The Key Page 14

  “This is the most expensive one. In fact, it’s the honeymoon suite.”

  “People honeymoon at motels in State College, Pennsylvania?”

  “If you play your cards right, we could honeymoon here.”

  “What happens if I play my cards wrong?”

  “You won’t get the honeymoon suite.”

  “But we’d still be honeymooning in State College, Pennsylvania?”

  “It’s a win-win.”

  That made no sense at all, but he opened the door with a flourish, confident in his logic.

  chapter twenty-four

  I t turned out that State College was named State College because it was the home of Penn State University, and it also turned out that the honeymoon suite featured a heart-shaped bed. In addition to being heart-shaped, it vibrated. And as if that weren’t enough, there was a Jacuzzi, too. Not in the bathroom, but right there in the bedroom, across from the heart-shaped bed. And it came stocked with a nice big bottle of Mr.Bubble. A honeymoon in State College, Pennsylvania, might not be so bad.

  We ended up not getting as much sleep as we’d intended, but I felt remarkably well-rested in the morning. I was still a murder suspect at large, but being back on a sure footing with Peter made that seem inconsequential in the larger scheme of things.

  We checked out around nine, I with newly brown hair and Peter wearing a trucker’s cap that he’d purchased without my authorization at Sav-Mart.

  “You look like Ashton Kutcher, circa 2003,” I told him.

  “Who’s Ashton Kutcher?”

  I didn’t know where to start. Besides, if Peter was really that culturally illiterate, he was probably beyond help.

  The first item on our agenda was to find a gas station as the needle on the fuel gage was hovering near the perilously empty mark. We found one on a broad street named, appropriately enough, College Avenue and opted for full-serve since it seemed like what Luisa would have wanted. The attendant complimented the car and our selection of premium unleaded, squeegeed the dead bugs off the windshield with aplomb, and pocketed our healthy tip with a big smile. People were friendly in the Keystone State.

  Next we went in search of pay phones and Internet access. If we hadn’t yet realized that State College was a college town, the presence of a Kinko’s or Kinko’s-equivalent on every other block would have tipped us off. We found one with a pay phone right outside its door and an empty parking space beckoning from across the street. I’d insisted on taking the wheel and was pleased to have the opportunity to combat the malicious rumors about my driving with a demonstration of parallel parking expertise. Peter, to his credit, offered only the occasional pointer, although his patience did seem to be wearing thin on my third, ultimately successful attempt to maneuver the car into the designated space.

  He ducked into a nearby café to get a Diet Coke for me and a coffee for himself while I went directly to the pay phone. The New York office of Luisa’s law firm was sufficiently large and well-equipped to have a 1-800 line, which was particularly convenient in my present circumstances, although I was starting to get used to hoarding quarters. I didn’t even have to talk to a real operator but could instead punch in Luisa’s extension once I reached the main switchboard.

  “How’s my car?” she asked by way of greeting.

  “Peter and I are fine, thank you for asking.”

  “Seriously.”

  “The car is fine. And we just fed it gallons of premium unleaded and had the windshield squeegeed. All by a trained professional.”

  “And you’re letting Peter do the driving?” Normally, this question would have inspired a self-righteous lecture in which I challenged Luisa’s assumption that Peter was a better driver than I. Today, it seemed wiser to opt for the harmless lie.

  “Absolutely.”

  “You’re lying, aren’t you? I can hear it in your voice.” I could almost hear Luisa raising one eyebrow—her preferred method of expressing skepticism—over the phone.

  I’d thought it would be safe enough long distance but clearly not. I tried to change the subject. “What’s going on back there? What’s the update?”

  “I’ll give you the update if you promise to let Peter drive from now on.”

  I crossed my fingers behind my back. “All right, Peter will be the designated driver. So what’s the news? Anything good?”

  “Not really, but since we’re talking about news, you should probably know that you’re it.”

  “What do you mean, I’m it?”

