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

by JC Simmons

  After a shower, and while sipping my second cup of coffee, I called the airports in Philadelphia and Newton. Neither had any airplanes departing or landing this morning. No one answered at the Forest airport. Dialing the control tower in Meridian, I got Paul Bradford, the tower chief. He promised to check the logs and call me back.

  Hebrone drove up with B.W. "Did you see the Cessna circling?"

  "The Meridian tower chief is checking for us. I'm waiting on his call. Nothing at the other local airports."

  "Rose said you needed to spend some time with this big boy, here."

  "Thanks for bringing him," I said, while setting B.W. a bowl of his favorite tuna on the floor.

  The phone rang.

  "Okay, Paul. Thanks a lot. No, he didn't do anything illegal. We just wondered who it was, that's all."

  Hanging up, I looked at Hebrone. "A Cessna 182, registered to Gerald VonHorner took off at six a.m., landed a few minutes ago. Radar showed the plane in our vicinity."

  "Maybe we should ask him what he seeks?"

  B.W. looked up from his tuna as if to say, “That's a good idea."

  "I want to ride down to Decatur and have a talk with the sheriff. Get him started on the background checks on Collinswood, Pushkin, and Spruance. Why don't you take Pussy Galore to lunch, see what you can get out of her, use all that Opshinsky charm.

  "Better take B.W. back to Rose. I don't want to find him hanging from the door. It would make you do insane things."

  "Yes – insane. We'll meet up later this afternoon."

  ***

  Sheriff John Quincy Adams was in his office. We made polite small talk, then I asked, “So you were 'in-country?'"

  "Don't want to talk about it. I'll only say your boy, Opshinsky, has done okay for himself. A lot of guys who went through what we did ended up much worse. They turned to drugs and crime and died young and disillusioned."

  "How'd you make it through unscathed?"

  "Luck, my friend, and by the grace God, though I was far from unaffected."

  "Someone poured water in the oil tank of my airplane. Hebrone and I escaped death by a few feet. I need you to run a background on four people with an eye for aviation mechanical knowledge."

  "Water in the oil? Old trick we learned in service."

  "Why does everyone know about this but me?"

  John looked at me with steely eyes – a strange grin contorted one side of his face. "Consider yourself lucky you're not trained in all the ways to kill people, Jay. It can be a burden. I'll run the backgrounds for you, but it's not going to solve who poured water in your oil tank."

  "One of these men, the one whose prints were on the note left along with the coyote hanging from my door, is at the head of the list."

  "Henderson? Yeah, he's capable, but he's a hired hand, one of those tough, survivalist types with few brains, easily led. I'd be afraid of him, if I were you. Shack Runnels and him were tight when they were young. The difference in the two is Runnels was intelligent and married a smart woman."

  "He's been a good friend to me over the years. Taught me things about the people and country. Kept me from making serious mistakes at times."

  "You would be wise to let me handle Ralph Henderson if you get enough proof that he tried to kill you."

  "I'll keep that in mind, John. Thanks for your time."

  ***

  Sunny Pfeiffer was sitting in the glider playing with B.W. when I arrived back at the cottage from the visit with Sheriff John Quincy Adams. The weather had warmed into the sixties and it was a pleasant day.

  "Where's Rose?" I asked, getting out of my truck.

  "Philadelphia. She had some shopping to do. I hate that, so B.W. and I are waiting for you to take us to lunch, and to explain why you were off investigating the disappearance of my mother without me when you were specifically told that I wanted to be involved? Who is paying for your services?"

  She said this with a non-condescending smile, and in such a pleasant manner, that I wasn't offended.

  "I planned on a bowl of cereal with honey and a banana. You are welcome to share."

  She laughed with such a deep, sexy sound that it made me stare. "Cereal for lunch, I would never have imagined. Do you feed B.W. the same thing?"

  "He laps up the leftover honey-sweetened milk."

  She chuckled again.

  We sat at the table with our cereal bowls.

  "Tell me where we are with finding my mother?"

