November 18 & 19
“I don’t mean to knock your date night idea, but…” Brandon started to trail off.
Cordelia smiled over at him, and he smiled back teasingly.
Overhead an airplane lowered its landing gear and touched down on the nearby airport landing strip.
They were stopped at the edge of long-term parking purgatory. A sea of cars waited for them. They were about to embark on a journey through open parking lots, covered parking lots, and a lot of parking garages. Cordelia had no idea where Sophia had decided to park her car, but she was determined to find it.
“Ready?” Brandon asked as he drove his car toward the first lot.
Cordy held up Sophia’s car key. “Ready.”
“Wish she had one of those fancy key fob things.” Brandon chuckled and pulled up to the gate of the first lot. The RED lot.
Cordelia nodded, looking down at the older Lexus key. It was just a plain key. There would be no hitting the panic button and waiting for a honking reply. Or hitting the lock button and waiting for the subtle beep and flashing lights. Nope. This search would require them literally looking over every single car they came upon until Sophia’s was found.
“Red is Sophia’s favorite color.” Cordelia said optimistically.
“Good enough for me.” Brandon took his parking lot slip and pulled through the RED gate. A sign greeted them and indicated that rows 1-40 were to the left and rows 41-82 were to the right. Brandon went to the left. “May as well be civilized about this and start from the beginning.”
Cordelia laughed. There was no one she would rather do this with.
The RED lot search took about an hour. They found two cars that roughly matched Sophia’s and stopped to try the key in the doors of both. No luck.
“On to the green lot!” Brandon said after they paid the fee for the RED lot.
Once through the GREEN gate, they were met with 112 more rows of cars. This lot took just shy of an hour and a half to search. Three cars seemed to match Cordelia’s memory of Sophia’s car…but again, none of them were a match for the key!
“What if I am remembering her car all wrong?” Cordelia started to fret as they pulled into the BLUE lot.
“Do you want to stop at each Lexus we find?” Brandon asked with a mountain of patience.
“As much as I like spending this time with you,” Cordelia said, “I don’t think I could wrap my head around stopping at each one. Or going back and starting over.”
“We’ll stick to what you remember then.” Brandon nodded as he pulled through the BLUE gate.
Back and forth they went. Up and down each row. Careful to study each car as they passed by, just in case.
A few cars parked or pulled out ahead of them, slowing down their search a bit. The sky was starting to get dark, and the lot lights flickered on. Suddenly the lot looked more like a baseball park with all the flood lights.
“Right there.” Cordelia pointed to the edge of a bumper ahead. A golden Lexus.
Brandon parked his car and Cordelia got out to try her key. She walked over to the driver side door and slid the key into the lock and turned. CLICK! The lock inside the car popped up. “This is it!” Cordy shouted back at Brandon.
“Yes!” Brandon put his car in park and headed over to join her.
Cordelia opened the car door and peeked inside.
Unsurprisingly, the car was clean, except for a few books on the floor in the back.
Brandon opened the passenger door and climbed inside to join Cordelia in her search.
They searched the glove box, the arm rests, and the center console. They looked under the front seats, under the back seats, between the seats, and in the trunk. But nothing surprising showed up. Nothing that would indicate where Sophia went. Not even the books in the back seat gave any indication. They were just fiction novels.
Cordelia sat back in the front seat and sighed. Brandon was in the back seat thumbing through the fiction books to see if there were any notes slipped inside or any commonalities with the books.
“One’s a story of a woman living in Detroit. The other is a story of a man living in the Rockies. And the other is about a child growing up in norther California.” Brandon announced after a few minutes. “Ring any bells? Any connections you can see?”
“None. Not unless her trip included Detroit, the Rockies, and Northern California.” Cordy sighed.
“That would make for a strange vacation.” Brandon agreed.
Cordy started checking the center console again. Just in case she missed something. There was nothing but some old takeout receipts, a pair of scratched up sunglasses, and a pack of old gum.
Cordelia started absentmindedly moving her hand through the open cubbies in the dash and in the cup holders. They were all clear. No parking slips to indicate when Sophia arrived at the airport.
Her hand ran over the dashboard, nothing. Her hand went up to the sun visor and dropped it down. As soon as it opened, a set of keys fell out of the visor and into her lap.
“What was that?” Brandon asked from the back.
“Keys…” Cordelia scooped them up off her lap and looked them over. One key was the exact same as the bookstore key Brea had given her, she recognized it by its size and special shape. A second key was also on the chain. It was a regular looking house key. But was it a house key?
Cordelia took her set of keys out of her pocket and compared the second key to all the others she had. It didn’t match Sophia’s house key…in fact it didn’t match any of the keys Cordelia had.
Could it be the key to the closet in Sophia’s bookstore?
“Any idea what that one is for?” Brandon asked as Cordy studied it.
Cordy quickly told him about the locked closet at the bookstore and how she had been dying to know what was behind it. “What if Sophia locked some sort of clue up? Or what if something happened to her and this will give us an answer?”
“What about this?” Brandon suddenly asked as he pulled his hand up out of the crack between the back seat and the arm rest.
He held up a small bottle of cologne. He popped the cap off and smelled it. “It’s not expired. And it’s still full.”
“Cologne?” Cordelia was surprised.
Brandon handed the bottle to her. She looked between the key and the bottle.
Two new clues.
But what did they mean?