“Oh, man, I'm screwed.”
Everyone hates the bearer of bad news, and Tram shot me a mean stare. I felt bad for him. There was no greater shame than letting your kid down.
“I've got an idea,” I said.
His eyes turned hopeful.
“Tell your wife you only drank one of the beers,” I suggested. “Then you realized you were making a mistake, and tossed the rest out.”
Tram gave it some thought.
“Yeah, that will work,” he said.
“But you still need to be apologetic.”
“And admit I was wrong.”
“Yes.”
He studied the photographs some more.
“Where did you find these?” he asked.
“In the motel room of the man who snatched Shannon,” I said. “Someone sent them to him on his computer, along with a lot of information about you and your wife and daughter.”
“How the heck could someone know all that?”
“That's what I want to find out. I want you to reconstruct what you did this morning, from the moment you took your daughter out in your pickup.”
The fire's flames illuminated Tram's face as he tried to reconstruct his morning.
“I took Shannon to McDonald's, bought a six-pack of beer, drove around for a while, then came back here and picked up Peggy Sue. No, wait. I bought the six-pack first, then went to McD's.”
He lifted the photograph, counting the beers left in the six-pack.
“Heck. I know where this was taken,” he said.
“You do?”
“Yessir. On the drive-through at McD's.”
“Are you sure?”
“Uh-huh. You know the expression ‘Your first beer is your best beer’? Well, my first beer this morning was sitting on line at McD's drive-through, waiting for my grub. I placed my order, popped a brewski, and got a buzz on.”
Tram impressed me as a guy who would remember something like this, and I stared deeply into the fire. Julie and Carmella Lopez had gone to a McDonald's restaurant in Fort Lauderdale the morning that Carmella disappeared. I'd found another link.
“They must've been listening to me inside the restaurant,” Tram went on. “I called my sister on my cell and told her what we were doing today.”
“You think someone inside the restaurant was listening through the order box,” I said.
“Yessir,” Tram said. “I bet they photographed me through that thing, and listened to me as well. That must be how they knew all that stuff.”
I continued to stare into the flames. There was something wrong with Tram's explanation. I'd seen the order stations inside McDonald's restaurants, and they were right by the kitchens. An employee couldn't spy on cars in the drive-through without other employees noticing. I was still missing a piece of my puzzle, but I suspected that a trip to the local McDonald's would answer my questions.
“Thanks. You've been really helpful,” I said.
“No problem,” Tram said.
I handed him the brochure. “Does your daughter know about this?”
“Heck, yeah. She found them all. Bet you didn't see the one in front of us.”
I shook my head, and Tram pointed at the protective metal screen covering the fireplace. A hidden silhouette of Mickey Mouse was carved into it. Mickey was waving to us, and I found myself nodding. If I'd learned anything as a cop, it was that you had to search for the good and bad in this world. It was all out there, if you knew where to look.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Tram walked me to the lodge's entrance. I asked him the location of the McDonald's where he'd bought breakfast, and he said it was in Kissimmee. When he described the landmarks, I realized it was a stone's throw from Sleep amp; Save. I started to leave.
“I need to ask you something,” Tram said.
I stopped in the doorway and waited for him to finish.
“I never got your last name,” he said. “Folks back home in Douglas are gonna want to know who you are when I tell them this story.”
The idea that this kid was going to be telling stories about me made me smile.
“It's Carpenter,” I said.
“That works.”
I hesitated, unsure of what he meant.
“Carpenters fix things,” he said.
I smiled at him. I'd come to the conclusion that he wasn't a criminal, just a young guy prone to making dumb decisions, and I hoped that this experience had taught him a lesson. Then I went outside.
A wet kiss on my wrist turned my head to the sky. Another storm had rolled in, and I reached my car just as the downpour began. Buster sat on the passenger seat, looking ready to call it a day.
I found the weather on the radio. A storm front was parked in the Gulf, and heavy rain was predicted for several days. It was the price you paid for living in the tropics. I left Disney unable to see twenty feet in front of my car.
Pulling into the Kissimmee McDonald's twenty minutes later, I was shocked to see it closing for the night. I entered to find a black kid wearing a hairnet mopping the floors. He shot me an annoyed look, and I stood on the mat with water dripping off my hair.
“We're closed,” the kid said.
“The sign says ‘Open 24 hours.’”
“I have to mop up,” he explained. “Don't want customers coming in and slipping on the wet floor. Then we'll get sued.”
“When will you reopen?”
“Once the night manager gets here.”
“When will that be?”
The kid smirked, leaving me to believe the night manager would show up whenever he pleased.
“I need your help,” I said.
The kid rested his chin on the end of his mop and gazed at me reflectively. He looked seventeen but had the eyes of a much older man. His name tag said Jerome.
“What's this about?” Jerome asked.
“I need to ask you a couple of questions. I'm doing some work for Disney. It's concerning a little girl who was abducted in the Magic Kingdom theme park earlier today.”
Jerome looked me up and down. He would have made a helluva poker player, because I couldn't read what he was thinking.
“No offense, but are you
It took me a moment to catch his drift. Disney didn't allow long hair or scruffy clothes on anyone in their ranks, and I had both. I extracted a dog-eared Broward County Sheriff's Department business card from my wallet and shoved it into Jerome's hand. His facial expression didn't change, so I showed him my driver's license. He studied the names on each, then handed both back.
