The Four Corners of the Sky Page 13

  To Annie it was impossible to believe that her father had reformed. But perhaps he’d gotten so good at his crimes that he was no longer caught, either by the police or by those mysterious men he’d always named for cartoon villains—The Crocodile, Dr. No—those men who’d barged into their lives on the road and threatened them. Like the large man with a gun who’d kicked open the door to their motel room at midnight while they were watching The Ten Commandments…She stopped talking mid-sentence. “Wait! Royal Coach, that’s it! Trevor, thank you, thank you!”

  He chuckled at her exuberance. “For what?”

  “The name of the motel. Dad and I were watching The Ten Commandments in the Royal Coach Motel in St. Louis. A man broke in, we got away from him, and we drove straight to Emerald and Dad dropped me off here at Pilgrim’s Rest. So it’s the last place we stayed together. Royal Coach Motel. That’s where he’s gone.”

  “Sorry. I’m not following you.”

  She said it didn’t matter, she’d explain it all when she returned to Chesapeake Cove. She was heading to St. Louis tonight in her Piper Warrior.

  “Why don’t I see if I can get a field agent there to check things out for you?”

  Annie couldn’t explain why she felt that she had to go herself to find her father, but she did.

  “Well, good luck.” Trevor said to let him know what she found out. “And I’ll check into this Cuba thing…So, any message for Amy Johnson? We’re headed for bed.”

  “Tell her I miss her, not that she’ll care.”

  “You never know with cats. People either.”

  Annie said, “You do know with cats. That’s what I like about them.”

  She ran back to the living room where Clark and Sam were sharing more spicy tuna rolls. “I figured it out. Dad’s in the Royal Coach Motel in St. Louis!”

  “Ah.” Clark nodded slowly. “The fishing fly. Royal Coachman. What a jerk.”

  “Dad knocked a man out and took his gun. There was a pink neon coach with four horses on the motel sign near the pool.”

  Clark mildly wondered why Jack hadn’t simply written down the name of the motel in his cryptic note to her. “I repeat. What a jerk.”

  “Never write things down,” Annie explained; it was in the top five of her father’s old crime “lessons.”

  The Royal Coach still had its St. Louis listing. The young man at the desk told her that the motel had been in business in the same location for over thirty years. No one was registered as Jack Peregrine but the clerk, a friendly and bored college fellow, described in detail a late check-in yesterday of a man vaguely fitting her description of her father. The man had returned to the night desk around 1 a.m., borrowed a pair of scissors, and while sitting in the lobby had cut off his very good trousers above the knees. Annie asked the clerk to check the name on the registration.

  The man had registered as Clark Goode.

  “Fucking wonderful!” Annie took a breath. “I’m sorry. That’s not my father’s real name. Clark Goode is my uncle’s name and he’s right here in North Carolina and has been all week.”

  “Listen,” confided the clerk, “nothing surprises me. Last night I had a transvestite pull in driving a 35-foot Gulfstream Yellowstone RV; checked in as Barbra Streisand. But maybe it was Barbra.” The clerk added that the man who’d cut off his own trousers had specifically insisted on a particular room in the motel, 115, when he’d arrived—an unusual request, since all the rooms were identical.

  That evening the clerk had noticed the man swimming back and forth in the motel pool. Then, hours later, he’d seen him once more, at the pool’s edge, this time smoking a thin cigar, lying on his back on the concrete as if he were sunbathing, although it was three in the morning. The man had appeared to be staring up at the stars, not that you could see many.

  Annie asked if it were possible to speak with whoever had cleaned Room 115. The intrigued clerk told her to call back in fifteen minutes. She did so and learned then from a Guatemalan maid, whose story the desk clerk translated, that just this morning the maid had seen two men in the parking lot with the person who’d cut off his trouser legs. He’d walked back to his room with these two men, talking nonstop in an agitated way. An hour afterwards, the maid had found bloody towels in the 115 bathroom, where the fan ventilator cover from the ceiling had been removed and was lying on the tile floor of the shower.

  ***

  Clark telephoned St. Louis hospitals to see if a Jack Peregrine had been admitted to any of them; he hadn’t.

