Balloons Can Be Murder: The Ninth Charlie Parker Mystery

by Connie Shelton

  I left him at the bar and blatantly cut in with her. Liz Pierce greeted me with that look that meant she remembered my face but not my name.

  “How was your day?” I asked Rachael.

  “Heaven,” she said. “I never did get around to paying those bills and organizing my desk. I picked up a book I’d been meaning to read for weeks and did nothing else all day.”

  “I’ve got some good news. About your dad.”

  She nodded politely but without lots of enthusiasm. “Later, okay?”

  We moved forward and loaded plates with brisket, coleslaw, potato salad and baked beans. The noise in the tent had risen to that level where the drunks try to out-shout the music and the musicians keep turning up the amps to hear themselves over the drunks. I had to get out of there.

  Rachael moved to sit with a group of friends, smiling and appearing more relaxed than I’d seen her all week. Maybe she’d had a couple of glasses of wine; maybe she’d just decided that she couldn’t live in fear all the time. I caught Ron’s eye and he moved closer to her.

  I stepped out of the tent, putting a small damper on the sound but not much. I set my plate on the hood of a car that afforded the only scrap of warmth in the chilly evening and proceeded to wolf down my meal. Ron followed a couple of minutes later, positioning himself so we could talk and he could keep an eye on Rachael through the open tent flap.

  “Sorry I got snappish earlier,” I said. I took another sip of the wine, which tasted better this time, and let the warm glow of the drink and solid comfort of food mellow me quickly.

  “Me too.” Ron stood awkwardly by the car, scuffing one booted toe in the dust.

  I smiled and filled him in with the condensed version of what I’d learned in Clovis and this afternoon’s surprising revelations by Dean Patterson. I also told him about Drake’s call but didn’t let on that I might actually be getting used to the idea of having a baby. I still needed to work through all the debris floating around in my mind.

  He didn’t seem to notice. His own muddled expression told me that he was still processing everything from the political rivalry, to the awful scheme Dean and Linda had come up with, to Linda’s death. I dug into the barbequed meat with my plastic fork while he thought it over.

  “What’s our next step with Rachael, now that we know her father isn’t involved?” I asked.

  “So far, no one seems to have a very strong reason for wanting to take her out of the picture.” He took a long pull on his beer.

  “So, maybe we’re dealing with a stranger? Some nut-case who wants to make a name for himself by harming a famous person?”

  “It’s not impossible,” he admitted, “but it’s usually the least likely scenario. Ninety percent of the time a victim knows her killer. And it’s usually the most likely suspect all along, the spouse, the boyfriend. Murder is a crime of passion, Charlie.”

  I chewed down the last morsel of my Texas toast and followed it with one more sip of wine. I set the glass aside. I really shouldn’t be drinking this stuff. “But we don’t have a murder—yet. We have threats. We have words that talk about preventing Rachael from setting the record. We’ve assumed that the threats are real.”

  “We have to.”

  “Agreed. I’m not saying we shouldn’t take them seriously. But maybe we can widen the scope of our search if we include people whose motive is to gain the spotlight for themselves.”

  “And that narrows our suspect list to what, a few million people?” He craned his neck to watch Rachael as she moved around inside the huge tent.

  “Not necessarily.” I posed the theory I’d had earlier. That someone within the ballooning community might not want to see Rachael succeed. He appeared to give that some serious thought and said he’d follow up on it.

  “Drake’s coming home tomorrow and I might be able to press him into service to help us with this. He’s never been to Fiesta and he’s eager to get in on it. For now, do you want me to stay at Rachael’s again tonight?”

  “Yeah, if you can. I better get back inside and hang close to her,” he said. “She wants to fly tomorrow. Saturday and Sunday are the two biggest days for this gig. Mass ascensions, huge crowds. I can use your help.”

  Since taking the dog with us to the field would make life complicated in the morning, I told him I’d run out to Rachael’s after the barbeque, get Rusty and leave him in Elsa’s care, and get back to Rachael’s for the night. I could go out to the field with the crew in the morning. The logistics of it all reminded me that life would get infinitely more complicated with a child in the picture.

