Willy handed over the photos he had printed out at the office for Ron to study under the bright midday sun. He looked at Ken Rhodes and raised a questioning brow. It was obvious from the photos that the figure wasn’t a “supposed” body at all. The prints removed all doubt.
“How did you get these shots?” Ron asked Willy.
Willy raised one finger and pointed up to the cloudless blue sky.
“We were up in a Cessna covering a story on the flight school,” I volunteered. “Willy took them while we were landing.”
The four men laid out the photos on the hood of the county sedan and argued about the approximate location of the body. I had nothing to offer, as my attention had been focused on Willy at the time, in order to avoid looking down during the landing. I glanced at the building and noticed Hank Barber peering out at us from the snack bar window. The mechanic, Drake Tuttle, stood beside him.
I pulled out my notebook and marched inside the structure, hoping the men could give me a little information.
“Hi guys,” I said, taking a seat in the small snack bar. “Care to join me?”
The two men shuffled over and sat down at the table.
“What’s going on out there?” Hank asked. “Why are the cops here? And more reporters? Who’s that other guy in the suit?”
“He’s with the county prosecutor’s office,” I told him. “He’s an investigator.”
“An investigator?” Drake asked. “Like a detective?”
I nodded.
Hank Barber looked perplexed. “Why are they here? We haven’t broken any laws, have we?”
“Mr. Barber,” I began, “Hank. The photographer thought he saw something in the field when he was taking some aerial shots during our landing. When we got back to the office and reviewed the photos, we realized it was a body.”
“A body,” the pilot muttered.
“You mean a human body?” Drake asked. “Like a dead person?”
“Most likely,” I told him.
The three of us turned to look out the window. An ambulance pulled into the lot and came to a stop near O’Reilly’s black-and-white squad car. Another squad car followed. Ron Haver and James O’Reilly took one of Willy’s photos and began a slow walk east into the field.
“Man, oh man!” Drake said. “This is getting so weird! There’s a lot of freaky stuff going on in the Harbor lately. I always thought this was such a nice, quiet place to live. A body. A real, live, dead body. ”
I decided not to point out the obvious error in his last comment. “The Harbor seems to be getting more exciting every day. Do you guys mind answering some questions?”
Both men shrugged. I could tell they were upset, even if they tried not to show it. Drake, in particular, seemed rattled.
“Have either of you noticed anything usual going on around here in the last few days?” I asked.
“Nothing,” Hank said. “The only thing out of the ordinary is you and your photographer coming out to do a story.”
Drake shook his head. “It’s been really quiet around here, especially since school started a couple of weeks ago. Nothing. No break-ins. No crank calls. Nothing other than some lessons here and there—all adults. Those were all scheduled and went as smooth as silk, right Hank?”
Hank nodded.
“There were no strangers hanging around? Did anyone file an unusual flight plan, or do you remember any weird pilots landing here that would have raised suspicion?” I asked.
“Just the usual guys coming in to take their planes up,” Hank said. “We know them all. Recreational flights for most of them—flying over their houses or doing the scenic thing over the ocean.”
“Sue Jeffries took her Skipper down to Atlantic City last weekend,” Drake told me. “She usually drives down, but she said she didn’t feel like fighting the parkway traffic. She came back early Monday afternoon. She hit three thousand playing craps.”
“I’m guessing Skipper is her boyfriend?” I asked.
Drake shook his head. “A Beech Skipper 77. It’s a sweet little single-engine beauty—a pleasure to fly. She let me take it up once. I love that plane.”
I wondered what kind of adventuress flew her own plane to AC, then flew back home a few days later with a small fortune in winnings. As it had over the last several months, envy reared its ugly head at me. I really needed a life and enough sense to get my finances in order so I could actually live one. I also wondered how much flying Drake Tuttle did. He never mentioned he was a pilot.
“You have a pilot’s license, Drake?” I asked.
“Of course I do. I got into the mechanics of it because I fly. Most pilots service and maintain their own planes. Why do you ask?”
“I’m just curious,” I said, writing small notes to myself that would never make it into a story. “Do you own any of the planes here, Drake?”
“A Cessna 150. You know, one of those small ones. I’d love another one, but you wouldn’t believe how much they set you back.”
A vivid imagination wasn’t necessary to know flying could be an expensive hobby, one not for a woman who had trouble paying her electric bill at the end of the month.
“Do either of you guys live around here?” I asked.
“A few miles away—both of us,” Hank told me.
“So what happens here at night?”
Drake laughed. “Nothing much. It’s not like we’re Teterboro or anything. They’re owned and operated by the Port Authority. They handle all kinds of traffic. We’re a mom-and-pop operation by comparison—privately owned.”
“Traffic?” I asked.
“Planes coming and going,” Drake explained.
“Do you have runway lights?” I asked.
“Sure, but you have to pre-arrange for them late at night. Same with the beacon,” Hank informed me.
I turned my attention to Drake. “You said the airport is privately owned. Who’s the owner?”
“Hank owns the place.”
I started a scenario in my head about the body in the field. “And this place is more or less closed late nights …”
“Unless someone makes prior arrangements,” Hank repeated.