  “He hates hospitals,” Sam said. “He wouldn’t go on his own. What do you mean bloody towels? Like hemorrhaging?”

  Annie shook her head. “No no. One of those guys probably knocked him down. Well, I’ve got a lead now.”

  “Have some coffee first,” said Clark.

  Sam sighed more loudly than ever. “I’m having a martini. This is all ‘putting me way behind in my drinking.’”

  Clark absentmindedly identified the quote. “Thin Man. You don’t drink.”

  “That was yesterday.”

  Outside on the roof it sounded as if a gutter was ripping loose. Malpy wriggled under the couch to hide. Sam and Clark hurried to the porch to check the damage.

  Annie was running upstairs to repack when the phone in the hall rang again. She picked it up. No one answered. “Hello…Who is this please? Hello, Peregrine-Goode residence…”

  Malpy began barking, feeling Annie tense.

  “…Hi there. That you, darlin’?” The voice was her father’s. No chance of error. She lowered the receiver but slowly brought it back to her ear.

  “…Annie?”

  “Yes?”

  “Annie? It’s Dad. Meet me in St. Louis?” He laughed weakly. “How often you get to say that in life?”

  Annie sat down. “Where are you? Are you in a hospital? Were you hemorrhaging?”

  He laughed again, as always, easily. “You going to hang up if I wasn’t?”

  Why, she asked, exasperated, wasn’t he in the hospital if he were dying? Why was there blood in his motel bathroom? Why had he gone to the Royal Coach motel pretending to be Clark Goode?

  Her questions appeared to please him. “I knew you’d figure out Royal Coach. I tried to be careful, in case somebody grabbed Raffy when he was mailing you the key. They got to me anyhow. Bad luck.”

  “Who got to you? And you should go to a hospital; you sound awful.”

  “If you could just fly the King to St. Louis tonight…I’d fly it back to you in Emerald, I promise.”

  While the unexpected had not been unusual from her father, this request amazed her. “Can you even fly a plane? And if you can, damn it, why don’t you just rent one!”

  He seemed to have trouble breathing and it took several starts for him to get through a sentence. “There’s something in the King I need. I can’t really talk now. I’ll explain when you get here. Did Sam find my jacket?”

  Annie squeezed her hand tightly around the phone. “Yes and I ripped open the lining. I’m sure you’ve replaced all the fake cards by now, so what do you want? The gun, the cash? Some password? Is that a password you wrote in the lining of that old pink cap—”

  “You kept that cap. Great. Bring it. I’m leaving you a million dollars, darlin’. Just in case, the key I sent’s an extra; the panel’s in the King’s hold—”

  “Shut up! I don’t want to hear this bullshit, okay? It’s just, it’s just bullshit!” She said that it enraged her that he was so sure she would drop everything, two decades after he’d dropped her, and fly to St. Louis to give him her airplane!

  He coughed. “But aren’t you coming?”

  “Yes, I’m coming! That’s not the point. You can’t assume I’d come!”

  “Sure I can. Because you love me. It’s even odds I’ll be dead by the end of the month anyhow. So, Annie, don’t you feel a little bit like, well, making up? Take it from me, you’ll only regret the things in life you didn’t do.”

  That he should offer her th
is “advice” on how to live her life was so preposterous, she couldn’t even respond.

  “You there, sweetheart?”

  “…Your buddy, Rafael Rook, says you’re ‘going fast.’”

  “Raffy told you that?”

  “Is it cancer?” she asked.

  “What’s the difference? Okay, tell me the numbers written in the cap.”

  Her mouth set stubbornly the way it had as a child. “Why should I?”

  He laughed cheerfully if without much volume. It had always infuriated her that life struck him as funny. “Because you’ve got me at your mercy, Annie. It’s ‘Add and Subtract’ time, like we used to play in the car. You still can remember a bunch of numbers? I never could. It amazed me the way you did it. You could remember anything. Tell me the numbers.”

  Annie was angrily poking her finger at the ornate family motto carved into the square newel post at the foot of the stairs, where a peregrine falcon held a scroll in its talons on which Gothic letters spelled Peregrinus ego sum.