  Chapter 20

  A mass ascension, despite its religious-sounding name, is simply a flight where all the balloons take off at once, ascending en masse to fill the sky with color. Albuquerque does this in a way that causes hearts to flutter, jaws to drop and rolls of film to be shot with amazing rapidity. Of course, more than six hundred balloons can’t literally take flight at exactly the same moment from an open field laid out in a grid where roughly a hundred can inflate and be ready at one time. The process is done in waves, with skilled launch directors giving the thumbs up to row after row of the huge craft, moving from the downwind edge of the field, allowing each successive row to take flight. By the time the first hundred are airborne the next wave have inflated and the process starts again. Within about an hour’s time six hundred colored globes fill the blue October sky and create a scene most artists and all photographers live for. There’s something so vivid, so ethereal about the sight . . . maybe it is a religious experience after all.

  If there’s something magical about standing on the ground and gazing at a sky full of color, there’s an otherworldly feeling about being up there in the midst of it.

  Against Grayson’s strenuous protests, Rachael informed him that I would be her only passenger this morning. Although Grayson argued for a ride for his important client, Ron pointed out that if something happened during the flight Grayson wouldn’t want to be liable for the man’s safety. That settled that question.

  I’d been able to keep my eyes on the crowd, watching for danger, trying to spot anyone who might show an overt interest in Rachael during the whole process of inflating the balloon and preparing for takeoff. I’d scanned the hoards of people as Rachael beckoned me to climb into the basket with her and during the fleeting moment when we ceased to feel the ground under our feet, that amazing moment when I realized we were floating.

  As the people below us began to fall away, transforming from upturned faces with open mouths to round blobs with dots for features, I have to admit that I couldn’t help myself. I just had to take a minute to stare around me. Hundreds of inverted-teardrop shapes in every possible color combination hung in the air around us. Whooshing blasts from Lady Liberty’s burner occasionally interrupted the same sounds, fainter, from others.

  By the time we’d climbed to a thousand feet or so above the ground, we began to move away from the launch field and I lost the details in people and objects below. This might be the most dangerous time in the flight—I wouldn’t be able to spot hidden dangers, but a concealed sniper on the ground with a high power rifle could easily sight in on Rachael.

  She’d given me a quick overview of the burner controls and instruments and the theory behind flying the uncontrollable craft. If anything happened to her, I could theoretically take over but I was far from ready to put that to the test.

  Rachael’s radio crackled and Sam’s voice came through.

  “Rusty One, Rusty Chase now leaving the field.”

  Normally balloons and crews use the balloon’s name to communicate on the busy frequencies that are shared by many. Lady Liberty would call out for Liberty Chase. But since announcing our every move could prove fatal in this case, we’d opted for the code word. I thought it funny that Rachael had taken to my loveable pooch so quickly that she’d picked his name.

  “Rusty Chase, ten-four. Looks like we’ve got a box today.”

  “Saw that. You going
with it?”

  Rachael looked at me and we both shook our heads. ‘The box’ is an Albuquerque phenomenon where wind currents often flow in exact opposite directions at different altitudes. From the ground up to about five hundred feet they’ll be out of the north, taking the balloons due south; climb to a thousand feet and you’ll head back due north; come down again to five hundred and you’re going back south. It’s not uncommon to take off, fly for an hour, and land near your starting point. Pilots and crowds both love it.

  “Negative, Sam. Staying high’s a better bet.” She gave a few more blasts on the burner and we ascended to 7,500, about two thousand feet above the ground and well above most of the others in the crowded sky.

  “Better,” she announced, taking a deep breath and letting her arm drop from the overhead blast valve she’d been constantly attending since the flight began.

  She pulled off one bulky glove and reached into her jacket pocket for a scrap of paper. On it she’d jotted down the winds aloft report from the pilot briefing this morning. “Looks like we can stay right about here, go north until we get nearly to Tramway, then drop down and find a good open spot,” she said. She jammed the note back into her pocket and reached up to hit the blast valve again. “If we get too far north we’ll end up having to deal with the Indians.”

