28. Bryan
28
brYAN
“ A re we there yet?” Amelia stopped singing to ask as I turned another corner.
I glanced at the GPS. “Close, sweetheart, close,” I said. I drove around the corner. “According to the GPS, her apartment should be coming up on the—holy smokes.”
There was a large sign announcing her apartment complex, like it was a shopping center. I turned on to the drive, which was really a private street, and slowed the car to a crawl.
“Oh, boy,” I muttered.
“Is this it, Daddy?” Amelia called from the back seat.
“This is it, but we’ve got a problem.” There was a double locked gate with a keypad at the entrance, and I didn’t have a clue what the number was. I lowered the window as the SUV rolled to stop, examining the keypad, seeing if there was a guest code printed anywhere. No guest code, but there was a printed set of instructions reminding residents to press the star key after they finished entering their passcode.
Great. Just great. Was the passcode four or five digits? There were only ten thousand potential combinations for four digits, and ninety thousand for five digits.
“This is going to be a little tricky,” I said, backing the SUV up. I swung the car around and pulled into a small parking lot next to what looked like a pool house, probably the apartment complex manager’s office.
“Why aren’t we going to get Nova?” Amelia demanded as she rocked back and forth in her car seat.
“Give me a minute, Amelia,” I snapped. “There is a code to get into the apartment complex and I don’t know what it is.”
“Why can’t we ask Nova?” Amelia asked.
She had a point. Why didn’t I pick up the phone and call Nova and say, ‘where are you? We’re coming to get you.’ Because I was afraid that she would hang up on me or that she would say she didn’t want us there. I was afraid that Nova would say, 'I don’t want you.’
“I thought we were going to surprise her?” I reminded Amelia.
“Yes, we should surprise her. That would make it a good Christmas present,” Amelia confirmed.
Somehow, on the drive over, rescuing Nova had turned into surprising her. She went back to humming one of the songs from the night we were snowed in together. I was going to have to correct her words. Then again, maybe not. It was just as well she didn’t understand the song was about drugs. I should have played more Christmas carols that night. Honestly, I knew more old rock songs that people liked to sing along with. The Christmas music I knew was from my training, classical pieces that didn’t exactly have words.
I sat trying to figure out what possible number combinations Nova could have used. I jotted down a list of potential numbers that I thought she might have tried, the last four of her phone number, the last four of her social security number, her birth date, the year she was born. All of these were the kinds of passwords that security companies highly recommended not be used. Nova was a first grade teacher. Would she even be aware of the suggestions of security from cybersecurity companies?
I noticed a car approaching in my rearview mirror, and another car behind that one. I backed out of the parking space I was in and carefully eased the SUV back onto the drive. As the second car cleared the open gate, I sped through behind them. I didn’t have time to sit there and try to second-guess a number code. I wasn’t some kind of code hacker. Now, I needed to figure out which of these many buildings Nova lived in.
The apartment complex was huge, consisting of many two-storied buildings. Each building had two open walkways with stairs. It looked like each walkway-stairwell combination had four units that made eight units per building. This complex was huge. There had to be ten, maybe twelve or fifteen buildings with eight units each.
I didn’t even know where to begin. I slowly drove past the first set of buildings. I noticed that some of the apartments seemed to have balconies, while others didn’t. And some of the balconies were decorated with festive lights.
Would Nova be in a balcony department? Would she have decorated for the holiday? She seemed like the kind of person who would have twinkle lights all around her apartment. I recalled she mentioned her apartment was small, so maybe not. Was there a way to tell from the outside how big the apartments in this complex were?
I drove around the complex trying to figure out the best approach to finding out which one of these apartments was Nova’s. That’s when I noticed there was a numbering scheme, and the buildings were labeled alphabetically, but I didn’t know which building Nova lived in. I didn’t have an apartment number for her, only a street address.
I pulled the SUV into an open parking spot and helped Amelia to unbuckle and get out of the car.
“Where do you think we should start?” I asked.
