“And the shriveled … whatzit has done what to get you this excited?”
“She has filed in court to be recognized as Afton’s next of kin!”
“And her excuse is … oh yeah, she styles herself his common-law wife.”
“That is her fantasy.”
“So she’s really going to press that claim.”
Julia shrieked, “You knew about this? And you didn’t tell me? What kind of a friend are you?”
I closed my eyes. I said, “I’m sorry, Julia. Truly. I am working on this case and because of that I have to stay quiet about a great many things.”
“So what else haven’t you told me?”
I winced. I’d always gotten along with Julia—in spite of her coarse language and penchant for self-pity—precisely because she was candid, but candor was too slim a virtue to mitigate the bad cocktail of emotions that was sluicing around inside her just now. I counted to ten, struggling to keep my own in check.
Julia said, “You show up in my office pretending to be my friend, but you’re just an adrenaline junkie! Or worse, you’re a ghoul!”
Julia’s words stabbed into me. Perhaps because this was the third time I had heard this accusation in one day, I looked down into my heart and saw nothing but a dried-up loner who couldn’t figure out how else to have a life with the people around her. I was hiding in my work, and work like this was a drug to numb my aloneness, just like smack.
You’re forty years old and pretend you want a man and a baby, but you’ve been hiding in an arm’s-length relationship with a man who considers you his buddy, I told myself.
But there are those wonderful moments with Sloane, I argued. Or the times I go to dinner at Faye’s …
When was the last time you did that? my internal critic sneered.
My mind wandered back to the realities of the moment. Julia’s voice was still going off in my ear. “ … and if you can’t be honest with me, go do your damned cowgirl Em Hansen thing. Go to hell, okay? I mean, life is too short to hang out with people on a trip like yours, you know?” She was crying now.
“You’re right,” I said, in a voice as thin as vapor. “You’re absolutely right, I’ve been playing hero again, and you need me to just be your friend.” I took a deep breath. “Please forgive me, Julia.”
MICHELE PHONED AGAIN JUST BEFORE IT WAS TIME FOR me to quit for the day and go home. In the wake of my conversation with Julia, I had been on a downward spiral into that dark place that lurks underneath daily routines and the other businesses of life. “What do you have for me?” I asked, meaning Do you have something that can fill the next hour, let alone the rest of my existence?
“I have a plane ticket to Colorado, unless you’ve got another hitchhiker’s pass with your friend.”
“What?”
“Your idea about the airplane hit the jackpot,” she said, her voice going all juicy with satisfaction. “We’ve got an FAA record of a Beechcraft Baron belonging to a Hugo Attabury taking off from Centennial last Thursday at 5 P.M. and returning during the night. The flight plan gave a different name—George Lewis—but we’ve got an eyewitness at Million Air who saw two white males getting off that plane. One answers close enough to a description of Hugo Attabury, and the other was dressed just like our corpse. They were met by another man who was waiting for them. The car came back at 2 A.M. I don’t have an eyewitness yet who saw how many people were in it, but we’ll have that as soon as their night crew comes on shift. We’re subpoenaing the tower tapes to nail Attabury’s voice.”
“So you’re going back to Colorado to interrogate him again?”
“Right.”
“If you’re so close to a collar, what do you need me for?”
“You’re the one who understands this ground water thing. If he was so afraid of McWain’s testimony that he’d kill him—and if McWain got off that plane alive, who else killed him, hmm?—then finding out I’ve got a geologist backing me up will loosen him up quite nicely.”
She was right. Forensic geology was a double-edged knife. One edge looked at microscopic evidence of Earth materials. The other edge was much broader: The contexts and connections under which the profession of geology was carried out. “With the evidence you have, he’ll probably go down like a house of cards. Anyone can file a flight plan under a false name, and his alibi is a lawyer who also stood to gain from McWain’s death,” I said.
“All right,” Michele grumbled. “But if Attabury can prove it wasn’t him at the controls of that airplane, I’m back at it with the shovel again. So stay close to the phone, okay?”
