I had part of the answer I needed. “Well, you take it easy,” I said. “Next time I get a chance, I’m gonna try that three hundred.” We shook hands, and Cliff climbed into the car and drove away.
I walked back into the office and up to a desk clerk who had an empty counter. The woman wore a pair of bright-blue reading glasses around her neck on a matching beaded chain. She took them off when I approached.
“How can I help you?” she asked.
“I was trying to locate a car,” I said.
“You want to rent a particular car?”
“I rented a car a couple of weeks ago, and I liked it a lot. I wanted to see if I could rent it again.”
“Unlikely we have that exact car, but we probably have something in the same class. Can I get your driver’s license?”
I was worried she would ask me this. “I don’t have it on me,” I said. “But I know the license plate of the car.”
“I can bring the car up that way, but I can’t rent you anything unless you have a driver’s license on you.”
“I completely understand. Can you at least see if that class of car is here?”
“Sure.”
I gave her the license plate. She typed on her keyboard some and moved her mouse. She shook her head. “Unfortunately, that specific car isn’t here,” she said. “Black Suburban. It’s up in Minneapolis. But I have another car just like it. Different color but same make and model.”
“Color doesn’t matter to me,” I said. “I’ll come back with my license a little later. Thanks for all your help.”
I went back to my car and sat there for a while. Several planes must’ve landed, because a surge of people filed into the office. I continued to watch. Then something caught my eye. There was a special number for something called Club Gold members. I decided to give it a try and called it. The first three agents shut me down, but the fourth was a charm.
“I was hoping you could help me locate an item I left in a car,” I said. “It’s a small flash drive that fell out of my bag. It might’ve fallen between the seats.”
“You’re talking about one of those small storage devices you stick into the computer?” she said.
“Exactly. I have some very important work information on it, and I can’t afford to lose it.”
“We have a number you can call for lost and found,” she said. “Let me get that for you. They can tell you if anything has been turned in.”
“Well, I just returned the car a couple of hours ago,” I said. “So, I’m planning on driving back out to the location to see if it’s there. It’s so small, they could’ve easily missed it when they cleaned the car, especially if it’s under the seat.”
“Going to the location might be your best bet,” she said. “It can take a while for recovered items to show up in the system.”
“Before I go back out there, I was just wondering if the car is still on the premises or if it’s already been rented to someone else.”
“The turnaround shouldn’t be that fast unless they get slammed. Let me check. Can you give me your gold number?”
“It’s stored in my phone, and I’m driving. Can I give you the license plate number, and you can look it up that way?”
“Sure, what’s the tag?”
I gave her the number.
“That’s strange,” she said.
“What’s strange?” I asked.
“When did you say you returned it?”
“A couple of hours ago?”
“To what location?”
“O’Hare Airport.”
“I think you’ve given me the wrong tag number,” she said. “This car was returned to O’Hare almost two weeks ago. Are you Mr. Robert Merriweather?”
“Robert Merriweather?”
“That’s who rented this car and dropped it off at O’Hare.”
“I must’ve copied down the wrong tag number,” I said. “Thanks for all your help. I’ll sort it all out when I get to the facility.”
49
I DROVE STRAIGHT BACK to the office and booted my computer. It was Sunday morning, so traffic was light. I typed Robert Merriweather into the search engine, and it returned over 390,000 hits. I scrolled through the first couple of pages, then gave up. I needed something else to tighten the search. I tried Robert Merriweather Chicago. That cut the results down by twenty-six thousand, but still a near impossible feat.
I sat there staring at the computer screen as if that were going to persuade it to speak the answer to me. I tried a couple of other search engines, but that didn’t help either.
I stared at the computer for a moment, then opened a Google search, but this time I typed Robert Merriweather Chicago, Illinois address. This cut the results in half, but it was still over a hundred thousand. Then something caught my eye. The article headline read Robert Merriweather Donates One Million Dollars to Lunch for All. Largest Single Donation in Organization’s History. I clicked on the article and read about the Healthy Schools Campaign, a small charitable organization whose signature program, Eat Well Live Well, put students front and center in the conversation about the school lunch program. This citywide program encouraged students to create healthy lunches that their peers would enjoy. The student chefs worked with mentors early in the school year, then late in fall had a cook-off at the Bridgeport Art Center, where supporters came and tasted the offerings from the participating schools. A panel of judges ranked the schools, with the first-place team winning a chance to compete in the national competition in Washington, DC.
In the middle of the page there was a picture of Merriweather surrounded by at least twenty children in chef aprons and hats. They stood in an enormous kitchen, with pots and pans hanging above them on a large metal
