“Somewhere with more people than this place,” I suggested strongly. “Maybe somewhere there are security guards around.”
“I think they keep moving, mostly.”
“Okay. Let’s find one and follow along within sight of him,” I said. “So if we yell he’ll hear us and come to our rescue.”
I couldn’t help glancing back over my shoulder as we followed after a couple of flight attendants pulling their suitcases on little wheels, in case the door we had come through opened and The Enemy followed us; but by the time we came to one of the main halls there was no sign of pursuit.
We slowed our pace to a more normal one but kept a sharp eye out in all directions. “Where the heck are we?” I asked. “I’m sure turned around.”
“If we keep going this way, we should come out about where we got off the plane,” Charlie said.
Eddie wasn’t sure about that. “Do we want to go there? Will they look for us there?”
“I should think they might look for us down in the baggage area. Even if they don’t know what luggage we had checked through, that’s where the cabs and the buses come, and where anybody picking us up would probably plan to meet us.”
“Then let’s stay away from the baggage area.” I stopped for a minute to rest my flight bag on a chair. “My arms are falling off. If we’re going to run all over this terminal, maybe we ought to stick our stuff into one of those lockers and pick it up after Aunt Molly gets here. We could maybe outrun those guys if we weren’t carrying so much junk.”
Charlie looked thoughtfully at the bag I’d put down. “Maybe we could set a trap for them.”
“Oh, sure, ambush ’em,” Eddie approved. “Surround ’em, like we’re a whole posse. Hold ’em until the cops come. Only we still don’t have any proof they attacked Mrs. Basker, do we?”
Charlie seemed not to hear. “Let’s go back to the waiting area where we came in. There it is, right up ahead. And then we can try a couple of things. Gracie’s flight bag was identical to Mrs. Basker’s, wasn’t it? So maybe there’s a chance that’s what they’re after. Maybe they think whatever was supposed to be in Mrs. Basker’s bag got into Gracie’s by mistake.”
“Nothing got into my bag by mistake,” I protested.
“No, but they don’t know that. You were talking to the old lady, and you watched her stuff for her. In fact I think there was a short time when both your bags sat side by side. Either one of you could have picked up the wrong one.”
“Look and see, Gracie,” Eddie said. “Maybe you did pick up the wrong one.”
“No, I didn’t. See?” I unzipped it. “There’s my candy bars, and my book, and the case for my toothbrush.”
“I think I’m coming up with a plan,” Charlie said.
There was something about the little smile that was forming on his face that made me uneasy. “What?”
“You know how they stake out a goat in the jungle when they want the tiger to come in so they can capture it? How they use a helpless animal as bait?”
I made a choking sound. “Why are you looking at me?”
“Because you’re the one with the blue flight bag like Mrs. Basker’s. If they think maybe those bags got mixed up—”
“They can’t,” I interrupted. “They searched hers, remember? I think they’d know an old lady’s underwear from a kid’s. Besides, my book and the candy bars would give them a clue if they opened mine.”
“True. But maybe they think she got confused and put whatever it is they want into your bag by mistake. So they want to search yours.”
Indignation made me scowl. “So what are you proposing? If you think I’m going to be a sacrificial goat, Charlie, you’re mistaken! Nobody is staking me out to be slaughtered!”
“Of course not, Gracie! If I let you get kidnapped or anything like that, your dad would never let us within miles of each other again, ever. But it’s got to be you, because they already know you’re the one with the blue bag.”
He sure wasn’t making me any less apprehensive. “What’s got to be me?”
“The bait. That’s only a figure of speech; I don’t expect anything to happen to you.”
“What if your plan doesn’t work out so they know they aren’t supposed to make anything happen to me?” I demanded. “Forget it, Charlie! I’m not going to act as bait! If you don’t stop talking crazy I’m going to tell Dad what you wanted me to do, and he’ll probably see that you get locked up!”
“You don’t even know what my plan is, yet,” Charlie said, in that way he had of making everything sound reasonable even when you’d have to be a lunatic to go along with it.
