The Underground Lady

by JC Simmons

  Locking up the cottage, I went to Rose's house. It may be necessary for me to stay the night if Hebrone didn't show.

  Meeting me at the door, Rose said, “She's fine. B.W. is soothing her. It's as if he knows she's been hurt. Seeing how the animal reacted to her brought a smile to her face. Amazing, isn't it?"

  "Yeah, Rose. He's really an amazing cat."

  "You're an S.O.B."

  "I still love you."

  She turned and huffed her way into the living room.

  Pussy Galore sat on the couch holding my cat. She seemed fragile, wrapped in a robe. Only the dark discoloration of her swollen eyes marred a skin so perfect it seemed oddly false. An alien covering. She smiled, not quite looking at me, but off to the side. It seemed a smile of pain directed at herself. Her hands trembled a little, and she spilled a few drops of coffee from the cup she was holding. I watched her empty the cup in a single gesture, the brusque, brief movement of her hand made it look like the gesture of some solemn pledge.

  She rubbed B.W., who sat in her lap looking intently at her. She raised her head a little – there was no perceptible change in her posture. I saw the look of a peculiar panic growing in her eyes, as if she wanted to turn the violence of her emotion into a fog screen that would blind her to reality, and that her blindness would make reality cease to exist.

  Her eyes moved to mine as if it was an involuntary and unstoppable attraction. In a voice that had a breathless tone, and a drop toward a whisper, she asked, “Hebrone…did he come back?"

  "Don’t worry about him. I've known the man a long time. Things will be fine."

  She closed her eyes, relaxing, and giving up. She seemed to have an odd indifference as if she suddenly wanted nothing but the comfort of surrendering to helplessness. B.W. jumped from her lap and came to me.

  Rose motioned for me to follow her into the kitchen. Sunny stayed with Pussy Galore.

  "So, what about Hebrone?"

  "I don't know, Rose. We'll have to wait and see."

  "Will he kill Collinswood?"

  "No."

  "Then he could get into a lot of trouble."

  "More than he would if the man ended up dead?"

  "But the lawyer could be in a mess for beating the girl."

  "That's probably what Hebrone is discussing with the man at this very moment."

  "I could kill him myself for doing what he did to that girl."

  "But you're not a murderer."

  "You don't know everything about me."

  "No, and I don't want too. I know you stopped Shack from killing Ralph Henderson."

  "I didn't want to lose a good neighbor."

  "Yeah, right."

  A car drove into the driveway and shut its lights off.

  Peeping out the kitchen window, I fingered the magnum in my jacket pocket. One person exited the vehicle. It was Hebrone. Thank God.

  "How's the girl?" He asked, walking through the front door.

  "She's fine. How do we stand?"

  He stared at me with eyes that had a peculiar look burned into them. I'd seen that look in the eyes of seasoned Airline Captains who'd fought blinding snow storms, heavy ice, strong crosswinds on dark foreboding nights when a safe landing was in doubt. I'd seen it before in his eyes when he'd killed to save my life.

  Pulling his coat off and hanging it on a rack beside the door, he said, “He took his beating like a man. Like Henderson, he needed some things pointed out to him. How life can become painful. He paid attention. Claimed he went into a jealous rage, did something he ruefully regretted. There will be no further contact with her."

  Breathing a huge sigh of relief, I ushered him into the living room where Rose, Sunny, and Pussy Galore waited to hear.

  Later, we gathered around the kitchen table while Miss Galore rested. Laying out the ground penetrating radar report from the Air Force, I pointed out the rectangular anomaly.

  "This has to be the area Avis Shaw saw that day he realized his equipment had been used. The fresh turned dirt and the debris piled on top."

  "You think my mother's airplane is buried there?"

  "Yes, I do."

  "But that doesn't look like the shape of an airplane."

  "Hebrone thinks, and I agree, that the wings were removed, placed alongside the fuselage. An experienced mechanic could do it in a couple of hours."

  "You think my mother is inside the airplane?"

  "I don't know, Sunny. But, yes, I think she is."

