped. It didn’t look as if he had taken anything. Why should he? He wasn’t looking for Melanie. I was. He was looking for Beryl Tree. I dialed the number for Caroline Wilkerson. It rang six times and the answering machine came on. It was her voice. The message was simple: “Please leave a message.” I did. I asked her to call me. Just in case she had tossed my card, I left my number.
Ames returned, broom and dustpan in hand, and went to work. I watched him. Once he had been worth about three million dollars, by his reckoning. Now he was cleaning the floors and tables in a bar and sweeping my floor and he said he was content. I believed him.
“Ames, I’ve got to find Beryl Tree.”
“She’s not at Flo’s?”
“Ran away. Her husband tracked her down.”
I pointed to the mess to indicate how he’d located her.
“We’ve got to find her,” he said as he swept. “I like the lady.”
“Then we better start looking for her and her daughter.”
“Adele,” he said.
“Adele,” I repeated.
“Nice name,” said Ames. “You feel up to it? You look kind of sickly.”
“Dwight came to see me last night.”
I got up, rubbed my sore stomach.
“Bad man,” said Ames, sweeping the floor.
“Very bad. I’ve got to get myself in shape fast,” I said. “I’ve got a date tonight.”
Ames stopped sweeping and looked at me. Just looked.
“A lady?”
“A lady,” I said, tucking the envelope with the tag number of the red Neon Melanie Sebastian had rented into my shirt pocket.
“You sure you’re up to it?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “But I’m going to try.”
I looked at him and he looked at me and then at my wife’s name plaque.
“It’s worth trying,” he said. “You know what trying does?”
“What?”
“Keeps a man alive,” he said.
7
Beryl Tree could be in any one of five dozen motels in Sarasota, not to mention more in Bradenton. It would take too long to find her that way. No, the best way to find Beryl was to find Dwight or Adele or both.
I had called Carl Sebastian and told him I had some news.
“Yes?” he said eagerly. “Where is she?”
“I’d like to come by and see you,” I said.
“Sure, of course, but I have a dinner meeting tonight. Let’s see… It’s almost four. Can you be at the bar in Marina Jack in half an hour?”
“Half an hour,” I said.
He hung up and I got dressed. I wasn’t sure of how I should dress for my date with Sally Porovsky, but considering what I had in mind, I settled for clean blue slacks, a light blue button-down shirt and a red knit tie. Then I headed for Marina Jack’s.
It took me a little over five minutes to drive to the parking lot, find a space between a blue Mercedes and a digesting pelican, and head down the pier. The docks jutting off to the right and left of the pier were reasonably full of small to medium pleasure boats that bobbed with the tide. Gulls swooped, cackled and searched for food. A few pelicans sat on the dock or on empty boats, wings tucked into their chests, scanning the water without moving their heads.
A pelican circled above, saw something and dived awkwardly with a plop into the water just beyond a white boat with the name Dead Souls painted on its stern. Someone, I think it was Dave, told me that pelicans keep their eyes open when they dive and the eyes of the bird aren’t protected. Eventually, if they live long enough, pelicans go blind.
In front of me, in the circle in front of the restaurant, valets were parking cars, moving around cars that were already parked to wherever cars could be parked. I walked up the steps behind a man, woman and teenage girl. The girl walked the sullen walk of a teen who found neither her parents nor her prospects interesting. The walk said that she planned to keep letting her parents know that she did not plan to enliven dinner with her wit. I read a lot into the walk and when I moved past them while the father checked in at the reservation podium, I got a look at the girl’s face and knew I was right. The girl was just about the age of Adele Tree. I wondered where Adele was and who she might be having dinner with.
I wondered how the couple in front of me would react if the sullen girl was missing the next morning. Anguish, yes. Confusion, yes. Denial, yes. And guilt, always guilt. You can tell yourself it wasn’t your fault. A
