By the time the local man had two Scotches in him, he’d relaxed considerably. Michael felt sure this was a good time to bring up the real subject.
“So, I wonder what ever happened to all that gold they found. Grandma said that her father left his hidden somewhere around here. I wonder where.”
Thespen laughed. “I suppose some did that. My grandfather bought the small bank that existed for the early miners. He always pressed people to put their cash into accounts or store their gold in the vault.”
“Joshua probably did that.” Michael felt his heartbeat pick up. “I should go by there in the morning and check his accounts.”
The banker shook his head. “I can tell you right offhand that there are no accounts in the name of Farmer in our bank. My father and I both take pride in knowing our customers. Stop by if you like, but it’s not there.”
“So, if not in the bank, where would it be?”
The man leaned in close and spoke in a low tone. “There’s an old story, the Legend of Gus’s Gold they call it. Personally, I’ve never had time to check it out but I fully believe it’s true. There’s an old mine shaft—more of a cave, really.” He glanced around the room, making sure no one else was nearby. Now his voice was barely above a whisper. “I know someone who can take you there. Meet us at Yakutania Point, across the river from the airport, in the morning—say, eight o’clock? It’s a hike, mind you. Wear decent boots.” He downed the last of his Scotch and stood up.
Michael hardly slept that night—picturing some old prospector, maybe Joshua Farmer himself, with a sack of gold almost too heavy to carry, putting the extra into this old cave for safekeeping. He woke as the sun began to shine into his room. In the bathroom the roommate was humming, probably just to let Mike know he was there and keeping an eye on things. His gaze fell on the letters and papers he’d brought with him from Katherine’s place. It wouldn’t be smart to let that guy get his hands on such private information. He gathered everything and went into the living room. The humming didn’t stop.
The house had a detached garage. Michael had noticed it when he got there, the thought flashing through his head that something in there might be worth pawning for some extra cash, just until he found the big stash of gold. It might provide a hiding place where Mr. Nosy wouldn’t check. He wiggled the hasp on the double doors and got inside. Shelves were full of all kinds of old crap—easy place to hide something.
A flowered cardboard box caught his eye, just the right size to hold most of his stuff. He jammed his spiral notebook and two of the diaries on the shelf, then put the letters into the box and shoved it in front. No one would think anything valuable could be inside. Plus, if he ended up staying in Skagway he would clear out of here real soon and buy something fancy for himself. He closed the garage door and went back in the house, pointedly making himself a cup of coffee from his own jar as the roommate came through and left for work.
Michael went into high gear and found himself at Thespen’s designated meeting place a half-hour early, wearing boots he’d lifted from the closet of his roommate. No worry—he would have them back in place before nightfall.
Precisely at eight o’clock the Lincoln drove up. The banker and another man emerged.
“Mike, this is my son. He’ll take you from here.”
The teenaged boy had a serious look about him, not unfriendly, just intent. He showed Mike where the trailhead began and the two started walking. Away from even the minimal traffic in town, away from the airport and boats in the port and the ever-present murmur of tourist voices, Mike realized how utterly, utterly quiet it was up here.
Chapter 29
Drake led the way to the downed JetRanger, with Chuey at his side, the two of them having an intense conversation while I trailed along a few feet behind after shutting down the A-Star. There was no pathway or trail; we simply blazed our own through heavy underbrush. I finally began to catch glimpses of white—our poor disabled helicopter.
The clearing, which had appeared miniscule from the air, didn’t seem so frightening at ground level. I saw that the break in the trees was easily twice the diameter of the rotor blades and that there was an open pathway at the south end of it where Drake probably set up his approach. Still, it was a scenario that probably would have panicked me.
The cowling covers were open around the engine. Clearly, Drake had spent his time already beginning to look for the cause of the engine failure. “There’s a lot of oil,” he said. “There has to be a leak somewhere.”
With the care of a dentist probing around in a tender mouth, Chuey ran his hands over wires and lines, giving a gentle tug here and prod over there.
“You’re right, it leaked like crazy.”
He climbed down and headed back toward the A-Star for tools. Drake, meanwhile, had settled into the pilot’s seat with the satellite phone in hand. He removed the cover to its battery compartment.
“Hon, look at this,” he said.
I walked over. With a fingernail he flicked a tiny wire.
“This was tucked behind the battery so it wouldn’t be visible. It’s broken.”
“Deliberately?”
“I can’t tell for sure. I don’t want to think that.”
Chuey came back and Drake stood by to hand him tools as he worked in the engine compartment. It took him about twenty minutes to discover the problem.
“Look at this, Drake.” He tossed down a foot-long length of rubber line and Drake caught it.
“See the chafing here?” Chuey pointed to a rough spot on the otherwise smooth surface. “That’s not natural wear. There’s nothing up there this should be rubbing on. And look here.”
He pulled a tiny flashlight from his shirt pocket and shined its intense beam on the questionable area. “There’s the hole. Wouldn’t you say that’s a little too perfectly placed?”
“Someone sawed it?” Drake’s voice came out barely a whisper.
Chuey looked up at him, his dark eyes stunned. “I think so.”