  Rose said, "Didn't Henderson say VonHorner's wife hired him to scare us off? She couldn't have removed the wings from the airplane, dragged it to a hole she dug with a bull dozier?"

  "No, but her husband was/is an aircraft mechanic. He could have easily done it."

  "But why? Why did this happen?"

  "We don't know, Rose."

  "I just hope it's not a hole where someone buried a herd of cattle that had to be destroyed due to some disease."

  Sunny stood up, went to the sink. "So what do we do, now?"

  "Shack is bringing his backhoe in the morning. We'll see what the anomaly is, what lies buried beneath."

  Rose stood. "I don't feel safe tonight, but there's not enough room for Hebrone to stay at my house." She looked at Sunny, then at me. "I'll go and stay with Jay. Put the girl in my bedroom. Hebrone can use the couch, he's used to it by now."

  Sunny grinned. "I could stay with Jay, Rose. We could play poker, see how he would bet the straight flush."

  "You look after Miss Galore. Jay doesn't need to be playing poker tonight. He needs to be rested for tomorrow. I'll see that he gets that rest. Right, Jay?"

  "Yes, mother."

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Rose and I sat in front of the fire at the cottage sipping a 1975 Quady Port and nibbling on Stilton cheese. I knew she liked port, and I wanted to see how the case in my cellar was aging. The dregs left after decanting the bottle were an inch deep. I shook them out into a small bowl and put them in the refrigerator to spread on toast like butter in the morning.

  "Sunny Pfeiffer has a thing for you. Do you intend to sleep with her?"

  "I've told Hebrone and I'll tell you, I don't get personally involved with clients."

  "You're a fool."

  "I've been told."

  "You two would make a good fit."

  "This is not up for debate, Rose." Irritated, and to get her off my back, I added, “I want a younger woman, one not so – complicated."

  "Well, Leicester, remember this, a seasoned sled slides better than a green one."

  I had no come back for this.

  "My God, this wine is wonderful." She held the glass up to the fire. "Where did it come from?"

  "California. Made by a genius who took his wine making the wrong way. Instead of continuing to produce port, he opted to make other sweet wines that were, in my opinion, crap. A great loss for the port lover."

  "You are always the purist."

  We were silent for a time. I thought how sad it was that Andrew Quady didn't make this fortified wine any more, but how happy I was that a case lay in my cellar. It was enough to last my lifetime.

  "What did Hebrone do to the lawyer?"

  "Taught him some valuable life lessons."

  "He's a smart man, Hebrone Opshinsky."

  "Yes."

  "But he's deadly."

  "Maybe we should get some sleep?"

  ***

  Gusting wind woke me. It was still dark, and I knew the dream would not go away. They sometimes have a long life, dreams. They have an odd durability for something not quite real. Closing my eyes, I listened to the dry leaves rattling in the oaks, and the blades on the porch fans protesting the wind. A cold front was approaching from the northwest. Digging a hole in the ground with heavy rains coming would not be a good thing.

  It was useless to try and sleep, so I got up, peeked in on Rose who was snoring peacefully, and went to the kitchen to make coffee. The clock on the stove read five a.m.

  "You screamed out du
ring the night."

  "Rose, I'm sorry, didn't mean to wake you."

  "I always get up at five o'clock. It's an old habit left over from milking cows. Women chasing you?"

  "Friends dying in airplanes."

  "Looks like rain coming."

  "We're going to have to hurry with the dig. The weatherman says the front will be here by four this afternoon."

  I made toast and spread the purple Quady dregs on the bread. It tasted like grape jam. Rose tried some and approved.

  At six-a.m. car lights flashed out at the tree line. Rose peered through the window into the dark. "That's Shack with the backhoe. Hebrone and Sunny are turning onto the terrace row. Let's go dig up an airplane – we hope."

  ***

  Pussy Galore remained, resting and recuperating, at Rose's house. We had no reason to think she would be in any danger. Hebrone assured us that Charles Collinswood was under control, and I believed him. Something nagged at me about her being alone, though, but pushing the feeling aside, we proceeded to the spot of the anomaly.

