I was shocked.
“Are those your bags under the seat?”
“Yes.” Adrenaline was roaring through me. The other passengers were absolutely still. The officer quickly stooped to pick up my purse and overnight bag, his eyes not leaving me. I got up and they led me out. All I could think was that someone had planted drugs in one of my bags. Denesa Steiner had, and I crazily looked around the tarmac and at the plate glass windows of the terminal. I looked for someone looking at me, a woman who was back in the shadows watching the latest dilemma she had caused me.
A member of the ground crew in a red jumpsuit pointed at me.
“That’s her!” he said excitedly.
“It’s on her belt!”
I suddenly knew what this was about.
“It’s just a phone.” I slowly raised my elbows so they could see beneath my suit jacket. Often when I wore slacks, I carried my portable phone on my belt so I didn’t have to keep digging it out of my bags.
One of the officers rolled his eyes. The ground crewman looked horrified.
“Oh, no,” he said.
“It looked exactly like a nine- millimeter, and I’ve been around FBI agents before and she looks like one of them.”
I just stared at him.
“Ma’am,” one of the officers said, “do you have a firearm in either of these bags?”
I shook my head.
“No, I do not.”
“We’re really sorry, but he thought you were wearing a gun on your belt, and when the pilots checked the passenger list, they didn’t see anyone on it who was authorized to carry a gun on the plane.”
“Did someone tell you I was wearing a gun?” I demanded of the man in the jumpsuit.
“If so, who?” I glanced around some more.
“No. No one told me. I thought I saw it when you walked past,” he lamely went on.
“It’s that black case it’s in. I’m sure sorry.”
“It’s all right,” I said, my graciousness strained.
“You were just doing your job.” An officer said, “You can go back on the plane.” By the time I returned to my seat, I was trembling so violently my knees were almost knocking, and I felt eyes on me. I did not look at anyone as I tried to read the paper. The pilot was considerate enough to announce what had happened.
“She was armed with a nine-millimeter portable phone,” he continued to explain the delay as everybody laughed. This was one upset I could not blame on her, but I realized with stunning clarity that assuming she had caused it was automatic. Denesa Steiner was controlling my life. People I loved had become her pawns. She had come to dominate what I thought and did, and was always at my heels, and the revelation sickened me. It made me feel half crazy. A soft hand touched my arm and I jumped.
“We really feel bad about this,” a flight attendant said quietly. She was pretty, with per med blond hair.
“At least let us buy you a drink.”
“No, thank you,” I said.
“Would you like a snack? I’m afraid all we’ve got are peanuts.”
I shook my head.
“Don’t feel bad. I would hope you would check out anything that might jeopardize the safety of your passengers.” I talked on, saying exactly the right words as my mind soared in flight patterns that had nothing to do with where we were.
“It’s nice of you to be such a good sport.”
We landed in Asheville as the sun went down, and my briefcase quickly came off the one carousel in the small baggage department. I went back into a ladies’ room and transferred my handgun to my purse, then I went out on the curb and got a cab. The driver was an old fellow in a knit cap that he had pulled below his ears. His nylon jacket was dingy and frayed around the cuffs, and his big hands looked raw on the wheel as he drove at a prudent speed and made sure I understood it was quite a distance to Black Mountain. He was worried on my behalf about the fare because it could be close to twenty dollars. I closed my eyes as they began to water, and I blamed it on the heat blasting to drive out the cold.