Cactus Island, A Stan Turner Mystery Vol 8

by William Manchee

CHAPTER 25

  CONFEDERATE AIR FORCE

  A little after nine, Paula made it back to the hospital to relieve us. Alex wasn't with her. She said he'd join her soon, so we went home and crashed. It was early afternoon when I woke up. Since the day had been pretty much wasted, I decided to run out to Weatherford and see if I could talk to someone about the Confederate Air Force and the P-38 Lightning. I asked Rebekah if she wanted to come, but she turned over and went back to sleep.

  It was a beautiful day and the ride out to the small airport was very relaxing. By the time I got there at four I was fully recovered from the previous day's ordeal. As I approached the hangar, I noticed several World War II planes parked inside. They were all in mint condition and quite impressive. A mechanic was working on one of them.

  I parked my car outside and entered a door with a sign in the window that read, "Airport Operations."

  Inside, a young woman was working on some paperwork. Her badge read: Rose Brewer—Flight Operations. She looked up. "Hi. Can I help you?"

  "Yes, I'm Stan Turner. I'm an attorney and—"

  Her eyes lit up. "Oh, Mr. Turner. I've heard about you on TV. What are you doing out here?"

  I chuckled. Rose was making me feel like a celebrity. "I'm interested in the Confederate Air Force. I heard they kept some of their planes here."

  She nodded enthusiastically. "Yes, they do. There are some of them in the hangar right now."

  "Yeah, I saw that. Is there anyone here with the Confederate Air Force today?"

  "Yes, Roberto. He's their chief mechanic," she replied. "You can go out there and talk to him, if you want to."

  "Great. He must be the one I saw working on one of the planes."

  She broadened her already wide smile. "That's him."

  "Good. I'll just go and say hello."

  "Fine," she said.

  I started to walk away. "Oh, Mr. Turner," she called after me."I just wanted to tell you—"

  I turned around and looked back at her. "I just wanted to tell you . . . well . . . that . . . I believe."

  I smiled. "Great. I appreciate that. Thanks a lot," I said and continued on.

  "If I can help you with anything, please let me know."

  I waved without turning around and continued on. Roberto looked up warily when I approached. I introduced myself, but unlike Rose, he didn't seem impressed. "So, I understand you handle the maintenance for the planes in the Confederate Air Force."

  "Me and a half dozen other mechanics," he replied.

  "Well, I visited your museum in Dallas and was very much intrigued by some of your planes."

  He perked up a bit. "Well, we have quite a collection. Anything you like in particular?"

  "Yes, the P-38. It's got such a unique design."

  "It's a beauty, ain't it?"

  "Oh, yes. Do you have one around here anywhere?"

  "Well, we did but it crashed the other day. It's a real mess right now."

  "Oh, that's a shame. I was hoping to take a look at it."

  "I'm afraid it will be a while before we'll be able to raise the funds to fix it."

  "Oh, that's too bad. Where is it now?"

  "In a hangar in Midland."

  "How did it crash?"

  "One of our pilots took it out and didn't check the weather reports well enough, I reckon. He got caught in a bad thunderstorm."

  "Do you remember the date?"

  He frowned. "The date?. . .Why does that matter?"

  "Oh, just curious."

  "I'm not sure, but you can check with Rose inside. She may have a record of it."

  "Okay. I'll do that. A couple more things. Who were the pilots?"

  Roberto frowned again. "What difference does that make?"

  I laughed. "Well. . . . Uh. . . . I just thought one of them might know where there might be another P-38 I could take a look at. I really wanted to see one up close."

  He shrugged. "Uh, well Adam Peterson and Carl Brooks are our main pilots. I'm pretty sure they took 'er up the day she crashed."

  "Were they hurt at all in the crash?"

  "Adam wasn't but Carl got scraped up a bit. They were lucky. They were able to set 'er down. It was a hard landing, but they weren't seriously injured."

  "Do you have addresses or telephone numbers for them?"

  "No, but you can find them at the Chevrolet dealership in town. They work there during the day."

  "Good," I said."Thanks a lot for your help."

  "No problem," Rob said and went back to what he had been doing.

  I went back inside and asked Rose if she knew the date and location of the crash site of the P-38 and she gave it to me without even looking it up. "It was September 22 and the location was 6.8 miles west of Possum Kingdom Lake." She looked like she had more to tell me, but I wasn't sure what it was so I decided to hang around awhile and talk.

  "What do you do as flight operations assistant?" I asked.

  "Well, this is a very small airport so it's not all that glamorous. You know, . . . there's lots of paperwork, logs to keep up, and reports to do."

  "Do you happen to have a log that shows when the P-38 might have flown?"

  "Sure, that's one that I keep."

  "Can we take a look at it? I'm interested to see if the P-38 went up on September 10. Since you've been following the Steven Caldwell case, you know he was distracted by what he thought was a spaceship, but a P-38 is a pretty strange looking aircraft. If he had seen that plane—"

  "Sure, that's possible. Let's check it out."

  Rose started looking through a journal. She looked up and frowned. "That's weird. The page for September 10 has been torn out."

  As we were contemplating this new development, the door opened and a tall man wearing a blue suit and a red silk power tie walked in. He nodded at Rose, then looked at me. "You must be Stan Turner."

  I nodded. "Yes, that's right."

