What Could Go Wrong? (7 page)

“A man,” I said blankly, turning away from the counter. “Why would she have gone anywhere with a man? She intended to come right back; she knew the plane would be leaving pretty soon.” I checked the time again, and saw that it was running out, yet how could I leave it at this? “What if something happened to her?”

“Like what?” Eddie wanted to know.

“If I knew
what,
I wouldn't still be wondering. Look, I know it's getting late, but I'm going to take a quick walk down that way and see if there's any sign of her. If there isn't, I guess we'll just have to give her stuff to the passenger agent and explain she's supposed to be on our plane and we don't know what happened to her. Maybe she got sick or something—though if she was with a man, and seemed to be all right when she left the gift store . . .”

My voice trailed. If she hadn't looked so much like Dad's aunt Letty, or somebody's grandma, or she hadn't asked me to watch her things, maybe I wouldn't have bothered. But the truth was, I
did
feel somewhat responsible.

“Well, come on, let's hurry up,” Charlie said, “or we'll miss the plane, and then your dad will finally have a real reason to think we're irresponsible.”

“It isn't Gracie he thinks is irresponsible,” Eddie informed him as we half-ran along the corridor amid a group that had just come off a
plane, lugging bags and bundles. “It's you, Charlie.”

“Thanks a heap,” Charlie told him good-naturedly. “She's nowhere in sight, Gracie, and we're getting farther from our gate all the time. We've got to turn around and go back.”

He was right. If we didn't turn around within the next few minutes, we'd have to run to make it. I could imagine sitting in front of Gladys and Howard and listening to her complain about our delaying the rest of our trip—if they didn't leave without us, that was.

To our right a stairway rose to a third level, and there was a sign that said
RESTRICTED AREA; NO ADMITTANCE.
Charlie saw me looking and shook his head.

“She can read. She wouldn't have gone up there.”

“No,” I agreed, and turned reluctantly to retrace our steps.

And then I saw it. A blue-and-white flight bag, just like mine, stuffed halfway into one of those refuse containers with a swinging lid on the top of it.

I stopped, and a cold feeling swept through me.

“It's hers,” I said, sounding hollow. “It's Mrs. Basker's flight bag. Why would she throw it away? Charlie, something's happened to her, and we've got to find out what it was.”

Eddie stared at the discarded flight bag. “How do you know it's hers? You've got one just like it, Gracie, and I've seen some other ones the same color, too. They sell them everywhere.”

“It's Mrs. Basker's,” I said with certainty. I pulled the bag out of the trash container and unzipped it. “Look! It's got her glasses in it, the same case I picked up off the floor! She'd never have thrown away her glasses!”

“No,” Charlie agreed. “Maybe somebody snatched the bag and took what they wanted out of it, then threw it away. She's probably looking for it, or went to find the security guards to report it.” He looked up and down the corridor, but though there were lots of people, there was no old lady in a blue-and-white striped dress.

“We've got to catch our plane in only about ten minutes,” Eddie reminded us. “We better just take her bag to a security person and take off. Let them handle it.”

I supposed he was right—we weren't cops, after all—but I couldn't help being worried about Mrs. Basker. “What if she got hurt or something when the guy stole her bag? She'd probably fight to keep it.”

I looked up the stairs that led to the third, forbidden, level. “What do you suppose is up there?”

“Offices,” Charlie said at once. “I think the security headquarters are up there, too. There's no reason to think she's up there, Gracie. The signs say ‘no admittance' and you don't see any traffic on the stairs, do you? There's nothing to say the cops are up there, either, so why would she go up there?”

“I don't know. But there's something on the steps—”

I shrugged off his restraining hand and ran up the off-limits stairway, snatching up what had from a distance looked like a dropped paper napkin. It wasn't a napkin, though.

“This is hers!” I exclaimed, spreading out the handkerchief so they could see the embroidery in the corner. “I picked this up, too, when she spilled the stuff out of her purse!”

