Run into Trouble (6 page)

She handed the receiver across the counter
to Drake. He put it to his ear. “Hello, Peter?”

“Yes.”

“This is Oliver Drake. You were given an
envelope to give me?”

“Oh…right.”

“What time was that?”

“Let’s see. Johnny Carson had ended. I was
doing some paperwork. It must have been about midnight.”

“Can you describe the person who gave it to
you?”

“Not very well. He—or maybe she—I’m not even
sure which, was wearing a sweatshirt with a hood and dark glasses.
Jeans, tennies. Not too tall, slim build. I didn’t see any hair,
because it was covered by the hood. The face was smooth—young
looking.”

“Did he—or she—speak to you?”

“No. He came running into the motel like he
was trying to catch a bus, handed the envelope to me, and ran out
again without saying a word.”

“Did you see a car or anything?”

“No. He disappeared. I was so surprised that
I followed him to the door, but by the time I got outside, he was
out of sight.”

“You said the face was smooth and young
looking. Like that of a young man or woman?”

“Yeah, either one.”

“You didn’t see any lipstick or
anything?”

“Nope. I’m not saying she wasn’t wearing
lipstick. I didn’t get a good look at the face. It happened so
fast.”

“Did you notice anything else about the
person?”

“He sure could run fast. That’s about
it.”

“Okay, Peter. Thanks for your help. If you
think of anything more, could you call…Giganticorp—you must have
their corporate number—and leave a message for Oliver Drake of
Running California? Leave a number where you can be reached in the
evening, and I’ll call you back.”

“After ten I’m usually at the motel. I work
the night shift.”

Drake said good-bye and hung up. He turned
and found Melody at his elbow. He had been so absorbed in the call
that he hadn’t seen her approach. Her face looked ashen under her
tan. They needed to talk, but not here with people milling around,
including some of the runners.

“Let’s go next door to the café.”

He took her arm and guided her out of the
motel. A few minutes later they were seated at a booth that
promised some privacy as long as they kept their voices low. He
ordered orange juice, scrambled eggs, and toast for Melody—she
appeared to be in shock—and coffee and a bigger breakfast,
including bacon and potatoes, for himself.

Melody, who had been clutching the piece of
paper, laid it on the table. “Do you think this is a prank?”

“If so, the prankster has a lot of
information about us, including where your mother lives. I think we
have to treat it as real. The first thing we can do is stay in the
run. By carrying out the instructions, we hopefully protect your
mother.”

And give Melody some piece of mind.

“I want to call my mum and see if she’s all
right.”

“I don’t know if we can make overseas calls
from the motel. Fred should be able to set it up for us. If
necessary, he can patch it through Giganticorp. We can tell him
your mother’s been sick. I don’t think we should tell him about the
note yet until we have some more information about who it’s from.
The writer said not to.”

When they had worked together fighting
Communism, they had operated on the premise that they couldn’t
trust anyone. That was probably a good approach to follow here.

“How are we going to get that
information?”

“After we get to our next stop, I’ll call a
guy in D.C. I worked with, see if he’s familiar with any betting
syndicates. He’s the only one still working there that I
trust.”

***

“I wish we’d been able to reach my mum.”

“She was probably out in her garden. She has
such a beautiful garden. We’ll try again this afternoon.”

“Not too late. There’s an eight-hour time
difference. If we call at four it’ll be midnight in England. She
likes to get her sleep. If I wake her, she’ll think I’m in
trouble.”

Drake was trying to keep Melody from
worrying about her mother. Just because she didn’t answer her phone
didn’t mean that something had happened to her. However, he wished
that she had been home.

It was another beautiful day in Southern
California. They ran close to the water because the sand was firmer
where the high tide had packed it down. Drake’s back had loosened
up just a hair, and they were moving faster today than they had
yesterday. Flocks of seagulls rose into the air as they approached,
and sandpipers scooted out of the way.

They still weren’t close to the other
runners. After Grace started them at the bottom of the cliff—Fred
had declined to walk down it—the other nine teams quickly ran away
from them and eventually disappeared from view. They ran in a
posse, as Fred had said, apparently content to stay together for
the time being.

