The rear license plate in my lenses matches the one I’m looking at for real in the Bojangles’ drive-through line. Sure enough, in the traffic video, the underside of the front bumper is damaged, and I have no doubt the Cherokee in front of me is the same one that was parked at the Hop-In convenience store 4 mornings ago.
“In fact, I’m sure it’s the same car,” and I describe it to Lex, including the damage to the bumper.
“How do you know that if you can’t see the front of it? I’ll take a look,” he says eagerly, his hand on the door.
But he’s not going anywhere. My Chase Car doesn’t answer to him.
22
“I CAN TAKE a picture,” Lex tugs at the handle again to no avail. “But you need to give me my phone back and unlock the door.”
“Absolutely not, and act normal, please,” I’m doing my ventriloquist trick as I watch the Jeep ahead, hoping there’s nobody in it I should be concerned about.
“You know, I can help if you let me,” Lex is more excited than afraid. “Is there somebody bad in it? Are we about to get into a chase? Because we’ll blow that tin can off the road in this thing!”
“I find it curious that someone would plan a business trip to Hampton when we were about to be evacuated because of a nor’easter,” I think out loud, other cars falling in behind us.
“Maybe the person got stuck here.”
“Maybe.”
What I don’t say is I find it even more curious that a salesman for a seafood distributor might have been sitting inside the Hampton Hop-In this past Wednesday morning.
“Have you and my dad ever stopped at the Hop-In close to the farm?” I test his veracity again.
“A few times when he gives me a ride.”
“How else would you get to our place if my dad didn’t give you a ride?”
“The bus. It lets me out not even a 15-minute walk from your farm. They’ve got good hot food there, and root beer,” he means that the Hop-In does. “Is that where you saw it?” he asks, and now he’s talking about the pearl-white Jeep.
I’m reminded that Lexell Anderson is a mental force to be reckoned with. He makes connections way too fast, and if I’m not careful he’ll react the way he did at NASA today, and a moment ago when he tried to get out of the Tahoe to check on the Cherokee. He doesn’t look before he leaps or believe he needs permission, and I ponder what Dick told me about the burner phone.
It was part of a shipment that went to the convenience store in question, and from there somehow ended up in Lex’s backpack at Wallops Island. I have no doubt Neva had the phone planted or did it herself. But how did she get it to begin with? Because I seriously doubt she walked into the Hop-In and asked for a burner phone and prepaid card.
“When was the last time you visited our farm?” I ask Lex.
“Two weeks ago. George and I were working in the barn, and while he was driving me home, we stopped at the Hop-In,” he says. “As you know, since you were there too.”
I have no idea what he’s talking about, and ART begins playing the security video in my lenses. A time stamp of 3:36 p.m., Saturday, November 23, and I see a recording of Dad and Lex walking into the convenience store. Then ART shows images of them cruising the aisles, and I realize with a sinking feeling that my father was doing a lot more than buying drinks or snacks.
He was filling a basket with luncheon meats, cheeses, bread, a dozen eggs while encouraging Lex to grab milk, cereal, orange juice, bananas. The Hop-In is owned by a couple, the wife a heavyset older woman, Bunny, and unlike what her name implies, there’s nothing warm or fuzzy about her.
I’ve always suspected she hates her life in addition to her job, and at 3:42 p.m. she’s irritably ringing up Dad’s purchases, and there’s no sign of a burner phone. A minute later, he and Lex are leaving, the bell jingling as they go out the door. I watch them carrying bags to Dad’s white Prius, and there’s a gray Tahoe like mine in the background parked at the gas pumps.
Carme is dressed in my same protective services fatigues, filling up her Chase Car, something I knew nothing about several weeks ago. Certainly, I wasn’t driving one then, leaving no doubt that Dad is intimately involved in whatever Carme has been doing. Two Saturdays ago, she was in the area, already doubling for me without my knowing.
My sister has been impersonating me longer than I thought, and I watch the pearl-white Cherokee stop at the squawk box. The window rolls down, and I can’t see who’s inside.
“Welcome to Bojangles’, may I take your order?” the disembodied garble is almost undecipherable, and the driver hesitates as if deliberating.
“Two lemonades . . . ,” an Asian accent without the politeness, definitely a woman’s voice, cold and brittle.
She goes on to order a grilled chicken salad with extra honey mustard dressing, green beans, coleslaw, a 4-piece combo with dirty rice. Obviously, she’s not Beaufort Tell, the bearded clerk I noticed inside the Hop-In during the blizzard. Possibly she’s his girlfriend, a relative, a colleague.
Something as innocent as that or maybe not, and I recall the undercover agents I saw on the streets and inside the NASA hangar several mornings ago. All of them could pass for local, and it’s impossible to tell by looking which side anyone is on. The woman in the pearl-white Cherokee could be a civilian who has no idea she’s being watched as she buys her take-out salad, chicken and fixings.
Maybe she works in the seafood industry the same as Beaufort Tell (assuming that’s his real occupation and name), and they’re in Hampton together. It’s possible they know the owners of the Hop-In, might do business with them and therefore had reason to be inside the convenience store when I noticed the unfamiliar bearded man sitting by the glass front door.
In other words, there’s no reason to suspect anyone associated with that pearl-white Cherokee with its scraped front bumper is connected to subterfuge, spying, plotting crimes including cyber ones and violence. But it also doesn’t mean they’re not. They also could be CIA, the Secret Service, military special ops. Or my real fear, adversarial minions deployed by Neva Rong and those who do her bidding.
“What’s your pleasure?” I ask Lex as the pearl-white Jeep noses toward the pick-up window, and it’s our turn next.