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

by JC Simmons

  I thanked him for the telephone numbers, the update on his brother, and asked him to please send my regards when next they spoke. He promised to do so.

  After hanging up, I thought about Asa Bradford. He was an outstanding aviator. There were thirteen of us in our class at Southern. Three of them are dead. One died on his first trip out after upgrading from the Martin 404 to the DC-9. The chartered aircraft crashed on approach to Huntington, West Virginia, wiping out an entire football program. Another died after an encounter with a severe summer thunderstorm in Georgia, which caused both engines to flame out. An emergency landing on a rural two-lane highway was unsuccessful. The third was a tragic error of judgment. The Captain of a Martin 404 descended into a valley on a clear day in the Rocky Mountains to give his passengers an up close view of the terrain. He flew into a blind canyon from which they couldn't climb out. The rest of the class, as far as I am aware, continues to ply the skies of the world.

  Even though it was just above freezing, Rose stood in her doorway waiting when B.W. and I arrived. Handing her the cat, I said, "Ah, Rose, I do love thee as each flower loves the sun's life-giving power."

  She took B.W. and held him to her breast. "That's poetry, and I know you are not a poet, so you must have stolen those lines."

  "Guilty as charged, however I do not remember who wrote them. I've never been smart enough to read poetry."

  "I've always thought poets were people who, because they cannot love, imagine what it would be like if they could."

  "Why, Rose, that is poetic in itself. Maybe you possess a talent that you do not realize."

  She put B.W. down, and he ran into the back of the house seeking other felines to bully. "Coffee is ready. Come to the kitchen and we'll talk."

  "Sunny Pfeiffer is gone, then?"

  "She left for the airport at daylight. Her chauffeur picked her up."

  "Chauffeur?"

  "There are some things you need to know about Hadley Welch and her daughter."

  Rose poured the fresh-ground coffee – she would always grind her own beans. Using a honey dipper, I stirred in a dollop of the sweet, brown liquid collected by a local producer.

  "How long have we known each other?"

  "Ten years."

  "You are a strange man, Jay Leicester, different from any man I've ever known. If we'd met thirty years ago, and had been the same age, I probably would have married you, or at least had one torrid affair. You see the world through a certain set of eyes."

  Taking a sip of the strong coffee, I sat back and waited to find out where this was leading.

  "You have to remember, Jay, people around here look through different eyes, explain the world in different ways, perform different rituals to keep it in balance. But most share common concerns. Family is more important than country, prayer more important than political power, weather more important than world news. People around here worry about crops, children, animals and food, and always about sickness and health."

  "I once knew a young woman living alone in a big city that worried so much about getting raped that she wore a Tampax tampon to bed every night, for fear a man would rape her in her sleep and she might not otherwise know of it."

  That was the wrong thing to say. Rose got up and went to the sink, anger oozing from every pore.

  "We must not lose our dead." She turned to me with an expression that told me this was serious and I'd better start taking it that way.

  B.W. strutted into the kitchen, jumped into my lap, and stared at Rose. "Okay, this has to do with Hadley Welch and her daughter. Why don't you get on with it."

  "Hadley Welch came from a very rich family. That's why, after her husband died, she reverted back to her maiden name. It made it easier to run the family business."

  "That business would be?"

  "Have you ever heard of Upton Pharmaceuticals?"

  "I know they are based in St. Louis and have an eclectic fleet of poorly managed corporate airplanes. Their Vice-president of the Aviation Department was an idiot. May very well still be."

  "Hadley's great grandfather started the company in 1840 as a one store pharmacy and built the business into a world-wide pharmaceutical giant. The company has stayed in the Welch family and never went public. It is one of the largest privately held businesses in the world. When Hadley's father and mother were killed in an Alaskan plane crash, she inherited the company. Shortly thereafter, she married the CEO, Ed Pfeiffer, and they had one child."

  "Why was she living on an eight hundred acre farm in rural Mississippi?"