“Yeah, Gracie, at least listen to his idea,” Eddie said.
I glared at him. “That’s easy for you to say. He’s not talking about using you for bait.”
“Gracie,” Charlie said, kindly and with infinite patience, “nothing would happen to you. You’d be perfectly safe.”
“Oh? Now that we’re out of sight of those two thugs they’re not dangerous anymore, is that it?”
“They’re probably dangerous,” Charlie conceded in a more normal voice. “But that doesn’t mean they can do anything to you. Listen to my idea, anyway, will you?”
So I listened to Charlie’s idea, the way I’d been doing all my life. Like the time we went up on the barn roof together, and the time we took a shortcut through Grandpa’s woods and fell into the abandoned root cellar and couldn’t get out until they sent a search party after us at dusk, and the time when we were just little kids when he talked me into hiding with him in an abandoned freezer and we nearly suffocated before Wayne found us and got us out.
“Gracie,” Charlie asked, “are you listening?”
“I was thinking,” I told him, “about the times you nearly got someone killed.”
“How could I get you killed this time? In one of the busiest airports in the country, with security guards all over the place? See, there’s another one right now.”
I had a sudden unpleasant thought. Security guards weren’t quite like real cops, were they? The ones in Portland had said they’d turn the case over to the police, once they’d called for help for Mrs. Basker to be taken to the hospital. What if they didn’t know what to do in a genuine emergency?
“You’re not listening again. What’s the matter? Don’t you trust me?”
For a minute I didn’t answer that. I looked full into his face, saw the curling dark red hair, the sprinkle of freckles I’d always thought so charming, the candid blue eyes, and I didn’t know the answer. Did I trust Charlie? My favorite cousin, with whom I’d always had so much fun?
Charlie, who my dad thought would get somebody killed someday with his pranks?
This wasn’t a prank, though. This was deadly serious, I thought, and then wished I hadn’t thought deadly. It sounded so ominous. But we were stuck in this big airport until Aunt Molly came, and those awful men had hurt Mrs. Basker and tried to rob her, and they didn’t deserve to get away with it.
“Okay,” I said. “Tell me your plan.”
Charlie is very good at explaining things. He works out details in his head very quickly. Eddie nodded a little at every one of them, but then Eddie wasn’t the one who was going to be the goat.
“That’s just a figure of speech,” Charlie said when I expressed my uneasiness with it. “It’s so simple, Gracie, and there’s no more danger than just running around the way we’ve been doing. You understand that all you have to do is sit there and wait, don’t you? Give them a chance to grab your flight bag, if that’s what they want?”
“But what if they really do it? What about my toothbrush, and my other stuff that’s in the bag?”
“We can take it out and store it in one of those lockers if you want to.”
“But if it’s empty anybody would know as soon as he picked it up.”
“Okay. We can stuff something into it to give it some weight. Buy something cheap from the gift shop—”
“There isn’t anyth
ing cheap in the gift shop.”
“Well, look, I don’t care if I lose the junk in my flight bag. We’ll go around a corner where we’re sure nobody is watching, and we’ll trade what’s in my bag for what’s in yours. Then if they actually steal your bag, it’ll be my stuff that’s missing. Only it won’t be missing for long, naturally, because we’ll leave identification in your bag so the security men can tell they stole it when they catch them and get it back. See?”
I saw. I didn’t like it a lot, but I understood. And I didn’t have any better ideas. “All right,” I said reluctantly. “But you guys better not really leave me alone.”
“Of course not. We’ll do just what I said, hide where we can watch you and call for the security guards when those guys come near you.”
“I don’t want to sit in that row of seats, though,” I said, indicating the ones he’d told me would be the right place for the stakeout. “Why can’t I sit with my back against the wall, like the cops do in movies, so I can see what’s going on? I hate the idea of someone sneaking up behind me!”
