The Man with the Red Bag (8 page)

B
efore long it will all be over.

The words tumbled in my head as I went quickly past Grandma's room without even stopping, fumbled for my key, and unlocked my door.

I tossed my carry-on onto the bed. My mystery notebook was in my suitcase, which hadn't come up yet from the lobby.

I grabbed a sheet of Old Faithful Inn notepaper from the desk and printed those seven words in block letters. It's strange how writing things down makes
them clearer. And truer. And scarier. What had Charles Stavros meant?

I stood staring at the paper and then, underneath his words, I wrote:

He might have meant our trip would soon be over. We just have Cody, the dude ranch, Mount Rushmore, and Rapid City, South Dakota. Those are the places left on our trip, the places inside the Big C. That might have been the only reason he circled them.

And that was the logical answer to the meaning of those words. But there could have been other meanings. I sucked on the pencil eraser (which is a very bad habit I have), then wrote:

Before long it will all be over.

Because???

a) The trip is almost over, or

b) He's going to give the bag to someone, or

c) He's going to leave the bag somewhere, or

d) He's going to stop carrying it around.

I tried to remember the tone of his voice as he spoke. Not angry. Not pleased. Almost tired, as if he'd come to the end of a long road.

My heartbeat was so loud I thought I could hear it.

My last possibility, the absolute worst one, was,
He's ready now to detonate the bomb.
But where? When?

I put my head down on the desk and took a shuddery breath.

The worst one, and one that was absolutely possible.

Once Dad had told me that people believe what they want to believe. I also knew that a person was innocent till proven guilty. I'd read that in mystery novels a gazillion times. But what if “Before long it will all be over” was as creepy as it sounded?

“I'm on a seesaw,” I said out loud. “I just don't know. But I know I need to tell someone.”

I took the sheet of paper and my key and went back along the corridor.

Passing Grandma's room I knocked on her door and said, “I'm going downstairs again. Back in a couple of minutes.”

Her voice came faintly from inside. “I'm about to get in the shower. Tell the bellman if you see him to hurry with the luggage.”

“Okay.”

Declan always gave us his room number when we
arrived in a new hotel. “In case you want to complain about something,” he would say, rolling his eyes.

I was glad now for the information.

Number 32.

I slowed and took deep, even breaths. If I tell him, I thought, it's not on me anymore. He can decide if Charles Stavros is a risk or not. It was kind of a relief. Mystery writers always have the hero/detective solve the case. But people could die if I didn't solve this one in time.

What if Declan wasn't in his room?

But when I knocked he came to the door right away. He was wearing sweatpants and a navy T-shirt and white socks. No hat. Slightly bald head. He didn't even look like Declan without his big cowboy hat and one of his flashy shirts, but he was. He didn't seem particularly happy to see me.

“What's up, young Kevin?” He held the door open only a bit, I guess hoping whatever was up he could fix with a word or two.

“May I come in?” I almost stuck my foot in his door. He'd better let me in, that was all.

“Sure, kiddo.” He stepped back.

His room was small and not as nice as mine. Not that I'd seen mine for more than a couple of minutes. He waved me to the only chair and perched on the bed.

“So, what's the problem?”

I gulped. “It's Charles Stavros. I think he has something—something dangerous—in his Star Tours bag. You know the way he carries it all the time? And when we sort of asked him, it was Millie who actually sort of asked him, although I did before and…”

I stopped.

Declan was looking at me as if he thought I'd gone wacko.

I got up and thrust the paper at him. “I'm worried, because this is what he just said. And I don't know what it means.”

He read the words. His feet in their socks wiggled like two squirmy white rats.

“And you think…?” he said at last.

“Well, I don't know. I thought I ought to tell you.”

Declan rose, gave me back the paper, stood looking down at me where I'd collapsed again into the chair, and said, “You can stop worrying, my friend. I know what he's got in the bag. I know why he carries
it around. I know why it will all be over soon.”

“You do?” I was astonished.

“I asked him, too. Remember when he insisted on taking the bag with him on the raft?”

I nodded.

“I asked him about it after the raft trip. And he told me. I didn't appreciate the way he ignored my order. He told me that in Salt Lake City he'd bought a very expensive gift for a friend in Cody. The friend's a doctor and he's going to change the bandage on Charles's hand. He says he bought a one-of-a-kind piece of Native American pottery. The gallery wrapped it pretty well but he doesn't have any kind of insurance on it in case it gets broken or stolen, and we don't, either.” Declan spread his hands in a helpless gesture. “So he takes it with him—even on a raft.”

