THEN
Two days before his arrival in Norman Wells, Webb had leaned forward in the backseat of a Phoenix taxicab to catch the view through the windshield as a large double-sided gate swung open to reveal palm trees growing in a divider down the center of a wide boulevard. The security code he’d been given worked; so far, at least, the plan was on track, even though he didn’t know what the plan was.
It was five in the afternoon. Webb should have been tired. He’d begun the day at 3:00 AM, catching a subway from downtown Toronto to the end of the line, then a bus to Toronto’s Pearson Airport for a Toronto-Chicago flight that left at 8:32 AM. It took an hour to get through customs at the airport—an hour of worrying whether he would get through customs. Grandpa’s lawyer had suggested he clean himself up a bit before he crossed the border. Webb had done the best he could.
He’d probably checked his passport a hundred times as he shuffled forward in the line. It was a new passport—at least new to Webb. The date of issue was three years earlier. Someone had applied for the passport on his behalf, before Webb had been old enough to do it for himself. And it meant that after the passport had arrived, that same someone had held on to it.
Had his mother applied for it? Or his grandpa?
He couldn’t ask his mother; they hadn’t spoken in months.
And, of course, he couldn’t ask his grandpa. The passport had been in the envelope given to him at the reading of his grandpa’s will. Along with the small key, some prepaid bank cards and a letter to Webb from his grandpa, which didn’t have much information and nothing at all about the passport. Not much to go on for a trip to the desert.
When he’d reached the front of the line, a middle-aged US Customs and Immigration guy had given Webb’s passport a bored look and asked about the purpose of Webb’s visit to the States.
“To deliver something for my grandfather,” Webb had answered honestly.
“What?”
Webb showed him the key. The customs guy had cocked his head, puzzled.
“I don’t know why,” Webb answered before the question could be asked. “Before he died, he arranged for his lawyer to pay for my ticket and give me an address in Phoenix so I could deliver the key.”
“Return airfare?”
Webb had nodded.
The guy looked hard at Webb, who was wearing a ball cap, trying to look like an upstanding young man.
“You ever had a drug conviction?”
“No, sir,” Webb said. It didn’t seem like the time and place to explain that he’d been kicked out of high school for drug possession. But, truthfully, there had been no charges, no conviction.
“I could hassle you,” the guy said, tapping Webb’s passport, “but what matters most is that you have a return ticket. And I think if you were making up a story, it would be a better one than that. If it was important to a dying man, then I’m not going to stop you.”
The guy had given Webb’s face a final look, then stamped the passport.
After that, there had been an hour’s wait for the flight to Chicago, then a delay of another hour, then the flight, then two hours in Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, and finally the flight from Chicago to Phoenix. Anyone who thought travel was exciting would have been cured of the illusion by the end of that trip.
Webb had spent most of his time on the plane listening to old rock music on his iPod, imagining where he’d place his fingers for each new chord.
He hadn’t reread the letter from his grandpa. Not even once. He didn’t need to have it in front of him at all; he’d memorized every word when he first opened it in a café near the lawyer’s office.
Webby, I owe an old friend a favor. You’ll find his name and address on the back of this letter. Ticket and passport and bank cards will get you there. Whatever you do for him is no different than helping me. I appreciate it. Here’s what you need to learn: buried secrets cause pain.
At the lawyer’s office, Webb had wondered what Grandpa had written to his cousins.
That was their business though. This was his. When he read the letter, he’d noted the date and time on the ticket, and realized the flight left the next morning; Devine must have arranged the flight sometime between the funeral and the reading of the will. Webb didn’t consider for a moment not getting on the airplane. Whatever you do for him is no different than helping me.
It was simple; Webb would have done anything to help his grandpa. If he needed to leave on short notice with unclear instructions, would he do it? Yes. The old man had been special.
That meant he’d do the same for Jake Rundell, who lived in a gated community in the northwest part of greater Phoenix, nearly an hour’s drive from the airport.
The taxi had taken Webb through the gates and down the boulevard lined with palm trees.
On one side of the boulevard was a sidewalk. On the other side, a fast-flowing creek with ducks.
In the desert?
Outside his air-conditioned cab, it had been 110 degrees.
Ducks, in the desert?
It hadn’t taken Webb long to figure it out. Gated community. Expensive houses. It was like an oasis. An artificial oasis made by piles of money. He glimpsed a golf course beyond the houses.
Whoever he was, Mr. Jake Rundell of 2911 Roy Rogers Road, this friend of his grandpa’s, was definitely rich.
And, as it turned out, definitely dead.