by Liz Freeland
She bounced off to get dressed.
“You’ll be going up soon?” I asked Teddy. My stomach tightened at the idea of Callie up in the Gail Force.
“Just as soon as Callie’s ready—but that might take a while. I need to teach her all about it, first. Don’t worry, I’m not going to jump the gun.”
That was somewhat reassuring. Callie might even tire of the lesson and lose a little of her flying mania in the face of a long lecture.
I stuck with Teddy until Callie appeared in her flying getup, which earned appreciative stares from all the men. Then the blocks were removed from behind Teddy’s plane’s wheels and the machine was pushed out of the enclosure. Before leaving me to take her lesson, Callie gave my hands a squeeze. “Don’t worry, Louise. Teddy wouldn’t dream of taking me up if it weren’t perfectly safe.”
I smiled, though of course what she’d said was ridiculous. My first real awareness of airplanes had come five years earlier when I’d read a newspaper account of a man who’d died flying in a plane with Orville Wright. Still, it would have been unhelpful to mention that incident to Callie when she was minutes from going up herself. Nothing I said would change her mind.
But as I watched her stride toward the plane, I backed away instinctively. “I can’t look,” I muttered.
“Then make yourself useful and hand me a wrench.”
The command came from a long pair of legs braced on a workbench under a nearby plane. The voice had startled me; then I realized whom it belonged to. Hugh Van Hooten. I’d almost forgotten about him.
The wing he was wedged beneath belonged to a plane that looked much like Teddy’s, only slightly larger—another two-seater “tractor” type. I’d learned from Teddy that a tractor was the kind that had the engine in front, pulling the machine forward, as opposed to pushers, which were locomoted from the rear. This plane looked very modern, from what I knew, which was still laughably little. The most notable thing about it was that it had a single wing jutting from both sides of the fuselage.
“How can that possibly fly?” I said. If I were going to be in an airplane, I’d want as many wings as possible.
“Well, at the moment it can’t, but it might have a better chance to if you’ll hand me that wrench I asked for.”
Hugh’s long-fingered hand pointed me toward a hefty metal toolbox, where I located the wrench. It was oily, and I carried it to him with my fingertips.
“Thanks.” He tightened something out of my sight, gave a grunt of satisfaction, and scooted out from his uncomfortable seat. On his feet, he looked at me closely for the first time. “You.” He didn’t disguise his displeasure. “Teddy told me he was bringing some girls out today. He never mentioned that one of them would be the friend of the man who killed my brother.”
“Mr. McChesney didn’t do it.”
Hugh’s face tensed in disgust. “He confessed.”
“Yes, but—”
“Can you imagine what learning about that did to my mother? To hear that her firstborn son—her dearest son—was murdered by his business associate, a man who had been one of my father’s closest friends?”
“He didn’t—”
“By God, you were even there that morning when he came to offer my mother condolences. Condolences!” His laugh was ragged, mirthless. “Very heartfelt, I’m sure.”
When I could finally get a word in, I jumped at my chance. “He admits to starting the fire. Not to killing your brother.”
“And what do you think killed him?”
“A detective told me that it was poison,” I said. “Cyanide.”
He looked up at me, his gaze more peevish. “Based on tests on my brother’s badly burned body. Tests not approved by the family, by the way.” He turned and headed back to his work area, climbed onto a stepladder, and bent over the plane’s engine. He clearly considered the conversation over.
“Whether you approved or not doesn’t alter the truth,” I said. In fact, his not approving made me think Hugh Van Hooten knew all along that an autopsy would reveal something he didn’t want the police to find. “Don’t you want to know what killed Guy?”
“I’m not interested in the why so much as the who. And now I have a name.”
“The wrong one.”
“We’re talking in circles, Miss—” He straightened and wiped his hands against his coveralls. “What do you call yourself again? I’m hopeless with names.”
“Louise Faulk.”
“Miss Faulk, if you don’t mind, I have a lot to do. As you can imagine, this business with my brother has put me behindhand.”
