“Maybe is nothing. But empty rum bottles in the trash. Many big bottles. Cruzan Rum.”
Deflation again. We knew most of the charter jets offered bar service. Gabriel explained to us now, “The passengers of many of these private jets like to party on their way to vacation. That’s why we have a contractor with a crew to clean out the planes. Sometimes they are quite filthy. Vomit. Drugs, even. Disgusting, really.”
Apparently the woman spoke English pretty well, because she shook her head no and spoke to me again. “Not like that. Sometimes party planes come. None come that day. I see the trash, and I know what they throw away. This trash?” She switched back to Spanish. “No mixers, no paper napkins, no olives, no toothpicks. This was different.” Her voice didn’t waver now.
Kurt rattled off a quick translation for me. Then he shuffled and straightened his papers. He gathered his pens. He cleared his throat. He gave all the signs of a man ending an interview.
I was confused. Why was he disengaging? Was her information significant or not? Kurt showed nothing on his stern face, another feature he shared with Nick, whose outward demeanor reminded some people of Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights. I knew he and his father had playful streaks and warm hearts. But you wouldn’t know it from looking at them, and you sure didn’t want to play poker against them. Kurt had his poker face in place now.
Abruptly, Kurt stood up, bowed slightly at the waist, shook the woman’s hand and thanked her. Gabriel excused her. She scurried out, but cast me a backward glance and a decisive nod.
How very, very strange all around.
“Anyone else?” I asked Gabriel.
He called in his young assistant, whose long dark curls I immediately envied. “Nancy, any others?”
“No, sir, you have talked to everyone who worked that shift,” she said.
“The janitor wasn’t on the list, though. Anyone else like the janitor?” I said.
Nancy understood my question. “There are others that work inside the terminal, but if you add the custodian, you have talked to everyone who works outside and around the hangar and was on shift when your husband was here.”
Kurt stood up. “Thank you both. This was great. Now, you must excuse us. Katie and I have a phone call. Gabriel, I am sure we will return this afternoon, but if you hear from the FAA or Coast Guard, please let us know, OK?”
“Of course, of course,” Gabriel said.
Kurt’s long legs ate up the floor in two strides before I had even gathered my things and stood up. “Katie?” he said, beckoning from the door.
“Yes, of course,” I said, echoing Gabriel.
We followed Nancy and her pearls and long curly hair as she clicked her way back to the terminal. Kurt pushed through the door without a word and I called out, “Thanks!” over my shoulder as I hurried to keep up. What the hell? His sudden departure and wordy but false summary of our day were out of character.
My father-in-law had some explaining to do.
Chapter Eighteen
I loped after Kurt, who was all but sprinting to Victor’s car. When had he called Victor?
“What’s going on?” I asked him when we had buckled in.
“We need to get back to the laptops. I want to check on something. Too soon to say.”
Like father, like son. “OK,” I said. It wasn’t OK, but I didn’t have a choice. That much I knew from living with the Kovacs men.
My iPhone buzzed. Incoming text. I pulled it onscreen and read, “But Nick is missing. Prove you are Nick. Who did you meet in PC?”
Holy creepers! A message from one of the numbers Nick had texted. I typed as fast as I could, and then retyped it all because it was unintelligible garbage. “I would not betray that confidence over text.” I hit send.
Thirty seconds later, the light flashed again.
“I think this is his wife, and that we’ve already communicated.”
Yes, I do believe we have. “You are A. Friend,” I typed. Send.
“Yes, I am.”
“I need help,” I sent.
“I cannot help you, but I wish you well.”
“What is your name?” I asked.
I watched for the flashing red light, but none came.
We arrived at the Puntacana Resort. If Kurt had sprinted before, he broke a world record for the hundred-yard dash now. I had no prayer of keeping up. I struggled out of the car, pants sticking to thighs as usual, and negotiated a pickup time with Victor in my now-passable Spanish. We needed to pick up my brother at 1:35, so we agreed to leave for the airport at 1:15.
I hustled after Kurt, checking my message light again as I trotted. Nothing. I caught Kurt at the door to our casita and followed him in, out of breath. Need more exercise.
