The Underground Lady (Book 8 of the Jay Leicester Mysteries Series)

by JC Simmons

  A friend once pointed out to me that of the thousands of writers from the last century the works of only four would survive; Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, and Steinbeck. I tend to agree, and have added Welty to the list. Time will tell.

  After reading a chapter of Green Hills, I thought that works of great originality are usually produced in a state of intense turmoil – a madness of genius. Creativity seems to emerge from extreme emotion, often at the edge of sanity, and sometimes brings about the physical wreckage of the person creating an artistic masterpiece. I knew Hemingway survived two plane crashes in two days causing severe injuries, but he also had other problems. Faulkner and Fitzgerald succumbed to alcohol, Steinbeck to a combination of tobacco and alcohol, Welty to old age. So, who knows? Right now, I had to prepare for dinner with Rose English and Sunny Pfeiffer and try to find out what happened to Hadley Welsh and her Piper Super Cub.

  Chapter Three

  Lamb? What wine would go with mesquite grilled lamb? Going down the steep steps into the cellar, a true wine cellar I had built under the cottage, both my knees ached. Too much football in my early years, fourteen seasons. Making the steps so vertical made it hard to climb and descend. I remembered the old Choctaw Indian working for the building crew pulling me aside with a warning that to dig deep into the ground would be coming close to the living world of the spirits, and I should be careful. For all I know this may be true. At the bottom, my head brushed against a spider web. I knew instantly from the strength of the silk strands that it was a black widow's web. They are prevalent in these woods and one has to be wary of them. It has always bothered me that I can never know the cold inner working of a spider's thoughts or those of the copperhead moccasin that follows me as I walk around the pond.

  Looking at the diamond-shaped bins, each holding a case of wine, I thought that nothing has brought me such uncomplicated pleasure as a fine bottle of wine. Mine is not a great collection, but I do have bottles from the fifties, sixties, a lot from the seventies and eighties, and few after that. It dawned on me one day that for a great French claret or California cabernet, it would take thirty years for the wine to age and become drinkable. My life span would certainly not be that long. At any rate, I have enough to last.

  Spotting a case of 1975 Pichon-Longueville, I picked two bottles. From the Haut-Medoc area of Bordeaux, this was an excellent year, was ready to drink, and would have enough tannin and fruit to hold up well with the lamb. I only hoped Sunny Pfeiffer enjoyed wine as it would be wasted on Rose, whose taste ran more to Budweiser and Jack Daniel's.

  It was almost time to depart for Rose's house. For some reason, I decided to wear a turtleneck and blazer. Rose would probably make fun of the clothes, for my usual attire is sweat pants and khaki shirt. "Come on, B.W., your original mama wants you to do some socializing." Putting him in the truck, I looked down at one of the two ponds behind the cottage. It was winter and cold and there were ducks on the water. Suddenly there was an image of a hot summer night, and a naked woman in the pond lying on her back, floating, head tilted back, her throat long and pale, water pooling in the soft hollows of her body, the full moon shining on her breasts. She is suspended just beneath the water's muddy surface, her face impassive, staring up at the stars. Then, after a while, a smile began to form. Now, the cold wind felt as if it came from very far away. I slammed the truck door and drove toward Rose's farm.

  The aroma of lamb roasting on a grill wafted around the corner of Rose's neat farmhouse as B.W. and I parked in the drive. It was a wonderful smell, mixed with that of wood smoke from the fireplace. Rose lifted an eyebrow at the jacket, but thankfully made no comment. Her eyes were a unique shade of gray, like the sky after a summer thunderstorm before it turns blue again, not the gray of a winter day when the clouds are low and heavy and damp.

  "So you did bring B.W. and some grape juice. Good for you. Sunny is helping me set the table. There are decanters on the kitchen counter and a small candle if you want to pour the good off the bad."

  "Ah, Rose, you are learning."

  She took B.W. from me. "Come on boy, I want you to meet some new cousins who have come to live with us." Rose could never pass up a stray animal.

