The next morning came way too early for me. I woke up just after six. Mia was not there beside me on the double bed. I wasn’t worried. She would be out for her run. I put on my official security guard uniform—the light blue, short sleeve shirt with the Gulf Coast Security crests on both shoulders and navy lightweight slacks. To finish the image—New Balance black walking shoes and a crested navy ball cap. I packed my light lunch into a small blue and white Thermos cooler chest. I would pick up my official clipboard and pen from the guy I was supposed to relieve at 7 o’clock. I was ready for another workday on Sand Key, but with Mia in my life now, it felt different, more meaningful. Joe Holiday, breadwinner again—it had a nice feel to it.
Just as I was leave, I spotted a small scrap of paper on the floor. I picked it up. Mia had scribbled the phone number for her apartment in Tampa on it. She must have left it on my small bookcase, and it fell off when she swung the door closed. I folded the note and put it in my pocket. The Jaguar started on the first try, and I was off.
During my mid-morning break, as I sat in the roadside guard shelter watching the twelve monitors and eating a carrot, I tried to phone Mia at her apartment. The line was busy. I tried again about a half an hour later, but no one picked up. I figured that she must have done all of the fridge cleaning and mail sorting that she needed to do, and that she was on her way back to the beach. From there, she would go on to IHOP to do her shift from two to ten. The rest of my day was as boring as it usually is doing that job. The occasional quick walk around the entire property—twenty-five minutes if I’m not distracted—is the only thing that keeps me sane. I never could figure out what I was supposed to be looking for on those patrols—anything suspicious I guess. The only thing I regularly found suspicious was how some of the residents had earned the millions that allowed them to live there. A few of them looked like they wouldn’t be able to tie up their shoes. I guess looks can be deceiving.
At the end of my shift, I collected my hundred in cash in a small white envelope—which is to say under the table—from the area security supervisor. I have to be paid this way because I’m a Canadian citizen without a green card. I’m not supposed to be able to work in the U.S. of A. as I might deprive an American citizen of a job. I guess that says something about my security guard position—no American citizen wanted it. I sat in the Jaguar with the windows down until the air conditioner got up to speed and then started my drive off Sand Key and on home. I realized that my light lunch had been too light. I was hungry. And I wanted to see Mia. Two birds with one stone, I decided to risk the dagger looks of the manager, so I stopped off at IHOP for a bite to eat.
“Nice outfit, Tex!—how many?” It was the short chubby waitress named Janille trying to play with my head again.
“Forty-two,” I said without batting an eyelid. “The bus is just parking around the back.”
Janille’s eyes shot wide open. She tried to peer around me to spot the bus with its forty-two passengers. “Gotcha,” I said. White humour! “Just get me a place in Mia’s section okay.”
“Mia ain’t here.”
“Yes she is,” I said. I wasn’t going for Janille’s payback. “She’s working until ten I think.”
“She’s a no show, and the boss is raggin’ on everyone since two this afternoon like somehow it’s our fault.”
I didn’t know what to do. I wondered if Janille was still trying to get even with me for the bus gotcha, but I couldn’t spot Mia. I thanked the chubby little black waitress and went to the parking lot. Mia’s car wasn’t there. I ran back to the Jag and drove home. Neither Mia nor her car was there. I wasn’t panicked, but I was starting to worry. I went inside and tried to phone her Tampa apartment—nothing. No one answered. There were probably plenty of possible explanations for why she had missed work, but the only thing I could think of was that she had fallen and hurt herself at the apartment. I had to get there.
Then I realized that I had set my GPS for that apartment when I had been there with her nights before. I ran back outside and fired up the Jag. After a few more seconds the GPS loaded. I punched in “Recently Found” on the touch screen and hit it. I drove as quickly as possible to her apartment praying the entire time that she was okay—but that warning note left for me on Mia’s car and the encounter with Sammy in the CVS kept playing through my head. Twenty minutes later I pulled over in front of her home. As I was getting out of the jag, I glanced over towards the apartment’s grim parking lot. Mia’s battered Honda was there. Please God, no. I ran to the door of her apartment. It was closed but not locked. This was not good. I knocked loudly. Nothing—but the door swung slowly open.