  The Sandia Indians own the land north of Tramway Boulevard, where there are few roads and fewer gates. And you don’t just fly in there casually; it takes a lot of time and some diplomatic talking to retrieve your balloon once you’ve crossed their fences. They’ve gotten easier to deal with in recent years, especially if you happen to land near their huge casino. That’s one part of pueblo land they don’t seem to mind sharing.

  She radioed her intent to Sam. With our present course he wouldn’t have to worry about crossing the Rio Grande, something that gets tricky with the few bridges that lead to the west side. We’d already tracked east of the balloon field and were about to cross Interstate 25. I spotted the truck as Sam maneuvered through traffic to follow Rachael’s directions.

  “Here, want to fly it for awhile?” Rachael asked me, taking my hand and raising it to the overhead blast valve.

  I think my eyes grew bigger. My piloting experience is strictly limited to very, very controllable helicopters.

  “C’mon, it’s not hard,” she said. ard,”tɀUntil you get the feel for it, just watch your instruments.” She pointed out the altimeter and rate of climb indicator. “You know these two guys, right? The only other thing to watch is the envelope temperature. If this little needle goes into the red zone we’ll soon have crispy fabric up there.” At the moment the needle was well below the red line.

  I stared up into the vast cavern of empty space surrounded by thin nylon and I swallowed hard.

  “Try it a few times,” she said. “You’ll get the feel of it.”

  I watched the rate of climb meter begin to drop slightly. I pulled tentatively on the burner control, a short blast. We began falling two hundred feet a minute, heading toward three hundred. I over compensated with a long blast and felt the corresponding rise thirty seconds later. Rachael tapped my elbow, instructing me to quit burning. Before I knew it we were climbing three hundred feet a minute.

  “It’s not as easy as you make it look,” I said.

  “Stay with it,” she said, “you’ll get it soon.” She coached me with hand signals through a few more cycles, letting me know when to burn and when to let off. After ten or fifteen minutes I began to get the feel for it, although I still didn’t dare take my eyes off the instruments.

  “We’re getting about to the limit of our northward travel,” she said. “We better come down, track back south a bit and find a spot.” She watched me for a second to check my reaction.

  “Landing?” I felt sweaty places forming under the parka that had felt so good at six o’clock in the predawn chill.

  “I’ll take over.” She reached for the control, picking up the radio mike and announcing her intention to Rusty Chase.

  I took off my jacket and stuffed it behind one of the fuel tanks. “That was fun,” I said, hoping I sounded sincere. The lack of directional control still bothered me.

  Rachael brought the balloon down to two hundred feet above the ground, her gradual descent a far cry from the hectic up and down movements I’d managed. She pointed out a dirt road about a quarter of a mile away in the middle of a patch of sage and chamisa. Housing developments framed the south and west sides of it and a row of power lines ran along the south edge of the houses. We were now only about fifty feet off the ground.

  “Won’t we . . .” I eyed the lines, knowing they were the single biggest danger to balloonists, but Rachael became intent on her task. I shut up and watched.

  She guided the balloon with short bursts of heat and reached out with her free hand to grab the red line that led to the balloon’s vent panel. I spotted our chase truck turning onto the road in front of us.

  “Face forward,” Rachael instructed, “grab the uprights with both hands, and hold on. Flex your knees slightly when we touch.”

  She shut off the blast valve and gave the red line a firm tug with both hands. The balloon settled perfectly on the dirt road. Sam had stopped the truck about ten yards away. The crew piled out and began walking toward us. I noticed Sam staring intently at the envelope above our heads.

  “What’s wrong, Sam?” Rachael called out.

  He shook his head but pulled Ron aside and pointed upward. Ron squinted, shielding his eyes from the sun. They spoke a few words, but I couldn’t keep up with it. Rachael had shut off the fuel and pulled the rip line, and the big red, white and blue globe folded inward into a slack mass of fabric as it gave up the bubble of hot air that had held us in the sky. I became busy with trying to stay on my feet as the basket tipped over and we stepped onto terra firma.