How could a man be so little interested in his brother’s murder? If it were my brother, I didn’t think I could concentrate on anything else. I would be obsessed. But Hugh already had an obsession—his airplane. My object was to jolt him out of it.
“Myrna Cohen,” I said.
He stilled.
“I went to see her,” I continued. “I also saw the baby. Guy’s baby.”
“And?” His voice was tight.
“I also learned about your encounter with Jacob Cohen when he came here asking you for money.”
“None of this, Miss Faulk, is your business.” He smiled, catching me off guard. “Is this how you intend to exonerate your boss? By pointing the finger at the poor Cohens? Or is it me you want to implicate?”
“I only want to find out who is really guilty,” I said.
“You can do better than the police?”
“You didn’t sound very confident in the police before.”
A mechanic hurried in. “Ready, Hoots?”
Hugh nodded, pulled a pair of leather gloves out of his back pockets, and put them on. “Be right there.”
When the man was gone, he turned to me. “I admit I feel much more favorably toward the police now that they have a killer in custody.”
“They have an arsonist in custody.”
“And you trust McChesney’s word that he didn’t kill Guy? The man burned down his own business for money, and his partner in the bargain, whether or not it was premeditated, and then showed up at our home shedding crocodile tears over the whole affair. He even involved you in that last scene of his act. You were there! Doesn’t the memory of that morning shake your confidence in that old man?”
Memories of that morning did make me uneasy. But I also remembered that Mr. McChesney had seemed distraught, and his sorrow had struck me as genuine. It still did. Hugh, on the other hand, had not exhibited one moment of sorrow at his brother’s death.
I wasn’t even sure I believed his outrage over Mr. McChesney. He was merely relieved that the police had a person in custody so he didn’t have to think about it anymore . . . and didn’t have to worry about becoming a suspect himself. I couldn’t forget his saying that Guy was his mother’s “dearest” son. There had to be a well of bitterness toward his sibling for those words to have slipped from his tongue so readily.
“I’d like to talk to you more about that morning,” I said.
His dark look told me he was considering having me chucked off the premises. After a moment’s thought, however, he said, “Then by all means, do. I wouldn’t want to hamper your little investigation. But you’ll have to talk to me as I work.”
This was a better outcome than I’d hoped. “Very well.”
He tilted his head. “As a matter of fact, you can help me. And if you do, then perhaps I can answer all your questions.” He smiled. “A favor for a favor. Deal?”
Quid pro quo. I nodded eagerly and fell into step by him as he hurried to a wall of neatly arranged shelves and cubbies. The precise placement of items by size and type was my first insight into Hugh’s mind. The neatness showed again how different he was from his brother, whose desk drawers had been indiscriminate clutter catchers.
He began pulling things out—a leather cap, then another, and two pairs of large, buglike goggles. He loaded those into my arms, then looked me up and down. “A duster coat, I think.” Glancing at my feet, he added
, “Your shoes are sturdy enough. I approve of girls in sensible boots.”
As if I craved his good opinion of my sartorial choices. My retort, however, was cut off by the uneasiness thumping in my chest. A duster I could understand if I was going to be helping him. Also gloves. But the goggles . . .
I swallowed with effort. “What is it you want me to do?”
“Nothing difficult. I simply need a passenger.”
I looked over his shoulder at the airplane he’d been working on. Though my stomach was twisting into pretzel knots at the very idea, I tried to keep my head and sized up the craft. Could I do this? While my guts said no, no, no, my head was saying, Just hunker down and close your eyes. How long could it last? I’d hung over a wall fifty-eight stories above the sidewalks of lower Manhattan and survived. Could a simple hop in an airplane be worse than that?
And there was Hugh’s promise to consider. He’d agreed to talk with me about his brother’s death if I helped him. Maybe this flight was a sort of test to see how trustworthy I was.
“All right.” My voice sounded raspy, dry. I wobbled toward the airplane like a condemned prisoner walking the last mile. “Do I sit in front or back?”