Melody glanced at Drake. “You look a bit
more like your old self with the bandage off. Your nose is
discolored and swollen, though. I don’t know whether you’ll ever be
as beautiful as you were.”

He had taken the bandage off before they
started the run. “I was tired of wearing that damned thing. I felt
like a cripple. That’s a luxury I can’t afford now. Just don’t hit
me in the nose.”

“I really appreciate you not quitting. As
least we’re abiding by the terms of the letter. I hope it isn’t too
hard on you.”

“I’ll survive. I don’t want anything to
happen to your mother. Unfortunately, it’s not a long-term
solution. Either of us could twist an ankle at any time and not be
able to run at all.” Drake was silent for a minute. “One way to
keep my mind off my body is to see what we can deduce. For example,
the letter is full of grammatical and spelling errors. It was
written by somebody whose English isn’t great. A foreigner.”

“Be careful how you speak about us
foreigners.
Or
, it could be somebody who wants us to think
he’s a foreigner. Did you notice the incongruity? Even with all the
errors, the typing itself is perfect.”

“No typos except the spelling errors, which
are consistent. No cross-outs. No evidence that the typist even
used that white liquid they use to cover errors. An experienced
typist did it, but not necessarily one who knows proper English.
And it looks like it’s been typed on a good typewriter, like an IBM
Selectric.”

“You mean the one with the bouncing
ball?”

“Right. Most business offices use them.”

“He knew where my mum lives.”

“He knows a lot about you. He’s got
connections, whoever he is. He knows where we’re staying. This is
not a fly-by-night operation.”

“What about fingerprints?”

“Well, yours and mine are all over the
letter. Mine are on the envelope, and I even took notes on it. We
didn’t exactly follow good evidence procedure. There may be others,
but we can’t go to the police.”

“What did you find out about the
messenger?”

“Not much. Not even sex.”

“Like yes or no?”

“Like boy or girl. Whoever it was was
apparently young—and nimble. Got away before the desk clerk could
note any identifying characteristics.”

CHAPTER 7

Drake and Melody decided that if they were
going to find out anything, they needed to get better acquainted
with the other people associated with Running California. When they
arrived at the motel—courtesy of Peaches, who met them, noted their
time when they finished the run, and drove them to the motel, all
without saying more than five words—the first people they saw were
Tom Batson and his running partner, Jerry Kidd.

Drake invited them to have dinner with
Melody and him. They accepted and agreed to meet after Drake had
his appointment with a chiropractor. Thirty minutes later Drake
returned to the lobby, having showered and changed his clothes. He
was able to move a little better—he was becoming slightly less
stiff. By the time they finished the run, he might be in the kind
of shape he should be in right now—if it didn’t kill him before
then. Peaches, his driver, was sitting in the lobby reading a
magazine about martial arts.

They walked out to the company car. Drake
sat in the passenger side of the front seat. In a nod to the warm
weather, Peaches was wearing a summer-weight suit with the jacket
on to hide his gun, Drake was sure. Although not as tall as Drake,
he was broader, with a bull neck and large head topped with short,
dark hair. Drake decided to see if he could get Peaches to
talk.

In a conversational tone he asked, “How long
have you worked for Giganticorp?”

Peaches made a turn onto the street in front
of the motel and glanced at Drake. “Long enough.”

That wasn’t a promising start. “Are you
stationed in San Jose?”

“That’s what it looks like.”

“How many employees does Giganticorp have
there?”

Peaches looked at Drake as if he thought
Drake were trying to pry company secrets from him. Was Giganticorp
so private that they didn’t even release employment figures? What
could he ask Peaches that wouldn’t be considered confidential? He
wanted to ask his real name, but that would sound like an
interrogation.

“I guess Giganticorp is a good company to
work for.”

When Peaches didn’t say anything at first,
Drake wondered whether he had used up his quota of words for the
day.

Finally, he said, “It’s a job. Better than
some, worse than others, but it keeps beer in the cooler.”

