A King's ransom

15

I called Alex for lunch. I figured it was time to level with my consultant.

We met at Scotty’s Landing, a waterfront patio-style restaurant, where the specialties were grilled mahi-mahi sandwiches and bowls of delicious conch gumbo, served cold, like gazpacho. The place was essentially an open hut with a bar and a kitchen, flanked by a wood deck eating area with little round tables, plastic chairs, canvas umbrellas, fresh sea breezes, and nice views of the bay. It wasn’t exactly in the heart of Coconut Grove, but to me the sign posted at the entrance captured the old Grove spirit. PLEASE WAIT HERE FOR NEXT AVAILABLE TABLE, it read, followed by separate, smaller signs in increasingly smaller print: IT DOESN’T SAY WAIT TO BE SEATED. SEAT YOURSELF.IF NOT UNDERSTOOD, START AGAIN.

We seated ourselves at the table nearest the water. Alex sat with her legs crossed, which I naturally noticed because the sundress and sandals she was wearing made her legs highly noticeable. It was actually the toe ring that had caught my attention, a little gold band around the middle toe, her longest. Feet like a ballerina, or so I recalled from the day Lindsey had come home from ballet crying because her teacher said it would be harder to stand on point if your first toe was your longest toe. She gave up dance and took up hell-raising.

“You like my toe ring?” she asked.

“What?”

“The ring,” she said, wiggling her toe with the slender ankle flexed. “It seems to have caught your fancy.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

She smiled. I looked away, embarrassed. We both knew I’d been staring.

The waiter brought us water and took our order. While waiting for our food, I told her all about Jaime Ochoa, which prompted the obvious question.

“Do you think he really knows where your sister is?”

“Probably in much the same way he knows that at age sixty-three Julia Roberts will give birth to triplets.”

“You think he’s ever met Lindsey?”

“My guess is that she probably stiffed him on payment for psychic readings somewhere along the line. When he saw Mom on television last week talking about the kidnapping, he decided to rip off the family as payback.”

“Nice guy.”

“I love my sister, but she has a habit of mixing it up with deadbeats, usually about as far away from home as she can get. She likes to think it’s part of her adventuresome journalistic spirit, very Ernest Hemingway. One of her old J-school professors once told her that if you want to write a story about sewer rats, you don’t interview swans. I wish he’d also pointed out that to write a story about suicide, you don’t have to kill yourself.”

“So, you think she met Jaime Ochoa doing research for a story?”

I looked away, then back. I wasn’t a good liar, and there was no point pulling punches at this point. “That’s what I’m hoping. But I’m starting to get a little worried.”

“Where is she now?”

“Last time we talked, Nicaragua. Even though she and Dad are kind of on the outs, I always took some comfort in knowing that they were at least in the same country.”

“How long’s it been since you last heard from her?”

“A while. It’s always a while. She calls when she’s broke. But to be honest, it’s a little different this time, now that Dad’s missing.”

“That’s true. But I’d have to say that the odds are pretty low that both of them would be kidnapped at the same time in different countries.”

“Unless the kidnappings are related.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

I noted that she didn’t totally dismiss the possibility.

The server brought our food and left. I popped a french fry in my mouth, then said, “I’ve been thinking of going down there. I need to check on Dad’s business anyway. Maybe I’d do a little checking on Lindsey, too.”

“I recommend you at least wait until you hear from the kidnappers. Don’t leave your mother here to deal with that herself.”

I nodded, then glanced toward the bay, where a sunburned tourist was struggling furiously to tack his rented sailboat. “Maybe it would help to run a background check on Jaime Ochoa.”

“Sure. I can do that.”

“I’m sure he’s just a crackpot.”

“Then why did you go see him?”

I knew that the conversation would lead this way, but I also knew that it was high time I stopped keeping secrets from the person I was depending on most to bring my father home. “Does everything I tell you get back to the insurance company?”

“No. The insurance company pays your bill, as required by the policy. But my client is you, not the company. If you ask me to keep something in confidence, it remains in confidence.”

That was the answer I’d wanted, but I still hesitated. Dad’s problem with the FBI was not my favorite lunch topic. “I went to see him because I thought he might have something to do with some accusations I’d heard. About my dad.”

“What, specifically?”

She listened without interruption as I told her about my meeting with Agent Huitt, the FBI’s suspicions about my father’s business. She seemed particularly interested in the bureau’s apparent refusal to assist us in the kidnapping unless the Rey family cooperated in some as-yet-undefined investigation against Guillermo. When I’d finished, she said nothing. In fact, she looked a little miffed.

“Should I not have told you any of this?” I asked.

“You should have told me as soon as it happened.”

“It’s all such a crock. I didn’t want you getting the wrong idea about my father.”

My cell phone rang. I debated whether to answer till I’d cleared the air with Alex, but so long as Dad was missing, this was no time to be screening calls. It was my mother.

“A courier package just arrived from Colombia,” she said, her voice racing. “I think it must be from the kidnappers.”

I nearly fell off my chair. From the look on my face, Alex knew what it was. I waved her over so she could put her ear next to mine and listen in.

“Open it,” I told my mother.

“I already did.”

“Is there a ransom demand?”

“I can’t read it. It’s all in Spanish. There’s a little note on the bottom that looks like your father’s handwriting, but that’s in Spanish, too. I just don’t understand. Why would he write to his own family in a foreign language?”

She sounded so frazzled, I was about to suggest that she take it to one of our bilingual neighbors to translate. But this wasn’t something to share with the neighborhood.

“Just hang in there a few more minutes. I’m with Alex right now. We’re on our way.”

“Should I call Agent Nettles at the FBI?”

I paused, and Alex seemed to sense the reason: I hadn’t even talked to my mother about our problems with the FBI. “Let’s not do anything till I get home and read it.”

“Then hurry, please. It’s killing me not knowing what it says.”

“You and me both,” I said.