  “Yes, I can still remember numbers,” she told him.

  “Bet you’re still a damn good poker player.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  He coughed. “Okay. What’s your price to tell me those numbers? You could say…” He chuckled. “It’s life or death.”

  “Then you should go to the police.”

  “Come on, tell me. I’ll owe you. There’s got to be something you want.”

  “From you?”

  “Think about it.” He was quiet.

  Annie thought about it.

  And then all at once she knew that there was in fact something she wanted and that there was a deal she could make with him. She wanted information that she’d long ago put away hoping for, telling herself the knowledge was in any case useless, impractical, unnecessary. She said, “Okay, there’s something I want from you.”

  “Good.”

  “If I come to St. Louis, I’ll tell you the numbers if, only if, you’ll tell me how to find my mother. And don’t tell me she was Claudette Colbert either. That’s what I want. That’s the only reason I’m coming. My mother.”

  “…I don’t know where your mother is, or how you could find her. That’s the truth.” His cough was rattling. “But if you come, I’ll tell you everything I know.”

  Annie took a slow breath. “Okay, you give me enough information so I can find out about her. Her name, is she married, does she have other kids? And when I find out everything you know, then I’ll tell you the password.” She glanced at her watch. “I can get the King to Lambert in about five or six hours if I start now. Just don’t die before I get there.”

  Again he chuckled with that old infuriating ease. “For the love of Mike, you grew up one tough lady. I’m trying my best here…My game’s a little off.”

  “Are you calling from your own cell phone?”

  He said he was and gave her a number.

  “And stop using Clark’s name. Where are you?”

  He said she should stay away from the Royal Coach too. He’d had a “slight screw up” there. Meet him in the Admirals Club at Lambert–St. Louis International Airport as soon as she could manage. He’d wait for her there, as long as it took. But if something should happen to him, just in case, remember this: King, Queen, Sam.

  She interrupted. Did he know the Miami police were trying to arrest him in a fraud investigation? That the FBI was involved?

  “That’s the least of it, honey. Okay, Admirals Club. Sooner’s better than later.” Again, he seemed unable to breathe easily.

  “How sick are you?”

  His laughter sounded tight, as if it hurt. He quoted, “‘I am peppered, I warrant, for this world.’”

  “You stop it, just stop it!”

  “Oh sweetheart, old times. Happy Birthday, Annie. For the record, you really were born on the Fourth of July...You see Flight for Freedom? Great movie. The flying part, I mean...Rosalind Russell, she’s an aviator. And she’s got this line, something like, ‘Dad always used to say, when you’re safe...you’re dead.’ It’s true. Fly to the future, Annie. The future’s always there.” He hung up.

  Annie slowly replaced the receiver. She was still staring at it when Sam and Clark came back inside.

  Sam hurried over to her. “What in the world’s the matter with you?”

  “That was Jack,” Annie said.

  “What?” Sam sat down.

  “He quoted Shakespeare and some Rosalind Russell movie and then he hung up on me.”

  “That was Jack?” Sam bent over, rubbing her arms.

  “Daniel Hart calls, Rafael Rook calls, now Dad calls. Is this a set up?”

  “How did he sound? Dying?”

  Taking slow breaths, Annie walked to the porch, looked out at the still roiled sky. “What does dying sound like? He didn’t sound good. He told me to fly to St. Louis and look for him in the Admirals Club.”

  Sam punched at air with a hard jab. “If I hadn’t believed he was really on his deathbed, I never would have given you that FedEx! Why do I fall for him?”

  “My question for over a quarter of a century,” said Clark.

  “Well, Clark’s right. You can’t fly tonight.” Sam peered out the window. “This storm has stalled.”

  “Okay, that’s settled.” Clark held up the sushi platter. “Anybody want some more?”

  Sam started pushing the two of them toward the kitchen. “Let’s forget about Jack. People like Jack don’t die.” She sighed, unable to persuade herself. “Let’s eat supper. Who’s for forty pieces of chicken korma? Annie, how about some sushi?”

