The Count of Carolina Read online

“We haven’t heard much from them in a while,” Dan noted.

  “No, we haven’t. That was part of the reason I visited them. I was pretty sure that Darlene was holding back on giving me any new assignments and I wanted to tell her I was ready to work.”

  “Your arm feels up to it? I mean, you were very lucky that the bullet hit nothing but soft tissue, but a gunshot wound is a gunshot wound. She probably wanted to make sure you were a hundred percent before she sent you into the field.”

  Cole nodded as she chewed a bite of her toast. “Yes, I’m sure she was concerned about my physical recovery, but mostly, she wanted to know my head was right. That trip hit both you and me very hard.”

  “I’m a little surprised that you were affected to the degree that you were. After all, you’ve been doing this for a very long time. I had an excuse to be messed up by everything that we saw.”

  “Being honest, here,” she said as a preface. “There was a lot about that job that was new and unsettling for me, not the least of which was finding those poor women in that cell. But there was also an entire layer of weird having you with me, observing that world. It shook me seeing what the experience did to you.”

  “What are you talking about?” Dan said, a goofy grin spreading across his face. “I’m Two-Gunz, remember? Baddest man in the whole damn town.”

  “Badder than old King Kong?” she asked, picking up the Jim Croce song reference.

  “Mm-hmm. And meaner than a junkyard dog.”

  “Listen, Leroy Brown, you don’t go from a life in which the most violent experience you’ve ever had took place on a video game console to shooting two people dead in a two-day span and not have it do something to you.”

  Dan adopted a more serious facial expression. “I appreciate that, Coley. But I’m fine. I’ve told you that a hundred times.”

  Her meal finished, Nicole reached over and put her hand gently on top of Dan’s. “I know. And I believe you. That’s why we’re doing it again.”

  His eyes widened at the pronouncement. Nicole had said that she’d be more inclined to invite him along on a future job after the successful conclusion of their first collaboration, but now that it actually seemed as though it might happen, he was surprised by his own mental unpreparedness.

  “That face right there is why I’m still concerned, though,” she said, pointing to him.

  “I’m fine. Just wasn’t expecting you to say… that.”

  “It was a statement hovering on the horizon for several weeks. I knew I needed to work, and I hoped it would be a case in which I could include you.” She was so pleased to have an assignment that she’d forgotten her initial plan was to go it alone this time. “As it turns out, it’s a case for which your accompanying me will be vital.”

  “I’m listening,” Dan said with as much composure as he could muster.

  “This is a domestic cleaning, but we’ll have to travel to the east coast.”

  “Where about?”

  “Greenville.”

  “Greenville… South Carolina?” he asked, intoning the name almost reverentially. “As in where you grew up? As in the place you told me you’d sooner be burned at the stake than return to?”

  “Exactly.”

  “And in saying that last sentence, I have encapsulated everything I know about your childhood. It happened in Greenville and you don’t discuss it because it sucked.”

  “Correct on all accounts.”

  Dan let out a low whistle, which he let hang in the air for a moment. Nicole was cognizant of all the things he wasn’t saying now. She knew that out of respect for her, he never talked about that part of her life, simply because she’d asked him on one of their first dates not to go there. She also knew that for the entire twenty-one years of their marriage, he had to have wondered about it. And while she still wasn’t ready to paint him a detailed picture, this was as close to the topic as they’d ever really come. And it’s as close as we’re going to come, she thought to herself as she looked into Dan’s eyes.

  “Well, give me the particulars.”

  Nicole smiled, realizing she’d used the exact phrase to indicate to Darlene that she was willing to take the job.

  “You remember that Olympic team doctor that abused all those athletes?”

  “Yes, it’s pretty hard to forget. He garnered a lot of attention.”

  “Well, bastards like that have to get started somewhere, and Darlene says there is very good evidence that there’s an athletic trainer in the Greenville area that’s not looking at the downfall of the Olympic doctor as a cautionary tale. He’s viewing it as a how-to lesson.”