“How about cars?”
“What about them?” Drake asked.
“Could anyone just drive up onto the property after hours?”
“Sure. There’s no reason to though, unless they made a wrong turn off the highway or … oh, I get it. You mean, like, murder someone here, or maybe bring a body here and dump it in the field after dark?” Hank asked.
“Exactly.”
The two men looked at each other. “I guess they could,” Drake said. “I mean, I never really thought about it.”
“Because it never came up before,” Hank added.
I closed my notebook and slipped it back in my purse. “The interview on those flying lessons will have to wait a while longer, Hank. For what it’s worth, once the story about the body in your field hits the papers, I doubt your phone will be ringing off the hook with requests for flying lessons anyway.”
“Guess not,” Hank said, sounding a little disgusted. “I could have used the business, though, what with the lousy economy and all. Maybe it’ll pick up once this whole thing blows over.”
I went outside to join Willy and Ken. Drake and Hank followed me out of the terminal, but hung back near the entrance.
“Now what?” I asked Ken.
“Now we wait.”
After a while, a county hearse pulled into the parking lot and the ambulance left. A few minutes later, the police photographer’s van drove in. A young woman stepped out, reached across the driver’s seat, and brought out two cameras.
Officer O’Reilly emerged from the field and waved to the photographer. She slung the cameras around her neck and went to join him.
“They must have found something,” I told Willy. “I guess your pictures were right on target.”
“Can you believe this?” Willy said. “I actually spotted a body from all the way u
p in the sky. We’ll have to stay right here. I’ll need to get some shots when they bring the body out.”
“It’ll take time,” Ken told us. “Do they serve anything like food inside there?”
“There’s a small snack bar. I’m guessing sandwiches and coffee—things like that,” I said.
“We might as well get something while we’re waiting.”
Three cups of coffee, two bathroom pit stops, a handful of corn chips, and a package of M&M’s later, I finally watched two attendants from the medical examiner’s office begin moving our way. They wheeled a stretcher between them. Atop the stretcher was a white body bag—which confirmed the person in the field was, indeed, dead and not simply injured and unable to move. Willy took a few shots, as well as some long-range photos of the general area where the body had been found.
“Wait a sec!” called an officer. The attendants halted while he jogged toward them carrying an evidence bag.
“Almost missed this,” he said and placed the clear plastic bag on top of the body.
Inside was a woman’s brown sandal.
Hank Barber, who had been waiting on the walkway near the airport’s double doors with Drake Tuttle, let out a scream.
“No! God, no! Oh my God! I think that’s my wife!”
8
The body had appeared to be female, judging from the heel on the victim’s sandal—though I supposed a flamboyant male might consider the style. I retrieved my notebook from my bag and went straight to Ron Haver.
“No, Colleen. She’s definitely a woman,” Haver said. “That much I do know.”
“Do you think it’s Hank Barber’s wife?” I asked him.
He looked at me and then back to Hank. “Maybe, we’ll see.”
The coroner’s people slipped the stretcher inside the hearse and drove away. A very pale-looking Hank got in the back of a cruiser, which pulled out to follow them, leaving the rest of us behind in the parking lot to speculate.
“Drake Tuttle said Hank’s wife left him. How long do you suppose she’s been out there, Ron?”
Ron Haver looked uncomfortable with the question. I knew he wouldn’t give up too much information, especially to a crime columnist who also happened to be his girlfriend’s sister. But we both knew he would have to talk to somebody from the newspaper sooner or later. I thought it might as well be sooner, and if he was going to talk to anyone, it was going to be me.
“I’d rather not gross you out, so I won’t describe what that poor woman looked like. We’ll use her clothing and accessories to identify her temporarily, then confirm it with DNA.”
The body was unidentifiable. Something really bad had happened to her; that much was certain. “Was she beaten?”
“Possibly,” he said.
I stopped writing and looked up at him. “What does that mean?”
“It means that for the moment, we can’t say for certain how the woman sustained those horrific injuries.”
It felt like pulling teeth. “Okay, was she shot, stabbed, choked, pummeled, or what? Did it look like she died of starvation? You must have some idea.”
Haver shrugged. I thought about it for just a moment. An almost unspeakable thought came into my head. I knew Ron Haver wouldn’t come right out and say it. I waved to Ken Rhodes and motioned for him to join us.
“What?” he asked me.
“I just wanted you to hear this. I was asking Ron here how he thought the woman died. He’s been hedging, of course, dancing around it. I’ll say it if nobody else will. Does this woman look like she got smushed on the ground because she fell from a plane?”
Ron rolled his eyes. “For God’s sake, Colleen! Give me a break!”
I turned to Ken. “She was tossed,” I told him.
“I didn’t say she was tossed, and don’t you dare print it,” Haver said.
This time Ken spoke up. “We’re all thinking it, aren’t we?”
“At this point, it’s up to the medical examiner to determine how the woman died. The best we can do today is to continue to search the field for evidence.”
“I’m willing to bet you didn’t find any footprints out there,” Ken told him before walking away to join Willy.
