by Donn Taylor
Reva’s voice saddened. “When she got married, I thought everything would work out. But her husband caught on that he wasn’t measuring up, so he started drinking. The crux came when he found one of her storybooks where she’d imagined an affair with a friend of theirs. He grabbed a handful of her books, moved out, and filed for divorce. He was decent about it—just called it incompatibility and didn’t try to embarrass her. But he kept the books.”
“Where is he now?” Mara asked, her voice still a whisper.
“Lord knows,” Reva said. “Maybe ten years ago he had a job here in town. But his drinking kept putting him in and out of rehab, and I lost track of him.”
Mara still spoke in a whisper. “Do you still have any of her storybooks?”
Reva’s eyes squinted as if she could still see. “I burned them all when she went off to college. If I’d died of a heart attack or something, some stranger would have poked through those and poor Mitra never would have lived it down. I couldn’t let that happen to her.”
Mara spoke now in a normal voice. “One of her storybooks has gotten some people in trouble, accused of things they didn’t do. Would you be willing to tell their employer what you’ve just told us?”
Reva turned her face to the wall and said nothing. The silence grew, as did my apprehension that my job and my future might hang on the slender thread of her decision.
She spoke more to herself than to us. “That policeman came around asking questions, but I didn’t tell him anything. I couldn’t do that to Mitra.”
“What did the policeman look like?” I asked.
“You’re asking me for a description?” she said, turning back from the wall. “With my half-blind eyes? All I can tell you is that he was a big fellow with a voice to match.”
“A harsh voice?” I asked. That could be Staggart.
“A strong voice,” she said. “A big man with a strong voice.”
There was no use pursuing that further. I threw Mara a shrug, and she took over again. Recording or no recording, we both knew our reputations and our futures might hang on Reva’s decision. Dean-Dean would undoubtedly claim this recording was faked. But neither he nor anyone could deny Reva’s direct personal testimony.
Mara’s soft voice repeated, “Mitra’s stories have fallen into the wrong hands and hurt some people. Would you be willing to tell their employer what you’ve told us?”
Reva turned her face back to the wall. “I couldn’t do that to Mitra. I couldn’t spoil her memory like that.”
A slight edge crept into Mara’s voice. “You’d let Mitra’s make-believe world ruin the lives of real people in the real world?”
“Make-believe is make-believe,” Reva murmured. “People ought to know that. I’m tired now, you’ll have to go. And will you please tell those people to stop burning those stinking tires?”
Mara and I looked at each other in despair. We’d learned the secret of Mitra’s journal, but we’d been denied Reva’s testimony. Proving our innocence now depended on Dean-Dean’s crediting Mara’s recording. We gathered our overcoats and headed back down the hall.
Outside, my anxiety took over, and I asked, “Did you actually record all that?”
“I think so.” Mara took the phone from her pocket. “Oh, no!” Consternation possessed her face. “My phone is dead. I don’t think I got any of it.”
We looked at each other in horror.
From somewhere in the Northwest came the rumble of distant thunder.
CHAPTER 31
Rain fell steadily as we parked in front of Ralph Dornberg’s office. A gusty wind drove it in small whiplashes across the puddled pavement. The weather formed the perfect mirror for our dampened spirits. I kept cursing myself for losing my voice recorder. I knew Mara was beating herself up for letting her battery go dead and for not bringing her recharge equipment for the car. But we weren’t interviewing Dornberg about Mitra’s journals, so recording him didn’t seem to matter.
The corner unit of the little strip center that hosted Dornberg’s office sported a faded “For Lease” sign that looked old enough to draw Social Security. Next door stood a pizza place manned by a lone teenager playing a video game. A sign on the third unit proclaimed “Ralph Dornberg, Financial Consultant.” Its display windows were covered inside with aluminum foil up to about six inches from the top. Lights showed through the uncovered strip. The fourth unit bore a sign that read “Oncology Clinic: J. Carson Oma, M.D.” The final unit flaunted a neon sign blinking out the word “Nails.”
