The Key in the Attic(51)

She lifted her chin. He was not going to make her step back. “Then why don’t you call them right now? You can press charges against me, and then they can have a look inside that suitcase. How about that?”

He was pressing his lips together so hard they were white, but he gave her a tight smile. “I don’t want any unpleasantness now. I have business to take care of, and at this point, I really find this all extremely boring. If you’ll excuse me, the line is moving.”

He turned and moved up about three feet closer to the check-in desk. She stayed right with him.

After a moment, he faced her again. “Don’t make me have to make things unpleasant for you, Mrs. Dawson. I really don’t want to cause you any trouble. You’re a nice lady. Your friend’s a nice lady. I’m sorry she lost her clock, but it has nothing to do with me. Can’t you just leave me in peace?”

“I’m not doing anything but standing in line. It’ll be interesting to see what those x-ray machines reveal. It’s amazing what people try to carry onto planes with them.”

His eyes darted toward where the screeners were staring at the monitors, sometimes stopping the conveyor belts that moved the carry-on luggage past the scans, sometimes asking passengers to open their bags for inspection. A little trickle of sweat ran down the side of his face.

“You realize they only let the screeners look at the monitors, don’t you? The other passengers have to mind their own business.”

“I suppose that’s true. Still, sometimes one of the people screening the luggage is notified by the police to look for something in particular.”

She gave a subtle nod to one of the screeners and then looked pointedly at Sanders. The screener acted like he hadn’t noticed. Probably he hadn’t. It didn’t matter as long as Sanders didn’t know that.

Another trickle of sweat ran down his neck and into his collar. He glanced at the check-in desk. Only one person ahead of him now and then the scanner.

Annie gave him her sweetest smile.

Finally he stepped up to the desk. The woman there smiled professionally and held out her hand.

“May I see your ticket, please, sir?”

Sanders looked at her, glanced at Annie, and then looked at her again.

“I … uh … I think I’m going to have to take a later flight.”

He turned and grabbed hold of his bag. As he did, Mary Beth stepped into sight with a security guard beside her. Sanders’s eyes widened, and he dodged to get around Annie.

But he didn’t see Alice standing behind her. The two of them crashed together, the impact sending Alice reeling backward just as one of those airport service carts came zipping by, horn beeping.

“Alice!”

Annie yanked her back just before she would have been run over, but by then Sanders was half running down the corridor, his suitcase jolting behind him.

Alice was breathless but laughing.

“You were almost killed, and he’s getting away,” Annie scolded, wanting to hug her and shake her. “It’s not funny!”

“Oh yes, it is.”

Alice pointed, and Annie looked to see that Sanders’s suitcase had burst open and he was scrambling to retrieve the contents scattered on the carpeted floor behind him. Mary Beth and her security guard were on him before he could even think of getting away.

Annie put one hand to her mouth, covering an incredulous smile. “But how—”

“I might have accidentally popped those catches open when he was talking to you.” Alice looked sweetly heavenward. “Only accidentally, of course.”

“You bad thing.” Annie took her arm and leaned conspiratorially closer. “That was brilliant!”

They hurried over to where the other three were. The security guard was a burly man with a barbed-wire tattooed around his neck. The only hair on his entire head was in his sparse eyebrows and in the square inch of blond soul patch under his lower lip. Sanders didn’t look like he was very interested in putting up a fight at this point.

“Is there a problem, sir?”

“I … uh … no. No problem.” Sanders looked up at the guard, smiling and sweating, trying to conceal a split-open cardboard box behind a bathrobe and a pair of pants. “I just had a little accident.”

“You almost caused one.” The guard crossed his beefy arms across his chest. “And this lady says you have something of hers in there.”

Sanders’s face turned red as he still tried to stuff everything back into his suitcase and kick aside the packing peanuts that had dribbled from the box. “That lady, as you call her, has had her friend here harassing me for days now. The police, if you’d care to check with them, have told them all that there is no evidence whatsoever that I have what they’re looking for. Feel free to call them up if you like, but I’m late for an appointment. Excuse me, please.”