“I'd think carrying it everywhere would be riskier,” I said.

“He carries it very care-ful-ly.” Declan drawled the words out like some kind of comedian.

“You know, I saw inside that bag,” I told him. “It didn't look like Native American pottery to me. There was a black string thing.”

“Could be the wrapping for the pottery piece has a string around it,” Declan said. “And I'm not saying he hasn't got something else in there with it. He probably has.”

“Something private and precious?” I asked.

“What?”

“Nothing. Have you noticed he keeps it locked?”

“I've noticed. That's his prerogative—that means his choice.”

I thought it wiser not to say I knew what “prerogative” meant. “Can't you just ask him to open the bag for you? Tell him that you need to examine what's inside?”

“No way. I don't have the right to go looking in our guests' private luggage. How would you like it if I said, ‘Kevin, open that bag of yours. I want to see what's inside.'”

I shrugged. “You can if you want.”

“Your dirty laundry? No thanks.” Declan grinned.

I stood up. “Well, I've told you.”

“And you should have. That's what I'm here for.” He put out his hand for me to shake, which I did, man to man.

He walked me to the door. “Have you seen Old Faithful yet?” he asked. “She's just about ready to blow. Check the notice in the lobby when you go through. They keep the times posted by the front desk.”

I nodded.

Well, I'd told him and he'd given me an answer. But did I believe it?

G
randma and I walked out to watch Old Faithful blow and it was something to see against the night sky. I wondered if a blue whale's spout went that high. We ooh'd and ah'd and cheered with everyone else.

“Way to go, Old Faithful!”

Charles Stavros watched, too, sitting alone on one of the benches, the red bag on his lap. Once I thought I saw his lips move and I imagined him saying to the bag, “I'm glad you could see this with me. Enjoy it, because now it's almost over.”

My own imagination could make my skin crawl.

Dinner at the inn was great, but I had the most miserable, jumpy, nerve-racking night, checking on the paper scrap I'd wedged again in Charles Stavros's door. I was up so many times that at the end I think I was sleepwalking. No devoted assistant to help me.

“I'm on the other floor,” Geneva had said. “I can't go walking around the corridors and up and down the stairs in the middle of the night.” She'd given me that honest navy blue stare. “Sorry, Kev!”

Yeah, sure.

 

The next day we spent touring Yellowstone National Park. That is some big park! Declan says there are over 10,000 hot springs within its boundaries. We didn't see all of them, but we sure saw a lot. Two-thirds of the geysers in the world are located here. I have to say Declan keeps us well informed.

All the time I was admiring these natural wonders, I was keeping an eye out on Stavros, who seemed as innocent and interested as the rest of us. I tried hard to stay awake and not miss anything, but it's possible
I overlooked a couple of those hot springs.

We were back at the inn in time for dinner. I ate a lot because I wasn't going to get much sleep and I needed to keep up my strength. I'd tried cajoling Geneva again into helping me keep watch on Stavros, using the same paper-scrap-in-the-door trick, but I'd had no success.

“Thanks a whole lot,” I'd told her. But sarcasm got me nowhere.

Three times that night I got out of bed and stumbled along the corridor to check that Stavros was still in his room. He was. The paper scrap was still in place, exactly where I'd put it.

It was maddening to think of him, the bad guy, in there sleeping peacefully all night long. Life is definitely not fair.

The morning of day seven, we were on our way to Cody. Historic Cody, Wyoming, founded by Buffalo Bill in 1896.

More of Declan's good information.

I sat with Grandma. I was dozing and pondering, pondering and dozing, and she was letting me.

My grandma knows when to talk and when a guy
needs quiet to think.

In front of me was Charles Stavros, his bag on his lap. Behind me were Geneva and her dad. Last night Grandma and I had sat with Midge at dinner, and that was part of my ponderings. Midge had been telling us about a dog she had in her kennels. A rottweiler.

“People are scared of rottweilers,” she said. “No one has ever wanted to adopt Bogie and he's the sweetest dog you could ever imagine. And then we have another that
looks
like a rottweiler, but isn't. One glimpse of him and people shake their heads. Even looking like a rottweiler is bad news.”

“That's the way it works,” Grandma said. “Everybody judges.”

Well, I was judging Charles Stavros and I couldn't seem to stop. Maybe what he had in that bag was totally innocent. But…I squirmed in my bus seat. He hadn't
shown
Declan anything, had he? Seeing is believing. And I was pretty sure what I'd seen hadn't been any Native American artifact wrapped up and tied with string.

We were driving down winding mountain roads.

