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office phone and dialed
Randolph’s cell phone. The call went to his voice mail. “Sweets, there was a
key dropped here yesterday. Woody and I are going to the airport to check it
out. There’s a number on the key, which I guess according to the phone call, is
for a locker number. We’re going to see if there’s really a locker number 127,
and what may be in it. I’ll call you when we get there.” She dropped the phone
into its cradle.
    Then she slid open the drawer
and closed her hands around the key.
     
     
Chapter 9
Monday, late morning, December 10
    Rhetta hit the remote start so that Streak could idle and warm up before they climbed in. By the time they
had buckled up, the vents gusted warm air. She turned down the satellite radio
that blasted Cousin Brucie and the oldies, slid the SUV into gear, and merged
with the southbound traffic on Kingshighway.
    What snow had fallen
overnight was gone, leaving the streets coated with a dirty slush mixed with
mud. Rhetta wove through traffic and eventually eased onto the approach to
southbound Interstate 55. The winter sun’s brightness forced her to lower the
visor against the glare. She fished around the console for her sunglasses, but
came up empty. “Woody, can you hand me my sunglasses?” She waggled fingers at
him as an invitation for him to rummage through the console until he located
them.
    He handed them to her. “Do
you really think that was your father who called you? And showed up at the
hospital parking lot last year?”
    Rhetta thought about how to
answer. She wasn’t positive about the identity of the man who insisted he was
her father. Maybe he was a stalker. After all, she had proof of her father’s
death. Then again, if he was a stalker, why was he so elusive? He wasn’t
actually doing much stalking, at least that she could tell.
    “I don’t know what to think.
Last year, when he stopped me in the parking lot at the hospital, he gave me
this locket.” She fingered the locket at her throat. “It was definitely my
mother’s. Then he disappeared. She didn’t tell Woody that the years of hatred
toward the man claiming to be her father nearly boiled over the first time
Frank Caldwell revealed himself to her. Luckily, she caught herself before she
actually ran over him and killed him. That would have generated way too much
paperwork. She sighed. She didn’t actually want to kill him, but her anger very
nearly made her do something very stupid.
    She glanced at Woody. “I
didn’t tell you at the time, but he called me at the house on my birthday,
after everyone went home from my party. He said he keeps tabs on me, which,
frankly, gives me the creeps.” She honked at a pickup that was trying to cut
her off as she descended the ramp to the highway. The truck swerved aside. She
thought she saw a middle-finger salute as she passed him.
    Because the Cape Girardeau
Regional Airport was located just a couple of miles south of Cape Girardeau,
Rhetta arrowed down the exit ramp mere moments after getting on the interstate
in Cape.
    “How does he keep tabs on
you?” Woody asked, as he glanced at traffic over his right shoulder.
    “Beats me. That’s why it
gives me the creeps.”
    The airport had a dozen or so
hangars that housed a few manufacturing businesses, and some accommodated
several private planes. The airport’s regional carrier, Cape Air shuttled to
St. Louis Lambert International Airport where passengers could connect with
major airlines and head out to any part of the world. In its own way, the
little local airport served as a gateway to the world. As an added bonus,
parking and security was much easier than dealing with the huge international
airport in St. Louis, or even Memphis. Most people for a hundred miles around
utilized the convenience of flying out of Cape. It made the airport a busy
place some days.
    Today, however, wasn’t one of
them. They breezed into the parking lot and snagged a space close to the main
entrance.
    “Maybe my