Detour

by Kurtz, Sylvie

  Dimly on the edge of my consciousness, I became aware of Sofia’s distraught sobs hiccupping through my heart. Talk about wake-up call. Obviously her memories were causing my reaction to Wyatt.

  “Whoa, cowboy.” I slipped out of Wyatt’s hold and made a time-out sign. “I don’t mix business with pleasure.” Another wise lesson learned from Leo. “Try that again, and I’ll clock you. Got it?”

  “Got it.” Scowling, he shoved open the door and snapped on the overhead light.

  Ignoring him, I marched over to his desk and dug the copies I’d made out of the backpack. “Let’s get this stuff spread out and see if it tells us anything.”

  I noticed the stronger grate of static between Wyatt and me, as if Sofia had firmly wedged herself between us.

  When Wyatt’s desk didn’t prove large enough, I moved everything onto the floor. I liked to get the big picture without having to juggle. Wyatt hunkered down beside me, his knee striking mine like a match every time he reached for another piece of paper. He was doing it on purpose. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of a response.

  I liked to work things out by talking out loud. Sounds ridiculous but sometimes the sound of my own voice clicked something I’d missed by just eyeballing it. “From the org chart in Paul’s file, it looks like Leann Rice took over Sofia’s work and they got a new hire, Candace Howard, to fill Leann’s spot.”

  “Leann was a friend of Sofia’s,” Wyatt said. “And her cubicle mate. She’d only been on the job for six months, though.”

  “There was a hiring freeze for everyone but entry-level personnel,” I said, reading from the hiring memo. “Do you think Leann was aware of the data discrepancies?”

  Long frame bent over a fan of papers, Wyatt shrugged. “Coming in in the middle of a project always takes some adjustment. She might not.”

  “Can you make heads or tails of any of this?” I handed Wyatt Sofia’s engineering journal.

  Wyatt thumbed through the pale green pages. “A lot of technical stuff. It’s going to take me a while to decipher it. The phase Sofia was working on was integrating a smaller, lighter and more power-efficient piece of equipment. Looks like the HART uses signal intelligence Trinity software architecture so it’ll be interoperable with the avionics already in the aircraft.”

  “And what does that mean in English?”

  “That the software they’re using is based on a program I wrote years ago. The problem could be with the integration of the software with the existing hardware component.”

  I tucked a stray strand of hair behind my ear. “So you’ll be able to figure it out?”

  “Maybe,” Wyatt said.

  “Would Sofia have noted anything about the integration process in the journal?”

  Sofia’s filmy body materialized against the black of night at the window. She floated over to Wyatt, wrapped her arms around his shoulders and read her journal.

  “I’ll have to go through her notes.” Wyatt rolled his shoulders, dislodging Sofia’s hold.

  A stricken look etched her face and she disappeared. Her agitation waved needles of static through me. For as much as she got on my nerves, I felt sorry for her. Being caught between two worlds like that couldn’t be easy, especially when the man you loved couldn’t see you. That someone had killed her wasn’t her fault. She didn’t want to haunt me any more than I wanted to be haunted. And she couldn’t stay away any more than I could go home. We were stuck with each other until this case was solved.

  After a couple of hours of staring at print, a low-level headache pressed against my temples, my neck ached and my eyes burned.

  “Here’s how it looks.” Wyatt stretched the kinks from his body. “The HART successfully completed its first flight on the stealth fighter on September thirteenth.”

  “Six months after Sofia died,” I said.

  He nodded. “It operated flawlessly at a demonstration for the Defense Department and some other key government officials. Qualifications testing was scheduled for completion by the end of September, and then it would move on into the advanced flight-test phase.”

  “How did it perform in the advanced phase?”

  He flipped through Sofia’s journal, then the test results from her files. “I don’t see any mention of the results. They’re probably in later journals.” His gaze skewered me. “And no, we’re not going back for them.”

  I stared him down. The window of opportunity had closed—not that I was going to admit it to him. I stabbed a finger at a memo from Paul’s file. “It says here that Allied Defense was scheduled to deliver HART systems to a third of the stealth fleet by the end of March of this year. Meeting this date was a key business event for the year.”

