"Hi, Kinsey. This is Lupe, over at Santa Teresa Travel. It looks like you hit the jackpot on that luggage trace. I put a call through to Baggage Claim at TWA and had the agent check it out. The four bags were sitting right there. He said he could put 'em on a plane this afternoon if you like. Could you call me back and let me know what you want to do?"

I snapped the machine off and shook both fists in the air, mouthing "All riiight!" to myself with a big grin. I put a call through to Jonah first and told him what was going on. I was jazzed. It was the first good news I'd had since I tracked down the cat. "What should I do, Jonah? Am I going to need some kind of court order to open those bags?"

"Screw that. Look, you have the claim tags, don't you?"

"Sure, I've got 'em right here."

"Then go down to Florida and pick up the bags."

"Why not just have them flown out?"

"Suppose she's in one," he said.

That certainly conjured up an image I didn't like. I could feel myself squirm. "Don't you think someone would have noticed by now? You know, an odor... something dripping out the side?"

"Hey, we found a body once had been in the trunk of a car for six months. Someone had shoved a high heel down some whore's throat and she ended up mummified. Don't ask me how or why, but she didn't decompose at all. She just dried up. She looked like a big leather doll."

"Maybe I'll get on a plane," I said.

By ten o'clock that night, I was back in the air again.

Chapter 19

Chapter 19

It was drizzling and the temperature was already in the seventies at 4:56 A.M. EST when we touched down. It was still dark outside, but the airport was filled with the flat light and artificial chill of a space station orbiting a hundred and ten miles out. Dawn travelers walked purposefully down deserted corridors while doors shushed open and shut automatically and the paging system seemed to drone on and on without hope of response. For all I knew, the whole operation was mechanical, running itself at that hour without any help from humankind.