“Sure. Hey, you’ve got a backup going into it with Attabury, right?”
“The locals are ready and waiting.”
“Good. See ya.”
“I have a nasty feeling you will.”
TWENTY
TO PROVE TO MYSELF THAT I HAD A LIFE OUTSIDE MY work, I phoned Faye and invited her and Sloane to come to my apartment for dinner. When they arrived, I had hot dogs for Sloane and a nice bit of steak for us grownups, and some cold cooked potatoes fried up with red onions. Faye brought a salad. We sat out on my little balcony in the shade of the elm tree and caught the evening breezes, enjoying a cup of decaf after the meal and waiting for the air to cool and the sky to go pink over the Oquirrhs.
“How’s that case coming?” she asked.
“I’m standing by for a phone call,” I told her. “I might need to go back to Colorado tomorrow.”
“Are you going with Fritz?” she asked. “I thought he wasn’t going back until the weekend.”
“No, that’s okay,” I replied. “The sheriff’s department will pay for me to fly commercially.”
“But Fritz will be going over there again tomorrow or the next day for Mr. Reed. Why would you want to fly commercial when you can go general aviation? No waiting at the gate, no long lines anywhere, you go into a more convenient airport and to an FBO where people treat you like something smarter than cattle, and besides, you get to ride with Fritz. And Mr. Reed really enjoyed your travelogue.”
“That’s nice to hear,” I said noncommittally.
Sloane had climbed up onto my lap. “Horsy ride,” she begged, pulling on my thumbs as if they were reins.
I jiggled her up and down gently and sang, “This is the way the ladies ride, trippity-trot, trippity-trot …”
“Are you and Fritz having a fight or something?” Faye asked.
“No.”
“Then why are you avoiding him?”
“Am I?” I tried to deflect Faye’s scrutiny by looking the little girl in the eye, wondering if the horsy seemed lame to Sloane, too. Shifting to a faster gait, I said, “This is the way the gentlemen ride, gallopy-trot, gallopy-trot …”
“He said you turned him down for a low-level flight in his plane. That sounds serious to me.”
“Cowboy!” Sloane cried, giggling with glee.
Faye said, “Em, fess up; something’s bothering you. Come on, you can’t hide it from—” she shot out a hand and jabbed me in the ribs, a rough tickle“—the claws of Faye!”
“Ouch!” I shrieked.
Sloane squealed with glee. “Cowboy! Cowboy!” She rocked forward and back maniacally, almost dislocating my thumbs.
Bouncing Sloane right into the air, I cried, “This is the way the cowboys ride, gallopy-gallop, gallopy-gallop!”
Faye raised her arm for another strike.
Panting, I said, “Fritz is busy.”
“Busy doing what?”
“Dating what’s-her-name.”
“What’s-her-name? Who’s what’s-her-name? Fritz hasn’t spent time with anyone but you in months.”
“Well then, who was that in …” Cringing, I slammed on the verbal brakes, but I had already said too much.
Sloane twisted and wiggled with delight. “Farmer! Farmer! C’mon, Auntie Emmy! Farmer!”
I began to lift one knee and then the other, rolling her from side to side. “This is the way the farmers ride, ho
bblety-hoy, hobblety-hoy …”
Faye gave me her you-cannot-avoid-the-piercing-mind-of-Faye look. “Spare me the twenty questions this time, will you?”
I tried unsuccessfully to quell a whiny tone that crept into my voice, but failed. “There was somebody at his house Saturday night. A woman answered the phone.”
“Oh yeah. Marsha.”
“That was Marsha?” I felt like a total fool. “What was his ex-wife doing answering the phone?”
“She was there to drop off Brendan and discuss their situation. Which is serious. Did he tell you she wants to move out of state?”
“Yes …”
“Yeah, well she can’t do it without his say-so, I don’t think, so she’s there putting pressure on him. It’s been awful for him. He could really use your support just now.”
