by Rachel Brady
I walked alone outside the hangar and mulled it over. Trish flew for Eric Lyons’ company. Karen recognized her from company travel. It was likely Trish had crossed paths with Casey on one or more of Eric’s trips. Casey was missing. Trish used planes without asking. Had she snatched him and flown him off somewhere?
***
A dog barked in the parking lot and I was happy to see Cindy. She thumped her tail at me from her post in the back of Vince’s truck. Her tongue lolled in a drooling pant and made her look like she was smiling. Vince’s guitar case rested, abandoned, in the back with her again.
I gave Cindy her requisite strokes and lifted the guitar case out of the truck. I tried to think of something witty to say when I found Vince.
It turned out he found me first.
“Tryin’ to steal it?”
He walked up from the direction of the hangar, sporting a day of stubble and the same black cowboy hat pulled low over his forehead. Evidently, his wardrobe was limited to jeans and solid colored tees. This one was hunter green and brought out his eyes. When he got closer, I smelled aftershave. I was pretty sure that was new.
“I’m not stealing it,” I said. “I’m moving it inside. You don’t deserve this guitar.”
He took the case from me, letting his palm brush the back of my hand. Then he headed for the hangar. I followed.
“Actually,” he said, “I was coming out to get it. Good thing too, because here you are, thieving it again.”
We walked to the same corner where I’d found his guitar on my first day. He set it down, crossed his arms, and looked at me.
Trish emerged from around the corner and crossed the packing area on her way to a cooler. I thought she and Vince exchanged a cold look, but it passed so quickly I doubted what I’d seen.
He turned back to me. “Get your gear,” he said, simply. “It’s time to jump.”
“Can’t.”
I explained about Donna and my disassembled gear.
Vince shook his head. “I came all the way here on my day off to jump with you, and you don’t even have a rig. Pitiful.”
He picked up his guitar case again. “Guess I should have asked you before hauling this in here.”
“You’re not…Are you leaving?”
“Yep,” he said. “And so are you. Let’s go.”
I smiled. “Go where? Since when do I take orders from you?”
He winked and gave me a playful nudge toward the parking lot.
***
I liked the rugged feel of Vince’s pick-up as it hummed down farm roads, past brown fields and rows of giant, round hay bales. Vince drove a little too fast, and I liked that too. At the highway, we passed a billboard advertising fence repairs in both English and Spanish, and headed south to Freeport, an industrial little town apparently centered around natural gas companies. Street names like Glycol Road and Chlorine Road made me think the town was all business, an impression reinforced by a long series of factories and smoke-stacks streaming by my passenger-side window.
At a red light, I stared at the gargantuan steel framework of one of the factories. Its endless maze of pipes and reinforcements struck me as cold and impersonal, and the ugly steam pumping out did nothing to soften my opinion. “You sure know how to impress a girl.”
Vince only winked and gunned the truck when the light changed. Palm trees and gulls gave me the notion water was near, even though I couldn’t see it anywhere. Then we started up an enormous bridge over the Intracoastal Waterway, and suddenly I saw water for miles.
Flat boats and industrial ships floated motionless in the channel below, and more factories and stacks populated the marshy landscape to the east. Straight ahead, the Gulf of Mexico dominated the view. Massive and infinite, the ocean was royal blue everywhere except for a wide band of white where the sun glinted off its choppy waves. It was the first truly majestic thing I had seen for years.
Vince turned onto a pitted, desolate road that ran parallel to the coast. On our left, one sign said Plant Entrance while another said Beach Access on our right.
He took the right and eventually the road morphed to sand. Vince didn’t let off the gas, though, and his tires slipped the same way mine did in snow. “Quintana Beach.”
I looked up and down the shoreline and saw only sand, waves, and tread marks. “Where do those tracks go?”
He parked the truck and opened his door. “Let’s find out.”
