Page 24 of Identity Unknown
“No, I’m not sure. And I should have asked. There are a lot of things I should have asked him, but I didn’t.”
“Don’t feel bad about it.” Lucy’s voice is matter-of-fact in my headset. “You know what they say about hindsight being twenty-twenty. There’s not a thing you could have done to prevent what’s happened unless you’d abducted Sal yourself and locked him away somewhere for safekeeping.”
In my mind, I see him on his driveway. We chatted in thesunlight surrounded by flowers blooming, everything dusted with greenish-yellow pollen. He was getting ready to leave for West Virginia, packing his pickup truck.
Dove è finito il tempo, amore?Where did the time go? he asked when I handed him the gift basket and wished him a happy birthday.
“He was expecting you yesterday? Did you contact him in advance?” Lucy turns the Doomsday Bird on a due west heading.
“Yes,” I reply. “I showed up at eleven with a gift basket of Italian cheeses, olive oil, a bottle of Toscana red, my homemade ciabatta bread. I thought he might want to take it on the road with him.”
“You have a text, an email that shows you were planning to see him?”
“Yes, a text. Actually, more than one,” I confirm. “Why do you ask?”
“When did you send these texts?” She thunders over a field where kids are playing soccer, and they stop their game to stare.
“We communicated the night before.” I scroll through the messages on my phone. “We texted on Sunday night between six and six-thirty while I was home making dinner.”
“Who reached out first?”
“I did.”
“Why?”
“To ask if I could stop by the next day with his birthday gift,” I reply. “And I said that when he was back from his travels, Benton and I would have him over for a belated celebration.”
“This was in a text?”
“Yes,” I repeat. “Am I a suspect in something?” I’m not really joking.
“You knew him well and are going to be asked a lot of questions,” Lucy says as we fly over a meadow spangled with colorful wildflowers. “Better get used to it.”
“I’ll do my best to answer what I can.” I’m not liking the sound of this.
“What can you tell me about the florist’s van that happened to show up at the same time you did yesterday?” Lucy returns to that while scanning her instruments.
“The driver was wearing dark glasses, a black baseball cap pulled low and a black face mask,” I describe. “Don’t know if it was a man or a woman but I had to move over to let the person pass. The driver was rude in retrospect.”
“Can you describe the van?”
“White with no windows.” I wonder uneasily who I passed on Sal’s driveway. Who was it really? “There was a rack on top, and a Betsy Ross flag logo, the name First Family Florists. I’ve never heard of them, by the way.”
“That’s because they don’t exist, not around here.” Lucy’s “smart” glasses answer questions without being asked. “Did Sal say anything about a flower delivery? I’m assuming the van you saw must have dropped off something?”
“He told me that he’d just received five dozen long-stem white roses.”
“Wow. That’s quite a gift,” Lucy says. “Whoever sent them obviously knew he was turning sixty. Of course, it wouldn’t be hard to find out that information or where he lives.”
“He told me they arrived in a beautiful Italian ceramic vasehand-painted with a pastoral scene.” I continue telling her what I remember. “The card was addressed toSal,and nothing was on it but the name of the florist that you’re telling me is fake.”
“Did he have any idea who the roses might be from?”
We cut across the Capital Beltway. Ribbons of traffic wind through hotels, apartment complexes and parking lots like a charmless Monopoly board.
“He thought they were wonderful and assumed I sent them.” I envision his face lighting up at the thought. “Of course, they weren’t from me. And as beautiful as they may be, I wouldn’t pick white roses because I associate them with funerals.”
“Maybe that’s the point considering what’s happened since,” Lucy says, and it’s a sickening thought.