  I grabbed my jacket and remembered belatedly that I’d intended to take pictures with Drake’s little digital camera, which hadn’t left my pocket once after all.

  Justin and the other crew members proceeded to pull the fabric taut, retrieve the envelope’s storage bag, and ready the whole system to be stowed in the truck. I was in the process of checking the pockets of my jacket to be sure I’d not lost any of my belongings when Ron tapped me on the arm.

  “We got problems,” he murmured, pulling me away from the group.

  “What?”

  “Sam noticed them. Come take a look.” He glanced back toward the crew, who were near the top of the balloon, setting the top deflation panel back in place. Rachael and Sam stood near the mouth of the balloon; he held a section of the fabric up for her to see. Ron nudged me closer to them.

  Sam held up the fabric, emphasizing a hole about the diameter of his finger. “There are four of them,” he said.

  “What are they?” I asked.

  “Bullet holes.” His voice sounded grim.

  I felt my knees go weak.

  Chapter 21

  I leaned against the side of the wicker gondola. Rachael’s face had gone white and Ron took her arm and hustled her to the truck, tucking her inside the cab and scanning the horizon in every direction.

  “When did this happen?” Sam asked me.

  “I . . . I . . .have no idea,” I admitted. My mind whirred back over the past hour.

  “Let’s get moving,” Ron ordered. “They probably watched her land and know exactly where we are.”

  “Guys! Double time,” Sam shouted to the crew members.

  Luckily, no one questioned. They knew their jobs and began stuffing the hundreds of yards of fabric into the bag. Within minutes, they’d disconnected the cables and shoved basket, bag and inflator fan into the truck.

  “Everyone stay low,” Ron said. He positioned Rachael in the center of the backseat of the truck, as concealed as we could make her. I sat on one side of her, Danny the crew member on the other.

  Sam drove and Ron rode with Justin in the back of the truck, inside the balloon gondola. Sam gunned t
he truck a little more than necessary, kicking up a cloud of dust on the road. He found a way into the nearby housing development and took a circuitous route down narrow residential streets.

  “Where are we going?” Rachael asked, her voice sounding impatient and frightened at the same time.

  “Not back to the balloon field,” Sam said tersely. “First we’re going to be sure we’re not followed. Then we’ll get you and the balloon hidden away.”

  Rachael started to open her mouth again, but I nudged her side. Clearly, Sam didn’t want to discuss plans in front of the crew. From my position I could see his jaw working as he fought back anger. The young crew guys stayed quiet.

  I glanced back at Ron. He’d pulled down the fluttering banner that identified Lady Liberty and tucked it discreetly away somewhere. As Sam picked up speed, Ron and Justin hunched into the basket, backs against the wind.

  We wound through another residential neighborhood, without anyone apparently tailing us, until we emerged somehow onto Eubank. Sam headed due south, then got onto Interstate 40 and merged east, heading toward the mountains. I looked at Rachael, puzzled that we were apparently leaving town, but didn’t say anything.

  Sam changed lanes frequently, dodging between the big-rig truck traffic on the state’s heavily traveled main east-west route. He exited fifteen minutes later at Tijeras and drove another twenty minutes, taking us deep into the mountains on Albuquerque’s east side. Two more roads and a tiny dirt lane later, he eased into a narrow driveway bordered by scrub oak and cedar. Tall ponderosa pines grew thickly over the property. Two Rottweillers in a fenced run barked furiously, racing back and forth within the confined space. A hundred yards away, at the edge of a small meadow stood a barn. A dozen goats milled around inside a fenced enclosure.

  Across the driveway from the dog run stood a house with redwood siding, a steeply pitched metal roof of sage green and a wraparound porch. Barrels of brightly blooming impatiens bordered the steps leading to the front door and groupings of lawn furniture sat under the high branches of the pines.