I stepped onto damp sand and took a deep breath. The low rumble of the surf and light ocean breeze made the beach all the more beautiful. Vince unchained Cindy and the three of us walked ankle deep in the surf, Vince and I carrying our shoes. He’d brought a faded tennis ball, and Cindy was dying for it. She lunged into the ocean and tirelessly swam into the waves until she sometimes disappeared behind them, all for that stupid little ball. Each time she came back, she shook water all over us. I was beginning to feel the tightness of salt drying to my skin.
“You really came out today to jump with me?”
He pulled the ball back, tossed it high over the waves, and didn’t take his eyes off it.
“Yep.”
We watched Cindy leap into the frothy tide and paddle until her head was barely visible.
She mouthed the ball and turned back.
“Wow,” I said. “You must really like the way I skydive.”
He directed an embarrassed smile at the sand.
“Not really,” he said, redirecting his attention to the dog. “You’re an Average Jane skydiver.”
I huffed and playfully shoved his shoulder.
“But I do like the way you sing. Nothing average about that.”
I grinned and looked away. The compliment made me uncomfortably self-aware.
“It remains to be seen about your personality,” he said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I don’t know you very well yet. You might turn out to be a nut, or a…bore.”
“A bore?”
He smiled. “I’m sure there are lots of wonderful singers with no personality.”
I moved to slug him again, and he stepped backward and stumbled over his sopping wet dog. The next wave crashed, soaking his jeans with seawater from the knees down. Cindy didn’t care. She shoved the ball into his fist and waited, staring at it.
Vince looked from his drenched pants to me, accusingly.
“Women,” he muttered to the dog, and tossed the ball.
“Men and dogs,” I replied.
Eventually we came to a fishing pier and Cindy doubled back. Vince explained this was a regular walk for them and we’d arrived at the halfway point. It felt nice to be included in their routine.
Before driving back, he asked me to play for him again. It was becoming a regular thing for us and, he joked, was mutually beneficial: He liked my voice. I liked his guitar.
My song ended abruptly when I broke a string.
“Concert’s over.” I removed the broken string and shoved it in the back pocket of my jeans.
“Naw,” he said, and brushed my cheek. “This is only intermission.”
Chapter Sixteen
“Guess I’m not supposed to skydive in leather pants,” Jeannie said, running her hands over her tightly fitted hips.
I looked her over. “Or high heels.”
She lit up again and we walked across the grass to my tent. She stomped her cigarette into the damp ground and we crawled inside, Jeannie taking care to avoid kneeling in the grass. I fished in my bag for a top and shorts to loan her. She’d need them to practice exits and parachute landing falls. I unlaced my only pair of sneakers, handed them over, and slipped into Birkenstock sandals instead. Jack used to call them my Lesbian Shoes. Jeannie just called them ugly. I told her I’d learned Trish Dalton’s name and what Richard had determined so far.
“How’s Cole treating you, anyway?”
“He’s not annoying me as much,” I said. “We’ve only talked about the case, nothing else.”
“Got any soc
ks?”
I searched for those too and tossed her a pair.
“You know,” I said, “I’ve been thinking about this case and the first one. When Casey was kidnapped, his mom’s security system never sounded.”
She worked herself out of the leather pants. “I thought you said Casey’s dad had the pass—” she grunted “—code.”
“True, but he was later found murdered. We’re assuming he wasn’t the kidnapper. So, that leaves the question…what happened to Karen’s alarm?”
“Shit,” she said, finally free of the pants. “Makes you wonder what you pay the security company for.”
She pulled my tee over her head and reached for my shorts.
“Jeannie, do you remember…Do you remember the time Jack went to Pittsburgh?”
Her expression hardened and she stopped moving. I could tell by her concerned look she got my meaning.
Shortly after I’d received the threats during my friend Nora’s investigation, Jack left for a two-day business trip. His first night away, I was attacked in my sleep. The man who broke into our house straddled me in my bed. I woke up staring at a facemask, with a gloved hand pressed over my mouth and my attacker’s body weight pinning me at the hips. I wasn’t raped. I wasn’t even hurt. The intruder shoved a piece of fabric into my hand, leaned so close to my ear I thought he might bite it, and whispered, “This is how close I can get to your daughter.”
