by Barr, Nevada
Utterback was working with the knowledge of her superiors. The United States Forest Service had come under contempt of court a few years earlier for failing to hire women in sufficient numbers. Alice had been instructed to see it didn’t happen a second time. But though the Forest Service would presumably cover any financial losses incurred had Hammond pressed his suit, Utterback would have paid for it with her career. Every public relations disaster required a sacrificial lamb. Sometimes the lambs were innocent and sometimes not, but the chosen took the hit for the rest of the flock.
Alice Utterback didn’t strike Anna as the type to go like the proverbial lamb to the slaughter. Neither did she seem the sort to commit murder to avoid it. There was that about the woman that led one to believe she would fight her battles in the open and by Queensberry rules.
The dispatcher had less luck in her inquiry into the Belfores’ connection with Slattery Hammond. North Cascades was a big park and wild; the districts didn’t overlap socially as much as in smaller parks. Hammond had flown out of Redmond and lived in Hope, Canada. Todd was district ranger in the Cascades. The Belfores kept an apartment in Hope, where Tabby spent most of her time. Evidently Tabby was frightened by the wildness and isolation of the Cascades. Todd came to town on his weekends. There was not even a whisper of anything between Mrs. Belfore and the pilot. In a town the size of Hope, unless Tabby was infinitely more resourceful than Anna gave her credit for, there would have been gossip had the two been seen together.
Frieda had tracked down the particulars on Hammond’s marriage. They were separated and had been since the birth of their son two years before. Mrs. Hammond had filed for divorce on several occasions but never went through with it. According to what Frieda had been able to gather, she wasn’t terribly broken up over her husband’s demise. Disposing of the inconvenient remains and getting her hands on the insurance money were the goals an ungenerous co-worker attributed to her. There wasn’t as much judgment in that as the bare words implied, Frieda told Anna. The Hammond marriage had not been crafted inside the pearly gates. For the past twenty-three months, the Mrs. had a restraining order against Slattery and was fighting a dogged court battle to keep him from unsupervised visitations with his son. Near as Frieda could tell, the restraining order wasn’t a onetime, divorce-spawned action. Hammond had two previous orders filed against him in the past three years. With the exception of the last, all had been withdrawn.
“That might explain the police visits to his apartment,” Anna said.
“That would be my guess,” Frieda replied.
Anna thanked her for her work, and after a minute or two of pleasantries, she rang off.
“Anything?” she asked as Dijon let himself into the chief ranger’s office and sprawled in the straight-backed visitor’s chair by the door.
“God, I’m good,” he said cheerfully. “Rick’s got a date for the day after we get off this desert isle, and if he follows my lead, he might even get lucky.”
“He’s married,” Anna said flatly.
Dijon made an exaggerated face depicting horror. “Well, gee, that changes everything.”
So much for family values. It was a moot point anyway. As soon as their tour of duty was over, they’d all be flown out of Georgia on the first available plane.
“What I got,” Dijon said, and ticked the points off on fingers so free of calluses that Anna guessed to date he’d done little but read and write about fieldwork, “our Norman was on the mainland at the time the plane went down. Ms. Pudge saw him come off the dock in St. Marys around nine-thirty that morning. After the news of the crash reached him, he came back by helicopter. It was the chief his own self who told her he’d been on the phone with whosis in the regional office at the magical moment he was supposed to be rendezvousing with Hammond. Ms. P. said Hull told her he’d taken the call over here. It didn’t seem to bother her that he’d have to break half a dozen laws of physics to pull that off. I didn’t push her, her being blond and all. Didn’t want to tax her brain.”
Anna nodded. “Hull told Renee he’d taken the call in St. Marys.” Briefly she pondered in silence. “Lies are good,” she said at last. “Gives us something to go on.”
“SO WE WORK it out backward,” Dijon said, as they motored sedately up the lane toward the north end of the island, burning petrol and being available. “The Beechcraft is tied down in an open field in the dead center of the island for two and a half days and two nights. Sometime during that—what?—sixty-two hours, person or persons unknown sabotage it. That pretty much counts everybody in. No one that’s not in jail can account for that long a stretch of time. Anybody off the island?”