I pulled Sloane into a tight hug and buried my face against her shoulder.
Faye asked, “What’s troubling you so, Em? Come on, you can tell me. I won’t bite.”
“It’s nothing.”
“It’s Fritz.”
“No, it’s not.”
“You can lie to yourself, Em, but you can’t lie to me. Why are you hiding from him? Because Marsha answered the phone? Wait … I get it! You like him! Well, he’s nuts about you!”
“How do you know that?”
Faye stared at me, really squinted, as if I were some odd bug she had never seen before. “You two really are a pair. Just like you, he misses half the social clues that are thrown at him and misconstrues the others. In his case, it makes him easy to get along with because, while he doesn’t hear half of the compliments, he’s also deaf to three-quarters of the insults. But with you, it somehow just makes you ornery.”
“So you’re saying we’re not suited for each other.”
“I’m not saying that at all. What’s not to like? He’s Mister Nice Guy. Amiable. Decent. Keeps his nonsense to himself. He doesn’t take things personally, and he’d never, ever push himself on you. Besides that, he’s smart about a great many things—good at business, good with clients for all the reasons I’ve just mentioned, and a wizard at anything to do with aircraft or flying. And he’s damned fine to look at, he takes care of his body, he loves kids, and hey—featurette!—he’s deeply moral. What is your problem?”
“I—” What was my problem? “I don’t know. He’s so calm all the time. I get to feeling agitated around him. I can’t hold still. I feel like an idiot sometimes.”
Faye shook her head. “He’s a good man, Em. Try letting him be the calm one so you can do the wiggly stuff.”
I seized the opportunity to change the subject from me to her. “It sounds like you like him a lot. I shouldn’t get in the way.”
“He has eyes for you, toots, not me. Trust Mama Faye.”
“But what if I weren’t here? Wouldn’t he then like you?”
“I doubt that.”
“But would you like him to?”
“Like him to what?” Faye asked.
“To like you?”
“He does like me. We’re very good friends and successful business partners, and that is exactly how we both like it. Trust me, we’ve even … drum roll … discussed this.”
“But wouldn’t you like him to love you? As a woman?”
“No, I would not like that.”
“Then you don’t really—”
“What are you looking for? My stamp of approval? Didn’t I just give that to you?”
“If you approve of him, why aren’t you interested in him?”
“Because it would ruin everything.”
“How so?”
“Because then he would be a frustrated business partner who wanted to be my lover, which I don’t want.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not his type, and he’s not my type.”
“What is your type?”
Faye’s gaze drifted to the sunset and grew dreamy. “You knew him. Tom was my type. Tom really, truly did it for me.” She shook herself as if waking from a trance. “Fritz does not do it for me.”
“But do you do it for him?”
“I already said—oh, I get it, you don’t want to be second best. Don’t worry about that, Em. Fritz has never even so much as given me the once-over. I think he saw you and that was that. The women he’s been dating since he met you have been just … well, companions. He’s been waiting for you.”
“How do you know this? Has he told you this?”
Faye was beginning to lose patience. “No, but it’s as clear as the nose on his face. Every time he looks at you he gets kind of … well, his cheeks get rosy; haven’t you ever noticed?”
“I thought that was just how Fritz’s face was put together.”
“That’s because you’re there each and every time you look at him. Try sneaking up on him some time. In fact, try not ignoring him; he’ll get even redder.”
Sloane had turned around in my lap and rested her head against my chest. She was getting sleepy with all this adult chitchat.
And I was getting agitated again. The subject was swinging back to me like a twenty-millimeter gun that had snapped an anchoring pin. I kicked it back her way. “But you need a husband, a father for Sloane.”
The little girl’s eyelids were growing heavy, and her neck was damp with baby sweat from being so close to me. I wanted to hold her forever.
Faye said, “I may need a father for Sloane, but I do not need a husband.”
“You don’t?”