“Neither. That plane’s weeks away from her next test. Haven’t got the motor quite right. We’re taking a ride on Beulah.”
Beulah? “It sounds like a mule.”
“Oh, she’s a workhorse, all right,” he answered breezily. He looped his arm through mine and steered me toward the doors at the back of the building. “Beulah’s our training plane. Solid little machine. Just had her wing repaired, but she should be running like a top now. If not, I guess this flight will show us, won’t it?”
If not?
Outside, Teddy and Callie were in his airplane, which had been rolled a distance away from the hangar. Teddy was pointing at the controls. Callie, kneeling backward in her seat and bent over, was nodding. I tamped down the urge to run to her to say goodbye. But that was foolish. If I was going to do this, and I’d already said I would, I wasn’t going to look like a ninny.
“This way,” Hugh said, tugging me by the elbow.
He led me around the corner of the hangar. My feet stopped, and he overstepped me by a few paces before my stationary arm, which he still had a grip on, forced him to swing around.
“What is it?” he asked.
That’s what I wanted to know. I pointed to the contraption in front of me. The machine looked as insubstantial as a child’s plaything. Only this toy boasted biplane wings with an enormous span, a tail like a box kite, and long skids in front. Its weight rested on tires that might have been stolen off an old Schwinn. Wires crisscrossed between the various parts, holding it all together. It was as if a mad scientist had taken a kite, a bicycle, and a sled and tried to create a giant dragonfly.
Most alarming of all, there was no sturdy, barrel-like center of the plane with front and back seats. Instead, there were side-by-side places in front on the lower wing where two could perch with nothing but a bar below for the feet to brace on and two small poles on either side to hang on to.
“You expect me to go up in that?”
“Of course,” he said. “Miss Faulk, meet Beulah.”
CHAPTER 14
In the end, what gave me courage wasn’t fear of looking like a fool in front of Hugh Van Hooten and his assistant. It wasn’t even that Beulah was a biplane, not a mono-wing. That extra wing was cold comfort now. No, what bucked me up was the fact that I was a policewoman. Well, almost a policewoman. How could I stake any claim to bravery if I shrank from a ride in an airplane? I smashed the too-large cap on my head and pulled the goggles onto my forehead. I wasn’t going to show myself up as a coward in front of Hugh Van Hooten.
“Ready when you are,” I said in a voice completely at odds with the roiling in my stomach.
Did Hugh notice what my devil-may-care attitude was costing me? Probably not. He was circling the plane, giving it one last going-over. And thank heavens for that. The closer I came to Beulah, the more uncontrollable the shaking in my limbs became. The engine was mounted right out in the open, behind the seats, and upon closer inspection it seemed too small to power this crazy machine. Yet if it were bigger, and heavier, maybe the plane would never get off the ground.
How did planes get off the ground? It probably had to do with air currents and the elevators and stabilizers that Teddy had been droning on about. I was putting a lot of trust in Hugh, who, even if I suspected him of having had a hand in his brother’s murder, was supposed to be a brilliant aviator.
“Did you design the plane yourself?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady.
He shook his head, not just to respond in the negative, but in pity and amazement at my ignorance. “You mean you can’t even recognize a Wright design? This is a Model B, although I’ve made significant alterations.”
“So you know better than the fathers of aviation?”
“Don’t be a nincompoop. Anything can be improved. And in Beulah’s case, modification was an absolute necessity. She had a smashup and busted her wing.”
A smashup. My nerves were as tight as violin strings.
“She’s all snug now, though.” He bestowed a loving pat on her wing. “Hop on.”
Easier said than done. At least for me. Callie’s getup made sense now. To get onto the passenger seat, I had to pick my way through the spider’s web of wires and also metal bars attaching the skids to the wings. My skirt, practical as it was, had not been designed for an aviatrix.
Seeing my difficulty, Hugh came up behind me and hoisted me over the first skid and then up onto the seat. I let out a gasp of surprise.
