With the last of the passengers gone, Vicki and Cathy went rapidly through the big cabin on a final inspection tour. The empty seats were reclined at all angles; pillows, magazines, and newspapers were scattered over them in confusion. At one seat she picked up a small package that had been forgotten. She’d take it to the Lost-and-Found desk in the terminal building.
In the seat that old Mr. Tytell had occupied something peculiar caught her eye. It was a Tampa visitor’s guide, part of the travel literature and other reading matter carried in the plane’s seat pockets. But it was folded in the shape of a sort of pyramid and was standing upright on the seat.
“Odd,” Vicki thought, and reached over to pick it up. As she did so, she noticed that the exposed page was an advertisement for a restaurant located in Ybor City, Tampa’s old Latin Quarter. The restaurant was called the Granada, and under the name was the slogan: “The liveliest and most popular meeting place in Tampa’s famed Ybor City.”
The words “meeting place” were underlined by a wavery pencil scrawl!
Had the old man left this as a signal? She remembered his furtive over-the-shoulder glance as he was leaving the plane. Maybe he had a job at the Granada playing in the orchestra. But why hadn’t he come straight out and said so? Vicki wrinkled her pretty brows in a puzzled frown. Was something strange going on here? Or was she just imagining things?
She tucked the folder into her jacket pocket and went on with her work.
CHAPTER III
An Odd Offer
VICKI SAID GOOD-BY TO CAPTAIN MARCH, JOHNNY, and Cathy and strolled leisurely through the air terminal waiting room, watching the milling crowds of people which always fascinated her. One could certainly pick out the “Yankees” who had just come in, she thought. Their northern winter pallor contrasted sharply with the deep sun-browned skins of the local residents. It suddenly struck Vicki that she was a “Yankee” herself. “I’ll have to go to the beach and start working on my own sun tan,” she thought, “the first time I have a day off.”