Bea Cannon - A Small Gray Dot

He shook his head. “I didn’t know who you were. As you may recall, Talbert only introduced you to me as “Morgan”. I only heard your last name after Mr. Murray arrived. I must say that I was quite unsettled. I’m so sorry you had to go through that but it was the only thing I could think to do.”

He turned to me and smiled. “I didn’t think you looked like an “Alvin”, and I like “Tennessee” much better. Now, then; I imagine you have some questions for me.”

I mused that the man wasn’t as taciturn as he’d appeared when I made those deliveries.

“Yes, I do, sir. But first, I need to explain a couple of more things to Morgan.” I turned to her. “I haven’t taken you to your sister yet because, since I didn’t come in through the entrance, getting out of Blue Heaven is going to be difficult. I came back here for two reasons: one, this will be the last place that whoever wanted you kidnapped will think to have anyone look, and two, this is turning out to be more than a simple case of “girl goes off with boy and forgets to call home”.

“Now ordinarily, I’d take you home – or take word of your whereabouts – collect the rest of my fee and that would be the end of it. Since the guy held you against your will, I would report it to local law enforcement because that is something they would handle. In this case, from what Talbert said, you might come up missing again and I want to know why. Tracking is how I make my living and I need the money I make from finding folk, but I don’t like Blue Heaven and I’d rather not have to come back here to look for you again, and they might get to you before our overburdened law enforcement can get on it. To avoid that, I’ll have to eliminate the reason if I can.”

She sat back. “Oh.” Then she straightened up again. “Hey, wait a minute! Ken said there’s only one way in and out of here! If that’s true, how did you get in? And he never would tell me why I kept getting lost. What’s up with that anyway? Why can Ken, and you, get around here but I can’t?”

The doctor shot me a solemn look. “You came across the strip?”

I nodded. “Yes. I didn’t want to use the entrance. They ask too many questions.”

Morgan frowned. “What’s the strip?”

“You’ve heard of the blighted areas?”

She nodded. “There’s one back home but nobody goes into it. I think somebody got killed in it so there’re warning signs posted.”

“Charlotte has five, six with the rather nasty, big one encircling Blue Heaven. Going through it is the only other way in or out. It’s dangerous but the guards don’t watch it at night.”

Dr. Bennett leaned forward eagerly. “What did you see? What—”

“Sir, I’ll tell you about it later. And, Morgan, I don’t know why people get lost in Blue Heaven but you can avoid it if you keep your destination in mind and don’t get distracted. Now, I have some questions I need to ask the doctor.”

She gave a reluctant nod and settled back.

“Well, I know why people get lost here,” said the doctor. I stared at him. That was startling, though it wasn’t one of the questions I had for him. He gave a dry chuckle at my expression. “I know, you want to know why anyone would want to kidnap this lovely young woman, and I think I know why. It’s something I deduced once I heard her last name and reasoned who she must be. And, if you’re wondering exactly what type of doctor I am, it’s not medical. I have a PhD in physics.” He shrugged. “I’m sure that makes you wonder why I’m working for Semptor Labs.”

Well. In truth, I wasn’t wondering about that, though now that he’d mentioned it… Still, while all of that was interesting, the only thing I needed to know at the moment was why someone who was obviously as high up in the company as Henderson would want to kidnap a young woman. It was reasonable to assume Semptor Labs paid him enough to buy the affections of all the women he wanted if that was what he was after.

“Yes, sir. Uh, why would your supervisor want Morgan?”

“All right. I understand your urgency in this matter. But it all eventually ties in, you know. However, I’ll get to that later. Henderson wants to hold young Ms. Effingham hostage. Now, of course he didn’t tell me that but I’ve made that deduction because I happen to know he’s not happy with her sister.”

Morgan, looking mystified, said, “Huh?”

That was my first reaction, too, only she beat me to the “huh”. What I said was, “What does Semptor Labs have to do with Madison Effingham… oh, wait.” It struck me. “This has to do with Effingham Shipping, doesn’t it? Only, how?”

Morgan said, “Wait a minute. Maddy likes to work personally with a company on the big deals, which is why we came to Charlotte. She brought along a couple of our company’s lawyers to negotiate some kind of shipping contract.” She shrugged. “I don’t pay too much attention to that kind of thing though Maddy keeps saying I need to. I just came along because I wanted to see a couple of old friends who moved to Charlotte.”

She looked thoughtful for minute. “I guess Maddy’s right and I ought to start paying more attention because I didn’t even know it was Semptor Labs she was trying to cut a deal with, but she told me Thursday morning that things weren’t going well and that we were leaving Monday, whether she got a contract or not.

“She said the company’s negotiator is being an ass— oh, pardon, Dr. Bennett — he’s being stubborn, and she said she wanted the deal but not under their terms. Hey, it’s not as though we’re hurting for business, you know. We’re doing all right with other companies since everything on the mainland ships by truck and we have the largest fleet around. Heck, we even have ships for river and overseas transport, and Maddy is thinking about investing in one of the new sailing ship companies since ship engines seem to be—”

I cut her off because the part of her rambling statement about Semptor’s negotiator being stubborn raised my hackles. I had no idea what type of terms would be involved, but if they would kidnap Morgan to use as a bargaining chip, what else might they do? Especially once they learned she had escaped. I pointed to the phone next to the monitor. “Doctor, I need to use your phone.”

He stared at me. Then his eyes widened as it hit him, too, and he said while getting up, “You don’t want to use that one. Come with me. You, too, Ms. Effingham,” he added when she shot him a questioning look.

He moved fast for an old man. Morgan and I hurried after him down a hall – with Morgan protesting that the doctor didn’t have to keep calling her “Ms. Effingham, just Morgan will do” – where we came to a door that opened into a room that held bedroom furniture. I glanced at the phone on a nightstand but he shook his head and strode over to a door that turned out to be a walk-in closet.

He shoved aside clothing on a rack and behind it was a panel. He pushed what looked like a painted over nail-head and the panel slid aside. It opened into a room wider than it was long and held a lot of electronic devices including another, bigger, surveillance monitor that showed a three-eighty of the outside including an overhead view of Blue Heaven’s occluded skies. It also looked out into various places in the house. There was one of the livingroom indicating where the doctor might’ve been when he overheard Talbert. There was also a row of computers, some equipment mounted on a wall that I didn’t recognize, and several phones.

Damn.

I glanced at Morgan. Her eyes were big and her mouth had dropped open.

I swallowed my own amazement and asked, “All the phones work?”

“Yes. Hurry and make your call and I’ll explain.”