“Western Wyoming,” Declan said. “Home of oil wells and cowboys.” And then he got excited. “Look! See the cowboys, driving their cattle…to the left of the bus. Port side, everyone.”

Scotty slowed to an almost-stop and we crowded to port side to see. There they were, straight out of a movie. That could have been John Wayne, herding his cattle to market. No chuck wagon kicking up dirt behind them, though. Nobody shouting “Git along, little dogies!” At least, not that I could hear from inside the bus.

I love those old movies.

In the bus, still cameras clicked. Video cameras roamed.

“Kevin,” Millie whispered, close to my ear, “want to see something strange? Or not so strange? Beth and I have been looking over the pictures we've taken so far on the trip. We got them developed in the photo shop at the inn. Check them out.”

“Better sit down, Kevin,” Declan called from the front as Scotty revved the motor again. I slid into one of the empty seats and began riffling through the photographs. In a nanosecond Geneva was beside me.

“What have you got?” she whispered.

It didn't take me long to discover what I'd got. Twenty-eight pictures. There were the Doves, sitting on a wall at Jackson Lake; the Texans, the four of them posing sidesaddle on a log as if it were a horse, waving their cowboy hats at the camera; Buffo and Blessing, striding out of Great Salt Lake, seaweed wrapped around them like banners; Grandma and Midge on a bench, gazing at Old Faithful, which looked like a plume of smoke in front of them; Geneva and me on the pier, waiting to go on the Snake River raft trip, Geneva's dad, reading on the porch of the Jackson Lake Lodge; Scotty and Declan, posed in front of the coach. There were lots of Millie and Beth, lots and lots of the scenery, and the bison and elk. The faraway bear. Some casual shots and…not a single looking-at-the-camera view of Charles Stavros. In the group getting out of the bus his head was lowered. On the raft trip his back was turned, even though I remembered Millie calling, “This way. Smile, everyone.”

“You can't get a good look at Stavros in any of them,” Geneva said.

I nodded. “He doesn't want to be recognized.”

We stared at each other.

“Stay here a sec,” I told her, and I took the pictures back to Millie.

“Interesting,” I said. “But maybe he's just camera shy. I've started to wonder if he's like Midge's rottweiler.”

“What?” Millie said.

I shrugged. “Just because Stavros looks dangerous and acts different doesn't—”

Millie gave me a hard look. “I know he's dangerous, Kevin. Viscerally, I know.”

I went back to sit with Geneva.

“Viscerally, Millie knows.” I yawned a gigantic yawn.

“What's she talking about?”

“Viscerally, in her gut, she knows Charles Stavros is a terrorist.”

“We know, too,” Geneva said.

“Well, I'm not certain anymore.” I faced her astounded stare and before she could get sarcastic with me I told her about my visit to Declan's room last night, about how he'd explained away Stavros's
coddling of the bag, etc., etc.

“That doesn't convince me,” Geneva said at last. “And it shouldn't convince you, either.”

“I was almost convinced,” I said. “Except…” I paused. “Stavros said something to the bag. Or whatever's in the bag. He said, ‘Before long it will all be over.' I heard him.”

Geneva sucked in her breath. “Wow! That must mean he's going to do something now, fast, soon, today, tonight. So it can be over.”

“My thinking exactly,” I said.

I nibbled on my knuckles as we drove through the outskirts of Cody.

Now, fast, soon, today, tonight!
I thought. Has to be, since we only have three days left, not counting the day we fly home.

“He's supposed to get his bandage changed here in Cody,” Geneva reminded me. As if I needed reminding. “If this doctor is his friend, they may be in the plot together. What if he goes into the doctor's office or hospital or whatever and comes out without the bag? Huh? What about
that
?”

“The passing of the bomb,” I said under my
breath, and I was in full suspicion mode again. “We have to keep following him. We can't let him out of our sight for one minute.”

We high-fived each other. That girl's hand was bigger than mine!

 

Cody is a really neat town, half Old Western, half updated style. There are art galleries and world-famous museums and Buffalo Bill memorabilia everywhere. And of course the rodeo, which we'd be going to tonight.

Our bus was taking us first to the Buffalo Bill Historical Center because just about everyone wanted to see it above anything. Everyone except Charles Stavros.

Geneva and I dawdled and heard him say, “I'll join the group later. I have to get my bandage changed.”

“Okay. But we'll be leaving for the rodeo at seven-thirty,” Declan said. “We'll have dinner first, then meet here in front of the hotel.”

“I'll be on time,” Stavros said.