  Entering the kitchen, I ran face to face with Sunny Pfeiffer. She was tall and angular and beautiful, and a warm light seemed to surround her like an aura and follow her when she moved. All men would find her charming in the extreme. She wore a white pullover sweater, black pants, and the same tennis shoes from this morning.

  Without so much as a hello, she said, “So you are going to help me find out what happened to my mother."

  "Yes."

  "Good. Now let me see what your taste in wine is." She reached for one of the bottles, looking intently at the label. "Ah, a seventy-five. If I can remember that vintage – -yes, smaller than average crop with wines of great color and high intensity. The Medocs were rich in tannin and well textured. Other areas of Bordeaux also produced very high quality, elegant wines that year. A welcome vintage after the disastrous seventy-two, three, and four years. Would you like for me to decant these for you?"

  "You know wine, then?"

  "A little. Have these been cellared properly?"

  "I think so."

  "Then this will be fun. It should marry well with the lamb."

  "We'll see."

  Rose walked into the kitchen. "Oh, my God, am I going to have to listen to this wine snobbery stuff all night?"

  The lamb was outstanding and the Pichon-Longueville was even better than anticipated.

  Over coffee in Rose's living room, I asked Sunny about the differences in her and her mother's last names. It turned out to be a simple explanation: her mother took her maiden name back after the death of Sunny's father. I was hoping for something more sinister.

  "I'm still curious as to why, after twenty-five years, you suddenly want to find out what happened to your mother?"

  She seemed to go into deep thought. It sat well on her, softening the tense angularity of her posture. She turned, looked at me. Her face seemed to shrink in on its bones, making her look stern and formidable. "I received an anonymous letter two weeks ago that said my mother did not die in a plane crash. That she was murdered."

  "Then someone knows you, your mother, and the killer. Or maybe the killer's conscious is bothering him and he's trying to confess for redemption?"

  Rose sat her coffee cup on the table beside her. "I'm right in making the assumption that there is no statute of limitations on murder?"

  "That's correct."

  Sunny got up and paced back and forth in front of the fireplace. Her arms folded over her stomach and her long legs gave her a harlequin aspect, like a sad clown caught in bad light.

  "Have you had any other suspicions about the disappearance of your mother over the years?"

  "Except for always wondering what happened, none." She stopped in front of the fire. She seemed one of those people who couldn't bear to face a change in their life. Like one of those waiting mothers who sit beside the phone waiting for a call from a wayward child, but doesn't know what to say when the child finally calls.

  "I'd like to see the letter."

  "I didn't bring it with me."

  "A lot of information can be gleaned from the document, where it was mailed from, fingerprints, DNA, things an investigator looking into a murder would be interested in."

  "I never thought…"

  Rose looked hard at me. "Why don't we let Jay look into your mother's disappearance, see if anything points to foul play before assuming murder."

  "You do still have the letter?"

  "Yes, I still have it." Her voice was flat. Her face was without expression, though it was marked by traces of past expressions around the eyes and at the corners of the mouth. She looked both young and old. Her eyes seemed to dull and turn the color of the darkness in the corner of the room.

  "Tomorrow I will go talk to the man who taught your mother to fly and sold her the airplane and to the air traffi
c controller who worked the flight. Maybe I can get a copy of the accident investigation. Even though there was no crash site, some kind of report was filed."

  "Then I will go with you. Rose would probably like me out of her hair for awhile."

  Usually I do not enjoy company when I'm working, but this would afford me the opportunity to study Sunny Pfeiffer. "That's a good idea. There are many questions, and we can get to know each other."

  Rose looked relieved. She knew that I worked alone, that I preferred it that way. She had witnessed me brush people off, even lose clients who insisted they tag along. She once told me that by the time I'd made enough mistakes to learn from, it would be time for me to die. One couldn't argue with that logic.

  "You must know, Sunny, I don't think there is any possibility of solving what happened to your mother after twenty-five years. There's no aircraft wreckage, no body."

  "I have to try," she answered in a voice that hung almost toneless between expectation and despair. There was a look of acceptance on her face as if she'd lived too long without endings.