  “The police went public with your name, and you’re in every paper this morning, and on TV, too.”

  For once I was glad to be without my phone. I could only imagine the messages my parents were leaving on it.

  “Don’t worry,” Luisa said, as if she knew what I was thinking. “Emma already called your parents and told them not to panic. And Jane had a long talk with your grandmother about how many children you should have. They agreed on five.”

  “What are they saying? In the papers and on the news?”

  “They’re describing you as ‘wanted for questioning.’ And there’s a picture of you, too.”

  “Which picture?”

  “What do you mean, which picture?”

  “Is it a good picture?”

  “I think it’s from your Winslow, Brown ID. It’s very professional. You’re wearing a suit.”

  “Oh. Do you think you could get them a better one?” The Winslow, Brown picture was sort of blurry, and they hadn’t given me a chance to even smile before they snapped it.

  “Get who a better what?”

  “The press. I mean, if your picture was going to be all over the news, wouldn’t you want to make sure that it was at least a good picture?”

  “I’m going to pretend we’re not having this discussion.”

  “Okay. What else is going on? Did you tell the detectives about Jake trying to kill me last night?”

  She sighed. “We tried, Rachel, we really did. But they’re not biting. Just because they didn’t find you at Emma’s doesn’t mean that they don’t suspect us all of aiding and abetting. Especially since we couldn’t exactly tell them how we found out about Jake shooting at you. It wasn’t the most credibility-building of exercises.”

  My expectations had been low on this front, but it was still disappointing news. “What about the mystery man in the suede jacket? Any news on him?”

  “Hilary checked all of the area emergency rooms but had no luck. However, she’s moved on to Plan B.”

  “What’s Plan B?”

  “She figures that if this man has been following Jake, she’ll be able to locate him by following Jake, as well.”

  I envisioned Hilary following the man following Jake. “It will be like a parade. How will Jake not catch on?”

  “Hilary said she’d be subtle.” I had a feeling that Luisa’s eyebrow had shot up again as she said this.

  “Hil’s never been subtle in her life.”

  “I needed to be here to take your call, and it seemed too risky to have Emma do it since the police still seem to think she was harboring you at her loft, and that only left Jane.”

  “Even if she were ten months pregnant, Jane could be more subtle than Hilary.”

  Now I could almost hear Luisa shrug. “True. But Hilary insisted.”

  “Are you sure there isn’t even a little bit of good news?” Thus far, things were looking sort of dire.

  “I don’t know if this is good, but Jane spoke to her teacher friend and it looks like Naomi Gallagher had an alibi for when Dahlia was attacked, so she’s definitely out of the running.”

  “What kind of alibi?”

  “A Caldecott Parents’ Association meeting. During which Naomi engaged in heated debate with one of the other mothers about uniform hem lengths or something equally controversial. Apparently blows were nearly exchanged. So it’s not as if she slipped out after the meeting started to go attack anyone.”

  “Well, I guess it’s nice to have o
ne loose end tied up.”

  “And in the spirit of tying up loose ends, we were up most of last night going through the TV recordings from the other night, to see if we could figure out what Dahlia had seen.”

  “Anything interesting?”

  “Nothing leaped out at us, unfortunately. But we made a list of the stories. Do you have time for me to read it to you? It’s sort of long.”

  I’d been staring at the door of the copy shop while she spoke, and it presented a handy solution. “Why don’t you fax it to me?”

  “Under what name?”

  I no longer had my Olsen hat for inspiration. “How about Underhill?” I suggested.

  “Why Underhill?”

  “You know. From Fletch.”

  “What’s Fletch?”

  I didn’t know how to respond to this. Luisa had officially trumped the cultural illiteracy of my fiancé. Even taking into consideration that she had grown up on a different continent, her lack of familiarity with the classic works of Chevy Chase was astounding. However, this was not a deficit that could be solved over the phone today. Instead, I gave her the number from the sign on the door and promised to check in later. I hung up just as Peter arrived.