“But that’s just the point, Gracie. They have to be able to sneak up behind you, or they won’t try to steal your bag. Remember, put it down beside your chair, a little behind you, so it’ll be easy for them to grab. And if you sense someone there, don’t look around and scare them off. Let them take the bag. That’ll give us evidence that they’ve done something wrong when we call in the security people. Then they can investigate and we’ll tell them about Mrs. Basker, and maybe there will be some evidence to connect them with that crime that the police wouldn’t even look into if we didn’t catch them stealing your bag.”
I didn’t know if it sounded logical or not. He must have read that in my face, because Charlie added the clincher. “You don’t want them to get away with what they did to Mrs. Basker, do you?”
And that’s why a few minutes later I was sitting alone in a row of seats at one of the nearly deserted departure areas, my flight bag flung carelessly beside my chair, with all the little hairs prickling on the back of my neck as I waited for The Enemy to find me.
Chapter Eleven
I knew Charlie and Eddie were posted somewhere they could see me, though just before I took my seat I’d looked around and wasn’t able to spot them. I imagined Eddie having a hunger attack and sneaking off to buy a bag of potato chips. The boys had agreed to put their bags into a locker, so I knew Eddie didn’t have his own food supply handy. Or maybe both of them would go to use the bathroom, leaving me to deal with whatever happened by myself.
I’d never felt more alone.
Maybe Dad had been right about this trip. If either one of us had guessed what might happen, I wouldn’t be here now. I’d always liked reading about scary adventures, but this wasn’t any fun at all.
A few people were beginning to drift into the departure area, which had been practically empty when I sat down, and I saw by the TV screen that a flight to New York was due to leave from this gate in fifty-five minutes. At least that meant I wasn’t entirely alone, but maybe that would mean The Enemy wouldn’t try to steal my bag, either, if people were watching.
I wasn’t sure if that made me feel better or worse. I wanted to catch those men and see them punished for what they’d done to a helpless old lady, but my skin crawled at the idea of them coming up behind me. How did I know if they’d settle for taking my bag? If they’d made Mrs. Basker go with them by threatening her with a gun, maybe they’d do the same thing to me, and then where would Charlie’s plan end? What if Hawaiian shirt or Mr. Upton held me hostage in order to get away with something really valuable?
Of course I didn’t have anything really valuable. Would they be so angry when they found that out that they’d shoot me? To keep me from describing them to the police who would investigate when they found my body lying like Mrs. Basker’s in some deserted area, except that instead of a bruise I’d have a bullet hole in my head?
Someone walked past my chair and brushed a suitcase against my shoulder, and I nearly flew apart. “Sorry,” the man said, and kept on going. He was no one I’d ever seen before. It was several minutes before my heartbeat slowed down to normal.
“Gracie, you have more imagination than is good for you,” Dad said to me sometimes, and I began to think he was right. Usually I enjoyed my imagination. It was fun to make up stories and pretend to be someone I wasn’t. But under the present circumstances it only made me more scared to think of things that could go wrong with Charlie’s plan.
Please, Aunt Molly, I begged silently, come soon. Come and get us out of here.
But Aunt Molly didn’t come. Time dragged. I decided I’d go crazy if I didn’t try to find something to occupy my mind besides fantasies of being kidnapped or murdered.
I was still carrying that book I’d brought from home. I’d decided not to empty my own things out of my bag; if anything really happened, I was sure Dad or Aunt Molly would pay to replace its contents. I reached over for my bag, hoping Charlie wouldn’t later say I’d spooked The Enemy just before they reached for it, and took out the book.
I couldn’t read, though. On page three I realized I didn’t have any idea of what I’d read, so I dropped the book back into the bag. I even repositioned the bag handles to make it easier for someone to grab it, and I took out the folded newspaper instead.
Maybe I could do the crossword puzzle. Grandma said it calmed her nerves to work on crosswords. My nerves sure needed calming.
It felt as if eyes were boring into the back of my head. I couldn’t stand it and pretended to drop my pencil; I even kicked it so it rolled away from me. When I got up to retrieve it, I glanced behind me.