“Declan? Geneva and I aren't too interested in the center,” I told him, which was another big lie. I really
wanted to see that museum. It had a bunch of stuff from the Pony Express, and all kinds of real saddles and guns and bronze action figures of cowboys and Indians. But this was a sacrifice I had to make. “Geneva and I just want to bounce around the town,” I added.

That remark brought on one of Declan's not-too-well-hidden smirks. “Okay by me if it's okay with your folks,” he said. “Just be careful where you bounce to!”

Grandma said it was all right by her, but was I sure I really wanted to miss the museum? “It's the best in the West,” she said. “I thought you'd be interested, Kevin.” She sounded a bit disappointed in me, but she didn't try to change my mind.

I guess Geneva's dad said okay, too.

We let Charles Stavros get ahead of us, then trailed along at a slow pace.

We saw him stop at a doorway, push open the door, and disappear inside.

“C'mon, quick!” Geneva urged.

The brass plate outside the door said
DR
.
MICHAEL RAFFERTY
,
GENERAL MEDICINE
.

“The doc doesn't sound like a Saudi Arabian or an
Iraqi,” I muttered and I was thinking, wouldn't it have been great if it had said “Doc Holliday”—the old-time dentist who was in so many shoot-'em-up Westerns? And what if we'd been standing here and the James brothers had ridden up and…? But this wasn't then. And practically speaking, this could be worse.

“We can stand in this doorway and wait,” I said. “They won't see us, since it's set back. But we can peer out and see them if we're careful.”

“Okay.” Geneva was enthusiastic and excited. “I think we're going to find out something, Kev,” she whispered. “I have this feeling.”

I had it, too.

But the longer we waited, the more Geneva's enthusiasm wore off.

“What's keeping him?” she muttered. “He just has to get a bandage changed.”

“Maybe he's visiting,” I suggested. “Isn't the doc supposed to be his friend?” And I thought, Maybe they're conspiring, talking terrorist talk, planning exactly where inside the circle to set the bomb. I was suddenly cold, though our little doorway, next to the
doctor's, was fully in the sun. Of course, Stavros could be innocent. Declan thought so. He was having his bandage changed and gabbing with an old friend, that was all. I hated this “he is, he isn't.” It was wearing me down. That and lack of sleep.

We waited and waited.

“I'm sick of this,” Geneva whined. “We're missing the rest of the town. And we're not having fun.”

“Detectives aren't supposed to have fun,” I said. “This is a stakeout. This is our job. And it's a patriotic job, too. Think about being on the Oprah show.”

Just then the doctor's door opened and Charles Stavros came out of the office. There was a man with him, bald on top but with a skimpy little ponytail. He was wearing a white coat. This I saw in one quick, secretive peek before I drew back out of sight, like a turtle into its shell.

Dr. Michael Rafferty, I thought. And his friend, Mr. Charles Stavros.

They were talking and it seemed like the middle of a conversation. I gripped Geneva's arm and strained to hear.

“You won't be able to get close,” the doctor said.
“There's too much security.”

“I'll get close enough. I've come all this way to do it and nothing's going to stop me now.”

“Oh my gosh!” Geneva breathed.

I squeezed her arm. “Shh.”

She was doing that snorting thing again, like she had a marble up her nose. I wanted to put my hand over her nose and mouth in case they'd hear her.

But they were talking again.

“At least be careful.”

“I will.”

I risked another peek.

They were shaking hands. “Well, thanks again for the vase. Good luck, Charlie.”

I pulled back.

Geneva and I stared at each other. Her face was all shiny with sweat.

I heard the door close and Stavros's footsteps going away from us along the sidewalk.

We waited for about thirty seconds, then came out of our hiding place.

“I can't believe it,” Geneva muttered. “This is
so
not believable!”

“I know.”

Stavros walked purposefully along past the shops, and a thought I'd had before popped into my head: a man with a mission. I took a deep breath and tried to think.

He was still carrying the red bag. Was it a little less bulky? It should be if he'd given his friend the vase. But I was sure the main thing, the dangerous thing, was still in there. His bandage was smaller, fresh and dazzlingly white in the warm Cody sun.

“He's not going back to the hotel. Or to the museum,” Geneva whispered. “He's headed for somewhere else. Kevin, I don't know if we can do this. This is…this is…”

“We can. We're onto him. There's no turning back.”

Stavros was walking quickly now, slowing as he passed each store window or open door, checking inside. I deduced he was looking for a special place but he didn't know exactly where it was. Maybe Dr. Rafferty had given him some directions that weren't too precise.