Free What Could Go Wrong? by Willo Davis Roberts Page B

said eagerly.
    Charlie’s gaze was withering, and even I knew better than that. “And tell her what?” Iasked. “What’s our evidence? Our proof? The police aren’t going to arrest anybody on our say-so, without proof!”
    â€œBut the clerk described that Upton guy! That’s enough to take him in for questioning, isn’t it?”
    â€œWhat good will that do?” Charlie said. “Unless there’s some real evidence? All he has to do is say he doesn’t know what we’re talking about. Or that he spoke to Mrs. Basker about something perfectly innocent, like she dropped a coin and he picked it up and handed it to her. It would be his word against ours, and figure out who they’re going to believe. As long as she’s unconscious, Mrs. Basker isn’t going to accuse him of attacking her. We didn’t see him do anything to Mrs. Basker or even speak to her.”
    â€œThe guy in the Hawaiian shirt followed her when she left her stuff with us,” I said, finally remembering. “She walked away and when I turned around to look at her, he was heading in the same direction.”
    â€œBut it was Upton—if that’s really his name—she was seen with in the gift shop,”Charlie mused. “And now they’re both on this plane, talking together and pretending they weren’t when you saw them, which means they’re probably in cahoots, right?”
    â€œRight,” Eddie and I said in a chorus.
    â€œWe talked about it before,” I added, “only then it didn’t seem particularly important, and now it does. The Hawaiian-shirt guy didn’t fly with us from Sea-Tac, but he showed up in Portland only a little while after we landed there. He sat around in Seattle for at least half an hour before our flight left. If he was coming here, why didn’t he get on that plane?”
    â€œMaybe he was only going as far as Portland,” Eddie said, “and Flight 211 wasn’t scheduled to land there, remember?”
    Before I had decided that Eddie had, for once, said something sensible, Charlie asked, “Then why is he now on the plane to San Francisco? This gets fishier and fishier. There wasn’t another plane to Portland or San Francisco on that TV screen schedule, not on our airline or our gate. I read it several times to see if anything had changed while we were sitting there waiting.”
    â€œThen how did he get here?” I demanded in a fierce half-whisper. “Why would he take another airline after he’d sat there as if he were waiting for our flight?”
    â€œHe could have gone on an errand and missed the flight,” Charlie said, thinking it out as he went, “or he could have changed his mind about going until it was too late. And then he decided he had to go, after all, and—and chartered a plane, I suppose. Those small planes don’t fly as fast as the jets, but we were on the ground in Portland for quite a while before he showed up, weren’t we? Time enough for even a small plane to have made it.”
    I was dubious. “Doesn’t it cost an awful lot to charter a plane?”
    â€œNot necessarily. Sometimes it doesn’t cost any more than regular airline tickets. Besides, if it was really important, the cost might not matter to him.”
    â€œLike,” Eddie ventured, “if they were gang members who robbed a bank, and Mrs. Basker double-crossed them and took off with the loot, and they had to chase her.”
    â€œOh, Eddie,” I said in exasperation, “this isserious! Try to think of something logical, will you? She sat right there in front of Hawaiian shirt, and he didn’t do anything, did he? Do you think she’d have sat talking to us—or he would have ignored her—if she’d been stealing their stolen money?”
    Eddie didn’t give up. “Probably he didn’t want to knock her over the head while there were