  Shack positioned his backhoe at the eastern end of the rectangle, or at least where we thought the east end would be, judging from the satellite photo and the GPS coordinates. Shack had one of those hand-held Garmin GPS receivers mounted on the panel of the backhoe. I did not ask why, but it was there. He anchored the machine to stabilize it and made the first drag with the bucket across the rectangle, rather than parallel. If the airplane was in the area, we figured to hit the engine or tail first.

  Rose, Sunny, and I stood near the creek. Hebrone was beside the backhoe, observing Shack. There was a cool, dank smell of water-soaked bottomland. A cold fog drifted in and began to wet the trees and grass. The air started to turn bitter. To the west, the tops of the oaks and pines drifted in and out of the uncertain light of scudding clouds like ghosts of mountains.

  Sunny watched intently as Shack moved bucket loads of dark soil into a pile. She unconsciously drew her ponytail to one side, draping it over a shoulder.

  Rose looked at me. In the dim light, her face, though middle-aged and weatherworn, was her face returning, as some women's faces do, to its original girlish likeness.

  Looking across the land, I thought, money, power, memory, blood, food, and finally a grave. That's what land was, everything.

  After a half hour, and digging to a depth of almost four feet, Shack had found nothing. He repositioned the backhoe further to the west. On the first scoop, I heard the engine suddenly go to idle. Shack motioned to me and pointed at the dig. Hebrone and I grabbed shovels and jumped into the hole. There was metal showing. Scrapping and digging, we moved enough dirt away to recognize the framework of a horizontal stabilizer of a small airplane. The fabric covering the frame had long ago been eaten away by the elements. We had, in fact, found the tail of an airplane. Now, we had to work our way along the fuselage to the cockpit.

  I stood by the bucket, instructing Shack how much to dig and where. Hebrone moved dirt with a shovel. It was slow going, but inch by inch we made progress along the left side of the airplane. One of the wings was detached from the fuselage and now lay parallel with it as we had thought it would be and this made for difficult going. With the fabric eaten away, dirt filled in between the metal framework.

  An hour later, we were at the front cockpit. The Plexiglas side windows and windshield were intact, but the roof was gone and the interior of the cockpit was filled with dirt. Now, we were forced to move dirt a handful at a time. Uncovering the instrument panel, I saw the small metal placard that read: N1HW. This was Hadley Welch's Piper Super Cub. Avis Shaw's suspicions had been right. Then we found what we most feared, but expected. Hebrone brushed the dirt away. A human skull emerged, gray and soiled, after twenty-five years buried underground.

  Hebrone carefully removed the skull, including the lower jaw. Rose and Sunny remained near the creek, a hundred yards away. I looked at the woman whose mother's skull Hebrone held in his hands. For some reason, this got to me. I've seen it all – mangled and burned bodies in airplane crashes, people shot, cut, stabbed, witnessed autopsies – but this one nailed me to the wall. I thought I'd felt it all, nothing could get to me again. This must have struck some hidden cord in my own psyche, and I hated it. If our hearts weren't filled with greed and anger and lust and selfishness, our conflicts would vanish and our wars would cease. But they are filled with these evil thoughts and the inevitable result is conflict. My belief in the fundamental goodness of man was much put upon.

  "You okay?"

  "Yeah, it just seems such a waste."

  "There's a bullet hole." He held the skull for me to examine.

  "She was shot in the back of the head."

  "Front, back, she's still dead. Dead is dead."

  "You callous bastard."

  "Hell, Jay, we all begin to die as soon as we are born, and the end is probably linked to the beginning."

  Gripping my shovel handle, I looked into Hebrone Opshinsky's eyes. Studying his face I saw that we were truly not friends anymore. We had chosen different paths, and his burning eyes told me that the break was as final as the death he held in his hands. I felt no sorrow inside myself. Then from his eyes came something different, and all of a sudden I knew – he was simply trying to get me through this. At the right time, I would tell him I was sorry for thinking otherwise. "Thanks, old friend."