For once Charlie didn't waste time arguing about an idea just because it hadn't been his in the first place. “Come on. I guess we've got time for a quick check. Maybe a security guard took her up to the offices to make a report or something.”

We ran up the stairs. Between Mrs. Basker's things and our own, we had about all we could carry. When we reached the third-floor level, I was breathing heavily, and it wasn't all from the climb. I had a really anxious feeling about what had happened to Mrs. Basker.

The longest corridor I ever saw ran off in both directions. There were no people around, and it was very quiet compared to the rest of the airport. There were open doors showing that workmen were remodeling or building, but no workmen.

“Geez, guys, we haven't got much time,” Eddie said uneasily. “What if we miss the plane? Everybody will be mad at us, and what
if they make us pay for new tickets on another flight? We haven't got enough money for that.” He licked salt from the corn chips off his lips. “If anybody's folks have to drive down from Seattle to pick us up, we're going to be in trouble for sure.”

I knew he was right, but I didn't take time to discuss it. “I'm going to open some of these doors and see if I can find anybody who saw her.”

“You and Eddie go that way,” Charlie suggested. “One of you take each side of the hall. I'll go the other way. There's a sign that says ‘security office' down that way. If nobody finds her, we'll tell the guards we have to catch a plane in a few minutes. Then they can take care of it.”

Eddie and I fairly flew along the hall, opening doors, calling out into unfurnished and unfinished rooms. We didn't have to go very far.

The sign said
AIRLINE PERSONNEL ONLY.
Some of the doors had been locked, but Eddie twisted this knob and shoved inward, and a moment later his yelp brought me back to him.

“You were right, Gracie,” he said, his eyes practically bulging out of his head. “I think . . . I think she's been murdered!”

For a minute, staring past Eddie, I was afraid he was right.

The room was some sort of lounge that didn't look quite finished; there were tarps down where someone had been painting the walls, and a ladder and paint cans.

What we looked at, though, was Mrs. Basker. She was lying on her side on the floor so that we couldn't see her face, but the blue-and-white striped dress and the comfortable white shoes were unmistakable.

I sucked in a painful breath. Was Eddie right? I pushed past him—he stood frozen, blocking the doorway—and dropped to my knees beside the old lady. The straps of my flight bag slid off my shoulder, and something crunched under my weight, objects I recognized.

I'd picked some of them up earlier, when her purse had been knocked out of her hands and spilled on the tiled floor.

“It looks like somebody grabbed her purse and emptied it out,” I said, sounding choked,
which was the way I felt. And scared. I was definitely scared.

So was Eddie. His Adam's apple was bobbing up and down and he couldn't even talk until his second try. “Is she . . . dead?”

I never took anybody's pulse before, but I'd seen it done in the movies. I felt around on her wrist until I found it. “She's alive, but I think somebody hit her on the head. See, there's a big purple bruise. Run, Eddie, get Charlie and the cops, and tell them to call a doctor, or an ambulance!”

Only after Eddie had fled did it occur to me that I was alone here with an unconscious old woman and that the person who hit her and robbed her might still be around. I'll bet my own pulse was beating a mile a minute. “Mrs. Basker,” I said urgently, “can you hear me?”

She didn't answer me, didn't move. I swallowed hard. Please, please, don't let her be dead, I thought.

And then, aloud, I said, “Hurry up, Charlie! Come with the cops!”

I suppose it didn't really take very long. Charlie ran, so he got there first, but the security
officer was right behind him. A second officer peered in the doorway and immediately started speaking into the walkie-talkie he unclipped from his belt, calling for a medic team.

Things were sort of a jumble then for a few minutes. The officers asked questions, and we tried to answer them. Charlie was the one who finally remembered our plane was probably already leaving. The second officer said, “Don't worry about it, we'll have them hold it for you,” and got on his little radio again.

Two men came with a stretcher and lifted Mrs. Basker onto it and took her away. They picked up her belongings and said they'd see that she got them. Her wallet and change purse were still there, with money still in them, and her identification.