The fabric was a swatch of pajamas he’d cut off of Annette while she slept down the hall. He’d come into our house, cut my little girl’s pajamas from right over her heart, left her sleeping in her bed, and come to threaten me in mine.
It all happened without triggering my alarm system.
Days later, a phone technician reported signs of tampering at the junction box down the street. A specialist from my home security company tinkered for hours before discovering cut wires in my attic, severed in a spot hidden by insulation. With a disabled audible alarm, temporary interruption to my monitoring service, and no immediately detectable signs of tampering, it was clear I’d been hit by professional criminals.
***
Rick and I stood in the landing field and watched Jeannie’s orange and brown Manta creep three thousand feet overhead. Rick spoke into a ground-to-air radio used to talk students back to the landing area. He asked Jeannie for a right-hand turn. Her canopy continued straight ahead. He asked for a left-hand turn. She still flew straight. Soon it was obvious Jeannie was freewheeling with a broken radio. Where she’d land was anyone’s guess.
“She’s headed for Cromwell’s place.” Rick shook his head. “Lord, keep her.”
“Cromwell’s place?”
“Our resident Farmer McNasty.”
I winced. “Rough on a first-timer. I’ll go pick her up.”
From the highway, I found the dirt road Rick said would lead to Jeannie and followed it for nearly a mile until it curved behind a leaning wooden barn. An orange and brown parachute emerged from behind the failing structure. The parachute’s cells were puffed up, obscuring most of Jeannie’s head, but I recognized my shoes. She looked like the Great Pumpkin with legs.
I put the car in park and tapped the horn. She jumped, and the fabric amassed in her arms slipped over and over itself until it rested on the ground in a sloppy heap. When she spotted me, she gathered up the parachute again and hurried to the car, dragging most of the fabric in the dirt. She was near crying.
“Take this stuff off me. We gotta get out of here.”
I couldn’t help but laugh.
“I don’t see what’s so damn funny.”
I unbuckled her helmet and slid her goggles off her head. I daisy-chained her lines, released her chest strap, and loosened her leg straps. She stepped out of the rig and I placed it in the back seat of my car.
“You shouldn’t drag a parachute.” I brushed road dust off the nylon. “It could tear.”
Jeannie was already in the passenger seat.
“Bite me.” She slammed the door.
I slid behind the wheel and looked at her. She was sweating.
“You okay?”
“Just drive.”
When we turned onto the highway, Jeannie said, “That was a treat. A guy from the cast of Deliverance lives back there.” She gestured behind us with her thumb.
“Rick mentioned him,” I said. “I came as fast as I could.”
“He’s a lunatic, Em. Certifiable.” She started to imitate him, stabbing a pointed finger in the air. “‘You and yer planes. Noise all day and all night with you. This private property! This private! Git off my land!’”
“I am so sorry. Your first skydive and you had a run-in with the local crank.” I hesitated. “You are going to jump again though, right?”
She pulled down the sun visor to check her hair in its mirror.
“Bet your ass, sister. Right after I get a cigarette.”
***
Jeannie did make another jump. She was on the sunset load, the last load of the day. When the Otter’s wheels left the ground, the beer light went on and the party was officially underway.
A bare-chested man with a nipple ring set up colossal stereo equipment in one corner of the hangar, and as he manipulated plugs and wires, Linda moved rigs and gear bags from their spots in the middle of the carpeted packing area. I gathered she was clearing a dance floor.
I pulled a bottle of Shiner out of a cooler and scanned the crowd, wondering if Vince would come. He’d bowed out after our beach walk, claiming errands to run. On my way outside to check the picnic area, Marie waved to get my attention.
“Give me a hand, hon’?”
She leaned over a long party table and arranged troughs of brisket and baked beans. I helped her lay out plastic cups and Styrofoam plates as jumpers began to congregate near the food.