  “I’d think in the current climate, something like that would be exposed and shut down pretty quickly,” Dan said. “Should be, anyway.”

  Nicole shook her head. “You’d think so. You’d certainly hope so at the very least. But the fact of the matter is that the climate about that sort of thing has never really changed in places like Greenville, or at least in the outlying areas.”

  “Even in the ‘me too’ era?”

  “It has to do with Southern culture. The respect for elders that is preached daily goes a long way toward numbing self-preservation instincts. So when someone tells you ‘don’t tell anyone,’ you keep your mouth shut.”

  “That’s disturbing on many levels.”

  “It is. It should be.”

  “Alright,” Dan said, taking a deep breath. “So let me see if I’ve got this right. At this point, you’ve been told only two additional things: when to pick up our identification and where to go.”

  Nicole smiled at Dan’s wanting to get with the program. “You forgot one. I’ve been given my handler’s contact information.”

  “Ah, the handler. Of course. So we get the IDs, we hop a flight east, and you contact your handler to set up the meet.”

  “That, Two-Gunz, is exactly right.”

  “What’s the time table?”

  “Well, J.J. is home for another two days, and I was worried about running out on her. But it turns out that it’s not going to be a problem. My usual documents guy is out of the area, and although he hooked me up with a dependable back-up, I can’t contact that guy until tomorrow, which could put obtaining the IDs off for two additional days.”

  “Okay. So we’ll be here till the day J.J. leaves, which is… Wednesday?”

  “Yep. She’s heading back to Indiana at noon.”

  “Better make sure we’re not on the same flight.”

  “Actually, Darlene is going to book us out for the day after J.J. goes. We could pull it off on Wednesday, but the stars would have to align just-so. See her off, hope the IDs are done on time and right, then make our flight. And we have to swing home at some point, because we couldn’t bring our luggage when we drop the kid. Waiting one more day eliminates all the tap dancing.”

  Dan poked out his lower lip and nodded, his non-verbal sign for “Solid logic. Quite agree.”

  “So it looks like we might be traveling for our anniversary again this year. Alright. Gotta change the subject. She’s home.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Girl-radar, baby!”

  “Girl-radar? What are you talking about?”

  “It’s the estrogen-laced equivalent of the man-map that you’re always going on about.”

  Dan groaned as she teased him yet again about his reliance upon an innate ability to navigate with no landmarks, based solely upon the fact that he was a man, dammit, and so it has been for time immemorial. As always, he took the jibe with good humor.

  “But that, just like the man-map,” Nicole said with a sly grin, “is bullshit. If you look out the window behind you in that gap in the hedge that you keep promising you’ll plug, you can see tiny patch of Cook Street, about twenty feet west of our driveway. While we were talking, I saw a flash of Fran’s pink jeep.”

  Picturing Jennifer June’s childhood best friend, Fran, in her hot pink Wrangler, Dan thought there might possibly be another person in Denver dr
iving something that same horrid color, but he hoped not.

  “So you saw a flash of pink through the hedge hole, and you knew J.J. was home. That still sounds close to radar. I don’t think I’m going to challenge that one.”

  Nicole huffed. “Challenge? There…there is no challenge. There can be no challenge! I debunked my own claim.”

  “I reject you debunking and reserve the right to hold the original statement unchallenged. In the name of man-map users everywhere.”

  “Ooo. You big…” Nicole lunged toward him. Dan leapt from his chair and started running, and she chased him. They did a couple of laps around the table before he made a break for the kitchen entryway, where they collided, laughing hysterically, with J.J. and Fran. The four of them ended up in a heap on the floor.

  “Hi, Mama P. and Papa P.,” Fran said a little shakily, but with a smile.

  “Hi, sweetie,” said Nicole, not yet able to curtail her laughter.

  From the bottom of the pile, J.J. said, “You guys are so weird.”

  “It’s okay, Jayj,” said Fran. “That’s why I love them. My parents are boring!”