  “And in April, airplanes started crashing,” Wyatt said.

  Lorraine came in, bearing a tray of flan and a pitcher of milk. “I thought you might like a bite to eat before I went up to bed. I can heat up some leftover stew if you want something more substantial.”

  “We’re fine, Ma,” Wyatt said, his irritation at the journals seeping through.

  “Thank you.” Reaching for a bowl and spoon, I couldn’t help a stir of envy for Wyatt. I tried to picture my mother bringing me a late-night snack and my mind went blank.

  Lorraine peered over my shoulder. “What are you working on?”

  “Making order out of chaos,” I said.

  She pulled out a couple of sheets from Glenda’s file. “Look at this, Wyatt. This woman got a bonus for meeting all her target dates. And she works with numbers. Imagine that.”

  I glanced at the memos and compared them to the ones I’d been looking at in Paul Farr’s file. “Good catch, Lorraine.”

  Lorraine narrowed her gaze at Wyatt. “I told you I was good with sums.”

  Wyatt sighed. “Tell you what, Ma. Since you’re so fired up to take over the accounting, we’ll go over it once this is over, and you’re welcome to it. It’ll give me more time to work on other things.”

  Like his silly-looking mechanical cow?

  Wyatt strode to his desk and searched the piles of papers. “Ma, did you throw away a sheet with handwritten numbers on it?”

  “You know I’d never throw away anything of yours without asking first. Speaking of lost things, you need to remember to close your window if you’re going to have the air-conditioning running.”

  Every muscle of Wyatt’s body tensed. “Which window?”

  “The one behind you.” She rubbed her hands along her apron. “I’m going to call it a night, Wyatt. I want to go to the early service tomorrow. I don’t suppose I could talk you into going with me.”

  “Maybe another day, Ma.” Wyatt walked his mother to the door, then as it clicked shut, his gaze met mine. “The data sheet you wrote for me is gone.” He examined the window, then held up a toothpick he found impaled in the carpet.

  Rey.

  Why had he threatened me at the show? Because he’d needed the data sheet? Did he work for one of Allied Defense’s competitors? “Where did you say Rey worked again?”

  “I didn’t,” Wyatt said. “But he works for Sofia’s father’s company.”

  “What does he do?”

  “Antonio’s a garbage man. I’m sorry—a recycler. I’m not sure what Rey does there.”

  “And this is picking up more stink by the minute.” I grabbed a pad of paper and closed my eyes to recall the numbers on the sheet.

  As I finished transcribing the last row, Wyatt said, “We have a problem.”

  “What?”

  He spread the journal pages open wide and showed me how the page numbers skipped. “Six pages are missing.”

  “As in removed?”

  “As in cut out.” He fingered the nearly invisible cuts.

  “But why? Wouldn’t it be obvious in any sort of review or audit that someone had ripped pages out?”

  “If the deception was uncovered during a government audit, it could mean a jail sentence. But with Sofia already dead, she’d be the fall guy, a
nd dead people can’t defend themselves.”

  I massaged the stiffness from my neck. “So if pages are missing, it means someone inside Allied Defense removed them.”

  “The same person who had her killed?” He shook the bonus memos Lorraine had found.

  “To protect their bonuses?” I asked.

  “Seems farfetched. There’s always some sort of incentive to meet target dates.”

  “But this time it’s significant if someone was hell-bent on getting that bonus and messed with the data to meet the deadline.”

  “Possibly.”

  I laid out the time line for him. “Sofia went to Nashua in March for some sort of software/hardware integration test at the lab. She doesn’t like something she sees. Someone picks up on her concerns and kills her before she can make them known.

  “The program goes on as if nothing was wrong. Allied Defense meets all its target dates and zips through the tests with flying colors. Congratulations are passed around. Bonus checks are inked. The following March, the HART goes into one-third of the stealth fleet. Three weeks into April, four have fallen out of the sky.”

