Marigolds, Chapter 39

39

“That’s great, sure. I appreciate the help.”

Bo Boban’s assistant was Jillian Gomez. I called her to be put in touch with the school’s travel agent. Bo told her to help me in any way I asked.

“OK, Mr. O’Keefe, here we go. It’s Ye Olde Mayflower Travel. Our contact there is Dennis. I’ll give him a buzz to tell him you’ll be in touch. Here’s the number.”

“Thanks, Jillian. No last name for this Dennis?”

“Nope. Not in the file.”

I killed the fifteen minutes before I called Dennis the best way I knew. I opened a Sam Adams and tossed two papusas into the warmed oven.

“Dennis? Hi, my name is Fintan O’Keefe.”

“Sure, Mr. O’Keefe, how may I be of assistance?”

“Can you tell me if you have arranged any travel in the last week or so for Yalena Orasac?”

“That I can. Let me look up the details right here in…”

The unmistakable sound of slow keystrokes was followed by, “Here it is.”

Orasac had booked flights, separate fights, to Halifax, Nova Scotia and then on to Belfast, Northern Ireland through Shannon, all the day before yesterday.

“Do you know why she might have done it that way as opposed to connecting flights?” I asked.

“I asked the same question. It was much more expensive to do it her way. She said, oh so politely, I should mind my own business.”

“Anything else out of the ordinary with this transaction?”

“Yeah. She paid for it with her own credit card. I reminded her the school has an account and all… she told me again to butt out.”

“Dennis, can you see if she made both of her flights?”

“Hmm, I was just looking at that…it seems she didn’t make the one to Belfast out of Shannon.”

“Did she book a hotel or a car through you in either city?”

“Nope. She wasn’t supposed to be in Halifax but a few hours. And…nothing in Ireland either. Oops, Mr. O’Keefe, I have another call. May I put you on hold?”

“Dennis if you’ll check when you are done if any flight to anywhere out of Shannon had a passenger named Helen Moore and call me back…”

“Got it. Will do.”

I finished my papusas and opened another Boston Ale. My cell phone did its dance on the table next to the brown bottle. Dennis confirmed that one Helen Moore had boarded a flight for Toronto out of Shannon that morning and then another for Belfast that afternoon. Pending Bo’s approval, I asked him to look into a flight to either or Belfast and Shannon for me.

I was feeling in full detecting flower. It lasted only as long as it took me to consider what now.

What now?

I called the cell number that Bo Boban left with me. He answered on the first ring. I told him what I had learned from Dennis.

“Shit, Fintan. Yalena must be somehow connected to this then, right?”

“Has to be. Bo, do you want me to go to Ireland? I imagine that even though she flew to Shannon she’ll end up in Belfast, or somewhere up there.”

There was a pause bracketed by an audible nasal intake of air and a noisy discharge of said air.

“Fintan, go to a town called Portrush. That’s where she’d go. That’s where Chris Moore is. It’s the only place she’d go.”

“Bo, was Yalena one of your off-the-books imports, too?”

“Yes. Years ago. Since then her presence in the country has been validated.”

“You sound like a seasoned spinner of bureaucratic bullshit, Bo.”

“Go to Ireland, Finn. Portrush, Northern Ireland. Have Dennis book it.”

“No one is to know, Bo. Right?”

“No will know Finn.”