“Maybe I won’t have to sell used cars,” I said. “I could open a hammer shop.”
“A what?” Mara gave me a querulous look.
“A hammer shop,” I repeated. “Every place I go, I find a shop advertising nails. If they’re that much in demand, there ought to be a market for hammers.”
Mara’s voice remained soft. “Press, you idiot, they’re talking about fingernails.”
“We learn something every day,” I said.
Heaven knows we needed that levity. I especially needed it, for my body kept reminding me of the beating it had taken in the wreck.
“Come on, Cupcake,” Mara said. “Let’s get this over with.”
She opened her door and skipped through the rain onto the relatively dry sidewalk beneath an overhang. I tried to follow suit, but my aching joints slowed me down, and I got a good sprinkling of rain on my hat and overcoat. As I looked back at the rain, a familiar-looking dark car cruised by on the street. Without knocking, we opened Dornberg’s door and went in.
We’d seen the teener next door playing a video game. Dornberg reflected a generational difference by propping his feet on his desk and reading a magazine. I caught a glimpse of a half-clad female on the cover before he dropped it out of sight. He was a bit slower getting his feet off the desk. The furniture consisted of that desk and chair plus three hardwood straight chairs, all looking like relics from a furniture rental.
Dornberg’s appearance contrasted sharply with his drab office. Well into his sixties, he showed a carefully-combed head of gray hair above a ruddy complexion. He wore a multi-colored silk shirt with a healthy crop of gray chest hair showing at the collar. An overcoat hanging on a nearby coat rack must have cost more than five hundred.
He greeted us with light blue eyes that glittered. “Welcome to Dornberg’s Consulting Services,” he said. “How can I help you?”
“We wanted to talk to you about aviation,” I said.
The blue eyes flickered. “Airline stocks aren’t doing well right now. You’d do well to put your money elsewhere.” He made a face. “Phew! Till you opened the door I didn’t realize how bad it smelled outside. I thought they’d closed that feed lot.”
Apparently I still carried my olfactory halo.
“Actually,” Mara put in, “we want to talk to you about one particular airplane—the one that Jerry Vaughan crashed in.”
Dornberg’s eyes held steady. “He cashed in, all right. Wing came off when he pulled out of a loop.”
Mara didn’t acknowledge the pun. “Mr. Dornberg, we’re interested in why the wing came off.”
That should have drawn some kind of reaction, but Dornberg answered as if reading from a script.
“The accident board said the wing was improperly installed,” he said. “No matter how careful you are in aviation, you’re still a fugitive from the law of averages.”
I tried another tack. “Have you always been a financial consultant?”
Another scripted answer. “I owned several businesses around here, but they were getting to be too much work. A couple of years ago I sold them all and started this financial consulting business. It keeps me busy and out of trouble.”
Busy reading girly magazines, I thought. But I said, “How long had you and the others been building your own airplanes?”
He stretched and leaned back. “Oh, this was our third. We’d had good luck with the other two. Eventually, someone would make us an offer too good to refuse. We lik
ed this one better than the others, and I doubt we’d have parted with it for any price.” He gave a half-laugh. “Maybe we should have.”
“Do you remember who put the wings on it?” I asked.
He wrinkled his nose. “They ought to close that feed lot. It stinks up the whole town. Well, we all had a hand in putting the wings on—under Jerry’s supervision, of course. He was the one with the background in aeronautical engineering.”
I refused to let go. “Could anyone have tampered with the wings after they were installed?”
“It’s possible.” Dornberg’s tone gave nothing away. “The accident board looked into that. Any one of us could have sabotaged the aircraft. But if it was sabotaged, they couldn’t tell when it was done. We’d all flown the aircraft in the last couple of weeks. I flew it myself the day before the crash.”
“But you didn’t do aerobatics,” Mara said.