  B.W. wandered in and jumped up in Rose's lap. She stroked him from his head all the way to the tip of his tail, the big cat arching his rear legs up to meet her hand. It is another thing that I do not understand about felines.

  "So, what have you heard from Alella?" I asked Rose.

  "A letter from her came yesterday. She plans to return after the first of the year. She is having a wonderful time with her family, but misses me, the farm, and the animals."

  "Who is Alella?"

  "A young girl from Spain who had been battered so much by the world that she had only the faintest wisp of life left when Jay brought her to me."

  "Oh, he brought her?" Sunny said with a lecherous smile.

  "He spent a night with her in Mexico and decided to save her from herself."

  "Come on, Rose, you know that was a platonic event."

  "Then you are gay?"

  "I don't think so, Pfeiffer."

  Rose laughed. "Alella is now a citizen of the United States, and my adopted daughter. She lives with me and is a lovely, wonderful young woman who is learning to trust people again. You must come back for a visit and meet her when she returns."

  "Yes, I would like that."

  "We have a long day tomorrow. B.W. and I will take our leave."

  "What time should I be ready?"

  "Eight o'clock."

  When we stood, B.W. jumped from Rose's lap and ran to Sunny's ankles. She reached down and picked him up. At the door, she handed him to me. "Perhaps you will get to know me," she whispered.

  As she spoke those words, her enigmatic eyes never lift mine, and at the same time, a smile came to her lips. It was a smile so beautiful, so perfect, so filled with all the light in a Mississippi night sky that it took my breath.

  Back at the cottage, I buttoned everything up, turned the thermostat to its lowest setting and climbed into bed. The full effects of the Pichon-Longueville were finally getting to my brain. I tried to think about what we would do tomorrow; however, when lost in the fumes of Bacchus' grapes it seems that I cannot choose the things I wish to remember. Memory is not continuous. It is not meant to be. Each time I remember the past, it comes in pieces. Each event seems something lost, fragmented. Perhaps the past does not exist at all and is only a fabrication. It seemed as if my brain, thinking about my life, had come to a long line of thunderstorms in the sky, had faltered, hesitated, trying to decide whether to fly over, around, or even go back the way I came.

  As the restless sleep overtook me, I thought whoever it was that played life's little tricks on us always watches with amusement when through carelessness, pride, or ignorance, we find ourselves walking on the sharp edge of the knife.

  ***

  I heard the muffled sound of a bird and knew the day was here. It seemed a gentle shift of time that you can only feel. You know it's happening, but you cannot pinpoint where it begins. My body seemed to settle and grow solid like the morning light. It was cold and I lay for a minute listening. Now there was only silence, no birds, no cow lowing, no coyote howling, even the wind seemed to stall in the air like the week's wash stiffened on a clothesline. There is a certain comfort in knowing nature's machinery is setup to run regardless of any human intervention.

  I went into the bathroom and looked into the mirror at my face as if I could somehow read the future there. All I could read was my own past, in the marks of erosion under my eyes, the glints of gray in my hair.

  After a hot shower, I dressed, made coffee, and fed B.W., who then wanted out. It was a bright morning. The edges of the sky had a yellowish tinge like cheap paper fading in the sunlight. The wind picked up and the dry shaking of the oak leaves sounded like rattlesnakes. Sunlight lanced through the trees in honed, piercing shafts.

  As I headed for the truck, the sun eased up through the cold treetops. I watched light slide across the hollow on the upper end of one of the ponds, a wide swath that seemed to set fire to the brown grass. I had always liked this time of the year. The world seemed to shed its skin like the king snakes that lived in the big brush pile in the valley south of the cottage. Everything seemed new and stronger. Add that to the bawl of a calf, the smell of wood smoke, the iron-cold steel of a cattle gate, and you had a beauty in the landscape.

  I watched the wind blow the dead leaves in a new dancing choreography as birds began to wheel and soar, and I hoped that the rest of the day in the company of Sunny Pfeiffer would go as well.

