Free What Could Go Wrong? by Willo Davis Roberts

think?”
    The officer’s interest quickened. “That so? The gift shop near the stairs? I’ll talk to her, see if she can give me a description of him. Though he’s probably long gone, now. Out of the airport, and beyond jurisdiction. The regular police will handle it from here on.”
    â€œWhat about Mrs. Basker? Do you think she’ll be okay?” I wondered.
    â€œWell, she was knocked out, but she didn’tseem to have a depressed fracture or anything like that. I’m not a doctor, but I think she’ll probably come around all right. Probably have a bad headache for a few days. Here you go, lady, these are the last of your passengers,” he said to the waiting passenger agent. He had a parting word for us. “It’d be better if you don’t talk too much about this, except to your parents. The news people have a way of blowing everything out of portion, and there’s a lot we don’t know yet.”
    â€œSure,” Charlie said, and Eddie and I murmured our agreement.
    Everybody looked at us as if we were some weird species of bug under a microscope when we finally boarded the new plane. I felt very self-conscious being stared at by a whole planeload of people. I couldn’t blame them for being curious, but I sort of resented the comments from Gladys and Howard behind us. (We took the same places as we’d had on the first plane.)
    â€œI don’t see why we had to wait for them, just because they’re kids,” Gladys observed in a tone loud enough for us to hear. “We’vealready been delayed so much we’ll just barely make it to the wedding.”
    â€œInconsiderate,” Howard said, finally finding something he and his wife could agree on. “That’s the way kids are these days. Never think of anyone but themselves.”
    My cheeks felt hot as I fastened my seat belt. It wasn’t fair to say that when he didn’t have the slightest idea what had happened to us, or to lump all kids together in the way they behaved.
    Mrs. Hall leaned forward across the empty seats beside her. “Do you know what’s happened to the lady who was here before? Mrs. Basker? She was supposed to be going on to San Francisco, wasn’t she? I mean, we weren’t even scheduled to land in Portland.”
    â€œShe got hurt,” I said, after a moment of hesitation. “She’s been taken to a hospital.”
    Mrs. Hall drew back, shocked. “Really? Oh my, how did it happen?”
    Charlie nudged me warningly, and I resisted the impulse to tell the whole story, as far as we knew it, to let Gladys and Howard know how wrong they were about us.
    â€œWe don’t know exactly,” I told her. “Only that she hurt her head.”
    Mrs. Hall made clucking noises, but I didn’t volunteer any more. Maybe, by some miracle, our names wouldn’t be mentioned if any of this got into the paper. I could see my dad reading it and demanding that we return home at once, even before we’d seen anything of Aunt Molly or San Francisco.
    This time I wasn’t nervous about taking off. In fact I was so busy thinking about poor Mrs. Basker, and hoping she would be all right, that I was barely aware of the plane leaving the ground. What had her assailant been after? She didn’t look like a person you’d expect to be carrying a lot of money or any other valuables. I couldn’t help wondering how much difference it would have made if we’d gone with her to the restaurant for sandwiches instead of having banana splits.
    When I mused about that aloud, Charlie, as always, had an instant reply. “We’d probably have been knocked over the head and robbed, too. Gracie, are you sure you didn’t see anything in her stuff that somebody might havewanted? Important-looking papers, something valuable? I don’t buy the idea that the guy was scared off before he could take her money; it was right in plain sight. I