The Four Corners of the Sky_ A Novel - Michael Malone [52]
She asked if there were anything in the folder about an incarceration in Cuba a year or so ago. Or anything about Cuba’s interest in a sixteenth-century religious artifact known as La Reina Coronada del Mar that Jack had allegedly stolen? After a long pause, Trevor said no, he saw nothing about Cuba. “Reina what?”
“Reina Coronada del Mar. The Queen of the Sea. A gold statue.”
Trevor said such a statue was nowhere mentioned in the files. Curiously, however, the sheet on Jack Peregrine had come to an abrupt end eleven months ago with a sealed indictment. Everything after that was closed.
To Annie it was impossible to believe that her father had reformed. But perhaps he’d gotten so good at his crimes that he was no longer caught, either by the police or by those mysterious men he’d always named for cartoon villains—The Crocodile, Dr. No—those men who’d barged into their lives on the road and threatened them. Like the large man with a gun who’d kicked open the door to their motel room at midnight while they were watching The Ten Commandments…She stopped talking mid-sentence. “Wait! Royal Coach, that’s it! Trevor, thank you, thank you!”
He chuckled at her exuberance. “For what?”
“The name of the motel. Dad and I were watching The Ten Commandments in the Royal Coach Motel in St. Louis. A man broke in, we got away from him, and we drove straight to Emerald and Dad dropped me off here at Pilgrim’s Rest. So it’s the last place we stayed together. Royal Coach Motel. That’s where he’s gone.”
“Sorry. I’m not following you.”
She said it didn’t matter, she’d explain it all when she returned to Chesapeake Cove. She was heading to St. Louis tonight in her Piper Warrior.
“Why don’t I see if I can get a field agent there to check things out for you?”
Annie couldn’t explain why she felt that she had to go herself to find her father, but she did.
“Well, good luck.” Trevor said to let him know what she found out. “And I’ll check into this Cuba thing…So, any message for Amy Johnson? We’re headed for bed.”
“Tell her I miss her, not that she’ll care.”
“You never know with cats. People either.”
Annie said, “You do know with cats. That’s what I like about them.”
She ran back to the living room where Clark and Sam were sharing more spicy tuna rolls. “I figured it out. Dad’s in the Royal Coach Motel in St. Louis!”
“Ah.” Clark nodded slowly. “The fishing fly. Royal Coachman. What a jerk.”
“Dad knocked a man out and took his gun. There was a pink neon coach with four horses on the motel sign near the pool.”
Clark mildly wondered why Jack hadn’t simply written down the name of the motel in his cryptic note to her. “I repeat. What a jerk.”
“Never write things down,” Annie explained; it was in the top five of her father’s old crime “lessons.”
The Royal Coach still had its St. Louis listing. The young man at the desk told her that the motel had been in business in the same location for over thirty years. No one was registered as Jack Peregrine but the clerk, a friendly and bored college fellow, described in detail a late check-in yesterday of a man vaguely fitting her description of her father. The man had returned to the night desk around 1 a.m., borrowed a pair of scissors, and while sitting in the lobby had cut off his very good trousers above the knees. Annie asked the clerk to check the name on the registration.
The man had registered as Clark Goode.
“Fucking wonderful!” Annie took a breath. “I’m sorry. That’s not my father’s real name. Clark Goode is my uncle’s name and he’s right here in North Carolina and has been all week.”
“Listen,” confided the clerk, “nothing surprises me. Last night I had a transvestite pull in driving a 35-foot Gulfstream Yellowstone RV; checked in as Barbra Streisand. But maybe it was Barbra.” The clerk added that the man who’d cut off his own trousers had specifically insisted on a particular room in the motel, 115, when he’d arrived—an unusual request, since all the rooms were identical.
That evening