  Chapter Four

  Sunny Pfeiffer bounded out to my truck as soon as I stopped in Rose's driveway like a teenager on a first date. She carried a thermos and two ceramic mugs. Opening the passenger door, she jumped in, slamming the door hard, shaking the whole truck. She wore a turtleneck sweater with a sailcloth jacket, her hair was pulled back into a ponytail. A pair of black slacks and the now familiar tennis shoes made up the rest of her attire. I, on the other hand, was back to sweat pants, a wool plaid shirt, and a leather jacket.

  She looked at me with sparkling green eyes like highly polished gemstones. They were remarkable, piercing, and smoldering, and could stop a man's words, make them drop from the air like a flock of redwing blackbirds on a windy day. She had on a perfume, a familiar aroma, yet distant, like the scent of an almost forgotten flower.

  "Rose had an idea that you might like coffee with honey. Something I've never heard of, nor tried." She handed me a cup.

  "She had an idea, did she? Robert Frost once wrote an unfinished and undated poem that said, “An idea comes as close to something for nothing as you can get."

  Sunny Pfeiffer laughed at that, opened the thermos and poured us both coffee. "Not bad," she said, tasting the honey-laced, licorice-colored liquid. "A little too sweet for my taste, but not bad."

  The day was getting off to a good start.

  As we eased along the gravel road, leading to the blacktop, trying not to spill our coffee, Sunny cocked her head at me, and with a sly grin, said, “Frost also wrote a poem about two women on a farm without a man. They had a milk cow named 'Lesbia."

  Now that one I had not read. We both laughed again.

  After turning onto the blacktop, we headed east toward the town of Union, a place William Tecumseh Sherman refused to burn during his devastating march of destruction across the south during the Civil War because of its name. There is a hotel in downtown Union that has been restored called the Boler Inn, which Sherman used as his headquarters for a short time.

  Suddenly a horrible stench permeated the truck. It was as if we had driven into a garbage dump.

  Sunny looked at me with a turned-up nose. "What is that smell? That is terrible."

  Laughing, I said, “That, my dear young lady, is a common prominence in this otherwise pristine landscape. Those five chicken houses off to your right are the cause. Their contents are ready for the slaughterhouse. It is their vaporous odors that are a perpetual aroma of remembrance of things bad."

  "I would hate
to live near them."

  "Agreed, however they've been in this part of the country for many years, and when one moves next to the airport, he cannot complain about the noise of the jet engines."

  After passing through Union, we turned south on Highway 15, and headed toward Decatur, then to Interstate Twenty, and on to our destination, Meridian where the airport and Sanders Flying Service were located.

  We drove past open pastures, the wind whipping through them, moving the tops of the dead grass in waves. The motion reminded me of the mane on a galloping horse. Passing through Decatur, we turned southeast and headed for the Interstate.

  "So why did you stop flying and open an aviation consulting business?"

  Looking at her, I didn't know whether to give her a crass answer or tell her the truth. I decided on the truth. "I wanted to be able to make my own choices, not have someone make them for me. Life without choices equals bondage, and I had no desire to explore the depth of servitude." She looked at me with amusement. "When I first learned to fly, it seemed I had faith in the impossible. An enormously expanded world teemed with possibilities of flight, adventure, and romance in which one's wildest dreams could be fulfilled. Life had a zest."

  She stared at me for a minute, didn't say anything, as if a moment's balanced reflection would serve to place every reality on an even plane. Then, “So what happened to change that zest for flight?"

  "A simple answer would be government bureaucracy, but it was much more. Deregulation hurt the airlines more than any other single thing. It used to be a privilege to fly, a luxury. It is now mass transit, and the reality is that commercial airlines were destined for that. So, it was change or be left behind for the air carriers, the flight crews, both cabin and flight deck. Then, after 9-11 things got really bad, but I was already out by then. That's why you see so many corporate airplanes today. If an individual or a company can afford it, it's the only way to fly."

  "Corporate airplanes, yes."