  “Anything?” he asked, handing me a can of soda.

  “Nothing good.”

  He leaned in to kiss me.

  “Except that,” I added.

  I left him at the phone and went inside, where I found the expected bank of computers. I fed a ten-dollar bill into a vending machine to purchase a debit card, selected a station in a quiet corner, inserted my card into the reader, and opened up a Web browser to log into my new e-mail account.

  The account was less than a week old but it had already been discovered by spammers. It took me a few minutes to delete all of the ads for homeopathic aphrodisiacs, after which I was left with two real messages. The first was from Man of the People. That was a relief—I’d been worried that yesterday’s less than gracious response might have alienated him, and I’d since realized that any lead, however tenuous, we could get on Thunderbolt could only help. We needed Man of the People to come through for us.

  His e-mail was, as usual, more cryptic and less informative than I would have liked.

  They killed Gallagher? I hadn’t realized just how dangerous they are. I can’t risk getting you involved in this. I won’t e-mail again. And you should take care, now that we know what they’re capable of.

  Wasn’t Gallagher part of the “they” in the first place? And wasn’t it a little late to be worrying about my involvement?

  “What have you got?” asked Peter, pulling a chair over from another work station.

  I showed him.

  “Well, at least he returned your last e-mail. And at least we know he thinks Gallagher got killed because of this deal.”

  “Sure, but he probably doesn’t know about Jake and Annabel and that side of the story, either.”

  “We should still e-mail him to tell him that we’re on our way to Thunderbolt and ask him to help us get to the bottom of things. If he’s actually involved with Thunderbolt and lives in the area, like we think, maybe he’ll even agree to meet with us in person.”

  But when we sent an e-mail off, saying just that, we got a message back almost instantly, saying something about an Unknown User.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  Peter examined the text of the message and shook his head. “He canceled the account. We can’t e-mail him there anymore.”

  I groaned. “So, we’ve come all this way and now we can’t even contact our most promising source?”

  “We’ll figure something out,” he said. “Besides, it wasn’t like he was ever that promising as a source.”

  “Yes, but at least we had one.”

  “Also true.”

  The other message was from Jake, and that he’d e-mailed me at all was just plain bizarre.

  “What did Jake have to say for himself?” Peter asked.

  “I wasn’t sure if I should open it. Could he have tagged it in some way, so that opening it could tell him where I am?”

  “There are ways to do that, by inserting a code that would communicate back to the original e-mail server, but he would probably need a few programmers to help him do it. It should be fine.”

  I clicked on the Read icon and opened Jake’s message.

  Are you all right? It took me longer to get to the boat basin than I expected, but then you weren’t there. I waited for an hour. What happened? Is everything okay?

  I stared at the words in disbelief. Did Jake actually think that I hadn’t recognized his voice, that I didn’t know that it had been him under that ski mask? Even recognizing that I’d been playing right into his hands for days, he couldn’t possibly think I was still clueless.

  “The nerve of that guy!” said Peter. “He tries to shoot you, and then he tries to pretend it never happened? Who the hell does he think he is?”

  “We should write back and tell him what we think of him and his nerve.”

  “I’d like to show him what I think of him and his nerve.” Peter’s hands had clenched into fists. I found this endearing.

  “But he’s not here, so we should write him back and tell him.”

  “I’d like to, but we shouldn’t, even using the resend service. We don’t want to give him any sense of what you’re up to, even if it’s only checking e-mail.”

  “You’re probably right,” I said, disappointed.

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  “They should have a Kill function on e-mail. You know, Reply, Reply all, Kill, Kill all.”

  “That’s not a bad idea.” He stood up and returned his chair to its original place. “I need to make one more call, and then we’ll hit the road, okay?”

  “Sure,” I said, distracted. I was still fretting about Man of the People while simultaneously fuming about Jake’s e-mail.