Dornberg squinted. “Only Jerry did aerobatics. But what’s your interest in this? Are you friends of Jerry’s?”
“Of Mitra Fortier,” I said. “We’re following up where she left off.”
Dornberg nodded. “She talked to me a couple of weeks ago. I told her the same things I’m telling you. Nice lady. I was sorry to learn of her death.”
I changed tactics again. “Do you have any connection to an El Paso company named Dustin Industries, Incorporated?”
He shook his head. “I never heard of it.”
“Do you own stock in Overton Technologies or any of Gordon Samstag’s companies?”
“I used to, but I unloaded.” Dornberg grinned. “Overton was flying higher than the hard facts would justify. I had a few hundred shares in Samstag’s Pegasus Electronics, but I dumped them when that rocket failed. Good thing, too. That stock’s down thirty percent or more.”
He stood up, indicating the interview was over. “If you want to know more about that airplane, go talk to Cocky Joe. He’s the night watchman at the airport.”
“Night watchman?” Mara asked. “I thought an airport would have more security than that.”
“It’s a small airport,” Dornberg said. “Nobody much but crop dusters used it till the new industries moved in. They lengthened one runway to accept corporate jets, but they bring their own security when they’re here. I guess Cocky Joe would call the police if anything ever happened, but it never has.”
“Is he there all the time?” I asked.
“He lives in a little room in the hangar.” Dornberg began moving us toward the door. “Joe is paid to watch at night, but he gets off at eight in the morning. By then, some of the regulars have arrived and started work. The regulars all know each other and would ask questions if a stranger monkeyed with one of the aircraft.”
“What is Cocky Joe’s full name?” I asked
Dornberg shrugged one shoulder. “I never heard anything but ‘Cocky Joe.’”
By this time we were at the door.
“Thank you for the information, Mr. Dornberg,” Mara said.
He showed her a hearty grin. “Don’t mention it.” The grin vanished. “Look, if somebody did sabotage Jerry’s airplane, it’s not safe for you two to go poking into it.”
“Who do you think would make us unsafe?” I asked.
“Whoever killed Jerry,” he said. “If anyone did.”
“Thanks for the warning,” I said.
The grin returned. “No extra charge. Maybe you should save talking to Cocky Joe for another day. Bad weather’s coming in, and you’d be smart to get home before it hits Overton City.”
Hand on the door, he sniffed and turned up his nose. “We really have to do something about that feed lot.”
He shut the door, effectively pushing us out onto the windswept sidewalk. The door closed on more than his office. It closed on another avenue of inquiry without our learning anything helpful.
CHAPTER 32
The rain continued its steady fall with the wind whipping it across the puddles. Our gray afternoon subsided into night without benefit of sunset. The temperature plummeted, presaging an overnight freeze. I shivered once in spite of overcoat and gloves.
We made it into the car without taking too much rain in with us.
Mara cranked the engine and turned the heater to high. “Well,” she said, “we can scoot back to Overton City before the roads ice over, or we can see what ‘Cocky Joe’ has to say.”
“Find Cocky Joe,” I said. “We couldn’t accomplish anything in Overton City.”
Mara gave me a straight look. “Then we’ll have to stay overnight. You know what the Blatant Beast will do with that.”
“We’re already bitten,” I said. “What more can they accuse us of?”
Her lips quirked into a half smile. “They’ll think of something. Meanwhile, let’s find some food.”
We bypassed the fast food places on the main highway and found an old-style café downtown. We parked beside two pickup trucks and scrambled up under the café’s awning without getting drenched. A dark car drove by but did not stop. Inside, two middle-aged men wearing tractor caps sat at a counter and jollied with a brassy waitress of equal age. Mara and I took a table on the opposite side of the room.
“Be on your good behavior, Cupcake,” Mara said. “You remember what happened in Insburg.”
That was where I’d wised off to a waitress who named me Cupcake.
The waitress delivered menus, then looked at me and sniffed. “Are you one of them workers out at the rendering plant? I thought they only burned carcasses on Saturdays.”