“Not that I know of,” Anna replied. “Easy enough to check.”
“Screw alibis?”
“Pretty much.”
“Witnesses?”
“Maybe,” Anna granted. “Dot and Mona live right off the end of the airstrip. They may have seen something. If they did, I can’t imagine they wouldn’t have come forward. There’s no such thing as a secret on this island. I doubt there’s a soul who doesn’t know the plane was wrecked on purpose. All we’ve managed to keep under wraps is how that sabotage was accomplished.”
“Maybe the old ladies don’t know it could’ve happened over a three-day period. Maybe they only thought about who was hanging around an hour or two before the plane took off,” Dijon said.
“Worth a stop,” Anna conceded.
Dijon whooped. “Hot on the trail,” he said, and: “Can I interview the old broads? I thought of ’em.”
Inwardly, Anna groaned. At least she thought it was inward until Dijon said: “Stop making noises like a buffalo in heat. I won’t fu—foul up. Jesus. Give me a break.”
Anna said nothing. She was cursing the buddy system a paucity of vehicles had saddled them with.
“Come on,” Dijon wheedled with transparent charm. “Old ladies respond well to godlike young men. Take you for example.”
Anna laughed. “I’ll watch and learn.”
THE MEADOW NEAR Stafford House and Dot and Mona’s cottage was set on a neck of the island not much more than a mile wide. The field was good-sized; enough space to house a dirt airstrip with room on either end to climb clear of the ubiquitous live oaks and pines. Ribbons of shell-and-sand cut the meadow from the surrounding woods. Stafford was at the eastern edge of the airstrip. An eerie spot called appropriately the Chimneys bordered it to the north where a settlement of slave cabins had been burned to the ground after the Civil War, leaving a grove of brick-and-mortar monuments: chimneys designed to harness fire and left as a testament to its final victory. To the east, pines cut off the view of the Atlantic. Left over from the days they were grown for harvest, the trees marched away in orderly rows.
Dijon and Anna emerged on the southern edge of the rough rectangle to find the place bustling—or as close to a bustle as the heat would allow. The blue truck Alice Utterback had been given was parked beside the airstrip. Three figures clad in the pale green of the United States Forest Service were creeping along, heads down, eight or ten feet apart. Along the shaded tabby wall at Stafford, a peanut gallery had formed. Guy was there, spread over his ATV like a blanket. Lynette Wagner sat on the wall, her legs dangling down near the crew boss’s shoulders. She was laughing at something Guy said. In the unguarded moment, his face glowed with pride and pleasure. His defenses down, joy stripped his worn face of years. Anna was surprised she hadn’t noticed before. He was sweet on Lynette. But then everybody was sweet on Lynette; Marshall had gotten lost in the crowd. A scrawny band of gold on the left hand was not proof against the girl’s charms. Anna made no judgment calls. Given life in the nineties, it was a wonder anyone’s marriage survived. For a brief moment, one that passed so quickly she didn’t even need to hold herself accountable for it, Anna was glad she’d been widowed. The untimely death of her beloved Zachary had left her heart broken but her dreams intact. For Anna Pigeon and Juliet Capulet, True Love would always exist.
; Oblivious of fire ants and the ubiquitous ticks, Dot and Mona sat nearby on the ground, Flicka butting first one, then the other in successful bids for attention.
“Quite a crowd,” Anna remarked as she and Dijon pulled over into the shade.
“Best show in town,” Guy drawled. “Where are the two of you headed? Al and Rick have gone north along the beach.” It wasn’t really a question. Guy had a laid-back management style. He was merely checking his troop deployment.
“We thought we’d do the same but stay inland,” Anna answered dutifully.
“Sounds good.” He loosed a stream of tobacco juice politely downwind of the ladies.
“Where’s Tabby?” Anna asked Lynette.
“At the apartment. Marty’s helping her pack up some of Todd’s stuff.”
Dijon made a face; a mime depicting comedic surprise. The helpful domestic scene struck Anna as unlikely too but she didn’t say anything.