Encouraged that Peaches had uttered more
than one sentence at a time, Drake was going to try to keep the
conversation going, but at that moment they arrived at the
chiropractor’s office. When Peaches drove him back to the motel an
hour later, he had retreated into his shell and only grunted in
response to Drake’s questions.

***

“Fred tried to call my mum at noon, but
there was still no answer. That would have been eight o’clock at
night her time. She should have been home.”

Melody and Drake were waiting in the motel
lobby for Tom and Jerry, the runners they were going to have dinner
with.

“Did you try again from here?”

“It was too late. I don’t want to call her
in the middle of the night there. It would scare her to death. When
I was working for the agency, although she didn’t know exactly what
I was doing, she suspected enough that she said what she feared
most was that call in the middle of the night because something had
happened to me.”

Tom and Jerry appeared in the lobby, two
runners cut from the same mold: medium height, skinny frame. They
wore their hair down over their ears, but not long enough for them
to be mistaken for hippies. More like the Beatles. Tom’s was red
and Jerry’s was brown. It flopped when they ran.

“Do you want to go to an Italian place?” Tom
asked. “Italian food’s good for carbohydrates.”

“There’s one about two blocks from here.”
Jerry looked at Drake. “Do you think you can walk that far?”

“I don’t have my cane with me, but I think I
can make it.” Drake used an old man’s voice. “If not, you can carry
me.” He exaggerated a hobble as they started along the street.
Young whippersnappers.

“Congratulations on being in first place.”
Melody was trying to direct attention away from Drake.

Fred had posted a typed listing of the teams
on a bulletin board in the motel and written down the time of each
team so far. Drake and Melody were so far behind that they didn’t
even try to figure out how far.

“Thanks,” Tom said. “But we’re only about
five minutes ahead of three or four other teams. Not exactly a
comfortable lead with so far to go. We’ve had to learn to pace
ourselves. A couple of teams tried to break away today, but they
ran out of steam and we caught them.”

Jerry nodded. “They underestimate the
difficulty of running on sand. It slows you down and takes a lot of
energy, something they don’t account for. They think they can run
as fast on sand as pavement.”

“I was in the race when you won Boston,”
Drake said to Tom. “I was a few hills behind you, however.”

“So was everybody else.” Jerry grinned at
his teammate. “He blew them away.”

“Jerry ran under two-thirty in that race,”
Tom said.

They were clearly the team to beat. They
reached the small restaurant and were seated immediately at a
square table for four with a red and white checked plastic
tablecloth. It was noisy and friendly. Drake ordered a bottle of
beer. Melody had iced tea. Tom and Jerry split a carafe of red
wine. Each team had been issued two credit cards for food and
incidental expenses.

“How did you two become teammates in this
race?” Melody asked.

Tom looked surprised. “I was invited to
enter and pick my partner. Jerry and I train together in Redding,
so it was a natural. What about you?”

Evasion time. Drake signaled Melody with his
eyes. “We didn’t pick each other. Giganticorp picked for us. I
guess that’s why we’re in last place.”

Tom looked from one of them to the other.
“Didn’t you know each other before?”

How much had Fred let slip? “Only casually.
We’d run into each other a few times.”

Jerry laughed. “Run into each other. That’s
good. So the beanstalk boys picked you. We call Fred and Peaches
and the others the beanstalk boys. Giganticorp—giant—‘Jack and the
Beanstalk.’ Get it? You two must have been chosen to add color. A
girl and a war hero.”

“I’m not a war hero.”

“We were chosen because we make a good
team.” Melody had the look in her eye that Drake knew meant that
you better not underestimate her. “If Drake hadn’t been hurt, we’d
be doing much better.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Tom said. “I’ve watched
you run. You’re the best female runner I’ve seen. And I’ve seen the
women who’ve run Boston since they started letting them in.”

Melody picked up male admirers wherever she
went. It was obvious that Tom was among that number. Also that she
was susceptible to his flattery. Something stirred inside Drake. He
tried to squelch it. He’d had his chance and blown it.