“Who had access to my ship?” Drake said. “The three of us, Kerby, one of the other mechanics or pilots ...”
I knew he was running through the possibilities but they were limited. Although a lot of people came and went from the area around the helipads and the FBO, it would take someone with a knowledge of turbine engines to know how to do this.
Kerby and the other operator didn’t always get along but to sabotage an aircraft? I’d never heard of even the most bitter rivals doing that to each other. Business feuds were one thing, but this ... this was attempted murder.
I looked back at the satellite phone Drake had left lying on the seat. “Somebody wanted you out of communication. I wouldn’t be surprised if they tampered with your radio too.”
Both men’s faces were sober. A cloud blocked the sun and Drake looked up. “We better see if we can get this thing running.”
Chuey considered the oil line and nodded. “I think I’ve got something.” He headed through the woods to the A-Star again.
Drake couldn’t stand still. He paced to the tail of the JetRanger and back. “If I hadn’t been absolutely on top of this thing, there wouldn’t have been time to set her down,” he said. “If the engine had seized before I crested that peak, there would have been no safe place to land. I would’ve gone into the mountain.”
No, I would have gone into the mountain. I realized it with a sickening lurch of my stomach. I, not Drake, normally flew the JetRanger. I was the more inexperienced pilot. I usually flew a slightly longer route to gain plenty of altitude before crossing the range, so the leak would have done its damage sooner.
And I was the person asking a lot of questions around town.
Chuey came out of the woods just then, noticed my expression, patted my arm. “We’ll get her running and be back at the airport in no time.”
I looked at the sky. The clouds had become a wide swath of dark gray.
“You could take the A-Star and head back now,” Drake said, walking up
to me as soon as Chuey climbed back up to the engine with a piece of repair line.
“And leave you out here, not knowing for sure you’ll be able to start that engine. What if there’s more damage than we know about?”
I had a point and he knew it. He squeezed my hand.
“Come here. I can’t do much about the condition of your shirt but we can at least clean up your face a little.” I led him to the aircraft and found a bottle of drinking water and some tissues. A bit of careful dabbing and he began to look less scary. The cut on his temple might leave a scar, a reminder of this little misadventure.
A gust of wind traveled through the trees, making a spooky swooshing sound that started a mile away and came toward us. I looked at my watch. We’d been on the ground nearly two hours and the storm was building fast.
“Okay, Drake, ready to try starting it up?” Chuey called out.
The two of them went into action as I stood uselessly to the side. Chuey went back to the toolbox and returned with three quarts of oil. It wasn’t really enough but the engine might run long enough to get him home. I found myself holding my breath as the turbine whined to life. The rotor blades began to spin up and reassuringly held their speed.
“We have to get out of here fast,” Drake shouted over the noise.
He was right. Any number of other problems could show up. I gave him a thumbs-up to take off, then Chuey and I dashed back through the woods to the A-Star. I wanted to keep the JetRanger in sight as we both flew back to the airport. He was far from being out of danger yet.
Chuey tossed his tools into the box and checked that all the cargo compartments were tightly closed while I ran through my checklist and started the A-Star’s engine. The moment he climbed in and buckled up we were ready to go. As soon as I cleared the trees I began scanning the sky for the JetRanger. A dot in the distance was all the reassurance I got.
I kept him in sight, following his flight path and trying to ignore both the impenetrable forest below and the darkening clouds above.
“Chuey? You saw Kerby check both ships before he left this morning, didn’t you?”
“Yeah. He did pretty good preflight checks on them.”
“Look, I don’t know how this happened, but can we not say anything about it?”
“I have to write it up.”
He was right, of course. Strict rules existed for both maintenance and flight logs. An oil leak couldn’t simply be ignored. “Can you write it so the sabotage isn’t mentioned? Or at least not tell anyone else that we think it was deliberately tampered with?”
He started to say something but closed his mouth and nodded.
“At least for awhile. I need to do a little investigating.”
Ahead, I saw Drake enter the Taiya River Valley and turn to make his upwind approach into Skagway. As I followed, my legs began to feel a little shaky. I could have so easily lost Drake today. Or he could have lost me. I forced myself to concentrate on my approach and landing and to ignore the wave of uneasiness that threatened.
On the ground, I turned to Chuey. “Thanks. I have no idea what we would have done without you.”
He blushed a little and covered by unhooking his harness. “Just glad everything turned out okay.”
The understatement of the year.
I glanced up. Near the door to the FBO office stood a small crowd. They all seemed to be staring right at us.
Mina led the way toward the JetRanger, a staff photographer striding along with her. Among the gathering were a dozen or more in Search and Rescue jackets, along with some of the tour flight pilots and a couple of mechanics and fuel truck drivers from their crew. Barney and Earl stood near the building and even Ray had left his dispatch post. As soon as Drake stepped out of the JetRanger they flooded toward him.
Celebrity is not my husband’s strong suit; he prefers to do his work quietly and I’ve never seen him step forward to take the glory for the missions accomplished or all the lives he has saved over the years. His expression was cute to watch: surprise, followed by astonishment, overlaid with embarrassment as Mina began asking questions and jotting notes for what might be her front-page story of the week.
