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“We were hoping,” Remi said, nodding toward the door, “that he’s somewhere inside the building. He gets so turned around.”
The guard stared at the two of them a moment, before saying, “Don’t mean any offense by it, but I heard one of the police officers asking if the old man could’ve driven off in the car.”
“Wouldn’t someone have seen him?” Sam asked.
“Good question,” he replied. “You’d hope a bloke driving an antique car like that would be noticed.”
“You’d think,” Sam said, though he seriously doubted Albert was involved. With his diminished mental capacity, no way could he have orchestrated such a feat, never mind be an active participant.
“Could the car still be inside?” Remi asked.
“No,” the guard said, shaking his head. “Not a chance.”
“More important,” Sam said, “could my uncle still be in there?”
“Far more chance of that,” the guard said. “Plenty of places a bloke could hide.”
Remi, her eyes pleading, reached out, touched his arm. “I know you’re busy, but is there any way we could have a peek inside the building? What if he’s in there and needs our help?”
The guard seemed to think about it, then pulled out his keys. “Couldn’t hurt to take a pop in, have a quick look. Hate to think something happened on my watch.”
He unlocked the side door, peering inside first before opening it wider. “Shall we?”
They followed him in, Sam asking,
“How do you think they got it out? Without anyone seeing, that is.”
“Hard to say,” the guard said. “Bit of a dodgy neighborhood, ’round these parts.”
Remi gave the motorized overhead door a pointed look. “How do you think they got it past here without anyone seeing?”
“Had to have been a truck parked outside this very door,” the guard said. “All the confusion with those fire trucks up front, maybe no one noticed. Not that I saw a truck. Then again, I got called in for the fire, so if a truck managed to make it back here before the fire trucks—”
“Aren’t there cameras?” Sam asked, having seen them mounted high above, encompassing both directions of the road that circled the building.
“I expect the police are on top of that.”
Remi looked around, wide-eyed. “How on earth did they get the car from the auditorium to here and out the door?”
“Portable walls,” the guard said, nodding toward the gray wall separating the back bay and storage area from the central part of the convention floor. “They slide open. Whoever was behind that theft had to have a crew ready to open up these walls, move the car from the floor to here, close the walls, then get the car out through the bay door and up onto the back of a truck.” He opened a few doors that led to smaller storage rooms and what looked like a receiving office, with clipboards on the wall and stacks of paperwork on the desk. Albert Payton was not in any of them.
“How long would that take?” Sam asked.
“If they knew what they were doing, less than five minutes. Who’d notice in all that confusion?”
Good point. “Working here, you must have your suspicions . . . ?”
The guard gave a noncommittal shrug. “Wasn’t back here, I was out front.”
“No trucks drove out?”
“Didn’t see even one. Not sure how they’d drive past the fire engines out front.”
“So who’s good for it?” Sam asked.
He looked over at Sam, his expression saying that the answer was obvious. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but everyone was talking about it when we learned the Gray Ghost was entered into the car show. Car like that’d be worth millions. The first thing we all said when it ended up missing, well . . .”
“Insurance?” Remi said.
