Sergeant Bohler was not at the county impound garage. Neither was Sniffy the wonder dog, whose nostrils had imploded from whiffing too many Burger King wrappers. Their absence – the sergeant’s more than the dog’s – simplified the lies I needed to get away with.
‘I’m dropping off my Jeep,’ I said to the young officer sitting at Bohler’s desk.
‘Huh?’
‘Sergeant Bohler thinks I’m a murderer and she impounded my Jeep.’
‘I remember.’
‘She’s desperate to prove it was used to destroy evidence and will want new noses, canine and otherwise, to examine it.’ I did not add that Bohler might want the opportunity to install a new tracking device.
The young cop started to nod at the nonsense before he caught himself and stopped. ‘You’re nuts,’ he offered reasonably.
‘Perhaps, but new meds are being developed every day. May I have a receipt?’
‘Sergeant Bohler wouldn’t want this. Suspects don’t bring in evidence.’
‘She’s got a nose for thoroughness,’ I said cleverly. ‘She won’t turn down a redo.’
The young cop shrugged, grabbed a pad from Bohler’s office and followed me outside.
He laughed when he saw the top. ‘It’s green.’
‘You’ll be envious, come Christmas,’ I said.
His smile disappeared. ‘And that?’ the cop asked, pointing at the yellowish bit impaled on the braided wires protruding from the dash.
‘More interesting than an ordinary air freshener, don’t you think?’ I said of the Cheese Whopper wrapper. It was the second-to-last touch of my inspiration, a restoration of the scent that had driven poor Sniffy mad.
The cop gave me a receipt and I walked away as though headed for the train station.
Amanda was waiting around the corner in her Toyota. ‘You’re sure that was wise, poking so arrogantly at them?’ she asked.
‘I don’t want to leave the Jeep outside the turret if I’m not around, for fear of a new deposit. I won’t leave it at Leo’s, for fear I’ll link him to this mess.’
‘What about my building? Best guarded garage in town.’
‘You don’t need cops hanging around your condo.’
‘We’ll see who I want hanging around my condo,’ she said, and pointed her comfortably clattering old Toyota toward the airport.
Instead of continuing down 55th Street to the long-term regular parking garage, she turned south on Central Avenue and pulled beneath the portico of Signature Flight Support.
‘Support?’ I asked.
‘For the rich,’ she said. She held out her hand, palm up.
As we agreed before we left the turret, I gave her the $482 my coach seat would have cost to fly Southwest Airlines round trip to Portland, Oregon. It was a pittance and absolutely necessary.
‘I’ll have my secretary email you a receipt,’ she said.
We walked into the lobby. A center cluster of black vinyl and chrome lounge chairs faced a big-screen television. Another row faced windows that looked out onto the ritzier runways of Midway Airport. Amanda stopped at the main desk to hand a woman her car keys and we went outside onto the cement bordering the closest runway.
We walked past a Rolls-Royce pulled up to the closest jet and down fifty yards to where two pilots in white shirts, dark ties and black trousers were standing next to a sleek, small white jet trimmed in burgundy and gold. They smiled as Amanda introduced me. A door with stairs was dropped on the left side of the fuselage and we stepped up into the cabin.
It was close enough to opulent to reinforce my belief that I would never feel comfortable in such a craft. Two tan leather seats faced each other on the door side, along with a single seat that faced the door. Two pairs of seats faced each other across the narrow aisle. Most of the hard surfaces were tan, textured plastic, trimmed in narrow, gold-colored metal. Amanda and I sat opposite each other in the larger seating group.
The pilots came on board a minute later. The captain slipped onto the left-hand seat in the cockpit and the first officer came back to give us the same instructions about emergency evacuation, oxygen masks and flotation cushions that I ignored on commercial flights. Pointing to a cabinet, he told us there was an assortment of booze, Coke and snacks, and for us to help ourselves.
‘I asked them to stock Twinkies and Peeps,’ Amanda said.
‘You did all that this morning?’
‘Crack of dawn,’ she said.
‘You were pretty cocky, assuming I’d prefer this over the press of mankind in the main terminal,’ I said.
‘I hedged my bet by stocking the Twinkies and Peeps. I knew you wouldn’t refuse those.’
‘The Peeps, they’re fresh?’
‘Wealthy people don’t risk cracking teeth.’
We were off, then, and in no time we were above the clouds.
‘Seductive, isn’t it? No lines, no TSA screening, no waiting of any sort?’ she asked.
‘What if your shareholders find out you’re using this for personal reasons?’
‘This was my father’s plane, not the company’s,’ she said. ‘He used it for business, of course, but also for fishing and hunting trips with his buddies. I’ll need it once in a while but not as often, so I’ve let it out for charter. I expect to make money on it.’
She got up, grabbed two Diet Cokes and asked what specifically I expected to find in Reeder, Oregon.
‘The reason why someone isn’t there,’ I said.