“We’re ahead of schedule this week,” I said.
Mara gave me a cold-steel glance.
The waitress was not to be denied. “Or maybe you’re one of them illegal aliens they brung in from Canada or Mexico.”
“I’m actually a space alien from the planet Pluto,” I said.
The waitress placed one hand on her hip. “There ain’t no human life out there any further than Mars.”
“Sometimes I exaggerate,” I said.
Mara forestalled further byplay by ordering a cheeseburger and Coke. I dittoed the cheeseburger but took a chance on the coffee.
“You’ll be lucky if she doesn’t poison you,” Mara said when the waitress had departed.
“Don’t prompt her,” I said.
Our cheeseburgers proved to be old-fashioned delicious. Apparently, the diet police hadn’t penetrated this far into the hinterlands. Silently, I awarded a posthumous decoration to the cow.
“What do you make of Reva’s story?” Mara asked.
“It’s hard to match that with the Mitra Fortier I knew,” I said.
Mara frowned. “But aren’t there cases where people invented fantasies to create a part of life that the world of fact didn’t satisfy?”
“Some,” I said. “In Victorian England, Lady Harriet Mordaunt told her husband she’d committed adultery with the Prince of Wales. The scandal never made it to divorce court because she was declared insane. She’d imagined the whole thing.”
“Do you think Mitra was insane?”
“A week ago, I’d have said completely sane. But now I remember those periods of depression. After them, she’d be as right as ever.”
“It sounds like a double life,” Mara said. “As if she worked efficiently in public and then went home to those fantasies about being loved.”
“Sometimes I think the Renaissance people were on target,” I said. “They thought the faculty called Imagination colored our perception of the real world so that we never got anything exactly right, that our ideas of reality always had some element of fantasy in them.”
Mara showed a wistful smile. “How about us? I wasted years in the fantasy world of Wicca until last fall when I faced up to the reality of evil.”
I could have mentioned the idea she still held, that she could fight everything through on her own. But I thought better of it.
“And how about you?” she asked. “You keep saying you ‘just teach history,’ but you know very well you�
��re capable of more than that.”
“Like what?”
Her eyes sparkled. “Like burglary, for one thing.” The light faded from her eyes. “And that wasn’t exactly history you were teaching Brill Drisko and Cynthia Starlington.”
“I thought they were teaching me,” I said.
She arched one eyebrow. “Any old fantasy will do …”
“Let’s go find Cocky Joe,” I said.
The waitress must have briefed the men in tractor caps on my interplanetary origins, for they took in every detail as I paid the check.
“Cash or credit?” she asked, studying me as if I had two heads. “Credit.” I handed her my card. “If you run it through backwards, will the café pay me?”
“It don’t work that way here,” she said.
“It does on Mars,” I said. “Try it next time you visit.”
We completed the transaction in silence.
In the car, Mara said, “Cupcake, someday someone is going to take your measure but good.”
Then she laughed, and I joined her. We laughed with the spontaneous, uncontrolled laughter we’d shared after we defeated Dean-Dean’s petty plot about our contracts. The laughter purged the tension from our systems.
“Let’s go find Cocky Joe,” Mara said. “Since we’re only talking about the aircraft thing, I don’t guess it matters that we can’t record.”
A pair of headlights followed us but went straight past when we turned onto the airfield road. We parked beside the lone hangar and made a dash through the lone doorway. Under the dim interior lights we viewed six small aircraft parked facing great closed doors that in better weather would open onto a taxiway.
A scratchy male voice hailed us. “What’s your business here?”
The speaker was a small, unshaven man with unkempt dirty-blond hair. He wore blue jeans and a high-collared olive-drab jacket that emphasized the slump of his shoulders. As he advanced with a shuffling gait, I realized he was the stranger I’d seen at Mitra’s memorial service.
“What do you want here?” the scratchy voice repeated.