A minute or two was ticked off by the incessant clack of cicadas.
“I wish something would break,” Guy said. “Rain, wind, fire, any damn thing. I swear ain’t nothing changed since we got here but me. I’m a damn sight older, I can tell you that.”
“You don’t want wind or rain,” Lynette teased him. “You want fire. You’re such an old fire horse, you’ll die and go to hell and think you’ve landed in heaven.”
“If it’s burnin’ I’ll put it out,” Guy bragged inoffensively, and won another laugh from the young interpretive ranger.
“Have you guys worked together before?” Anna asked on impulse.
“Three project fires,” Guy said. “Okefenokee once, and Big Cypress twice. Lynette here’s one of the best fire dispatchers in the business.”
Anna filed that bit of information away. Because they were transitory, not connected to the island in any visceral sense, she hadn’t considered anyone on fire crew to be a suspect in the sabotage of the Beechcraft. Naive: all worlds were small worlds, circling their own tiny suns and evolving their own forms of intelligent life. “Did you ever work a fire with Slattery Hammond?” she asked abruptly.
As heavy-handed as the question was, Guy didn’t seem alarmed by it. Either he was ready and had rehearsed his answer or the idea of his being connected to the man’s death was as far from his mind as it had been from Anna’s.
“I don’t think I have. He may’ve flown bird dog on some fire I worked out west. That’d make sense if he’s been in the business long. Pilots don’t mix with grunts. Liable to get those snazzy orange flight suits dirty.”
Anna sighed. If every man who’d ever fought fire or had a crush on Lynette Wagner had to be questioned, her life’s work was cut out for her. Time to narrow down the possibilities at least by one.
“Be back in a minute,” she said to no one in particular, and wandered across the dusty road toward the airstrip. The instant she stepped out of the shade, the sun slapped across her shoulders, pressing hot fabric against her skin. Plowing through the miasma of heat, eyes to the ground, Wayne and Shorty were showing the effects of it. Both had sweat pouring from beneath their caps, and Shorty’s face was a lovely heatstroke red.
Alice Utterback was as cool and unperturbed as ever. Anna fell in step beside her and stared at the ground just as if she knew what they were looking for.
“Clews, dontcha know, clews,” Alice volunteered without being asked. “The odds are a zillion to one we’ll turn up anything useful, but this has got to be the place our buddy detached the actuator rod. I figured we’d better give it the once-over on principle. Who knows, maybe the guy dropped his wallet.”
“Why do you say ‘guy’?”
“Just a figure of speech. An equal-opportunity guy.”
It wasn’t much of an opening, but Anna decided to push her way in. “Speaking of which, rumor has it Hammond had a case filed against you.”
“Among others.”
Silence, embarrassed on Anna’s part, fell between them. “Could it have ruined your career?” she asked finally.
Alice stopped and looked up. The patch on her lower lip that she’d been fingering during the investigation of the wreck had blossomed into the promised cold sore. “Probably the sun,” she said, as if she felt Anna’s eyes on the unsightly blister. “It tends to bring the horrid things out.” Mirrored aviator’s glasses obscured Utterback’s eyes, and Anna was uncomfortably aware she could be staring at her, reading her face.
“Hammond ruin my career?” Utterback said thoughtfully. “He’d’ve had to hurry. I retire next January. I’ve got a ranch to run. Could he have left a bad taste in my mouth if he’d gotten as ugly as I think he had the potential to? Sure. Nobody likes to lose. I wouldn’t wish death on anybody, but if somebody had to go, I can’t say as I’m sorry it was Slattery Hammond.
“Besides”—she smiled and returned to her survey of the sere grasses beneath their feet—“I’ve got an alibi. Me and Shorty and Wayne are the only ones who weren’t on the island when the Beech was tampered with.”
“Am I that transparent?”
“Like glass. I could have sent some flunky down to do it. There are people for that,” Alice offered.
“That would be thoughtful. You were my favorite suspect. I liked the vigilante justice of it.”