The photographer grabbed some great candid shots and the SAR folks stepped forward to introduce themselves and make sure he was all right. Ray shouted out a greeting before turning to get back to his radios. Even Earl stepped forward.
“I’ve already called Kerby to let him know that you got back safely,” he said as I approached the fringes of the group.
“Thanks to my lovely and capable wife,” Drake said, motioning me toward him, draping an arm across my shoulders.
Sure, right. Make sure I get equal treatment in the embarrassment department. But I couldn’t be upset over it. I was too busy observing faces, trying to see if there was someone watching all this who was not happy to see me.
Chapter 30
Rain pelted the helicopters parked on their pads, the full fury of the storm catching up only moments after we got inside the building. The rain lashed out for ten or fifteen minutes then settled into a steady patter. Drake thanked the SAR people for coming out and they dispersed. I was ready to head home, myself, to find comfort food, the warmth of a fire and the easy love of a warm dog to snuggle with. Unfortunately, first came the paperwork.
I pulled out my logbooks and watched as Chuey went into the hangar to write up his own report. He would have to replace the makeshift line with one that was certified and approved, and there would be entries to describe all that. I could only hope that he honored my request to keep it low key and not mention the word sabotage.
Eventually, the fact of the tampering would come out, but I didn’t want the perpetrator to know that his misdeed had been discovered. Let him think that the mechanic believed the wear on the line to be natural. He might let his guard down long enough for us to catch him.
There was one person I did plan to tell: Chief Branson. I quickly finished entering my own flight data and signaled Drake that I planned to wait in the truck. The rain had settled to somewhere between a drizzle and a mist. I sat in the passenger seat and pulled out my cell phone.
“You kids all right?” the chief asked after immediately taking my call.
I smiled. There was surely no more than a decade’s age difference between Branson and Drake, but he did convey an air of fatherliness.
“We’re fine. Luckily.” I spilled it all. “I would have been at the controls of that aircraft, Chief, any other day of the week. It was purely chance that put Drake there. I don’t know that I would have had the presence of mind or the skills to do what he did.”
“You’re saying ...?”
“That I’ve been asking a lot of questions around town recently. I must be getting close to the answers if someone wants to be rid of me this badly.”
“Any particular names come to mind?”
“Barney Connell got pretty angry with me last night at the historical society soiree. He’s around the helicopters all the time and somebody said he was pretty good with engines and mechanical things.” I pictured the usually jovial mountain man. “I’m not making an accusation. I just don’t know.”
Branson mumbled something and I got the impression he was probably taking notes. “Anyone else?”
“Kerby Allen, naturally, knows everything there is to know about the machines, the schedules and the terrain we fly over. He’s made the trip out to Cabin Three so many times, he would know exactly when the helicopter would run out of oil. It’s just that I don’t see any pilot deliberately sabotaging another’s flight. These guys can have big battles among themselves, but there’s a line they don’t cross.”
“Okay, Charlie, you’ve given me two valid suspects and then proceeded to discount them as possibilities. Are they, or aren’t they?”
“I don’t know, Chief. My head is pounding right now and I can’t think straight.”
“Okay, fair enough. You’ve been through a lot. Go home and rest up, think about it. Be sure
to call me if anything else comes to mind.”
In reality, investigations of malfeasance with aircraft fall to the jurisdiction of the FAA. The fact that Branson had asked me to call him gave some reassurance that he believed my assertion that this was somehow related to our investigation into the murder of Michael Ratcliff and possibly to the older man in the cave as well. Clearly, I had struck a nerve with someone.
Drake drove and we stopped to pick up burgers—which Tootie comp’d us. Word spread fast around here. Mina was right about the newspaper being superfluous. We took our burgers and fries home in a bag and I slipped into flannel jammies, even though it was mid-afternoon.
A plan to spend a relaxing evening at home doesn’t necessarily mean said plan will happen. Drake’s phone rang almost immediately. Kerby, who was back from Anchorage and wanted a debriefing. I shook my aching head adamantly to the idea of going back to the airport and finally Kerby agreed to come by the house.
We had just finished our food when his truck rolled up out front. He carried a bag of chocolates that he said Lillian insisted upon, and he seemed genuinely happy to see us alive and well. Drake told him about the worn oil line and, respecting my wishes, left out the discovery that it had been done purposely. On the chance that someone at the FBO was involved, I had taken the damaged line from Chuey’s toolbox and brought it home with us. It was now in a plastic bag under our mattress and we would turn it over to the authorities once we knew who to trust.
My phone rang while the men were talking and I went into the kitchen to take the call.
“Is this Charlie Parker?” asked a smoke-roughened voice. “It’s Gert Manicot. I don’t know if you remember me.”
“Yes, certainly.”
“I remembered something about the man you were asking about the other day, Michael Ratcliff. It was a lot of years ago, and I only ever knew him as Mike.” She paused, looking for words. “Well, he did come here looking for information and, oh gosh, it sounds silly now ... We—he and I—had a little fling. A couple days of fun is all it was, really. I suppose I should be embarrassed to say that I barely remember him.”
Legends Can Be Murder Page 23