“Okay,” I said. “So far I’m following you, Marino. But what I don’t understand is how Frankie got Beryl’s telephone number. It was unlisted. And how did he know she was flying in from Key West the night of October twenty-ninth, the night she returned to Richmond? And how the hell did he know when I flew in, too?”
“The computers,” he said. “All passenger info, including flight schedules, phone numbers, and home addresses, is in the computers. All we can figure is Frankie sometimes played around with the computers when one of the counters was unattended, maybe late at night or early in the morning. The airport was like his damn crib. No telling what all he was into without anybody paying him any mind. He wasn’t much of a talker, a real low-profile kind of guy, the sort who slips around quiet as a cat.”
“According to his Stanford-Binet,” I mused, grinding the date stamp into its dried-out ink pad, “he was well above average in intelligence.”
Marino said nothing.
I mumbled, “His IQ was in the upper one-twenty range.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Marino said somewhat impatiently.
“I’m just telling you.”
“Shit. You really take those tests seriously, don’t you?”
“They’re a good indicator.”
“They ain’t gospel.”
“No, I won’t say that Intelligence Quotient tests are gospel,” I agreed.
“Maybe I’m glad I don’t know what mine is.”
“You could have your IQ tested, Marino. It’s never too late.”
“Hope it’s higher than my damn bowling score. That’s all I got to say.”
‘
“Not likely. Not unless you’re a pretty sorry bowler.”
“I was last time I went.”
I slipped off my glasses and gingerly rubbed my eyes. I had a headache that I was sure would never go away.
Marino went on, “All me and Benton can figure is Frankie got Beryl’s phone number out of the computer, and after a while was monitoring her flights. I’m figuring he knew from the computer that she’d taken a plane to Miami back in July when she ran off after finding that heart scratched on her car door–”
“Any theories as to when he might have done this?” I interrupted, pulling the wastepaper basket closer.
“When she’d fly to Baltimore she’d leave her car at the airport, and the last time she met Miss Harper up there was in early July, less than a week before Beryl found that heart scratched on her door,” he said.
“So he may have done it while her car was parked at the airport.”
“What do you think?”
“I think that seems very plausible.”
“Ditto.”
“Then Beryl flees to Key West.”
I continued attacking my mail. “And Frankie keeps checking the computer for her return reservation. That’s how he knew exactly when she’d be back.”
“The night of October twenty-ninth,” Marino said. “And Frankie had it all figured out. A piece of cake. He had legitimate access to the passengers’ baggage, and I figure he probably checked out the bags from her flight as they were being loaded on the conveyor belt. When he finds a bag with Beryl’s name tag on it, he snatches it. A little later, she’s complaining that her brown leather tote bag is missing.”
He didn’t need to add that this was exactly the same maneuver Frankie used on me. He monitored my return from Florida. He snatched my suitcase. Then he appeared at my door, and I let him in.
The governor had invited me to a reception I had missed by a week. I supposed Fielding had gone in my place. The invitation went into the trash.
Marino went on to supply more details about what the police had discovered inside Frankie Aims’s Northside apartment.
Inside his bedroom was Beryl’s tote bag, containing her bloody blouse and underclothes. Inside a trunk that served as a table next to his bed was an assortment of violent pornographic magazines and a bag of small-gauge pellets that Frankie had used to fill the section of pipe he bashed against Gary Harper’s head. Out of this same trunk came an envelope containing a second set of Beryl’s computer disks, still taped between two stiff squares of cardboard, and the photocopy of Beryl’s