“Me kill Hammond . . . I must say there’s an appeal there. Killing a government employee has got to be less complicated than firing one. Nah,” she concluded after a moment’s deliberation. “I don’t think I could bring myself to screw up a perfectly good airplane. Were I to embark on a life of crime, I’d do it for cash, not revenge. I’d hire only women and only those of a certain age—somewhere between forty and ninety—women with sedans, credit cards, and salon-styled hair. Drugs, white slavery, gunrunning—you name it—we could take over the market. Nobody would suspect us of a thing. Least of all of having initiative and a brain in our heads.”
“It’s something to think about if the ranching doesn’t work out,” Anna said.
“Mmm. I did get some info back from the lab,” Alice went on. “Not that it sheds any light on the matter. They analyzed the contents of the plastic bags we found in the outboard fuel tanks. Now here’s a question for a trained investigator: They were sandwich bags. What do you figure they were found to have contained at one time?”
“Sandwiches?”
“On the nose.” Alice tapped the end of that feature with a stubby finger. “Traces of a substance that was probably mayonnaise and a bread crumb or two.”
“Weird.” If silence tokens agreement, Alice Utterback agreed. “Your end of the investigation is about finished,” Anna said. “How much longer will you be staying on?”
“Not much if I’m reading the signs right. I was over to the Hulls’ for dinner last night. Unspoken rule: Lesser brass has greater brass home to dinner the first and last nights of detail. Maybe he knows something I don’t. Nice wife. His kid’s a piece of work, though.”
“Alice!”
The women looked up. It was Shorty who’d hollered. Looking apoplectic from the heat, he was mopping his brow with a blue handkerchief. “We about done?”
“All done,” Alice said. “We’re beating our heads against a brick wall here.”
Alice stuck out her hand to Anna. “In case I don’t see you again,” she explained. “It’s been good working with you.”
“Likewise.” Anna shook hands briefly, feeling less ridiculous than usual performing the ritual.
“I’m sorry I didn’t kill Slattery.”
“That’s all right,” Anna said generously. “It was just a thought.”
PLUM ORCHARD WAS on their way to the north end. Anna said she needed to stop and pick up something she’d forgotten, but it was just an excuse to check on Tabby.
The widow was comfortably ensconced on the sofa under the icy blast of the air conditioner, directing the marine biologist’s efforts. Marty, dressed this time in khaki shorts and a black T-shirt, his hair flying around his face, was boxing books. Both seemed sane, sober, a
nd constructively occupied, so Anna left them to it.
“Maybe Schlessinger’s got a heart of gold inside that scrawny body,” Dijon said when they’d left.
Anna just grunted. She wasn’t in the mood to give anyone the benefit of the doubt.
“At least he wasn’t fucked up,” Dijon said, and: “Excuse my French.”
Anna nodded an acceptance of the apology.
“You sure he was last time?” Dijon asked.
“I’m sure. But what the hell? It was his day off.”
“Want to take another look at the wreck?” he asked hopefully. Anna shook her head. “Be that way,” he said. Pulling a Walkman from his yellow pack, he effectively entered another dimension.
Anna was glad to be left alone with her thoughts, though they were scarcely entertaining. Vague disquiet was the underlying theme regardless of whether she contemplated her personal life or the tangled web somebody was weaving on Cumberland Island. If the knot on her head and the slashes behind her shoulder blades were any indication, a web she’d stumbled into.
When Anna was in her teens and Molly in her early twenties, they’d been addicted to true crime stories and would while away long car trips trying to plan the perfect murder. There was always a hitch. With this one Anna couldn’t find that hitch. The murder weapon—the separated actuator rod—could have been put in place at any time over a sixty-two-hour period. The Beech was tied down in the open in a relatively secluded field. Practically everybody had opportunity. Two men were killed, so motive was stretched thin. Means was a little narrower. Not everyone was possessed of the know-how to disable a twin-engine airplane. But given enough effort, most information is available. There was pathetically little to go on. Norman Hull had called in the county sheriff and he and a local FBI agent had visited the site, but nothing had come of it. They could add nothing to what Utterback had already discovered.