Amelia pointed to somebody walking their dog along one of the walkways in front of a building. “Why don’t we ask him?”
I shrugged. That was as good as any place to start. “Excuse me,” I called out, jogging toward the guy with the dog,
“I don’t want any,” he barked at me.
“Not trying to sell anything. Promise. Do you know your neighbors?” I asked.
“Are you a collections agent?” he asked me, barely slowing down to walk.
“No, no, I’m just trying to?—”
“We’re trying to find Nova,” Amelia cut me off.
“We’re trying to find a friend. I don’t have her apartment number. Wanted to give her a Christmas present.” It wasn’t exactly a lie.
“Yeah, I don’t know anyone named Nova. If she’s really your friend, why don’t you call her?” He shrugged and walked away.
“That would spoil the surprise?” Amelia called out after him.
“I think we might have to give her a call,” I said.
“But we have to surprise her,” Amelia insisted.
“Maybe we could look for her car?” I suggested.
“Her car is broken, remember?” Amelia reminded me.
“You’re right.” I said. “That’s going to make it easier. She’s got my old pickup truck.”
That truck was distinct in its gruff, old way. If it were a person, he’d be in overalls and have a face lined with age and spending too much time in the sun. It was dependable and had seen better days, even before it had come into my possession. It was not some generic car that looked like every other car that surrounded us in the parking lot.
“Come on. Let’s go.” I began walking with brisk steps, scanning the parking lot we were in as I returned to the SUV.
I let Amelia sit in the front passenger seat as I drove slowly through first one lot and then another. Spotting my pickup, I parked as close as I could. There were fewer buildings next to this lot, so our chances of finding Nova were looking better.
“Do you remember if Nova said she lives on the first floor or the second floor?” I asked Amelia as we approached the first set of four apartments on the open stairwell of one of the buildings.
I couldn’t remember Nova saying anything about where she lived other than what she told me the evening I hired her. She had been promised a place to live by the Wentworth Academy, but they had changed their story when she arrived. Instead of having a place for her, they were giving her a living allowance, but it wasn’t even enough to cover rent in the smallest of apartments she could find. She needed a job, even for a few weeks, to make up the difference in paying for her rent.
Why wasn’t the school paying its teachers enough so they could afford rent? I needed to have a little chat with the headmaster at Amelia’s school to make sure they were not putting any of their educators in a situation like that. I was paying top dollar for Amelia’s education. I expected her teachers were being taken care of. Then again, there was a reason she was at Leeds and not Wentworth.
Amelia began singing about being trapped on a dark desert highway. She had the tune perfectly, but her words were a little off, just like with the other song. Again, probably not the best song to teach a six-year-old. With pitch like hers, I should get her into music lessons soon.
“Would you like to play the piano, or maybe the guitar like me?” I asked as we approached the first apartment door.
I knocked.
“Grandmother said she wants me to learn the Jello,” Amelia said as the door opened.
“Okay? What? What do you want?” The person answering looked disheveled and barely awake. “You want Jello?”
“Sorry to disturb you this Christmas morning. We were hoping you might know where Nova lives?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. You want Jello for a nova? No, just no.” The door slammed shut.
I looked down at Amelia. “This isn’t going very well, is it? Are you sure we shouldn’t call Nova? And your grandmother means cello. It’s like a giant violin. I’ll speak to her about that.”
Amelia, undaunted by our task, ran up to the next door and knocked. A couple came down the stairs as we waited.
“Do you know Nova?” Amelia asked.
“You’re so cute!” The woman said. “Nova, like the space clouds?”
“No, not space. Nova,” Amelia corrected her with some frustration.
“She’s a first grade teacher. She’s got long, golden hair,” I cut in.
“Sorry, no one upstairs like that,” the woman said.
“Do you know about those two apartments?” I pointed to the two doors we hadn’t tried yet.
“Sorry, no. Good luck finding your friend. Merry Christmas.”
“Let’s try the next set of apartments.” I took Amelia’s hand, and she started singing as she skipped along next to me.