The Multitude, стр. 24
Brewster’s stomach took a roller-coaster dip. He couldn’t have heard him right.
“Too much vodka,” the trucker added.
“What did you just say?” Brewster asked.
“Vodka.”
“No, before that.”
The trucker spread his hands. “Poof.”
Brewster had trouble thinking over the sound of his pounding heart. “Poof as in Carla?”
Heather edged closer. “What’s the problem?”
He ignored her. “Help me out here, Tesfaye. Was her name Carla?”
“She didn’t say.”
“Are you talking about a woman with black hair? About five foot six, gray-green eyes—”
Igor furrowed his forehead and looked back and forth between Brewster and Heather as if they were the crazy ones. “Not a woman, a young girl, twelve or thirteen, blonde hair, blue eyes. American as apple pie is the saying, no?” He moved a hand to the back of his head. “She had what you call a ponytail?”
The trucker had the look of a man on a bender, but Brewster couldn’t ignore the coincidence of this guy bringing up a disappearing midnight visitor. He’d granted refunds for reasons far flimsier than the fact he might be helping a fellow victim of cosmic jokes. Yeah, this was crazy, but…he turned to the cop. “I think we’ve made a mistake with this guy. We’ll pay him the money he’s asking for.”
“Mr. DeLay, if you folks are being stalked, we can—”
“No, that’s not it. Sorry to bother you.”
After a long, hard stare and scolding shake of his head, the cop mumbled halfheartedly about the call not being a bother at all, one couldn’t be too careful anymore, and so on. Then he turned on his heel and left.
Heather grabbed Brewster’s arm. “Can I speak to you for a minute?” She looked ready to rip his head off.
“Wait here, Igor.” He followed Heather into the hallway leading back to the offices.
“What’s this about a girl?” she asked.
Good question. Now how to respond without coming across as nuts?
“We have fifteen hundred other customers just like this guy,” she added.
“Heather, this man came to our door. It’s a good idea to keep the stalking types relatively happy.”
Besides, squeezing a profit from the ill-fated occupational choices of others wasn’t what he had in mind when he graduated business school. Maybe chucking his career and pursuing the life of a starving writer wouldn’t be such a bad idea. He turned away from her and headed back to the trucker in the lobby. “Poof?”
Igor flashed a sheepish grin. “Too much vodka, no?”
That was the rub. How could he assign this clown any credibility? “Around midnight?”
“Or later.”
“Didn’t you think it odd for somebody so young to be wandering the streets ringing doorbells and—”
“She knocked.”
“Did you ever meet her before?”
“One time in a dream.”
Brewster cringed. He looked past Igor, the cop, Heather. He stared out the window at a world he thought he understood. A world without disappearing midnight visitors and young girls who knocked on doors in the dead of night when they weren’t visiting truckers in their dreams.
Too much vodka. A hard-partying Russian fixating on a perceived overcharge might have imagined the girl’s visit and promise of settlement. A man’s subconscious worked in mysterious ways. On the other hand… Brewster fished a business card out of his pocket. “Would you mind calling my cell number if the girl comes around again?”
The trucker took the card and slipped it into his pocket. “This girl. She’s a magician, eh?”
“Maybe she’s part of a troupe.” And it was high time to track down the performer he’d seen with his own eyes.
CHAPTER 11
A few minutes later
Brewster held little hope Igor Tesfaye would get back to him with more information about midnight callers. Heavy-drinking, potentially hallucinating truckers couldn’t be counted on to solve life’s mysteries. That’s what Google Maps was for.
He did find a Rag Thyme listing, but weirdly located in New York State, not Northbrook.
Carla copied another store’s name? No. More than likely she considered the name so unique and clever, she didn’t check to see whether anyone else had come up with it already.
That left him with a far more old-fashioned search mechanism, and one he wasn’t sure even existed anymore. He left the office building, escaped to the privacy of his car, and called 411.
“Operator.”
“Do you have a listing for a Rag Thyme in the 847 area code?”
“Is that a newspaper?”
“Craft store. T-H-Y-M-E.” He closed his eyes and succeeded in conjuring Carla’s image, sitting her at his kitchen table again. The memory was so vivid he could have reached across to sweep a stray bang of hair from her forehead, but a click on the line yanked him back to the lonely present.
“I’m sorry, sir. We don’t have a listing for a Rag Thyme.”
He groped in his shirt pocket for Carla’s card. The universe could recklessly attempt to rewrite history all it wanted, but Brewster had proof of his wild adventure. He’d found someone so uninhibited she’d sit in the middle of the street for a time-out when the twisty streets conspired against her, so enthusiastic her eyes sparkled when she talked about her store, and so compassionate she adopted one of his business cards just to make him feel good about his writing. Carla was bright, creative, interesting, beautiful, perceptive. She probably ran off when she realized he’d spent their whole time together trying to undress her with his eyes like some sex-crazed idiot.
She didn’t run off. She faded into the night.
Maybe his parents forgot to tell him about a family history of epileptic blackouts?
Based on the street names she mentioned, the store had to be in the Northbrook vicinity. “Try the 773 area code.”
Long pause…then, “I can’t find a listing there, either. Should I try 312?”
“Chicago’s too far.”
Maybe Carla only recently opened Rag Thyme? A brand-new shop might not be on the grid yet.
No way had he imagined her.
She’d told him the address, 918 Church Street, so he still had that going for him. Sure, a thousand towns from coast to coast boasted a Church, a Maple, a State,