  Recapping, I started with her receiving the letter from the now deceased Avis Shaw, the warning to cease and desist with the coyote hanging from my door, the interviews with the men in her mother's life, the second threat left on my kitchen table, the same one we ate cereal on at the moment, and the sabotage of my airplane engine. "Our next step is finding Ralph Henderson and asking him a few questions."

  Sunny moved the sliced bananas around in the cereal bowl with a spoon, deep in thought. "What if I decided, now, to stop the inquiry? Just forget about this whole thing?"

  "Why would you want to do that?"

  "I tend to live for the future, of course, but I don't really believe in the future I live for. I'm scared of getting someone hurt. My mom's dead, finding out what happened won't bring her back. It doesn't seem worth it."

  "Sure, go back to St. Louis, run your pharmaceutical company, have a good life. Frankly, I don't care. My life has been threatened, Rose English has been threatened, even B.W., my cat, is in danger. So you run back to the city by the river. I'm going to find out who is behind this, believe me, young lady. Nobody threatens my friends or me and walks away."

  Sunny Pfeiffer grinned. "You are sexy when you get upset."

  I looked into her green eyes like a man seeking some vision of the increate future of the universe.

  "You're staring at me."

  "The same way I'd stare at a straight flush in a poker hand."

  "Because you think you've misread the cards?"

  "I just want to be sure the numbers are in sequence and they're all blue."

  "Or maybe you're afraid nobody will call your bet?"

  "Maybe."

  "Bet the hand," she said. "Bet the hand, Jay Leicester."

  A car drove up. It was Hebrone. He strolled into the cottage and was rather surprised to see Sunny. "Am I interrupting anything?"

  "No," Sunny said, putting the cereal bowls in the dishwasher. "We were discussing poker strategy. How to bet a straight flush."

  "Go all in," Hebrone offered.

  "That's what I told Jay. Go all in."

  "Did you find out anything from Miss Pussy Galore?"

  "Only that she has broken off her romance with an unknown lover. Wants to make me the rebound guy. Up close, she's not a bad looking woman. I got nothing on her boss and Hadley Welch, except she wanted to know if the file she gave you was any help. Said it would probably cost her the job, and that they were not easy to find in this part of the country. Her fear was that she would have to move to Meridian or Jackson. She did not want that. I told her that you would probably be looking for an assistant to help with the burgeoning aviation consulting business in the near future."

  "You were wrong."

  "I'm always seeking good people," Sunny said. "Tell her to call me."

  "You gonna open a branch office in Union?" I said with some sarcasm.

  "It may surprise you to know what businesses we already own in the area, my dear sir."

  She had me there.

  "Did you visit with the sheriff?"

  "Yes. He's doing the background checks, though like everyone but me, thinks it is a waste of time. He warned me that Ralph Henderson is a dangerous man."

  "Yes, we will be careful with him – real careful."

  "We also need to keep a wary eye on Shack where it concerns Henderson."

  "He's a brave man, brings all his powers to bear on a single thought to the radical exclusion of all others. It's his way of achieving a solution."

  Bravery, I thought, is a very good qua
lity and not so rare in men as some believed. Yet like all good things, bravery possessed the hidden power to destroy, and when that ability was taunted, the consequences were often labeled foolhardiness.

  Sunny stood. "Well, Rose should be home. If one of you kind gentlemen would give me a ride, I'll help her put up the groceries. Let me know about Miss Galore. God, I'll have to change her name if she comes to work for me."

  "I'm going to stay with you and Rose for the rest of the day," Hebrone said. "You can ride with me." He looked in my direction. "What we gonna do about that Cessna 182?"

  "Tell Rose I'll come for dinner. We'll make a decision about VonHorner then."

  When they left, I felt something cold and soulless enter me like another being. I knew it would not leave, but stay, existing among the others until we found Hadley Welch. Its arrival frightened me. B.W. suddenly jumped and ran for the door, meowing to be let out.

