by Ellen Hart
“We’re not Eleven Madison Park or Le Bernardin, but my prejudiced view is that we’re the best in the Twin Cities. You like fresh oysters?”
“My God, yes.”
“We got some in this morning that are amazing. Have lunch with me. If you want, I can give you the full tour of the place when we’re done.”
“On one condition. That it’s my turn to be nosy about you.”
“I’m not sure my life’s been as interesting as yours.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
“Do I have to answer all questions put to me?” asked Jane, getting up and brushing off the back of her brown cords.
“In excruciating detail,” said Avi, rising and standing next to her, a good three inches taller.
“All my dirty little secrets?”
“Every last delicious one of them.”
Jane whistled for Mouse. “That will make this a very short meal.”
15
Instead of working out, as he always did before he left for the club, Vince sat on his stationary bicycle in his undershirt and sweatpants, trying to decide if it was time to call Emmett Washington and ring the alarm bell. After receiving no reply from his e-mail to Ken Crowder, his nerves were jangling like alarm bells. He’d made it clear that he needed to hear back from him immediately.
Crowder was a businessman, as was Vince. They both understood the necessity of simple, quick communication. He hadn’t asked for a long letter, just an e-mail that said, “I’m alive.”
“I’m taking our clothes to the cleaners this afternoon,” said Shelly as she sailed through the room, picking up the dirty towels Vince had tossed on the carpet.
Vince jumped, startled by her sudden appearance.
“You want me to take any of your suits?”
“Probably.” He couldn’t believe that the mere appearance of his wife had caused his heart to pound—and not in a good way.
She stopped, looking down at him. “You upset about something?”
“Take my gray pinstripe. And maybe the navy Hickey Freeman.”
“Have you had lunch? I could fix you a sandwich.”
“I’ll get something at the club.”
On the way out the door, Shelly said, “I’m having dinner with my father tonight. If it gets late, I may stay over.”
“Give him my best.”
She left the room humming.
Her good mood meant she was probably high on one of her self-help books. If life could only be that simple.
Vince had no sooner switched to a different program on the stationary bike than his cell phone rang.
Rushing over to the table where he’d left it, he barked, “Bessetti.”
“Hey, Vincesky, it’s Ken.”
Relief flooded every cell of his body.
“I got your e-mail a few minutes ago. I’m up at my cabin. Drove in last night around midnight. Hey, man, that’s awful news about Rudmann.”
Vince sank down on a padded bench. “You have no idea how glad I am to hear your voice.”
“What’s going on? You think Tatum and Rudmann’s deaths are connected?”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
“Too much blow, my brother. I had to get off the stuff. It was making me crazy.”
“I’m probably making too much of it. As long as you’re okay—”
“Never better. What about brother Emmett?”
“He’s good. Drinking again, but good.”
“I’ve been thinking. Why don’t you fly out? You could catch a plane to Salt Lake, rent a car and drive up. It’s only forty miles. If you didn’t bring your wife, we could have ourselves one hell of a hot time. I’ve got connections in town like you wouldn’t believe. Bring Emmett if you want.”
“When was the last time you talked to him?”
“Forever.”
“He got all religious when he met his wife. I don’t think he’d add to the fun.”
“Good to know. Scratch our soul brother.”
“When are you talking about?”
“Now. Tomorrow. Next week, I don’t care. I’m staying here for a month. Don’t have to be back in Salt Lake until mid-March. The Sundance Festival is over. The town’s back to peace and quiet. This place I bought, it’s like a slice of heaven—or as close as you and me are ever likely to get. What do you say?”
“I’ll have to do some checking, see what I can swing.”
“You got my phone number up here?”
“Nothing to write on. E-mail it to me.”
“Will do. How about you call me back tonight and let me know one way or the other. If you’re coming, I need to make plans, get stuff ready.”
“I’ll call,” said Vince. “I really need a break. I think you just saved my life.”
“I’m cooking dinner tonight for Jerry and Ingrid Johnson—ever heard of them?”
“Not that I remember.”
“Local celebrities. They own Lookout Pass, the famous ski resort up here. Anyway, they live just down the road and take care of my place when I’m gone. They’re elderly, so they go to bed early. After they leave, I’ve got a bunch of guys coming over to play poker. I’ll be home all evening. Make it happen, Vincesky. Life’s too short.”
* * *
Emmett ordered himself a double Scotch on the rocks. He felt guilty about it after what he’d told his son last night, but he needed something to steady him. Just this one last time. It was probably too early in the day for hard liquor, especially in front of a fellow pilot, and yet when the waitress had asked him if he wanted something from the bar, he responded without thinking. He couldn’t do the meeting without it.
“You haven’t submitted the report yet, have you?” asked Ted Kulakov, his first officer on last Monday night’s flight.
“I promised we’d talk about it. I keep my promises.” Emmett leaned back as the waitress set the Scotch in front of him. Ted had ordered coffee. Okay, so he wasn’t using alcohol to keep himself from going under, but he looked every bit as ragged as Emmett felt.