There was no sign of either of the men who might have been following us. There was no sign of Charlie or Eddie, either. If I ever find out they’ve gone away and left me alone, even for a minute, I’ll kill them both, I thought grimly.
I sat down again and opened the newspaper, found the puzzle, and refolded the paper into quarters to start working on it.
Someone had already filled in some of the middle part, so I started up at the top. One across: Cracker, e.g., in five letters. I remembered that from one of Grandma’s puzzles. W-a-f-e-r, I wrote in.
The P.A. system made an announcement, and I realized I hadn’t been paying attention when they came to the part about using one of the white courtesy telephones. My heart leaped. Aunt Molly? Had they said Molly?
The message was repeated. “Will Dennis Malloy go to the nearest white courtesy telephone, please.”
Deflated, I slumped in my seat. If Aunt Molly had any idea what we were going through, I thought, she’d leave her friend in the hands of the doctors and call the police to meet her here at the airport, sirens screaming.
Except, of course, that The Enemy hadn’t done anything since we left Portland to be arrested for. So far.
I tried to go back to the puzzle. Twenty-two across: Stanley Gardner, in four letters. I knew that one, because my dad’s a Perry Mason fan, and I read the books sometimes, too. I wrote in E-a-r-l, then erased it and changed it to E-r-l-e.
That meant, I thought, trying to concentrate, that eighteen down, German for mister in four letters, was h-e-r-r.
The next one had me stymied: mispickle, in three letters. Mispickle? What the heck was that? It sounded like somebody made a mistake making a pickle, but I never heard of anything like that.
I decided to skip that one and pick something that tied into the words Hawaiian shirt had already written in. Hirsute, in five letters. Wasn’t that h-a-i-r-y? Only it didn’t fit, because where I needed an “r” there was an “x.”
I stared at the word the original owner of the paper had penciled in. It was supposed to be “obliterate,” which I was pretty sure meant “erase,” but what Hawaiian shirt had written in didn’t make any sense. It was a jumble of meaningless letters and numbers. I never saw numbers in a crossword puzzle before, not unless they were written out.
I supposed I could erase—obliterate
—the wrong things that were written in. I turned the pencil upside down and scrubbed out a couple of the numbers, and then felt a surge of fear as I both saw and heard my blue flight bag go skittering across the floor, away from me.
Charlie had told me not to look around if I thought The Enemy was stealing my bag, because the idea was to let him get away with it, but I couldn’t help it.
I turned my head in time to see a young man in jeans, athletic shoes, and a yellow T-shirt with blue letters that said GO SEA HAWKS on it picking up the bag and bringing it back to me. “Sorry,” he said, and dropped it beside my chair before he hurried away.
With that shirt he had to be from Seattle, I figured. Which could mean he was connected with The Enemy, who had come from there. But he didn’t seem to be trying to steal anything. His Nikes were about size thirteens, and the bag was sticking out too far; he just caught his foot in the straps and kicked it before he could stop.
I repositioned the bag, my chest hurting from the tension. Darn Charlie and his stupid ideas, anyway! I gave up the idea of trying to do a stupid puzzle that someone else had already spoiled. I decided I’d better keep the telephone number Aunt Molly had given me, in case I had to call it again, so I tore off the edge of the newspaper and stuck the scrap with the writing on it in the pocket of my jeans. Then I refolded the newspaper and stuck it back in the outside pocket of the flight bag.
How long was I supposed to sit here like this, with nothing happening except that I was scared out of my wits? I looked around, hoping to spot Charlie and tell him I’d had it, that his plan wasn’t working and he’d have to think of something else.
And then something did happen.
I saw him coming across the expanse of polished tile, straight at me.
The man in the Hawaiian shirt.
I sucked in a sharp breath, frantically searching for Charlie. Where was he? How far away had he and Eddie gone to make themselves inconspicuous?
Then I spotted Eddie, sitting on the floor quite a way down the building near another boarding area, his back against a pillar. He was facing straight this way, but the trouble was he didn’t see either me or The Enemy, because he was reading a comic book and he didn’t look up.