NEW YORK HAD BEEN ICY COLD AND COVERED with a blanket of snow. Now, as Captain March banked his big airplane into the landing pattern over Tampa, it was as though Vicki were on some kind of futuristic spaceship coming down into a completely different world. Funny, she thought, this morning it was winter, this afternoon it’s summer.
When the ship rolled to a standstill in front of the unloading gate and the big door was swung open, Vicki breathed in a deep breath of the thick, sweet-scented air and sighed contentedly. “Golly,” she thought, “I’m falling in love with Florida! Me! A girl from Illinois!”
She quickly went through the routine of checking in at flight’s end, and then once more found herself face to face with the problem of what to do about Joey. She knew that she had to talk with him, but again she decided against going to the warehouse to see him. It would be better to get his address from Personnel and call him at his boardinghouse.
Just as she was making this decision, she heard a cheerful, familiar voice:
“Hi there, Miss Vicki!” Joey’s eager face certainly didn’t look like that of a suspected criminal. “I saw your plane come in, and I asked the boss for a few minutes off to come over and say hello.”
“You’re just the person I wanted to see, Joey,” Vicki told him. “Come over to the snack bar and I’ll buy you a coke.”
“Nothing doing!” The boy grinned. “I’ll come with you, but the cokes are on me.”
Vicki led the way to one of the booths, and when they had ordered, she said seriously, “Look here, Joey. You may be in trouble.”
Joey frowned, then his face brightened in his infectious grin.
“If you mean about that flashlight they found the night the gold shipment was stolen, forget it.”