  It didn’t occur to me to wonder who Peter could be calling.

  chapter twenty-five

  I lost the coin toss, even after we made it two out of three and then four out of seven, so Peter was at the wheel when we left State College behind. As co-pilot, my principal role was to navigate based on the route Peter had printed out from MapQuest, but since I’m not actually capable of reading maps, I held the wheel steady while Peter consulted the printout.

  I was also in charge of the radio, which left a lot to be desired in rural Pennsylvania. It was unlike Luisa to skimp on luxury features like satellite radio, but skimp she had, leaving us at the mercy of local tastes, which seemed to lean toward Christian rock and bluegrass.

  Peter and I had never spent much time in a car together before, and I was concerned to find that in addition to being culturally illiterate, he was woefully ignorant regarding appropriate behavior on any road trip lasting more than an hour. For example, he believed in finding a radio station, preferably NPR, and sticking to it. This was, of course, wrong, even assuming one could find NPR. The proper approach was to make continuous use of the handy seek function to ensure that we weren’t missing something better on another station. When we did find something better, it was customary to sing along.

  The fast food rule was new to Peter, as well. He thought that for lunch we would pull off the highway and locate a quaint diner where we could enjoy local Amish Country delicacies like apple butter and pretzels, when it’s widely understood that being in a car for more than an hour automatically entitles one to eat fast food. The grease and salt content of the fast food to which one is entitled is a function of just how much time one has spent in the car. I’d assumed that all Americans of my generation possessed this knowledge, much as they knew the words to Free to Be You and Me and that drinking soda after eating Pop Rocks could be fatal, but Peter seemed to be the exception.

  “I never knew you were such a McDonald’s fan,” he commented while we waited our turn in the drive-through line.

  “You’re not?” I asked, but I wasn’t really paying attention. I wa
s absorbed in the Big Mac versus Quarter Pounder with Cheese decision. The Big Mac had the advantage of being, well, big, but the Quarter Pounder was tasty in its own way and left more room for fries.

  “Not so much,” he admitted.

  This got my attention. “Are you a Communist?”

  “Not liking McDonald’s makes me a Communist?”

  “I don’t know which is cause and which is effect, so it could be the other way around.” A car behind us honked. “Look, it’s our turn. Do you want me to order for you?”

  Peter insisted on ordering for himself and asked for a salad, which made me really wonder if he was some sort of Soviet plant, like Kevin Costner in No Way Out, who hadn’t been repatriated after the collapse of the Berlin Wall. I reminded myself that I’d met his entire extended family and spent long hours with his very American mother examining a photographic record that began with Peter in the womb, but it was the gusto with which he polished off the remainder of my Big Mac and half my fries that ultimately convinced me he wasn’t secretly named Yuri.

  Twenty minutes later, and feeling only slightly queasy from lunch, we were back on the highway. The drive would probably have been scenic at a different time of year—there were a lot of trees and rolling hills and red barns—but in mid-March the trees were bare and the hills and barns were blanketed with tired, graying snow.

  It was early afternoon when we reached the outskirts of Pittsburgh and the rural flavor began to give way to rusting industrialism. MapQuest got us to where we were going without too much trouble—it only tried to make us go the wrong way up one one-way street—but since Peter had the sense of direction I so sadly lacked, he was able to improvise, steering a confident course through an area that was a mix of working factories, abandoned factories, and empty lots.

  “That must be it,” he said eventually, giving the map a final glance and pulling up to a corner. Across the street and to the right was our destination, the headquarters of Thunderbolt Industries. It looked pretty much like what it was: a rust-belt manufacturing plant. The building itself was a sprawling architectural hodgepodge of dingy red brick, dingy cinder block, and dingy concrete. The only shiny part was a glass-walled addition, clearly an afterthought. It extended awkwardly from one side of the factory and likely housed the executive offices. From the street, the complex appeared to be the size of a football field, but it was hard to tell how far back it extended. Only two of the many smokestacks were emitting smoke, a testament, no doubt, to the slump the company was in, and the potholed asphalt parking lot was only half-full.