Lifting the glass to his lips, Emmett spilled some of the Scotch on his blue oxford cloth shirt. It was then that he realized his hands were shaking. “You had any trouble sleeping?”
Ted pointed to the bags under his eyes.
“Did you talk to your wife?”
“Hell, no.”
“To anyone?”
“I’m not crazy. Or maybe I am.”
Their eyes met, and then, as if on cue, each looked away.
“So what are we going to do?” asked Emmett.
“Has Kingston been on your ass about the report?”
Emmett took another swallow of Scotch. “Not yet. I’ve been doing some research. This has happened before. As I see it, the question is, was the plane ever in any real danger? I think the answer is yes.”
“Hell,” said Ted. “I just want it all to go away.”
“But we have a responsibility to the airline. To the passengers we serve.”
“My biggest responsibility is to my family. We tell anyone the truth and our asses are on the line. I didn’t mention this before, but I’ve been offered a job by a private party.”
“Corporate jet?”
“No, it’s a single guy looking for a pilot for his Bombardier Global Express. You ever seen one of those babies? They’re incredible. State of the art. I’d be flying him all over the world. Big money. If we come clean about what happened and this guy hears about it, which he will, I don’t have a prayer.”
“Would you gentlemen like to order?” asked a waitress, stepping up to their table.
Emmett wasn’t hungry. He hadn’t even looked at the menu. Neither had Ted. “We’re good for now.”
“Can I get you another drink?”
Emmett couldn’t believe the Scotch was almost gone. “Sure. Why not.”
After she’d walked away, Ted said, “You’re hitting that kind of hard.”
“None of your business.”
He shrugged, turning the coffe
e cup around in his hands. “When you write the report, just tell them what we told the passengers. It was turbulence.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Okay, so … the airspeed indicator, then. We’re not lying about that. We got conflicting reports.”
“You don’t put an aircraft into a steep dive because of a faulty airspeed indicator.”
“We almost stalled.”
“And we made the correction.” Emmett closed his eyes. It was all still there, still visible, like a movie running inside his head. The loss of instrumentation. The static when he tried to radio the tower. “Do you believe in God, Ted?”
“What the hell’s that got to do with anything?”
“I would think it would be obvious.”
“You think God saved us?” asked Ted.
He’d completely missed the point.
“Yeah, I believe in God. Some kind of God.”
“The Christian God?” asked Emmett.
“I don’t know. Yeah, probably. Come on, what are we going to do?” This time, there was an edge in his voice. “We need a plausible explanation.”
Emmett shook his head. “I don’t have one. I don’t know what to do.”
Except, for all his overheated mental calculations, he did know. He’d known all along. He had to respond to this challenge ethically because it was his second chance. He’d never anticipated that life would offer him one, but it had. Once before he’d come to a fundamental crossroads, and he’d made a devastatingly bad decision. This time would be different. He would tell the truth. Before he did, however, he needed to build a case. Whether or not Ted was on board with it was of no particular relevance. Emmett had information AirNorth needed to take seriously. If Kingston didn’t want to hear it, he’d take it to someone higher up.
* * *
Jane’s lunch with Avi stretched for several hours, as she ordered small plates of all the Lyme House’s signature dishes. She was delighted that Avi was such an avid—and appreciative—eater. After lunch, as the afternoon sun made its slow decent over Lake Harriet, they took Mouse for a walk along the wooded path, staggering a little under the weight of all they’d eaten, all the wine they’d drunk. At one point, Jane slipped on a patch of ice. Avi caught her just in time before she fell headfirst into a patch of snow-covered bushes. They held on to each other a little longer than necessary, finding themselves staring into each other’s eyes. Smiling awkwardly, they hooked arms and continued on their way, talking about anything and everything. Books. Movies. Politics. Their childhoods. What made them happy and what made them laugh. Jane began to shiver, though not from the cold.
By five, they were sitting at a small dining room table in Avi’s apartment, drinking Darjeeling.
“That was an amazing afternoon,” said Avi, patting her stomach contentedly. “You were right about the food.”
“We try.”
“You’re sure you want to read one of my novels? Makes me kind of nervous. They’re all pretty bad.”
“How many did you say you’ve written?”
“Since I graduated with my MFA, six. Before that, maybe three. They’re dreck.”
“According to whom?”
“Agents. Editors.”
“So you’ve tried to get them published?”
“A few of them. It’s a lost cause. I don’t know why I keep trying.”
This was the first time Avi had opened up about any source of heartache in her life. At lunch, she’d spoken of the close relationship she had with her older sister. Both parents were still alive and well, living in Pittsburgh, where she’d grown up. When she’d come out, everyone in the family had been okay with it, except for her father, a man who was deeply conservative and hadn’t been all that pleased to learn his youngest daughter was gay. Yet as time went on, he’d mellowed. Given that Avi had been a stripper, she figured that people would assume she’d led, if nothing else, at least an interesting life. The truth was, her life had been deeply unremarkable, even boring. Not exactly the fodder she’d been looking for as a writer.