  He extended his hand. "Well, I'm Adam Peterson. Roberto called and said you were looking for me, so I decided to come out and see if I could be of any assistance."

  "Well, that was nice of you. I would like to talk to you."

  He grinned. "Roberto said you were interested in the P-38."

  "Yes, it's a pretty unique looking plane. I was sorry to hear it had been crashed. It was a miracle you weren't hurt."

  He sighed. "Tell me about it. I was damn lucky, but my copilot Carl was busted up a bit. They just released him from the hospital."

  "Really. Well, I guess just to survive a plane crash is pretty lucky."

  "Absolutely. So, we're looking for donations to get her repaired. Any assistance you might provide would be greatly appreciated."

  "Well, actually I was wondering if there were any other P-38s around."

  He shook his head. "No, this is the only one in these parts that I know of."

  "I'm curious. Did you take the P-38 up on Monday, September 10?"

  Adam stiffened. "I don't know. Why do you care?"

  "Well, are you familiar with the murder case I'm working on?"

  He nodded. "I've heard something about it, but I haven't really been following it."

  "Well, I won't bore you with the details. I just need to know if you took up the P-38 on September 10. That date seems to be missing out of the traffic logs."

  Adam looked at Rose and frowned. "Really. Hmm. Let me think. What day of the week was that?"

  Rose rolled her eyes. "It was a Monday."

  "No, we wouldn't have taken it up on Monday. I'm a working man, you know. Gotta be there at the lot when the customers come in."

  "Right. Do you keep a personal log book you could look at just to double check? It's pretty important."

  "Sure. . . . Oh! Damn, I just remembered. I lost my log book in the crash. Jesus. I'm sorry."

  Rose shook her head and walked away. Adam impressed me as the typical used car salesman that would say whatever it took to make the sale. I didn't believe a word he had told me but I couldn't figure out his motivation f
or lying. Rose rolled her eyes every time Adam told a lie and I could see she was anxious to spill her guts if I could get her alone. But I didn't want to get her fired or put her life in jeopardy, so I decided to terminate the interview and contact her later.

  On the way home I thought about the P-38 and how it would play into Steven Caldwell's defense, assuming I could prove it flew over Possum Kingdom Lake on September 10. What I needed—or the jury needed—was to actually see the big plane flying over head. It occurred to me that there must be old newsreels of the plane in flight. If I could find one, I could give it to our accident reconstruction expert and he could create a simulation of the plane flying in a thunderstorm. I decided that would be a good project for Jodie to start working on.

  It was late when I got home. Rebekah met me at the door with the news that Mo had called. She said he'd call back at ten. I looked at my watch and saw it was 9:30. Curiosity began eating at me. What could he have found out that would be so important that he would call me now? He usually called me at the office. Precisely at ten the telephone rang.

  "Stan. You're back," Mo said.

  "Yes, I just got in. What's up?"

  "Bad news, I'm afraid."

  "Oh God. What did you find out?"

  "It seems all of the proceeds from the liquidation of the Windsor assets are being wired into a BVI bank account under the name of Zorcor, Inc. Walter Johansen is listed as the sole officer and registered agent."

  "BVI?"

  "British Virgin Islands."

  "So who is Walter Johansen?"

  "He's a banker who acts as the sole officer and director of offshore corporations, and puts his name on the accounts for persons who want their identity kept secret."

  "So, do you have any idea who has hired him to maintain the account?"

  "Well, yes. He does business with the Agency and I was able to call in a favor to find out who owns the account."

  "Okay. Don't keep me in suspense. Who is it?"

  "You're not going to like this, but it turns out the account is being maintained for Cheryl Windsor."

  Mo's words hit me like a jolt from a stun gun."Shit! That's exactly what Perkins predicted. Damn it! How am I going to tell Paula?"

  "I don't know, but at least now you know she can afford to pay your fee. There are more than three million dollars in that account."

  "What? Three million?"

  "And change."

  "Huh. It still doesn't make sense. If she set up the kidnapping of her children, why didn't she just stay with them? Everyone would have figured they all had been kidnapped and when they were missing long enough, they'd be presumed dead. She could have taken her kids anywhere in the world with that kind of a bank roll and no one would have ever found them."

  "I don't know, but she's one clever lady. I've never seen assets liquidated so fast and moved around the world as deftly. It took me hours to track it, and I do this for a living."

  "From what Paula tells me she's not a financial wizard. I doubt she's behind it."

  "So, you think her husband is alive and he's orchestrating all this?"

  "That's my gut feeling."

  "But what about the money? That's a lot of cash to throw away just to get rid of your wife."

  "Not if he's worth ten times that much and doesn't want a divorce court splitting it up fifty-fifty. He had to wire enough money into the account to make it look plausible. A few hundred grand wouldn't do it."

  "Probably not. Anyway, good luck sorting it all out. If I can do anything else for you, let me know."

  "Thanks, Mo. I appreciate it."

  Now I had a headache. Paula's case was getting more complicated with each passing day, and Cheryl was looking more and more guilty. Yet, killing her husband didn't make any sense to me. A divorce court would have been quite generous to her, in my estimation. Why risk life in prison? But then it occurred to me. Maybe she knew Martin Windsor wouldn't let her live long enough to enjoy whatever the divorce court awarded her. It was a matter of survival. She had to kill Martin before he killed her.