Ron went to consult with Officer O’Reilly, leaving me standing there with my pen hovering above my notepad. I closed it and shoved it back inside my pocketbook.
* * *
I arrived home and immediately ran upstairs to rip off my straitjacket-tight bra and change into shorts and a T-shirt. The kids came home from school around three thirty, talking and laughing like old chums. I knew something was up and went into the den to investigate.
“Were you there?” Bobby asked eagerly.
He was so cute when he got excited, though I supposed no nine-year-old boy wanted to be thought of as cute, especially by his mother. I ruffled his dark, Neil-like hair and put on a dumb expression.
“What do you mean, Bobby? Where?”
Sara shook her head. “And you call me an actress! You covered that story on those flying lessons today, didn’t you, Mom? I heard they found a body in the field by the airport.”
Right. The flying lessons story. It had happened so early in the day that it felt like a lifetime ago since we examined Willy’s photos of the body in the field. “I was there,” I admitted.
The kids high-fived each other.
“They’re taking bets in school,” Sara informed me. “A few of us were thinking you’ll find one corpse every month. I personally think it’s over, but you never know. So far, Christian Grasso is betting you’ll find two more stiffs before the year is out! He says people are dropping like flies in Tranquil Harbor.”
I didn’t bother to hide my shock. “My Lord, Sara, you started a body pool? You sound like a gangster! And in front of your little brother!”
“I’m getting really popular with all your drama, Mom. Chris actually knows I’m alive,” she said with huge, jolly grin. “Between that and getting my learner’s permit, I’m gonna need an iPhone!”
“What?”
“My phone’s pitiful. I can’t even get breaking news or anything on it. I really need something that’s more up-to-date.”
“Can I have her old phone?” Bobby asked. “Please?”
Driving permits and iPhones and my baby, only nine, begging for his sister’s hand-me-down cell phone. My brain was doing pirouettes inside my skull.
“Everyone out of the den!” I ordered my darling children. “Get upstairs and start your homework. I have to write up this column and get it in by tomorrow. I don’t need these distractions.”
I heard the stampede up the stairs and the vibrating thumps of two slamming doors. I turned on my computer and opened the Word program. The blank page wasn’t enough to inspire me. I found my purse and pulled out my notes. I thought if I read them over a few times, I’d figure out an opening for the story that didn’t read like the prologue from a horror novel.
Town Crier staff photographer Willy Rojas made an interesting discovery while on assignment early Wednesday morning …
I liked the sound of it, though the use of interesting seemed a little too lighthearted for such terrible news. I thought gruesome would be a better fit but considered Ken Rhodes, who would edit the column himself. He would think the word was too gothic and sensationalizing for the story. I changed interesting to grisly, which sounded more on the serious side, but not quite as shocking.
I kept writing, self-editing in my head what would and wouldn’t be acceptable to the Crier’s readers. It turned out to be a tricky column to write. I couldn’t say too much, yet I didn’t want to say too little. I did manage to slip in Ron Haver’s brief comments about waiting until the medical examiner determined the cause of the woman’s death, but made no mention of Hank Barber’s outburst when he realized the woman might be his wife.
I finished the story around five o’clock and saved the file. My stomach rumbled, having had only minor light snacks for lunch at the airport. The kids would be wandering do
wnstairs to find out about dinner. Cooking was never my thing, and there weren’t any cold cuts in the house. My mother, of course, would gladly feed us, but I didn’t want to spend the entire night battling indigestion.
Pizza, I thought. It had been at least a week since we had it. I checked my wallet and found some cash and decided I would go pick it up myself rather than give the delivery guy a decent tip. This had been my new, meager effort to live within my means. “I’m going to Vincenzo’s to pick up a pie,” I called upstairs.
Doors opened and the kids emerged from their bedrooms. Sara leaned over the railing. “Do we have lettuce?” she asked.
“In the fridge. And carrots and celery and a couple of tomatoes,” I told her, knowing she might just be able to stand one slice of pizza, as long as she had her beloved green food to accompany it.
“How about Mountain Dew?” Bobby asked.
“Sorry, baby. You can have my diet soda though, or a glass of iced tea.”
* * *
I recognized Ken Rhodes’s silver SUV the minute I pulled into Vincenzo’s lot. I didn’t want him to see me in my most laid-back clothes and considered waiting in the car until he left the pizzeria. The problem was that he would recognize the Sentra and come over to chat. Either way, I was destined to face him.
I left the car and strolled boldly into the restaurant with my head held high. I could feign confidence, even if I did look like I was ready for a day at the beach.
“Colleen!” Ken said when I stepped up to the counter. “Another takeout night?”
He sat at an empty table, waiting for his own takeout order. I gave the guy behind the counter my order and went to the table to join him. “I didn’t feel much like throwing together a last-minute meal,” I told him. “It’s been a long, ugly day.”
“Did you manage to finish your column?” he asked.
“I wrote it all as close to your specifications as possible. That wasn’t an easy one to write, you know. How many ways can you dance around describing a squashed body?”
“I hope you did better than making it sound like mashed potatoes.”
Hide nor Hair (A Jersey Girl Cozy Mystery Book 2) Page 6