Kurt grabbed his laptop and got to work. I ordered us lunch from room service while my laptop booted up and my iPhone refused to give me any messages. I resent the message to A. Friend. I also texted Julie, who immediately answered and suggested a quick Skype while my kids were all strapped into high chairs for lunch.
In less than a minute, we were connected. Julie had positioned her laptop camera so my three beautiful children filled the screen. My heart stopped.
“Hi, guys, it’s Mom,” I said.
“Hi, Mommy!” Taylor replied. He looked adorable, even with smears of ketchup marring his perfect face. “Liv and Jess, say hi to Mommy.” He turned and looked at his sisters. “They can’t talk yet, Mommy, but they would say hi if they could.”
I laughed. Julie’s face appeared behind Taylor. “Hi, Julie. Kurt is here with me in body, but his mind is elsewhere. He’s researching something online.”
“No problem. I want all hands on deck to find Nick. Tell Kurt I love him,” Julie said.
“I will.”
“Bye, Mommy,” Taylor said, and slithered out of his high chair. He had learned how to unbuckle his own strap recently, but he still liked to sit in the chair to compete with the twins at eye level for attention. Well, I’d had him for fifteen seconds. I couldn’t expect much more from the little steam engine.
“Bye, sweetie pie,” I said. A knock sounded. Room service. “Hold on, Julie, I have to grab our food.”
I realized too late that I shouldn’t be opening the door to strangers with two men looking for me. But I got lucky; it was only the porter. He swiped my Visa and I locked the door. I deposited Kurt’s lunch in front of him. He hadn’t registered the knock or my response to it, nor did he acknowledge the plate now.
I returned to my laptop and motioned for Julie to continue while I ate.
“We’ve had an interesting morning,” she said. “I know you guys will need to hurry to the airport to get Collin, so I’ll make this fast.”
“We’re doing good on time. What’s up?”
“We had visitors today. Detective Tutein showed up with some of his minions and a representative from DPNR. Katie, they had a warrant for your arrest for disturbing human remains and failing to report their discovery.”
I nearly choked on my fish taco. “That fast? Oh my God!”
“I know. They scared Ruth and me, although she chuptzed them. You would have loved that, at least. She’s resting right now, or I’m sure she’d tell you this story herself.”
“Go, Ruth.”
“Yes, that’s what I said. Sort of. And then there was the magnificent Annalise.”
“What did she do?” I asked.
“You know that hive of bees on the library window upstairs, above the door to the kitchen? She dropped it. It nearly landed on them, too. They ran to their car screaming like little children.”
I hooted. “That’s my girl.”
“Before then, though, when they were still hassling us, I told them you had left St. Marcos on a trip, and that I didn’t know when you’d return. Tutein said to tell you he would be the first person you saw when you got off the plane. The DPNR rep then told me that he would come back with an injunction ordering us out of the house and requiring us to excavate the property at ou
r expense.”
“They’re playing hardball.” This ranked as a small problem compared to a lost husband, but it was still huge. And poor Annalise. What a violation this would be.
Julie rubbed the back of her neck with one hand. “Yes, they are. I asked him when, and he said soon. But I have no idea what that means.”
“I guess it means if they come back, you guys may have to visit Aunt Ava. Well, we need a local attorney to help us fight this.”
“Rashidi is helping me find one. He’s on his way here to stay with us, anyway. His guys are still out searching the island, but they haven’t turned anything up.”
“Good, I’m glad he will stay with you. Thank you, Julie. I’m so sorry this is happening.”
“Just find Nick.”
“We’re trying. I emailed you the developments last night.”
“I got it. Sorry I didn’t see your texts. I left you a voicemail. The girls were fussy and took all my attention.”
At that moment, Kurt jumped to his feet and shook my water glass with his yell. “Damn right!”
“What is it?” I asked, turning to him.
“What is it?” Julie asked me.
Kurt scrubbed his hand through his gray hair, which was standing up like a platoon of soldiers at attention. His glazed eyes focused on the screen, and he dropped back onto the couch, saying, “I knew I had read something about what alcohol can do to an engine. And I found it.”
