The Road to You (29 page)

He jabbed my shoulder with his index finger. “Stop it with the snottiness. I’m just trying to make sure we don’t overlook anything.”

I shrugged. “Fine. Let’s just go to the reference room and get started.”

He followed me, though several paces behind, as I collected my papers and speed-walked through the first floor and the general reading room so we could enter the connected reference area. Just as I’d done at the public library in Ashburn Falls, I took a quick scan of the available staff members to gather impressions about them and to see which one might be the best to approach. Who looked both knowledgeable and trustworthy?

There was a white-haired librarian with a warm smile, and she seemed like a good prospect to me, but she was busy helping a group of four teenage girls find something. I heard one of the girls ask, “And can we get Donny Osmond’s address, too?”

It was going to be a long wait.

There was a somewhat younger staff woman, but she had an angry crease between her brows and wore a grim expression on her lips. She was filing cards in the card catalog and gave off the distinct vibe that she didn’t want to be disturbed.

Finally, there was a third librarian—the youngest of them all and a guy—who was filling out forms at the reference desk. He looked to be just out of college, so about Donovan’s age. He had sandy-colored hair, circular wire-rimmed glasses that made him look studious, but also a playful grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. Cute. I made a beeline for him.

“Hi,” I said, slightly breathless from my hike across the library. “I was hoping you could help me locate some articles.”

He looked up at me. “I’d be happy to.” He smiled, showing off his dimples. Wow.
Really
cute.

I smiled back just as brightly. I couldn’t help it.

Then I felt Donovan’s shadow over my shoulder and realized he’d finally caught up. I didn’t need to look behind me to know that Donovan must have been scowling. The librarian’s smiled dimmed a few watts.

“Uh, what’s your topic?” Cute Librarian Guy asked.

“Oh, right.” I took a quick glance at my notes. “We were looking into local trucking companies. The kind of routes they take. The kind of cargo they carry. The ones with the best safety records in the area.”

He nodded. “Sure. I think I can get you started. Do you know the names of any of the companies?”

“Americana Trucking,” Donovan piped up. “That’s the first one on the list. Alphabetical, you know.”

Cute Librarian Guy eyed him with curiosity. “Great. So, you’re both working on this? Together?”

“Yes,” I said cheerfully. “But it’s really
my
brother’s
project.” I hooked my thumb in Donovan’s direction but kept beaming my warmest, most flirtatious smile at the librarian. I leaned in a little closer and lowered my voice. “He needs the help,” I added, just like a snotty younger sister might.

This earned me a chuckle from Cute Librarian Guy and another flash of his dimples. He stood up and turned his back on us so he could grab one of the periodical indexes.

As soon as he did, Donovan jabbed me with his finger in between my shoulder blades. “Better be nicer to me,
Sis
,” he hissed in my ear.

I snickered. “Just as soon as you do the same,
Bro
.”

With the help of the librarian, we soon had a stack of material to sort through. It took us over three hours of digging and reading archived microfilm, but Donovan and I finally unearthed something worth saving.

In following the trail of Americana Trucking, we learned from an old Joplin newspaper clipping that one of the guys on Treak’s list—Timothy Wick—had been an executive with the Missouri-based company. That was, up until two years ago when he was arrested for the “unauthorized shipping of explosive material” that resulted in “an unfortunate accident in Amarillo, Texas.”

“Oh, God, Donovan. Look at the date.”

“August 5, 1976,” he read. “Was that…uh, when…?”

“Yes,” I said. “That’s when, according to the decoded dates in the journal, Gideon and Jeremy were in Amarillo.”

“Shit.”

We looked up another newspaper article, this time from a Texas paper. There weren’t many more details, but we did glean a few new hints from the report:

On the outskirts of Amarillo, late Thursday, August 5th, tragedy struck as an Americana Trucking semi headed for Albuquerque caught fire and, due to the explosive nature of the cargo, was destroyed before the fire department could be called for help. The truck driver was missing from the scene, but the manager responsible for the shipment, Timothy Wick of Joplin, Missouri, is being held for questioning.

Donovan and I exchanged nervous glances.

“This isn’t good,” he murmured.

Then there was one final article, posted about a month later, with a follow-up to the story. It recapped what had been written before, adding that Wick had been jailed for illegally ordering the transport of boxes with explosives.

But that wasn’t all.

The name of the driver was still being held in confidence by the police, pending further investigation, as there had been evidence of foul play. And the big mystery investigators had been working on was where the explosive material had been manufactured. It was rumored there were ties to Chicago mob activity, but the police didn’t know for sure where the bombs had originated…

“Although
we
know,” I whispered. “And so did Treak, Ben, Jeremy and Gideon.”

Donovan crossed his arms. “Probably why Ben and Treak are now dead. And who knows what happened to our brothers as a result?”

“Yeah,” I whispered.

