Miranda and the D-Day Caper

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FOUR

Miranda crossed the empty front parking lot and turned the corner just as a mockingbird alighted on the motel roof, ran through bits of its repertoire, and settled on a high, piercing trill. As if taking the cue, Miranda noted an old Volvo out back, past the ice machines and soda dispensers. She assumed it was Skip’s and he was still in. But as she zeroed in on the room number Cindy had given her, she saw that the door was ajar. She knocked gently. Then, competing with the mockingbird trill, she called out and received no reply.

The bird desisted. In its place came a low, muffled moan. She called out again, went inside, and found Skip sprawled on the bed as though he’d taken a few steps, staggered, and collapsed.

Still moaning, he struggled onto his elbows, twisted around, and barely managed to slide off the bed and pull himself up.

“My God, Skip. Are you all right?”

“Shh,” he said, rubbing the back of his head and wincing. “Wait a minute. Maybe if I can stand without getting vertigo . . . can recall exactly . . . right before I blacked out . . .”

“Look, I think we better—”

“Quiet, please? Now, let’s see. Can I think, can I remember . . .? Right. Worried sick about Duffy . . . last night in fact, thought I heard a clicking sound and a yowl . . . maybe a motorcycle tailing off . . .”

“Never mind. What happened to your head?”

“I’m working on it. Yes . . . last night . . . must’ve rolled over and drifted off.”

“Will you forget about last night? Tell me what just happened.”

As Skip went blank, Miranda went over and discovered a swollen bump on the back of his head. She rummaged around the room, located a Styrofoam bucket, and headed outside for the ice machine. Hurrying back, she got a towel from the bathroom, dumped the ice onto the towel, and insisted that he sit down on a chair and hold the cold compress on the exact spot.

“Now then,” said Miranda, “we have to tend to the swelling and get you to the ER to make sure.”

“Wrong. You asked me what happened. I have to at least get my bearings.”

“Well get them fast, kiddo, and we’re off.”

“Hold on, will you? Okay. So . . . after I saw you this morning, guilt seeping in deeper over Duffy, I must’ve dozed off.”

“Whatever,” Miranda said, forcing him to keep the compress steady.

“Not ‘whatever.’ I got up, went to the police station, made a statement about somebody swiping Duffy. The duty sergeant gives me the once-over, doesn’t buy my story but jots it down anyways and passes it on to some officer by the name of Ed. I drive back, unlock the door, go in and slip out again.”

“Why?”

“Because I could swear I’d been tailed again.” He lost the gist of what he was saying and then came out of it. “Oh yeah, I scurried around and pressed my back against a wall like a night stalker on a raid.”

Unable to humor him any longer, Miranda carefully removed the compress and dumped the melted ice into the sink before wringing out the towel. “All right, let me guess. After leaving the door ajar, you doubled back, spotted nothing, stepped further inside, got bopped on the head, lurched forward, and wound up out cold, splayed on the bed.”

“Bingo.”

Miranda added fresh shards of ice, grabbed his overnight bag from beside the bed, and said, “Wait here. I’ll pull my car around. Don’t move.”

“But maybe I’m okay. No memory loss. No nausea, dizziness, or passing out. Just your average clobbered fugitive.”

“Knock it off, Skip. We’re going to the ER. You never know.”

Getting woozy again, Skip said, “We’re going to the ER. You just never know.”

As the clear skies began to give way to streaks of gray, Miranda was not about to take the fast route onto I-40 to Mission Hospital in Asheville. That would mean competing with the hell-bent eighteen-wheel rigs followed by 240 North with its lanes that suddenly switch to off-ramps in the race to the downtown exits. Instead, she decided to take Swannanoa River Road and then Biltmore Avenue. There would be stop lights, a slower trek, but so would her thoughts slow down and Skip, squirming next to her in the passenger seat, would hopefully cool it down as well.

But on the way to the first four-way light at Buckeye Cove, he began carrying on about pushing forty-five—his fear of winding up like the army of guys who couldn’t hack it, retreating to Podunk, selling life insurance, and treading the boards doing community theater. As if taking a page from her partner Harry, he considered waving the white flag and getting Duffy back after asking for a second chance to sign the NDA. After all, he’d only just gotten to the Big Apple, and this was his chance to get somewhere.

“After all,” he said, “who needs scruples?”

When Miranda didn’t bite, he blurted out, “Ask yourself, what’s my currency? It’s not my looks, right? It’s certainly not my sharp business sense. If you look at my sole cachet, it’s nonstop whimsy.”

Past Buckeye Cove, he threw in some more second thoughts. “Besides, who knows who might be listening in from the entertainment world if I tone it down?”

She realized he was trying to call on his usual carefree, go-with-the-flow style, but that fearful catch in his voice gave him away.

Another delay before he came out with “Come to think of it, why, out of the past, did fellow thespian Chris Holden keep saying what a nice homespun guy I was as he showed me around? Like he was making sure of what he was counting on when he called me at the last minute.”

“Someone harmless,” said Miranda to keep him talking while trying to make the drive as smooth as possible. “A fillin who wouldn’t rock the boat. Just an affable throwback to an innocent time.”