“What’s he talking about?” Julie asked. She had moved so close to the screen that her nose looked like the nose of our airplane, but without the blue paint.
I tied it together the best I could, considering that Kurt had cut me out of the pertinents until just now. “A janitor at the airport thinks she saw a man pour something into Nick’s fuel tanks. She also found Cruzan Rum bottles in the trash. Kurt appears to have researched alcohol and engines.”
“That could be important information, right?”
I nodded. I thought about the locals looking for Elena at the St. Marcos airport. The two black men that had roughed up the busboy for talking to us, the same two that said they had fixed Nick’s plane. The ones that might be looking for me.
Kurt typed again, fast for him, but not so very fast. His thick fingers got in his way. He cursed under his breath. My heart swelled. Thank you God for Kurt.
“Well?” Julie asked.
“I think we’ve lost him to his research again. But he believes he found information on the effect of alcohol on engines. Stay tuned. This is our big find of the day, by the way. We interviewed every employee at the hangar. We didn’t get zip from anyone else, including the FAA or Coast Guard. No word there, other than the search is starting nearest St. Marcos.”
“How is the alcohol significant?”
“Well, if it went into Nick’s gas tanks, it could be the reason he’s not home now,” I said. I saw the time. Shit, it was later than I thought. “Kurt, we have to leave,” I said. “Julie, I love you guys.”
“We love you both, too. Oh, and Katie, one last thing. Ava called right before lunch. She and her friends found something, a slave graveyard near Annalise. They’re coming out this afternoon to search.”
“That’s excellent news, but it sounds like if they aren’t blazingly fast, your government visitors will beat them out there. I hope not. All right, bye, Julie.” I blew kisses to the girls, but they were more interested in their Cheerios than in me.
We ended the connection.
“Kurt, we have to go,” I repeated.
“Huh? Go? OK,” he said. He heaved a long sigh. “I think I’ll leave this machine going to speed things up when we get home.”
I wrapped Kurt’s food in a napkin and placed it in his hand. His eyebrows went up and he grabbed it. “Thanks,” he said. He wolfed it down as we made our way back through the hotel to the car. I fought down my impatience while he chewed. Time to clue me in, Gramps.
Finally—finally—Kurt swallowed his last mega-bite. I said, “What do you think’s going on?”
“Dunno for sure, but if those bottles of rum were poured into Nick’s tanks, they could shut down the engines. The alcohol would overheat the engine, and the sugar would caramelize on the pistons. If that’s what happened, I need to find someone or something to tell me how long that would take.”
He was acting like this was good news, but to me it just meant that Nick’s plane had crashed, which was bad news. “But why is this important, Kurt? Why are you so excited about it?”
“Because if we know what happened to his plane in Punta Cana, we can zero in on where he went down. If he went down.”
“And then we can find him!” I shouted.
“Yes. Then we can find him.”
Chapter Nineteen
Now I was jazzed. Kurt and I rushed to the baggage claim area in the terminal we had flown into only yesterday. We had clues. I bounced up and down on my toes. Hurry, Collin. I texted him our whereabouts.
“Got it. ETA two minutes,” he sent back.
“Why didn’t you tell Gabriel about your rum theory? And why did you tell him we had a phone call when we didn’t?”
Kurt rubbed his eyes. Red veins carved lines through them. “I’m suspicious of everyone now, Katie. Gabriel didn’t identify the janitor as a witness, you did. She was ignoring him and talking straight to you. And if I hadn’t realized the significance of the rum, he might have convinced you it was nothing.”
“Do you think . . .” I couldn’t get the rest of the words out. Gabriel’s insipid questioning the day before, his cheerfulness, his lack of appreciation for the rapid passing of time all cycloned in my brain. Suspicious? Maybe. But I didn’t think so. He hadn’t set off my radar.
“No, he’s probably fine. I’m sure I just got paranoid.”
Before I could say anything more, I looked up and saw my brother. He walked toward us, wearing his threadbare Hooters t-shirt and his Levi’s 501 button-fly jeans, all “Danger Zone” playing with Tom Cruise striding to his plane in Top Gun. That was Collin. I ran to him and threw my arms around his solid frame, bumping his big duffel bag out of the way to get to him.