  “With so many accidents, why haven’t they grounded the fleet?” Wyatt rasped out. “Can’t they see the pattern?”

  “The midair collision was judged pilot error. And the other two airplanes were different types. Grounding the whole fleet is a drastic measure, especially when we’re fighting an active war at the moment.”

  Missing pages. Performance bonuses. A murdered engineer. Crashing airplanes.

  Like an invisible umbilical cord each piece led back to the HART.

  But who was behind the information suppression?

  The closest players were those above Sofia in the food chain.

  I closed Glenda’s file with a snap. “Guess we need to have another chat with Paul and Glenda.”

  Sunday, April 23

  I figured Wyatt and I had had enough togetherness for a while, so I made myself scarce. He needed to learn I couldn’t have him hanging around me all day. He’d agreed to get in touch with Paul and Glenda, and that’s all I wanted from him today.

  I used my business account to run a financial on both Paul and Glenda. Since today was Sunday, I wouldn’t get results back until late Monday or Tuesday. I did more research on the previous crashes to see if anything had been reported on the cause of the accidents and came up blank. Either it was too early for results or no one was telling.

  At dinnertime, I ventured back downstairs. I had to say that I’d regained a healthy appetite since coming to Texas. Van would be pleased.

  “Something smells really good,” I said as I walked into the kitchen. The little cabinet-mounted TV, was on but the sound was turned down low—as if Lorraine needed it more for company than for its programming content.

  Lorraine inserted beaters into a hand mixer to mash a potful of potatoes. “I’m glad you’re taking a break. You’re working too hard.”

  “It’s a tough puzzle to piece together.”

  “How did you get involved with it?” Butter and milk went into the pot.

  “Long story.”

  “I’ve got time.” She whipped the potatoes until they were fluffy.

  “What are your thoughts on death?” I asked as she transferred the potatoes to a serving dish. Wyatt had thought I was a psychic sent by his mother when we’d first met, so I figured she might be more open than the average person to the paranormal.

  Lorraine skewed me with a quizzical look. “Well, I’m not sure. The church speaks of Heaven, and it’s comforting to believe that it exists.”

  “Do you think there’s life after death? That we somehow survive our bodies and live on in a different state?”

  Lorraine paused, steamer of green beans hanging in midair. “Are you talking about ghosts and such?”

  “Maybe. I’m not sure.” When someone invaded your mind, that went beyond ghostly haunting, didn’t it? Or maybe Sofia was nothing more than a delusion that I’d somehow manifested like a child’s imaginary friend to fill some void. But the fault with the HART seemed real enough, so maybe I wasn’t quite ready to have a strait-jacket fitted.

  Lorraine’s gaze flicked to the door, then back to me. “I’ve seen Waylon since he’s died.”

  “Your husband.”

  She nodded and color crept up her neck. “He’s come to me at night, and we’ve had conversations.”

  I filched a piece of cucumber from the salad in the bowl on the counter. “I hear Sofia.”

  Her eyes went wide, not with fear as I’d half expected, but with curiosity. “I thought there was something familiar about you from the second I saw you in that blue suit. That was Sofia’s favorite color.”

  “I got her heart.”

  She passed me a handful of cutlery. “I wondered why someone healthy like you was scarfing down so many pills.”

  I set the table. Lorraine had noticed more than I’d given her credit for. “Antirejection stuff.”

  She nodded and went back to transferring the green beans to a serving bowl. “Yes, I’ve read about that.”

  “She asked me to find who killed her.”

  “Well, now everything makes sense. I always knew there was something wrong about the way she died, as careful as she was with things like seat belts. Since you have a part of her, she could reach you most easily.”

  I’m glad that made sense to someone, because I was more confused than ever.

  Lorraine pressed an intercom button. “Wyatt? Come carve the chicken, please.”

  “Be right there.”

  A few minutes later Wyatt strode in and went to work on the chicken with the efficiency of someone who’d done the task often. As he sliced into a breast, he stopped cold and swore.