“No. I don’t. Em, not every woman needs a husband. When Tom came along, that was great—while it lasted. In my own peculiar way, I’m kind of a one-man woman. But that’s gone. Over. He’s dead.”
“I know, but if he’d lived?”
“Then I hope we could have kept it going, at least for Sloane’s sake. But neither of us was really built for the good ol’ settled-down bit.”
“Am I?”
“I doubt it.”
“Then why—?”
“Because you want a man! It’s written all over you. You’ve got ‘I need a man and a baby’ tattooed on your forehead. Or maybe on some other part of your anatomy.”
“But you’ve just said I’m not built for settling down.”
“You aren’t. Damn it, Em, dynamic people do not settle down!”
“I’m dynamic?”
Faye flopped back in her chair. “Woman, you are the dynamo itself. Or make that feminine—you’re a dynama.”
“So—”
“So you find someone who doesn’t require that you settle down. What is this, rocket science? You want to be miserable, go find some chump who’s looking for a hausfrau. That is not you. Bon-bons and daytime soaps just ain’t gonna keep your heart pumping. You’re like a horse that needs plenty of exercise. And a very big pasture to run in.”
“No,” I said. “I’m the rider. And no fences or I’ll jump them.”
“I rest my case.”
“But Fritz wants … a woman who’ll settle down?”
Faye said, “Yeah, what does Fritz want? Let’s see if you can figure that out. Em, you are so thick!”
“He makes jokes about wanting a wife and babies. Doesn’t that mean settling down?”
Faye shook her head. “Fritz is not the type who makes jokes about such things, except maybe to hide his intentions in plain sight.”
“How do you know so much about him?”
“I work with the man every day.” She shrugged. “And it’s a lot easier to see these things when you’re not hiding from the man. Em, take it easy on him. Look what he’s going through now. Ol’ Marsha wants to take his one baby somewhere where he couldn’t see even as much of him as he’s seeing now. I think the man’s a saint that he’s not taking a meat ax to her or even cussing about her. Most men who go through such things come up with nasty names or just refer to their former wives harshly as ‘the ex.’ But Fritz doesn’t have a mean bone in him.”
“So how’s he doing with all that?” I asked wi
th embarrassment. She was right, I should have been a support to him.
“Oh … well … I asked him how he felt, and he said it hurt but that life wasn’t simple. He said he’d made his choices, and she was making hers, and he had to think it through and figure out what was best for Brendan, time with his dad or too much time with a frustrated mother. Call him, Em.”
“Okay,” I said. “Okay, I’ll call him, get him out for a hike. He always looks happier after a little exercise.”
“I’ll bet. He gets those roses in his cheeks every time.” She stared at the clouds that had gathered over the Oquirrhs. “You’ve done such a good job of asking me questions that I haven’t gotten to ask you the obvious one. Do you want him?”
Sloane was out cold, or should I say, out warm in my lap. Softly, I said, “I don’t know, Faye. How do you know when you’ve met the right man?”
Faye let out a long sigh. “Sometimes you find out the hard way.”
TWENTY-ONE
MICHELE PHONED FROM COLORADO JUST AFTER THE last light of sunset had faded. “Attabury’s tougher than I thought,” she said.
“What happened?” I asked. “When I didn’t hear, I figured you had it sewn up.”
“I got him down for questioning, but he got Upton on me so fast my head was ringing. He admitted that the plane was his but said if it’s been to Salt Lake City in the past three years it was without him. He showed us a long, narrow black book like that should prove to us he wasn’t there.”
“His Pilot Log Book,” I said. “And he has a point there. They’re like a religious article … what do you call them, that name Catholics have for bones of the saints.”
“Holy relics. Anyway, it was quite a performance. Upton said to come back when we had something stronger than ‘a bunch of hearsay from a government agency.’”
“He was referring to the FAA.”
“The same.”
“A pilot not writing his hours down in his log book, that’s cold. But it didn’t worry them just a bit that eyewitnesses at Million Air had him and McWain on the ground at Salt Lake International last Thursday?”
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