She seemed like an open book, easily answering any question Jane put to her. She’d been with four women, three for a couple of years, one for over five. She wasn’t dating anyone at the moment. A romantic, she assumed that the woman of her dreams was out there. She fell in love easily and underscored that she saw that particular quality as a flaw.
“So, what are some of the titles of your novels?” asked Jane, lifting the teapot and pouring them more tea.
“Oh, wow.” Avi scratched the side of her head, scrunching up her face in thought. “Well, Attaboy. That was the one I was working on when I was in grad school. Then Skin Ticket. Bleeding with Humor. And Someone of Account. That’s the one I’m working on right now.”
“What’s your favorite book?”
“Always the one I’m working on. It isn’t finished, so I still have hope.”
“Are they literary novels? Romance? Mysteries?”
“More commercial than literary,” said Avi. “General fiction, I suppose.”
“Which one can I read?”
She crooked her finger at Jane and then got up and walked into her bedroom.
As Avi dug through the boxes on the shelf in her closet, Jane stepped over to a beat-up old desk, where a laptop rested next to a can of Mountain Dew. In back of the soda can was a five-by-seven picture frame. The photo was of a little girl hugging a teddy bear and wearing oversized dark glasses. Turning around, Jane saw that Avi was watching her.
“That’s Gracie,” said Avi, a manuscript tucked under her arm. “She’s my niece.”
“She’s beautiful.”
“Yeah.” She lifted the frame out of Jane’s hand and set it back down on the desk.
Jane was put off by the move, sensing a coldness grow between them. “What did you choose?” she asked, changing the subject.
“Skin Ticket. Be honest, okay? If you hate it, and you probably will, just stop reading and give it back.”
“It’s not good to be so down on your writing.”
“Yeah, I know. I’ve had so many rejections.”
“Besides the editors and agents, have you shown it to friends?”
“There aren’t many people I trust.”
“Distrust is a terrible habit. Do you trust me?”
Holding Jane’s gaze, she said, “Not sure why I should, but yeah, I guess I must.”
“I like that.”
“I like it that you like it.”
They stared at each other. Jane had the sense that neither of them knew quite what to do.
Breaking the spell, Avi said, “Want more tea?”
“You know, I have a friend in the hospital. I should probably—”
“Right. I remember you saying.”
“I’m sure I’ll be up all night reading.”
“Ugh. You’re going to think I’m utterly lame.”
Jane brushed a hand down Avi’s arm. “I’m never going to think that. I can’t guarantee I’ll love the book, but it will have no bearing on how I feel about you.”
“Just so I know … you’d describe those feelings how?”
“Evolving,” said Jane, leaning close, touching her lips to Avi’s. “Definitely evolving.”
16
Jane arrived at the hospital a few minutes after seven, taking the elevator up to Five West. Striding to the end of a long hallway, she turned left and made her way to the midpoint in another long corridor, all along the way feeling a sense of revulsion at the faint though unmistakable hospital stink, literally cringing when she glanced into some of the patient rooms. She’d spent way too much time in hospitals for one reason or another—her mother’s final illness, friends and family who’d become ill or been the victims of accidents, a few visits of her own. She couldn’t imagine what kind of personality it would take to willingly spend time working in a place like this. She was glad there were people out there who wanted to do it, because she sure didn’t.
She found Nolan in b
ed, looking flushed, the television on across the room, the man in the bed closest to the window gone.
At her questioning look, Nolan said, “He made a prison break this morning. Lucky him.”
Jane stood by his bedside, folding her hand around his. “How did it feel to get up?”
“I’ve been in bed all day. Seems I’ve spiked a temperature.”
“Because?”
“An infection.”
Not good news.
“It’s handled. They’ve started me on an antibiotic, said I’d feel better by tomorrow morning.” His face was drawn tight with fatigue.
“Are you in pain?”
“Some.”
“Can you sleep?”
“That’s all I’ve been doing.”
She squeezed his hand. “I’ve got some good news. I found out why your nephew was in town.”
He turned toward her. “Why?”
“He came looking for his sister.”
“He doesn’t have a sister.”
That stopped her. “He doesn’t?”
“Where’d you get this bogus piece of information?”
“One of the bartenders at the club.”
“Well, either he’s lying or he doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about.”
“He’s a she. She said she talked to DeAndre several times and that’s what he told her. I don’t know why she’d lie to me.”
“People lie all the time.”
“Maybe DeAndre lied to her.”
“Why?”
“What about his biological family?”
“He was an only child, thank God.”
Not what she wanted to hear.
“I’m glad you’re still working the investigation. Not just for my sister and her family, but for me. The longer it goes unsolved—”
“I hear you,” said Jane. “I won’t let you down.”
“I wish I could be out there with you. My brain’s so scrambled by these drugs that I can’t even think straight.” His gaze drifted toward the windows.
She’d been sure that Avi’s information was the break they’d been looking for. She couldn’t imagine why she would lie. Not that Jane knew her very well. Then again, she knew DeAndre even less.
“Listen, Jane, will you do me a favor?”