The officer counted through the bills. “Hmm. A hundred and six dollars. Doesn't look as if robbery was the motive. Unless you kids scared him off before he had a chance to get it. Do you know if she was carrying anything else of value? Jewelry, maybe?”

I shook my head. “I don't think so. She spilled her purse before we left Sea-Tac, when
somebody ran into her. I picked the stuff up, and didn't see anything like that.”

“Anything missing, that you can notice?”

I looked at the accumulation of brush, comb, Kleenex—all the odds and ends a woman carries in her purse. “No,” I said. “Not that I can tell.”

“Well, we've got your names and addresses, and the phone number where you'll be in San Francisco,” he said finally. “Let's get you on to your flight. Someone will probably want to talk to you later, if they have more questions.”

“Maybe whoever did it is still hiding in one of the rooms along this corridor,” Charlie said. “Maybe you ought to search the whole third floor.”

The officer regarded him the way people often looked at Charlie. The way my dad looks at him. “Actually, we thought of that,” he said dryly. “My guess, though, is the guy left here long before you kids found her. He stuffed her flight bag in the trash at the foot of the stairs, right? Searched through it up here after he'd knocked her out, found what he wanted in it—or gave up when he didn't find it—and got rid
of it down there. So he's well away from here by now.”

I guess that was supposed to make us feel safe to go back to our departure gate, but I couldn't help looking around for someone dangerous all the way there, even with Charlie and Eddie and one of the security guards with me. The trouble was, I didn't know what a dangerous person would look like. He could be anyone.

Just before we reached the boarding area, which was practically empty now—everybody else was apparently already on the plane—I remembered something. “The clerk in the gift shop saw her with a man, she said. It must have been the one who hit her, don't you think?”

The officer's interest quickened. “That so? The gift shop near the stairs? I'll talk to her, see if she can give me a description of him. Though he's probably long gone, now. Out of the airport, and beyond jurisdiction. The regular police will handle it from here on.”

“What about Mrs. Basker? Do you think she'll be okay?” I wondered.

“Well, she was knocked out, but she didn't
seem to have a depressed fracture or anything like that. I'm not a doctor, but I think she'll probably come around all right. Probably have a bad headache for a few days. Here you go, lady, these are the last of your passengers,” he said to the waiting passenger agent. He had a parting word for us. “It'd be better if you don't talk too much about this, except to your parents. The news people have a way of blowing everything out of portion, and there's a lot we don't know yet.”

“Sure,” Charlie said, and Eddie and I murmured our agreement.

Everybody looked at us as if we were some weird species of bug under a microscope when we finally boarded the new plane. I felt very self-conscious being stared at by a whole planeload of people. I couldn't blame them for being curious, but I sort of resented the comments from Gladys and Howard behind us. (We took the same places as we'd had on the first plane.)

“I don't see why we had to wait for
them,
just because they're kids,” Gladys observed in a tone loud enough for us to hear. “We've
already been delayed so much we'll just barely make it to the wedding.”

“Inconsiderate,” Howard said, finally finding something he and his wife could agree on. “That's the way kids are these days. Never think of anyone but themselves.”

My cheeks felt hot as I fastened my seat belt. It wasn't fair to say that when he didn't have the slightest idea what had happened to us, or to lump all kids together in the way they behaved.

Mrs. Hall leaned forward across the empty seats beside her. “Do you know what's happened to the lady who was here before? Mrs. Basker? She was supposed to be going on to San Francisco, wasn't she? I mean, we weren't even scheduled to
land
in Portland.”

“She got hurt,” I said, after a moment of hesitation. “She's been taken to a hospital.”

Mrs. Hall drew back, shocked. “Really? Oh my, how did it happen?”

Charlie nudged me warningly, and I resisted the impulse to tell the whole story, as far as we knew it, to let Gladys and Howard know how wrong they were about us.

“We don't know exactly,” I told her. “Only that she hurt her head.”