Terry jotted down a fake note saying he wasn’t feeling well and was catching a cab to the local hospital, but not to worry about him, saying he’d call them later. Terry returned the laptop to its place, and slipped quietly back out of the room.
Terry stopped himself. Where the hell was he going?
“Jeez dude, calm down,” Terry told himself, taking a deep breath. He squatted in the hall, mind racing. Jeremy would forgive him for skipping out on the band to help a friend; they could find a temporary drummer at the pubs they were playing, but if he lied to him about some bogus illness, they would kick his ass and the rest of him out of the band in half a second if not sooner.
Terry went back. Hell, he had no idea where in Galway they were going.
Hey Guys, Sorry to drop this on you, but I’ve just found out I have a friend in big trouble in Galway, and I’ve made up my mind to help her out if I can. I will probably be back tomorrow, and I’m sure you can find somebody to do percussion in the meantime. Again, sorry I had to leave you hanging like this. Terry
Terry tore up the original note, left the new one, and walked out. “Ok, they were going to visit Rachel’s grandparents. What was Rachel’s last name?" He hailed a passing orange cab. “Could you take me to the nearest library please?”
At the library, Terry got some time on the computer. “Okay, her mother was P.E. teacher at their school…” He ran a search for Reitz High School, was immediately directed to the football team, but linked back to the school’s actual website and continued onto the P.E. Department.
“Brenda McDonald, hmm, sure looks Irish enough. But is that her maiden name or her married one?” He ran a search for “Brenda McDonald” and, not too surprisingly was greeted with 21,000 entries. Searching with the name plus “Evansville” narrowed it by a large percentage, Galway and Evansville even more.
“She kept her maiden name then?” Well that helped, doing a phone number search for “McDonald” in Galway netted a significant number of possibilities. “Well, a one in thirty chance is better than nothing,” he thought to himself.
“I’d better fly, if I’m going to catch them." Checking his watch, he saw that it was 11:30. “I can make the 13:15, fantastic!!”
Not wanting to leave his friends in the lurch, he took the time to call O’Donohues. “Hi, Kevin, it’s Terry, the drummer for Hydrofoil. Look, something came up and I’ll have to miss tonight. Is there another drummer available who can take my place? Terriffic!”
That crisis averted, or at least mitigated, Terry took the bus to the airport.
“Thank you for flying Aer Arann, and we hope you enjoy your stay or homecoming in Galway.”
Groggy from a lack of sleep, Terry checked his watch. It was just before two o’clock. “Fourteen hundred,” he reminded himself.
“Take me to the train station please,” They arrived just in time to see the girls piling into a silver Peugeot.
“Follow that car,” whispered Terry urgently. “Crazy Yank,” the cab drive thought to himself, but decided to humor him, so long as he had the Euros. The Peugeot pulled away, stalling once, then continued out into the streets. They drove along with the Peugeot, staying a few cars behind.
“You a detective, then lad?”
“Something like that. I’m trying to help a friend.”
“Y’know, ye COULD just check the license tag.”
Terry nodded, but decided to keep the chase going, it WAS rather adventurous, he thought to himself. The silver car pulled off into a fairly upscale neighborhood.
“That’s a cul-de-sac, son, shall we continue?”
“No, take me to the library, what’s the name of this street?”
Terry wrote down the information, no way that there were going to be more than one or two McDonalds on the same road.
Less than half an hour later, Terry had the name, address, and phone number of a Martin and Mary McDonald of Galway Ireland, parents of Brenda, grandparents of Rachel, and owners of the O’Hara pub on Fienster Street.
“I could use a couple of pints, come to think of it.”