  As they began to help each other up, Dan said, “Aw, we’re pretty boring too. Right, J.J.?”

  “No. Just weird.”

  Dan looked at Nicole. “She means you!” he said before bolting from the room.

  “Come back here, you!” Cole called after him.

  J.J. and Fran were left standing in the kitchen.

  “God,” J.J. said with just the right measures of disgust and love. Then after a beat, “I’m starving. Let’s teach them a lesson and raid the kitchen.”

  4

  Taking Flight

  “Did you remember everything?” Nicole asked J.J. as they parked the car in the short-term lot of the Denver International Airport.

  Jennifer June Porter, at twenty, looked so much like her mother had at the same age that sometimes Dan got a little disoriented when he saw the two of them side-by-side. Ahead of them lay the massive airport building, with its Teflon-coated fiberglass roof. The standard line about the roof was that it resembled the peaks of the Rocky Mountains, in which it was situated. To Dan, it had always looked like pointed tops of the teepees in a large Indian village, and his moderate to heavy mantle of white man shame always pushed the experience a little toward the uncomfortable side of the feelings spectrum. He always felt better once he got inside the terminal, where he could no longer see the imaginary homes of the rightfully revenge-minded Native Americans.

  “You always do that, Mom,” J.J. said with a lilting laugh.

  “I always do what, Jennifer?” Cole responded, a vein of pure mom-annoyance running the length of her tone and leading to the dread full pronunciation of her first name.

  J.J. reached up and tenderly patted her mother’s cheek. “You always ask me if I’ve remembered everything way too late to do anything about it!”

  Nicole smiled. “Well, did you?”

  J.J. stepped into the crosswalk that led to the Delta Terminal. “I remembered things I didn’t even know I needed.”

  Dan, who oversaw the suitcase she’d be checking, nodded with mock trauma. “I can corroborate that statement,” he grunted.

  “Faker!” Nicole and J.J. said in laughing unison.

  “Go ahead, laugh,” he said, maintaining the ruse. “Let’s see how funny you think it is when I die like a worn-out pack mule in the middle of the airport.”

  “Good lord, Dad. So much drama!”

  They brought the suitcase, which was actually quite manageable, to the baggage check and peeked at the arrivals and departures board. J.J.’s 11:54 flight was due to leave on time. Dan glanced at his watch and saw that it was not yet 10:00. “Anyone feel like a bite before J.J. goes to her gate?”

  “Yes!” Nicole exclaimed with fervor. As was usually the case when she spent the morning making sure that J.J. had all her ducks in a row for her return to school, she’d neglected herself and thus far had only a single cup of coffee fueling her.

  “Don’t you have a Delta Sky Club card?” J.J. asked her mother.

  “I do!” Cole said with the sort of enthusiasm usually reserved for children on Christmas morning. They took a series of escalators to bring them to the top floor of the central part of Concourse A, where the Delta Club was located not far from the American Airlines Admiral’s Club.

  As they arrived in the lounge, Nicole instinctively selected the best table available, with strategic views of the entrance as well as a clear perspective of the rest of the room, and made sure her chair was backed only by the wall. Over the years, she had always done this, and if the trait had once roused curiosity in the children, it had long since stopped doing so.

  As they looked over the menu, J.J. innocently asked, “So what have you two got planned once the house is kidless again? Nudge-nudge, wink-wink.”

  “That’s none of your business, young lady,” Dan said, essentially confirming his daughter’s insinuation. “Nice Python reference, though.”

  “What’s the matter? Didn’t expect it?” said J.J., a hint of mischief creeping across her face.

  “Not really,” Dan admitted.

  “Nooooobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!” she shouted triumphantly. “I’m so glad you chose no!”

  They passed a half hour in happy conversation, each enjoying light brunch fare. However, about twenty minutes into the meal, Nicole’s senses tingled somewhat as a man entered the lounge. He walked to the bar, seeming to pay little attention to his surroundings. She noticed he ordered a Bloody Mary, and after her initial Oh, that looks good thought, she turned her attention back to her family. But not completely.