  "Same reason you are, she and Ed thought it was God's country. Ed grew up in central Mississippi, wanted to come back to this area, buy some land, have a quiet, safe place to stay in the winter, get away from the hustle and bustle of city life and corporate business."

  "What killed Ed Pfeiffer?"

  "Hadley said it was a brain bleed, a hereditary thing. Seems several members of his family met the same fate. Too bad, he was only forty years old and a nice guy."

  "So Sunny Pfeiffer owns Upton Pharmaceuticals. Does she live in St. Louis?"

  "Yes, in the original family home. It is a magnificent mansion. Hadley took me for a visit one summer. It overlooks the river with a view of the arch. She also took me to my first professional football game; they owned part of the team. I believe they were called the Cardinals, then. We sat in a glassed-in box catered with food and drink. It was a fun time." Rose had a far off look as if remembering fondly the experience.

  "Hadley and Ed must have had to travel to St. Louis often in order to run the business?"

  "They would drive to Meridian to meet the company aircraft, spend a couple of days, then fly back. After Ed died, one of the reasons Hadley wanted her little airplane was so she could fly to Meridian instead of driving. She said it took only fifteen minutes to fly."

  "Sunny never came back to this area after her mother disappeared?"

  "Only to visit. Her grandparents would come once a year. They were nice people, country folks from Arkansas."

  "What happened to the house the Pfeiffer's lived in? I don't ever remember seeing a home on the property."

  "Someone burned it down soon after Hadley went missing. It could not be proved arson, so nothing was ever done."

  "That's interesting. Annie Sanders said there was a man in Hadley's life. You know anything about that?"

  "She was a young woman, Jay. She loved Ed, but after awhile loneliness set in. There weren't that many. She picked and chose carefully."

  "Local men?"

  "There was a banker from Decatur, a lawyer from Union, and a high-ranking Naval Officer stationed in Meridian."

  "What about married men?"

  "She would never knowingly go with someone else's husband."

  "I want you to write down the names of every man you can remember that she went with."

  "Several of them are still around, though most are married now, with children and grandchildren."

  "She ever mention Earl Sanders?"

  "Talked about him every day. He was a mentor to her in all things related to flying."

  "Could she have had an affair with him?"

  "I said no married men. She had too much respect for that, and I would have known."

  "Anything else, Rose? You didn't call this meeting just to tell me how wealthy Sunny Pfeiffer is today."

  "I want you to let her help you find out what happened to her mother. I don't want you to ask any questions, I just want you to do it as a favor for me. I've never asked you for much."

  "I'd do anything for you, Rose, even let Sunny Pfeiffer follow me around."

  "Good. Now take that cat and get out of here. I have work to do."

  Rose really wanted to hug my neck. Running us off was her way of avoiding it. We left, with me wondering why she wanted the daughter involved in the search for her mother. Rose never did anything without a reason. Things were getting interesting.

  B.W. and I started back to the cottage. In the west, a winte
r cold front bore down on us. As the storm approached, I became fascinated by the dichotomy of the sky. Everything north and east of a given line was bright sunshine and clear skies. To the west and south of that same line the sky was dark gray and frothed with darker clouds boiling in like lava. Here and there broad shafts of black rain hung beneath their parent clouds as they raced across the land in an angry cavalcade. The air all around reflected the dark menace of the clouds and gave off colors akin to old hammered iron.

  There was a distinct electric odor on the wind. It was a primeval scent that augured only the largest of storms. Suddenly, on the rising wind, aromas of decayed plant life and animal waste struck like a paste, but I knew the coming wind would scour the stench from the air.