  ***

  After Hebrone and Sunny left, I took another shower, the second of the day. Maybe I was trying to wash away that evil feeling, or forget this attraction to Miss Pfeiffer. Vigorously drying with a towel, I repeated my mantra – never get involved with a client, never get involved with a client.

  When I dressed and was ready to leave for Rose's house, B.W. was nowhere to be found. This was not good for two reasons. One, I didn't want him wandering the farm after dark – the coyote packs were roaming. Two, it would break my heart to return and find him hanging dead from the door. It would not be murder that I would commit as revenge, but something much worse.

  Just as I was about to call Rose and tell her that I would not be coming for dinner, B.W. appeared at the south end of the porch dragging a huge rat, still alive and rather irritated at being treated with such indignity. B.W. growled at me, but reluctantly released the rat, which made a hasty retreat back into the woods.

  "One of these days, old boy, you are going to grab a hold of something that's going to kick your ass."

  He looked at me with yellowed eyes as if to say, “Well, it hasn't happened yet."

  Rose met me at the door. "I heard you invited yourself to eat. I'm just glad we had plenty prepared."

  "You want me to leave?"

  "Christ, your sense of humor is on par with a firing squad. Give me that cat and get in here."

  "Rose, sometimes you are as cold as the ashes of love."

  "What do you know about love? You have about as much chance of succeeding at love as a one legged man at a rat stomp."

  "I've always been afraid that when I found love I would be afraid."

  "That doesn't make sense. Get in here. Hebrone's in the living room. Supper will be on the table in a little while."

  "Supper?"

  "That's what we call it in the country, supper. You don't have to eat it if you don't want too."

  Hebrone had a grin on his face, amused at our banter. "You two should get married."

  Ignoring his statement, I said, “Why would VonHorner be flying around my back eighty? You think he knows where Hadley Welch crashed and wanted to see if any debris remains visible?"

  "I'm sure they searched that area twenty-five years ago."

  "Maybe we should get a team together and walk it out, see if we can find anything?"

  "It's worth a shot."

  "Sheriff Adams might loan us some deputies and jail trustees. If we get enough people, it won't take half a day. I'll call him in the morning."

  Rose announced that it was time to eat.

  Fried chicken, rice and gravy, and speckled butter beans. Call it supper, dinner, whatever you want, but it was good eating.

  "I can understand why my mother and father wanted a home in this part of the country. The food, the people, everything is so relaxed. I may just divest myself of all my holdings and build a house here. Will you sell me some land, Rose?"

  "We will find you all the land you need."

  "What about it, Jay? Would you want me as a neighbor?"

  "Anyone as pretty as you would be welcome."

  "Why that's kind of you to say. If I didn't know better, I'd say you were flirting."

  "You'd be wrong."

  "Coffee in the living room," Rose announced.

  When we were seated, Sunny said, “We saw the airplane circling. Do we know who it was or why it was so low?"

  "It was VonHorner. Hebrone and I talked about getting some people together and walking over my back eighty, see if we could find anything."

  "We'll go," Rose volunteered. "But they combed that whole area pretty good back in eighty-five."

  "If it was VonHorner in the little airplane, he wasn't just sightseeing, he was looking for something. If there's anything in those woods back there, I want to find it."

  "Let us know," Rose said.

  "We'll get organized in the next couple of days and walk it out. In the meantime, Sheriff Adams is running checks on some people of interest, and we intend to talk to Ralph Henderson when he comes back into town, if he comes back. He may be lying low for awhile."

  Taking B.W., I drove back to the cottage, planning on a good night's rest. I did not know how wrong that hope would be, had no way of knowing there were beasts lurking in the night.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The bed moved ever so slightly. Opening my eyes, the green numbers on the clock glowed precisely two forty-seven a.m. B.W. must have jumped up beside me. He was allowed to do so when it thundered or lightning flashed. He was afraid of the storms. Closing my eyes, sleep cloaked my brain, then it dawned on me that my magnum was not on the table next to the clock and the weather was perfect. Slowly, I turned over and could see the gray hair and Cheshire grin – Hebrone.