“Thank you, Collin, thank you for coming,” I said. My eyes started leaking.
“I got here as fast as I could, sis. I’m sorry, so so sorry. Let’s go find Nick,” my brother said without letting go. We measured only two inches’ difference in height, but he outweighed me by a comforting fifty pounds of muscle. He released me and stuck his hand out to Kurt. They shook.
“Sir, sorry about your son. I hope I can be of some help,” Collin said.
Kurt nodded. “Thank you. I’m glad to have you here.”
Collin looked me up and down. “I don’t mean to offend, sis, but that outfit looks like something Grandma would have worn on a cruise, God rest her soul.”
“Bite me, Collin. This is my ‘blend as a tourist’ outfit. Kurt and I are a little worried that there are bad guys after us.”
“What bad guys?” he asked, his cop’s eyes pinning me to the spot in which I stood.
I spit out the details in rapid fire. “Quick version: we think Nick ran into trouble when he was investigating a death on St. Marcos for the Petro-Mex refinery. It looks like some men were following him here. And a man was overheard bragging that his partner fixed Nick’s plane. At least one of them was black and talked like he was from the islands. Now Nick and his plane are gone. A man has been asking about me, too. Oh, and there’s hints that these guys may be the hired hands for a Mexican cartel, maybe one called the Chihuahuas. Those bad guys.”
Kurt jumped in. “Talked like he was from the islands? Where did that come from, Katie?”
Oh, shit. I hadn’t told Kurt that part? My brain was fried. “I’m sorry, Kurt. From the busboy.”
Collin was shaking his head back and forth. “Holy Mother of God, Katie Connell Kovacs. The Chihuahua cartel is serious bad guys. My first partner in Anti-Drug in New Mexico was killed by them. A really nice guy, with a wife and an infant da
ughter. How in the world are they related to this?”
“Collin, hold that thought. I promise we’ll get right back to that question. Did you check a bag?” I asked.
“Nope. I’m traveling lean. Flexibility is the key to air power,” he said.
“What?” I asked.
“Just something my lady friend says. She’s an Army reservist. H-60 Black Hawk helos,” he said.
This was astonishing, to say the least. Collin with a lady friend? In the Army? A Black Hawk pilot? I didn’t know they let women fly attack helicopters, or that many wanted to. Except for Meg Ryan in Courage Under Fire, but that was the movies. And why would a tough woman date my outwardly chauvinistic brother? No fool am I, though. I kept my mouth shut about this last question.
Collin’s announcement didn’t faze Kurt, but then again, not much did.
I said, “We have a question for an experienced pilot. Maybe she could help us?”
“Lay it on me, and I’ll call her,” Collin said.
“Who’s her?” I asked.
“Tamara,” he said. He chucked me on the chin with his fist. “I think you’ll meet this one, sis.”
I couldn’t remember if I had ever met one of Collin’s girlfriends. Curiouser and curiouser, as they say.
We were still standing in the bustling baggage claim area. I herded us over to some empty seats by a bank of what used to be pay phones, only the phones had been ripped out of the booths. Much quieter. We sat down and Kurt explained the rum and engines to Collin, who hit speed dial as Kurt spilled the last of his theory.
We hung on every word as Collin spoke into his phone. “Babe, I made it to the DR, and I need a favor, ASAP.” Pause. “I love you, too. OK, I’m going to feed you facts, then ask you a question about them. Ready? Piper Malibu flying westward from Punta Cana, DR, to St. Marcos, U.S.V.I., three days ago at one o’clock p.m. Suspected intrusion of several bottles of rum into fuel tanks prior to takeoff. Don’t know speed traveling or altitude, but can you make a guess?” Pause. “Good. We want to know what happened to the plane. Physically, what would the rum do, and geographically, if it went down, can you give us a compass point?” Pause. Longer this time. “When could you have the info?” Pause. “You’re the best. I love you. Bye.”
Finding Harmony (Katie & Annalise Book 3) Page 14