  The first bloated raindrops struck just as we made it to the cottage. They were so big that when they impacted the sandy soil of the driveway, they sent up little explosions, like miniature artillery bursts. Thankfully, I had stacked enough firewood on the porch out of the weather to last for a couple of days. After building a fire and making a pot of coffee, I thought about where to go next with finding the missing Piper Super Cub and its occupant. A visit to the local FAA office in Jackson for the Accident/Missing Aircraft report would be necessary, a phone call to Atlanta for a copy of the tower transcript, and interviewing the men in Hadley Welch's life seemed a place to start. If that airplane crashed, it seems truly unlikely that someone would not have stumbled upon the wreckage by now, especially with the numbers of hunters, timber harvesting, land clearing, cattle farming, and people simply walking over their property. Although, there is what I call my 'back eighty,' an eighty acre rectangle of timber that I haven't walked over in years.

  If the PA-18 had crashed, all that would be left would be a small pile of twisted metal. The airplane was covered with fabric that would have rotted away, leaving the fuselage and engine, that would be partially buried in the ground from impact. The body, well only a few bones would be left, and those scattered about by animals. There was little hope of discovery after twenty-five years.

  Holding a warm cup of coffee, I looked out at the freezing rain and remembered pilots sitting in cockpits on frozen ramps, bone weary from long flights fighting terrible storms, resting their heads sideways on coffee mugs to imagine the breath of wives or lovers in their ears before departing on the next leg of flight.

  As the full brunt of the storm hit, the lightning flashed and thunder crashed in shattering intensity making the earth tremble. B.W. ran and hid under the bed, his favorite Querencia. A feeling of apprehension and barren anxiety settled on my soul like a wet deer hide. Something was wrong, but I was at a loss to know why I felt so distraught. I stared out the rain-soaked kitchen window, looking for the ghost of Hadley Welch.

  Chapter Six

  Looking through a Jackson, Mississippi, phone directory, I found a number for the FAA District Office. To my surprise, an inspector, who I did not know, offered to mail me a copy of the Missing Aircraft Report, saving me a trip to the state capital. I was not so lucky with a call to Atlanta. A surly female of African American descent curtly informed me that only agency employees were allowed access to tower transcripts. Hanging up, I had some truly evil thoughts toward her. A quick call back to Paul Bradford, the Tower Chief in Meridian, was much more productive. He would have the transcript sent to him, and would inform me when it arrived.

  There were three names Rose provided of men whom Hadley Welch dated after the death of her husband. One, a lawyer by the name of Charles Collinswood, lived in the nearby town of Union. Might as well start with him, I thought.

  Attorney Collinswood agreed to meet with me tomorrow at nine a.m. He seemed quite surprised at hearing Hadley Welch's name, but had no reservations talking about her.

  My next call was to a banker in Decatur, a man by the name of Peter Pushkin. Here I hit a snag. He in no way wanted to talk about his relationship with Hadley Welch. I convinced him to have lunch with me, promising the utmost discretion. He reluctantly agreed, but only if we met in Union. We set up a meeting at noon tomorrow in a little barbecue place that I knew called the Hot Spot.

  Next, I tried the Naval Officer. A pleasant-sounding woman answered and informed me that her husband was in his woodworking shop, and for me to hold on for a moment.

  "This is Raymond Spruance."

  "Sir, my name is Jay Leicester, and I'm looking into the disappearance of Hadley Welch. I'd like to talk with you about her."

  There was a pause. Then, “Who are you with? The police?"

  "I'm an aviation consultant, hired by the daughter to find out what happened."

  "Good God, man, that was twenty years ago. Why now?"

  "Twenty-five years to be exact. The woman wants to know what happened to her mother. Don't worry, sir, I won't do anything to damage your career."

  "Hell, son, I've been retired for fifteen years. There is nothing I can tell you about that woman's disappearance. But if you want to talk, please come to my home and I'll be happy to tell you about our brief romance."