  "You better come out back."

  He lay my magnum on the bed and disappeared into the dark. Am I dreaming, or is this real? Blinking, I knew that Hebrone was no apparition.

  Walking into the kitchen, I could see lights in the rear of the cottage. The back door stood open. A pickup truck, its engine shut off, headlights on, was the source of the illumination. Twenty yards from the cottage, a post oak stood among several other oaks, sweetgum, and hickory. It grew at an angle and was about a foot in diameter. All of the limbs protruded southeast, its only opening to the sun. I had often thought to cut it for firewood. What I saw, now, made me wish that I had cut it.

  A man stood under the post oak, outlined in the headlights of the truck. He was a giant, bushy-headed, full-bearded, and barrel-chested. He was rugged and powerful looking, and seemed as deadly as the country that surrounded him. His shirt was torn from his torso and hung in shreds from his waist. Sweat poured down his body, yet it was cool enough that our breath was visible. He was sweating because there was a noose around his neck, looped across a limb of the crooked post oak, and his hands were tied behind him. The rope was pulled tight enough that the man stood on his toes. Shack Runnels held the tension on the rope.

  Walking up beside Hebrone, I asked, “Ralph Henderson?"

  "Shack caught him entering Rose's house. Woke me after the fact. He wants to get the information we need, then kill him."

  "Jesus, Hebrone, we can't…"

  "Let it play out. We'll see."

  "This is not your decision."

  Hebrone stared straight ahead. "No, and it's not yours. It's Shacks."

  Looking at my watch, I saw that it was now three a.m., the darkest hour, too late to be called night, too early to be called morning. The hour when dreams become reality and reality is dreamlike.

  Moving closer, I could see Henderson's eyes had that surprised look the dead often have, a look of being betrayed, disappointed. He had a face like an eight-pound hammer and it appeared that the sun, the wind, and alcohol had road-mapped the reality of a hard life into it. He had round black eyes, a pug nose, and a small mouth. The mouth had a smirk, showing ugly teeth, his breathing an emphysemic rasp. There was the aroma of an unwashed body, made more pungent by a distinctly fecal odor.

  A great ugliness awes no less than a great beauty, and I w
as awed at this spectacle under an oak tree behind my cottage. My mind strayed from this sight, and so did my eyes, drifting to the darkness of the early morning, then to the stars and the vastness of space far out to where we have no knowledge. My eyes stayed there, but my mind went back to the man hanging from the tree.

  Shack tied the rope off on a small hickory tree, that stood straight and tall and unblemished, and I thought that it would make a good baseball bat, but would be a shame to cut for that purpose. Walking over to me, I could see Shack's face was completely alive, controlled but full of dangerous energy, like a grizzly bear disturbed on a kill. Sudden anger jerked his face apart. He turned toward me, and I saw the depth of his pain and knew that his world had shrunk to the dark, pulsing nucleus of a man hanging by his neck from a rope. A man he once regarded as a friend. All that mattered to him before no longer mattered at the moment. I heard his words, fraught with a desperate, festering rage, “I have to kill him. He was trying to gain entry to Rose's. The son-of-a-bitch was going to kill her like he promised in his note. And probably Sunny, too. He is going to tell us everything we want to know, then he has to die."

  "Shack…"

  "He threatened you and he's gonna tell us who hired him. He has to die like that coyote. It's the only kind of revenge I want." He said it so violently his jaw trembled.

  "We need the information, Shack, but let's think it through."

  "Yeah, let's think it through." His laugh was a wetness wrapped around his anger. "Hebrone, get me that trace chain out of the back of my truck."

  Hebrone pulled the twenty-foot length of chain from the truck and brought it to Shack. He doubled it up and walked to where Henderson balanced on his toes. "Who hired you, Ralph?"

  Henderson spit at Shack.

  The sound of the chain hitting flesh was different from what I thought it would be. There was no metallic clink, only a dull thump. Again and again, thump, thump. Shack asking after each hit, “Who hired you?"