  But Annie was back on the phone to D. K. Destin, asking him if the King of the Sky’s engine was fixed, if he could get it fueled fast and ready to fly. She’d be at the airfield as soon as she could get there. Please make sure she was good to go. Because she was flying to St. Louis.

  D. K. gave a loud derisive laugh into the phone, like a man gone melodramatically mad in a horror movie. “What do Amy Johnson, Amelia Earhart, Bessie Coleman, and Wiley Post have in common?”

  Annie knew what he meant but pretended otherwise. “They were all great pilots.”

  “And?”

  “Their planes crashed.”

  “And?”

  “They died.”

  “Hello baby.”

  Chapter 16

  So Proudly We Hail

  Annie and Clark stood in the kitchen, looking out at the rain. Clark said, “Annie, I wouldn’t count on the truth from Jack.”

  Annie shook her head stubbornly. “Either he’ll tell me about my mother or he won’t. He’ll die or he won’t. Either way, it’ll be over.”

  From behind Sam’s “Gore 2000” magnet on the refrigerator, Clark took a photograph of Annie at a track meet, sprinting to the finish line, her hair flattened against her face, her face twisted, her smile triumphant. He nodded. “You’re going to St. Louis. I accept it but I don’t like it.” He volunteered to drive Annie the eight hundred miles to Missouri instead.

  Annie smiled at her uncle. “Clark, if you drove me, Jack would die of old age before we got there. I’m flying the King.” She had calculated that the Piper Warrior could make it with one stopover to refuel. She could be at Lambert Airport not long after midnight, Central Time. The real question was, would her father even show up? “I’m thinking I should call that detective in Miami, Sergeant Hart.” She started to dial his number from memory on her cell phone.

  Sam grabbed the phone, agitated; she shoved it into the pocket of her shorts. “No, please, don’t call the police. They’ll put Jack in jail. He couldn’t stand it. Please!”

  A sigh, then Annie relented. “…Okay, okay, I won’t call the police.”

  “Just till we sort things out,” Sam pleaded.

  Annie took her aunt by the arm and walked with her back and forth in the kitchen, soothing her. “But if he’s really ill, shouldn’t he be in a hospital? If he’s bleeding all over motel bathrooms?”

  Sam stopped, pulle
d away. “You said it was practically nothing!”

  Annie backpedaled. “Well, I mean, it’s not that serious or he wouldn’t be on the phone asking me to lend him an airplane, would he? It’s just some little screw up.” From long thinking about how to interpret her father, she knew he would always be experiencing “little screw ups.” Time after time the calamities were a complete surprise to him, as if they’d only by the remotest chance had anything to do with him at all. It dawned on her now that this was a trait he shared with her soon-to-be ex-husband Brad. She recalled how Brad had looked up at her mystified when she’d caught him on their bed in that “slip up” with Melody Wirsh, as if Melody’s presence in the bed was as much of a shock to Brad as to Annie.

  Clark held up the huge emerald on its chain. “Where do you suppose Jack got this thing?”

  “Not by paying for it at Tiffany’s,” replied Annie.

  Sam examined the emerald again. It was doubtless worth a hundred thousand, she theorized. It was very large and looked to be perfectly formed.

  “Great. Maybe he wants to trade it for my mother’s name.” Annie zipped the stone with the fake business cards and the hundred dollar bills inside her father’s flight jacket. “Let’s go.”

  Clark left them to go check on Georgette before he brought the car around to the porch.

  Annie repeated the numbers from memory, “362484070N and 678STNX211,” and wrote them on a message pad, handing the pad to Sam. “Keep this.”

  Sam checked the numbers against those on the pink cap. “Perfect. And I can’t remember a phone number long enough to call it.” They walked together through the hallway. “More and more I just remember what happened ages ago, millions of little things, just flashes, from when I was a kid. When you’re young, you don’t have time to remember your life. When you’re my age…” Sam rubbed at her white hair. “The past starts to push the present aside.” She pulled from her shorts pocket the copy of Annie’s birth certificate that she’d found in the attic. “Know what I mean?”