  He gave me the address, and we agreed to meet day after tomorrow at ten a.m. Looking out the window at the heavy rain, I thought that none of these men seemed, at least on the surface, likely to have anything to do with Hadley Welch going missing. My bet was that she lost control of her little airplane trying to return to the grass landing strip due to some unknown emergency and lay in a mangled pile somewhere nearby. Annie Sanders threw the only monkey wrench into that line of thought. I needed to talk to her again, and to Earl. These two people were friends. Approaching them would be tedious, at best.

  B.W. came out of hiding as the line of thunderstorms moved eastward. He lay in front of the fire, looking at me as if he knew we were getting into something we didn't have any business sticking our nose into.

  At three o'clock, I fed B.W. a can of tuna. He ate it with such relish it made me hungry. Instead, I opened a bottle of Merlot from a 'boutique' winery in Napa Valley, stoked the fire, and thought about how one would go about finding a twenty-five year old plane crash. If it were under water, a side scanning radar would be effective. Had the crash happened within the last week, heat-sensing radar like FLIR (Forward Looking Infrared Radar) could detect the site. I had read about ground penetrating radar, but that would necessitate pulling an instrument along the ground to detect something buried, and that just didn't make sense.

  I needed a look at the letter Sunny Pfeiffer received, maybe send it to a crime lab for prints and DNA, if it hadn't been too contaminated. If we could find out who sent it and why, we would be in a lot better position to know how to proceed. The letter was supposed to claim Hadley Welch was murdered. Then where was the airplane? Was it dismantled and shipped overseas? I've known them to be stolen, stripped down, repainted, engines changed out, then sold to fish spotters, drug runners, and freight haulers. I've seen them shipped to Alaska where they are used by shady bush pilots who swap out serial numbers with crashed aircraft. There were so many possibilities.

  The author of the letter either killed the woman or knew who did. His conscious was bothering him, and he would be getting close to the age where his own death was looming. Maybe he wanted to square things before the final event, didn't want to fall from grace under the weight of a ponderous iniquity. The letter was the clue.

  B.W. played with a small tightly woven leather ball, swatting it away, then leaping and attacking it. I wondered about the unknown mechanisms that create the inheritance of mental traits like instincts. The big black and white cat paused and looked at me as if he had the answer if only I would learn to speak his language. It was time for me to get something to eat before the Merlot created any further ratiocinate thinking. My brain is not used to such endeavors.

  There were frozen salmon steaks in the fridge, sent down from Anchorage after the last King Salmon run by an old hunting friend. Putting one in warm water in the sink to thaw, I wrapped a potato in tin foil and put it in the oven to bake. Stoking the fire, my attention was dr
awn to a book by James Bradley that I had been reading in small doses due to the powerful and brutal content. Bradley's father was one of the six Marines shown raising the American flag in the famous photograph taken by Joe Rosenthal on Iwo Jima on February 23, 1945, atop Mount Suribachi. The myths surrounding that photograph are many and varied. One needs to read this book to dispel them. Personally, I think this work, Flags of Our Fathers, and another, Flyboys, the first work of Bradley's, should be required reading for all Americans. The simple lesson I learned about that war in the South Pacific against the Japanese is that, had we not had the atomic bomb and proceeded to go ashore on the mainland of Japan, another one and a half million American boys would have been killed.

  Something Rose said earlier came to mind, "We must not lose our dead." Wonder what she meant by that?

  The rain continued to come down in sheets, and the wind picked up, strong enough to affect the flame in the fireplace. B.W. ate as much of the salmon as I, and after some inane television we retired early. Tomorrow brought interviews with a lawyer named Collinswood, and a banker named Pushkin who was reluctant to talk.

  ***

  The fast moving cold front had passed through and the day dawned bright and clear, and somewhat warmer. It was one of those days that made a person glad to be alive. There is a softness in the air that follows a rain, like the respectful silence when the preacher asks the congregation to bow their heads for prayer. I, too, was careful to be quiet as I stepped out onto the porch and looked at the oak, cedar, pine, and hickory trees wet and gray and silent in front of the cottage. My breath formed little fog clouds into the morning and quiet of the woods.