Skip grew still, obviously taking this all in. At the same time, Miranda’s line about a more innocent time turned her thoughts to that incident when she fell out of the tree spying on the neighborhood girly girls’ tea party. Her incurably practical mom called her heedlessly reckless. But Skip came by when she was on the mend and told her she had the makings of a great scout. To cheer her up, from out of his bag of tricks he produced his ukulele and sang old timey songs like “You Are My Sunshine” and the good ole “I dream about the moonlight on the Wabash.” There was another crème de menthe and toast, and he told her about all the adventures they could go on. And there was that costume party at the big house on the hill, when her mom said her outfit wasn’t suitable but Skip insisted it was perfect for a commando raider. And all the birthday cards he sent with sign-offs like Tally-ho and Onward into the fray.

Driving on, Miranda began to wonder what she was getting herself into. Harry’s prodding crossed her mind, as did her mom’s. Like that time she was having second thoughts about majoring in business at Chapel Hill, and Mom, who had just broken up with her dad, had said, “What have you got to fall back on? Love and marriage? Or how about a life of foolhardy escapades with your loopy cousin Skip? Wise up, buttercup.” And where was her mother today? Running some trailer park south of Orlando with some guy named Fred.

No love or marriage. No foolhardy escapades. No ma’am. No sir-ree. Strictly business.

Breaking into her reverie, Skip said, “Hold on. There’s a good point there about good ole Chris. And that stuff Russ Mathews was going on about hidden threats to homeland security. Maybe there was always more to this and all the while I sensed it.”

As she came to Swannanoa River Road, despite mulling over Mom’s and Harry’s cautions, Miranda found herself starting to buy into some subterfuge. Like a character from Middlemarch putting aside her better judgement and getting more and more sucked in. “Okay,” she said, “as long as we’re at it, what exactly did you say when you were on the air?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know, catchphrases you glommed from Russ Mathews that let the cat out of the bag. No pun intended.”

Miranda held fast to the right-hand lane, avoiding the cars in line waiting to make a left-hand turn. “Come on. Let’s have it.”

A good five minutes passed before Skip said, “Unless . . .” Then he began squirming and grimacing and struggling with the slipping icy towel. “Unless it was references to that stuff on Russ’s wall. Those Marvel Comics movie posters. You know, Avengers, Captain America and S.H.I.E.L.D. Funny thing, though.”

“What?”

“While Chris was showing me around, he seemed nervous. I lingered in Russ’s office, and he caught me glancing at a book about Rommel’s tactics with his Africa Corp, another about Special Forces, and a calendar with circled dates. Plus a Stalking Horse logo. It was then he started to freak. Blocked my view of the map with check marks veering west toward Asheville.”

“Well now.”

“And Russ’s scribbling stuff like down to the wire . . . D-Day fast approaching. Chris grabbed me by the elbow, yanked hard, and hurried me out of there.”

Glancing at him as she drove, she said, “And you capitalized on that?”

“Naturally. One thing you learn about storytelling—you come upon something that lights a fire, you use it. When your listeners egg you on, you up the ante. More fun for one and all than homespun anecdotes and news from Indiana fishing holes.”

“Go on,” said Miranda, getting even more hooked despite herself.

“Right.” He assumed his radio voice. “‘Okay, night people. Taking a page from good ole Russ, how many of you know about D-Day or the SAS? There comes a time when you have to strike suddenly. When the stalking horse is in place. When there’s only a short window till midnight on this following Wednesday.’”

“Great,” Miranda said as she barely missed a car coming up on her right. “D-Day, the SAS, and the stalking horse—whatever that is—probably did it.”

“Except for the fact,” Skip said, back to wincing continually, “Russ Mathews started it.”

“Brilliant. Except for the fact he had no idea what you were up to. Except some higher-ups apparently didn’t appreciate your extrapolations.”

Skip devolved into muttering to himself, but Miranda listened in. “Wait a second. There was also a red pushpin in the neighborhood of the 9/11 memorial. What is that all about? Do you think there’s more than one target? Do you think . . .?”

As she approached the hospital on Biltmore Avenue, Miranda’s thoughts veered again. “How did anyone know you had a cat if it was always cooped up?”

Dispensing with the compress which had turned watery, Skip said, “Probably because of those times I felt sorry for him. I took Duffy for rides on those sunny days to check out the territory as he curled up by the rear window. He really liked that, peering out with the warm sun glancing through. That’s when somebody must have spotted him.”

“Crossing over into Lower Manhattan,” said Skip, his manic mood picking up again. “To check out St. Paul’s Chapel. The Little Chapel that Stood and survived 9/11. The van, the one coming and going at the ramshackle rooming house. The one with the Confederate logo and a small American flag.”

“What about it?”

“The driver was either checking out the old church or following me or both.”

She pulled into the visitors’ lot for the ER and slipped into a space close to the entrance and shut off the motor. Though it would totally overload the circuit, she couldn’t help letting him know.

“Look, I hate to break it to you, but Cindy at the motel let on it was some guy on a motorcycle who snuck into your room at the crack of dawn and sliced the collar. Tossed Duffy into a rental car where he crawled up by the rear window as the rental car took off. The upshot is, Mathews was the driver. Must have flown all the way down from New York to keep you under wraps one way or another.”

As Skip sat there in stunned silence, she couldn’t help but notice the white compact pulling in a few rows back. It could very well have been a Toyota Corolla. Needless to say, it was another sign the powers that be were on to Skip and their tactics were unlimited, let alone the parameters of the playing field.

Given the strain to eke out what was going on, Mom’s and Harry’s cliché word to the wise had no cachet.