  There was something about the man that was vaguely familiar, she realized as she stole an occasional glance. Although he seemed to concentrate more on his drink than on anything else, she saw that he had taken a seat at the bar, which allowed him to easily look in their direction merely by shifting his eyes. After a few more pilfered looks, she realized it was not the man himself who struck a chord of familiarity, but rather the type of man he was. Suave, perfectly dressed and groomed, with a sheen of product in his hair and, as the barmaid asked if he’d like another cocktail, a smile that had probably made a thousand pairs of panties magically disappear. His straight, perfectly white teeth looked far too much like those of a prowling, hungry carnivore. She’d never seen the man before, but she knew him well.

  But the man turned down the refill and stood soon after, leaving the lounge while the Porters were still finishing their food.

  I wonder if there will ever come a day when I stop seeing hostile operatives in every room I enter, she thought as the door slid shut behind him.

  “Well,” said J.J. at last, “they’ll probably start boarding by the time I get through security and make it to the gate.”

  Nicole put the meal on her card, and as J.J. picked up her carry-on and Dan threw his light jacket over his arm, she casually glanced around the lounge one last time. No one else in the room had given her any kind of unsettling vibe, and she exited the Sky Club still teasing herself for her constant diligence/paranoia.

  A moment after the Porters left the lounge, a nondescript man in his late sixties, his bald head and spectacles both shining even in the low light of the Sky Club, stood, throwing a twenty-dollar bill on the table to pay for two cups of coffee. He waited exactly thirty seconds, then followed them out.

  They walked together toward the TSA line, which J.J. saw, much to her delight, was not long. And it was moving quickly. “Stay with me till it’s my turn?” she said to her parents.

  “Of course,” said Nicole, who was casually scanning the crowd for the swarthy young man from the bar, who in her mind had assumed the name “Rodrigo,” for no better reason than that he appeared to have some Hispanic DNA, and that it was the sort of name she assumed a smooth character like him would either have providentially been given at birth or had selected for himself at some point in his adulthood. The concourse was bus
y, but not to the degree that she would have overlooked him were he lurking. So she mentally drew a line through the only name on her potential threat list.

  After only a few minutes, it was J.J.’s turn to put her bag on the moving belt that fed the X-ray machine. She’d already removed her shoes, and as she passed through the metal detector, the archway’s lights remained unlit, its warning signal remaining mute. She collected her belongings, then turned to blow a kiss to her parents, who stood, arms around each other’s waists, their other hands waving goodbye. She smiled at the sight of them. Yes, they were weird. Yes, her dad was the undisputed king of the corny dad-joke. But, not for the first time, she said a silent prayer that she someday found someone to love as ardently and as faithfully as they loved one another. She returned the parting wave and walked to her gate.

  As Dan and Nicole saw their daughter’s form recede down the long passage of the Delta Terminal, Nicole felt someone bump her slightly. She turned to see a bespectacled man struggling to remove his shoes. She immediately reached out to steady him. He turned to look at her with the most innocuous, grandfatherly grin she’d ever observed.

  “Why, thank you,” he said, removing his shoes and stepping up to the TSA agent.

  Without considering him any further, they headed toward the exit.

  Once the older man cleared security, he turned to make sure the helpful couple were gone, then made a beeline for the still visible form of J.J. in the distance.

  As they stepped out of the terminal and into the fresh, crisp air of yet another sunny Denver day, Cole’s phone chirped. She pulled it from her pocket and took a look.

  “Oh, good,” she said, sounding pleased as she read it.

  “What?” Dan asked.

  She turned the screen toward Dan, who read, “Dry Cleaning ready for pickup.”

  “When did you send out dry cleaning?” he asked.

  “I didn’t. It’s from the document guy. Our IDs are ready.”

  “That’s sooner than you’d expected, right?”