  “Did you cut yourself, honey?” Lorraine rushed to his side.

  Wyatt turned up the volume on the television and moved aside. Orange flames. Black smoke. Pieces of debris scattered along what looked like a marina. I wrapped an arm around Lorraine who gasped at the images on the screen.

  Not again, Sofia whispered. Her anguish squeezed the tissues of my brain.

  “An Air Force stealth fighter plane, roaring low over a crowded Maine air show, crashed into a waterfront neighborhood, exploding in flames and destroying one house,” a reporter said, her blond hair whipping in the wind. “The pilot ejected safely and four people on the ground suffered minor injuries.”

  “Maine?” Lorraine squeaked, shaking in my arms. “Oh, God, no. Tracy.”

  “She probably hasn’t been on base long enough to enter the flight rotation yet, Ma.” Wyatt crossed over to the phone and dialed. “No answer.”

  I tried to reassure Lorraine. “They’re probably on some sort of alert.”

  The reporter continued, “The pilot, identified as Captain Erik Lamphere, is a twelve-year veteran who has been flying the F-117 stealth fighter for four years. He was making a display circuit over the Pierce Air Force Base runway where more than six thousand spectators were gathered for the annual air show. Witnesses said the airplane went into a steep climb, then slammed into a storage building shortly after 3:00 p.m.

  “The explosion and fire gutted one house, destroyed a dock and damaged several fishing boats. The area was quickly sealed off, even to residents. Lamphere landed about sixty feet away from the crash and was airlifted to Boston. The extent of his injuries is unknown.

  “The F-117 is usually considered a reliable jet. It is the fifth military airplane to crash in the past month. Stealth fighters were used during both Persian Gulf Wars because of their radar-absorbing materials.”

  Wyatt punched off the television. Our gazes collided.

  “The pilot lived,” I said. I had to talk to him. He was flying. He could tell me what had gone wrong—if the HART was involved.

  Wyatt nodded.

  I yanked the phone off its cradle and, using a calling card to mask my location of origin, I dialed information and asked for the numbers of the major Boston hospitals. It took me
three tries to find the right one. When I finally reached someone who seemed to know what was going on, I pretended to be Erik’s distraught sister. “What’s his condition?”

  “He’s in Intensive Care,” a nurse answered.

  “Oh, God.” I let a strangled cry escape. “How bad is it?”

  “His most serious injuries are to his back.”

  “Is he—” I gulped “—awake? I mean…can he talk? Is he going to know me?”

  “He has brief periods of lucidity,” the nurse assured me. “He’s under heavy sedation at the moment, but he should be stable enough to transfer to a private room tomorrow.”

  “Okay, I’m going to fly up. Tell him to hang on, please.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  I hung up and turned to Wyatt. “I’m flying to Boston.”

  “I’m going with you.”

  Chapter 10

  We caught the last flight out of DFW to Logan. The possibility of getting something concrete from the downed pilot throbbed between us like a cyst in need of lancing.

  As the 737 lifted off, Wyatt ripped the in-flight magazine from the pocket in front of him. Sardined as we were in these coach seats, his shoulder rubbed mine going down and back up. The last thing this thin air needed was a spark.

  “What if the pilot won’t talk?” Wyatt’s voice had an edge like a machete.

  I squeezed myself closer to the window. “He will. I’ll make him.”

  “What? You’re going to rough him up?”

  “No.” I glanced at the magazine bunched in Wyatt’s fists and smirked. “I thought I’d leave that up to you.”

  “Smart-ass. You know you’re playing with a stick of dynamite.”

  I’d thought about that. A lot. I had every intention of living to a ripe old age—thanks to Sofia’s heart. No way I was going to let it blow up in my face. I shrugged. “I’ll deal with it when I see how much fuse it has.”

  Soon, I told myself, I’d get my life back. The only question was—which life?

  Don’t go there, Sierra, I cautioned myself.

  Sofia hadn’t said a peep since we’d boarded. Closer to heaven like this, I’d thought she’d be right in my face. But even her regular cold static seemed to have died down.