Then, as if trying to win the Understatement of the Year Award, he added, “Aurora, if we keep driving west, we’ve got to be very careful.”

Tulsa, Oklahoma ~ Thursday, June 22

W
E’D BEEN
in Tulsa for twenty-two hours…and arguing for a full fifteen of them. (But that was only because we’d slept for seven and neither of us talked in our sleep.) I’d managed to convince Donovan to enter the state of Oklahoma, but to say we did not see eye to eye on our next step since we’d gotten here would be an accurate deduction.

An even more accurate deduction would be to say that, less than a week into our trip, we wanted to have a lightsaber fight to the death like a Jedi Knight battling one of the Dark Lords of the Empire.

“What part of ‘Chicago mob activity’ makes you think poking your nose any further into this would be a good idea?” Donovan demanded, his voice rising. “Especially without police protection. Seriously, Aurora, you’ve reached the point of
crazy
with this road trip.”

“You know we have to go to Amarillo. Not only did Gideon send Amy Lynn a postcard from there—just a few weeks ago—but that’s where the Americana truck exploded. It happened when our brothers were there! God, Donovan, we’ve almost cracked this mystery. We’re
this
close
to finding Gideon and Jeremy. We can’t stop now.”

“Oh, yes. Yes, we can.” He crossed his arms. “And you’re wrong, you know that? We are
not
close to finding our brothers. They would have shown up if they’d wanted to be found. And we are
not
close cracking this mystery either. Not by a long shot.”

He started pacing around the room. “With everything we find a partial answer to, there are fifty more questions that come up. Maybe Hal was our waitress’s boyfriend and he was a trucker for Americana, bringing explosives from Crescent Cove to Albuquerque via Texas. But
why?
And how did the Chicago mob get involved? And what happened to Hal? And what exactly did our brothers witness? It couldn’t have been an accident that they were in Amarillo at the very same time this happened, could it?”

He shook his head and gave his sideburns an agitated rub. “Listen to me. This is not some little hick-town scheme gone wrong. This is major stuff. Maybe with a crime boss, just like in ‘The Sting.’
Just like real life
, your brother wrote. Remember?”

“I remember. And there was a dirty cop in Gideon’s movie reference, too, if you’re going to go that way with it. Police can’t be trusted,” I shot back. I shoved the journal at Donovan. “Look at this. We’ve got so much more information now, even if new questions have arisen.”

He snorted. “You always say—”

“Gideon wrote on July 27, 1976, ‘Tulsa with J.’ And below that he wrote, ‘Andy Reggio is OK, OK.’ And finally he wrote, ‘Bikes at 100N.’ These are valid leads! Names I can look up. Places and things I can find.” I was already pulling out the motel phonebook to search for this new name when Donovan all but ripped it out of my hands. He flipped to the R’s himself, his jaw clenched as he studied the page.

“Reggio, huh?” he said. “Well, see for yourself. There is
no
Reggio listed in the Tulsa phonebook. Not an Andy or an Andrew. Not anyone with that last name. It’s just another puzzle. Another stupid clue in code. The next part of some new game your manipulative brother, or whoever’s impersonating him, is playing. And I’ve had enough.” He waited until I’d looked at the phonebook page myself. He was right. There was no one by that name listed.

“Maybe it’s unlisted—” I began.

But Donovan wasn’t going to indulge me with any more conjecturing.

“People have
died
already. Other people are missing,” he said. “Most, if not all, of them were doing illegal things. It’s not our job to bring them to justice. We need to get back home and get on with our lives and our own jobs. If any more answers are out there—”

“
If?
Donovan, of
course
there are more—”

“Then the police can be the ones to find them,” he said. “We’ve got something legitimate that we can give them now. A solid starting point. There’s a storage facility with pipe bombs near Crescent Cove. There’s probably a trucking connection with this Hal guy. Maybe that’s how boxes of explosives were brought to Amarillo. These details ought to give some weight to our claims. And once they’ve cleared up that whole bomb mess, then maybe Jeremy and Gideon’s story will naturally emerge. If they’re dead—” He paused to gulp a few lungfuls of air and fight for his usual sense of control. “Then...then, I guess, they’re dead. But, if not, they could safely come out of hiding then.”

I chose to ignore Donovan’s attempt at a dispassionate speech. Why the hell did I still have to struggle to get his help despite all of the evidence I’d gathered?

I gritted my teeth in frustration and returned my focus to the phonebook and the name while Donovan blathered on. Why wasn’t Andy Reggio in there? I glanced again at the journal:

It was written under
Tulsa
but what if my brother meant that Andy wasn’t only “okay,” as in a person we could trust, but also that he was in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma…which would be the next big stop on Route 66? Maybe the front desk at our motel had an Oklahoma City phonebook. Or maybe we could contact the telephone operator there…but, if not, we were going to have to drive there so I could look this up in person. And, always, talking to people face to face was a better move.