  "I've been there. You'll be okay."

  "I'm going to tell Rose and Sunny."

  "I'll keep digging. Ask Shack to come down and help me."

  Sunny stood among the cold trees for a long time, not moving. Rose and I left her alone in her thoughts and walked to the dig. A spattering of rain swept across us then was gone, leaving a damp chill.

  We had to work fast to recover any other remains before the rains came. Shack would cover the plane back over to prevent the hole from filling with water. John Quincy Adams had to be notified, along with the FAA and NTSB.

  By noon we had found more bones and a few scraps of clothing, all of which we placed in plastic garbage bags, hoping dental records and DNA could positively identify the remains. Shack finished covering the hole and we all gathered back at the cottage.

  ***

  We were all subdued, quiet, thinking our own thoughts, listening to the wind pick up, the clouds lowering and becoming thicker. Finally, Shack said he was going to take the backhoe to his barn before the storm hit. Rose said she was going to check on Pussy Galore. Sunny decided to accompany her, as she wanted some time alone to reflect on her mother.

  After they left, I called the sheriff's office in Decatur, and asked to speak with John Quincy Adams. "We found the airplane and a skeleton. Looks like you have a twenty-five year old murder on your hands."

  "If it was a crash, why do you think she was murdered?"

  "It wasn't a crash. Someone buried the airplane. There were skeletal remains, and the skull has a bullet hole in it. We need to get a positive ID on the remains, and the bullet may still be inside the skull, there was no exit wound."

  "I'm familiar with the process. Will the daughter furnish a DNA sample for comparison?"

  "Yes. We've bagged the remains. I'll bring them to you in the morning."

  "Okay. I cut Henderson loose today. He won't be a problem to you."

  "Good. I'll see you in the morning."

  Hanging up, I immediately called Earl Sanders. Annie answered at the office. "We found the airplane, Annie." There was a long silence. "Annie…"

  "Oh, my God, Jay. Earl looked so hard for that crash site. I don't see how he could have missed it. This will crush him. I worry about how he will take the news. What if she had survived the impact and lay there suffering? He will blame himself."

  "Annie, Hadley Welch did not crash. She was murdered, shot in the head. The airplane buried on my farm."

  "Oh, Jay, Gerald VonHorner…?"

  "We don't know that yet, but we're working on it. You want to tell Earl, or you want me to do it?"

  "I think it would
be better coming from you."

  Soon Earl came on the line. "Jay, why is Annie so upset? What did you say to her?"

  "We found Hadley Welch."

  "Oh no – I missed finding the crash."

  "Earl, listen to me very carefully. You did not miss the crash site. Someone shot her in the head, then took the wings off and buried them, along with the fuselage and body. They covered the dig over with debris from a recent clearing off of a creek bank. You would not have noticed it from the air."

  "But how? Where did they get equipment? Took the wings off?"

  "The wings lay alongside the fuselage. It made for a much smaller hole."

  "Where? I want to come see."

  "We covered everything up. There's a storm due this afternoon. We didn't want the hole to fill with water. The sheriff, NTSB, and FAA will want to excavate the site."

  "You covered Hadley back over?"

  "No, we removed the remains. They will be sent for forensic analysis. Earl, there were only a few bones left after all these years."

  "Yes, I understand."

  "I thought you'd want to know."

  "Gerald VonHorner did this, and I think I may know why."

  "You have a motive? Tell me."

  "You remember meeting the mechanic that came with me to check out your Stearman after the water in the oil tank thing?"

  "Sure, Aaron Crosby, old guy, seemed like he knew what he was doing."

  "On the flight back to Meridian the other day after we'd worked on your Stearman, he told me a strange story about VonHorner. Crosby was working for us when we hired VonHorner. The two never got along. Seems he found out VonHorner was selling Annual Inspections."

  "I don't understand."

  "He was signing off maintenance logs on aircraft for inspections that were never done. Crosby heard he charged a thousand dollars, saving an owner three to five thousand on the cost of an Annual Inspection. For a price, he was also signing off fifty and one hundred hour inspections."