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“Please keep the rest of the details to yourself,” Bess says. “We’re in mixed company.”
The driver turns around a moment, exposing his scraggly beard and red-laced eyes.
“Bingo, is that you?”
“Dogo,” Nettie shouts, and soon enough it’s a reunion of the ages.
I lift a brow at the peculiar nicknames.
“Don’t ask.” Bess sighs my way as the two of them catch up on old times—precarious times according to the quasi-horror stories they’re dishing out—something about chickens, a hot house, dancing through a field naked at midnight, and barking at the moon.
“Remind me to cut her off before she gets to the punchline next time,” Bess says.
“I will,” I tell her. “But with any luck, her connection to the man commandeering this car might just be the break we need to crack the case. That is, if we don’t lose Nadine.”
“You’re not losing anyone, honey,” Dogo says as he hits the pedal to the metal. And before we know it, we’ve tracked Nadine all the way to—
“The airport?” I say in disbelief as we pull into the lane designated for arriving flights.
“Maybe she’s picking up a friend?” Bess suggests as she cranes her neck to get a better look at the car up ahead. “See there? They just pulled to the curb in front of the luggage terminal.”
“I guess it makes sense then.” I shake my head. “Maybe a friend happens to be landing on the same day the ship is here? They could squeeze in two whole days together.”
Nettie needles the car with a narrowed gaze. “Or maybe she’s meeting with the killer.”
“Now that makes no sense,” Bess says as we watch Nadine step out of the car wearing a pair of white shorts paired with a matching tank top.
It’s nice to know other women don’t share my fear of wearing white. The last time I was clad in that pristine color I made the worst mistake of my life—marrying Stanton Troublefield.
Okay, fine. Stanton did give me two of the most important pieces of my heart, Abbey and Parker, but outside of that, he was hardly worth the trip down the aisle—or the six hundred dollar shoes my father nearly had a heart attack over.
Nadine plops that yellow hat back on her head and walks through an entrance that reads pick up only.
“We gotta run,” Bess say. “We’re losing her.”
“Let me guess,” Nettie says. “You’ve always wanted to say that, too.”
Bess huffs a laugh at her bestie. “Only if the her in question was you—and I might have been running in the opposite direction.”
We jump out of the car and Dogo is kind enough to offer to hang around.
The three of us enter the building, only to find a thick crowd gathered around a luggage carousel.
“Oh no,” I moan. “This place is brimming with weary travelers. We’re never going to find her in this place.”
“Maybe so,” Nettie says. “But I’ve found her yellow hat.”
She points to the hard right, and sure enough, we see Nadine at a desk marked unclaimed luggage.
She’s speaking with a nice-looking man wearing a navy Hawaiian shirt and he nods to her while pointing to a shelf full of bags of every shape and size.
While Nadine heads over to inspect the baggage, the three of us get as close to the counter as we can before ducking behind a giant bird of paradise sitting in a pot the size of a Volkswagen.
Nadine points to an oversized Louis Vuitton trunk and hands the man a credit card. After a few minutes, she strides right past us and we watch as she pauses at a kiosk filled with pamphlets deposited by the local tour companies.
“We need to find out what that was about,” I say as the three of us scuttle to the counter and the very same man greets us. “Hello, a friend of ours was just at the counter and—”
“What did she want with you?” Nettie gravels the words out. “And how much are you charging to give it to her?”