“There.” He thumped me down on the seat like so much human cargo. “Put your gloves on and batten yourself down as best you can.” He gestured at my clothes. “Tuck in, button up, and hang on.”
The seat was actually more secure than it appeared. It had a back like a parlor chair, and was even upholstered in a deep green fabric. My feet rested on a bar in front, and two perpendicular poles jutted up on both sides of the seat. Overhead was the upper wing. It was like sitting on a veranda. A veranda that was about to zoom off toward the horizon.
I can’t do this.
I can do this.
Hugh settled beside me, and moments later the motor came to life like a band saw behind my head. The deafening sound made my heart somersault. The whole machine was vibrating.
He turned to me and said something. There might as well have been a glass wall between us. My ears hadn’t adjusted. He pointed to the goggles over his eyes and then pointed to mine, which were still perched at forehead level. I snapped them over my eyes.
The plane, aided by Hugh’s friend and the roaring motor and whirring propellers behind us, lumbered into movement and then turned onto a wide pathway of well-worn grass.
Hugh turned to me, grinning.
Before I could examine the cold sensation those white foxlike teeth gave me, the plane lunged forward. Over ground that had looked perfectly flat moments before, every bump and rut registered. Just like a car, I told myself. But automobile engines didn’t keen in your ear. In an automobile, I’d never had the feeling that I was rushing forward against the elements, against nature, against common sense. As the plane accelerated, pressure pushed me back against the seat. My hands gripped the poles for dear life. I was perched on the wing of an angry, noisy insect tilting at the air.
The plane ate the ground, but nothing seemed to be happening. I turned as we bumped past the Gail Force. Callie and Teddy gaped at us. Her hands were planted on her hips, and her expression was both astonished and annoyed. I wanted to lift my shoulders and shout, “This wasn’t really my choice,” but there was no chance. The machine lifted.
The disorienting lurch made me face forward. This had to be what a fledgling felt when it made its first flapping hop out of the nest into the void. My stomach jumped into my throat, then plunged again as the plane first dipped and then rose higher into the air.
/>
Wind flattened me against the back of my seat. Cold wind. But there hadn’t been a breeze at all this morning. It was all us, rushing cloudward—we were the wind, skimming forward and up as fast as a locomotive. Sickness and exhilaration battled in me. And terror. A line of trees loomed ahead. From the hangar, they’d seemed a mile away. Now they were dead close.
Though I had my feet firmly braced and a white-knuckle grip on the poles, my body was almost lifting from its seat in my urge to get over those trees. The plane careened toward the top of the canopy. At the very last minute, we tilted slightly up and skimmed over them, so close I could see veins on the golden leaves.
Relief nearly brought tears to my goggled eyes.
Hugh turned to me, a triumphant grin on his face. He leaned closer and yelled, “You think I killed him, don’t you?”
I stared back, unable to find words.
He shook his head and turned his attention forward again. Maybe he thought I couldn’t hear him.
I’d heard. He’d guessed correctly that I suspected him of being involved in his brother’s death. My little investigation, he’d called it. This flight wasn’t doing him a favor, I realized belatedly. There would be no quid pro quo. This was his way of terrorizing me.
He’d chosen his weapon well. My heart was lodged in my esophagus. I’d always scoffed at the idea of anyone dying of fright, but my heart’s frantic beating had me preparing to meet my maker.
Before, when I’d seen an airplane flying, it had seemed to soar like a raptor, with the ease of a mechanized hawk wheeling overhead. But ease had nothing to do with this experience, it turned out. The plane lurched and dipped like a roller coaster.
Callie was wrong. The air did have potholes, and Beulah hit every last one of them.
Hugh’s grin had disappeared. In profile I could see only a determined set to his jaw. Determined to what?
The plane banked, causing a new wave of clamminess and nausea. I squeezed my eyes closed until I felt the craft straighten out again; then I screwed up my courage and glanced down. We hummed above a boardwalk, then a beach. To the right, water lapped at the shore. The ocean. And ahead.