“Big turn-out,” I said. “Any night jumps this weekend?”
She frowned. “Had an accident a few years back. We don’t do them anymore.” She pinched a sample of the brisket. “Not bad.”
I grabbed my own sample and stepped outside. Vince was nowhere in sight, but I did spot Craig. He was demonstrating a freestyle technique to a couple of young jumpers. It occurred to me the loft might be unattended. Maybe I could get the flight logs. If I got caught in there again, I’d say I was checking on my repack.
In the loft, a cameraman was perched on a stool, editing footage. He ran images backward and forward in slow motion and ignored me when I stepped inside and flipped open the reserve closing flap on my rig. I pulled my packing card from its pocket and verified that Billy had been the one to do the repack, not Craig. I checked Billy’s seal, and finding it intact, hoisted the parachute over a shoulder. My back was tender from sleeping on the ground the night before. I groaned.
“Sounds like someone’s a little out of shape,” the cameramen said, barely suppressing a chuckle.
“I prefer ‘out of practice.’” On the screen behind him, Big Red’s hulking image came into the frame, and I nodded toward it. “We can’t all be built like an ox. I bet his job keeps him in shape. Me, I sit at a desk.”
The cameraman followed my gaze over his shoulder to the monitor. He shook his head. “Wrong excuse. Big Red has a desk job too. CPS.”
I considered the acronym. “Child Protective Services?”
The cameraman nodded. “Meyer too,” he said. “You know Meyer?”
I stared at him. “David Meyer?”
“Sure. They work together.” He shrugged, and swiveled to the equipment again.
I thought of David Meyer, choosing a career defending children, and of his girlfriend, Trish Dalton, possibly involved in snatching them. Then I hung my gear back on the pegs and prepared for another attempt at stealing the logs.
***
I’d just pulled my second beer from a cooler when Vince found me.
“You’re not dancing,” he said.
I pulled the top off my bottle. “Not much of a dancer.”
He turned toward t
he DJ and they exchanged a nod I didn’t like the looks of. The DJ picked up his mike.
“I’ve got a request to slow it down, folks, so grab a honey, or a hottie, or whatever you can grab, and come out for some smoochie-smoochie on the dance floor.” He made kiss noises into the microphone.
Piano notes from Patsy Cline’s “Crazy” rang through the hangar, and Vince extended his hand. I hesitated.
“Please don’t embarrass me, girl,” he said gently. “If you don’t dance with me, I’ll hear about it for a long, long time.”
He closed a hand over mine and pulled me toward him. Then he slipped an arm around the small of my back, and immediately, it seemed, we were dancing.
It was the first time I’d danced since Jack. Vince leaned over me slightly, his chin on the side of my forehead. A faint trace of cologne clung to him.
Holding him, swaying to “Crazy,” I wished the old songs were longer. I rested my cheek on his shoulder and let my eyes close, rocking with him wherever he led me. He opened his fingers on my back and drew me nearer until there was no distance left to close. I slid my hand from his shoulder to the place between his shoulder blades. It was a conversation of sorts, only wordless.
When the song ended and I opened my eyes, I was looking straight over Vince’s shoulder at Jeannie. She leaned against the wall with a satisfied smirk on her face and raised her drink.
She walked over to us and introduced herself to Vince before I could. Jeannie wanted to tell anyone that would listen that she’d passed her second Accelerated Freefall dive. This time, her radio worked and she’d had a nice stand-up landing in the field behind the hangar.
As she carried on, I spotted Craig across the room and got an idea.
***
One thing Jeannie excelled at was approaching men. Most flirted with her, but even the ones who didn’t flirt seemed unable to ignore her. Craig didn’t fall cleanly into either category, but fortunately, another of Jeannie’s talents was idle banter.
I had verified the loft was empty and asked Jeannie to keep Craig busy until she saw me again. She was on him like a suction cup, and only one thing went wrong. When I opened the drawer, the flight logs were missing.