Order of the Air Omnibus: Books 1-3

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Order of the Air Omnibus: Books 1-3 Page 58

by Melissa Scott


  "Yeah. That's where I saw it. I guess Jeff's got it back now. I dropped it in the fight."

  "I've got the necklace, darling," Stasi said.

  At that he opened his eyes and blinked at her. "You do?"

  She nodded. "The question is what to do with it."

  He frowned. "I thought he paid you to bring it to him. Why don't you just hand it over and collect the money?"

  "Because now I've seen what it does," Stasi said. "And I'm sorry but I don't think he's able to prevent it from wreaking havoc. It wants to kill and it's terribly strong. It belongs somewhere it can't harm anyone, or it needs to be destroyed."

  His frown deepened. "And that matters to you?"

  Stasi stretched out her leg and smoothed her tattered silk dress. "Darling, it may come as a complete shock to you, but I have a problem with killing innocent people. Unlike some present company."

  He didn't look away from her. "You think I'm the Axeman."

  "Are you?"

  Mitch took a deep breath. "I don't know."

  "Well," Stasi said.

  "I don't remember killing those people, but I don't remember much of anything from that year. The killings stopped about the time I left town." Mitch shook his head, leaned it back against the wall again. "I don't know."

  Stasi looked around at the pale tombs. "I could find out," she said.

  "How?"

  "The Dead probably know." Stasi smoothed her dress again. "I'm sure at least one of the Axeman's victims is still lurking around. Given a few days I could probably find one. Mind you, it's terribly difficult getting a witness description, you know how that is, darling, and it's worse when it's someone who was very upset, which the victim usually is. Ma'am, would you mind giving me a description of the man who killed you? Terribly awkward. But I could certainly ask them if they recognized you. Though it would probably be better to do something more like a police lineup. More scientific."

  He closed his eyes. "I'm not sure I want to know."

  "Ah," Stasi said.

  "What's that?" Lewis pulled up sharply and Alma stopped on his heels. Ahead of them were the gates of Lafayette Cemetery, a wrought iron arch overhead proclaiming its name.

  "What's what?" Alma asked quietly.

  "That." Something dark lay in the gutter like a dead animal. Lewis jogged across the street and investigated, then picked it up as Alma came over.

  "Mitch's hat," she said. She took it from him and turned it around in her hands. No blood, thank goodness. It smelled like smoke and booze but nothing worse.

  Lewis looked toward the cemetery gates. "If he was running and dropped it…"

  Alma let out a long breath. "I can't think of any good reason to run into a cemetery in the middle of the night." She looked at her watch, tilting her wrist to catch the light from the nearest streetlight, and suppressed the urge to swear a blue streak.

  "What time is it?" Lewis asked.

  "Quarter till five," Alma said. "We're supposed to be at the airport ready to take off in two hours and fifteen minutes."

  "Crap," Lewis said. He looked at the gates again. "We should…"

  Alma closed her eyes. "We have to find Mitch," she said. They were in first place. They were winning. Forty five minutes drive out to the airport, and nobody had slept a wink. Henry would be chewing the wallpaper. And if they missed their start time they'd lose their lead and everything they had invested in this. If they didn't win a purse they'd have to sell the Jenny when they got back to Colorado. She took a deep breath. "We don't leave our people behind."

  Lewis nodded. "Let's find him. At least in daylight we can get a cab to the airport more easily."

  "And let's hope Jerry has packed for us," Alma said. "And that he assumes we'll meet him there."

  Chapter Sixteen

  Jerry let the curtain fall, turning away from the street and the cars still parked below, no longer gray in the rising light. He’d managed to snatch a few hours’ sleep, despite waiting for a telephone call that hadn’t come; now he was busy throwing things into suitcases, ready for the moment Alma walked in the door. He reached into his pocket and checked his watch: quarter past five. Their start time was seven o’clock, first out, and they had to reach Pensacola by noon if they wanted to take part in the pylon race. Forty-five minutes to the airfield… He went back to the window again, peering out into the light. Oh, Alma, where the hell are you?

  There was a soft knock at the door, and he lurched to open it, almost falling in his haste. His shoulders sagged when he saw Henry in the hallway.

  "Anything?"

  Jerry shook his head, stepped back to let the other man in.

  "Damn it to hell," Henry said. He was keeping his voice down with an effort that made the veins on his forehead stand out. "Where are they?"

  "I wish I knew," Jerry snapped. "If I knew, don’t you think I’d tell you?" He controlled himself with an effort. They wouldn’t get anywhere shouting at each other. "I’ve got everything packed up. We can leave any time."

  "But will they go to the field?" Henry asked. He went to the window in turn, looking down on Poydras Street as though he could make them appear by sheer force of will. "if they come back here, waste time looking for you –"

  Jerry took a breath, made himself focus, shoving aside the worry and the sleeplessness and the night’s confusion the way he’d learned in the War. "She’d call," he said. "Alma knows how close it’s getting, she’d find a pay phone and call the hotel. We can leave a message with the switchboard, have the operator tell her we’ve gone on to the field."

  Henry nodded slowly. "All right. That makes sense." He crossed to the telephone, dialed the operator and left his message, then ordered a bellboy and cab with the absent ease of a man who did this regularly. Jerry latched Alma’s suitcase, gave the room a quick search to be sure he wasn’t leaving anything important.

  What the hell had Mitch been thinking, to let that thing get hold of him? But it wasn’t about thinking, he knew that from his own encounter with it. The curse was worked deep into the iron, growing in strength with each death, with every drop of blood and every tear. It tugged and it probed until it found a weakness – he’d felt it himself, and seen the look on Alma’s face when she handed it to him. And somehow, somewhere, it had found something in Mitch that it could use.

  Henry was finished with the phone, had gone back to the window, and Jerry looked at him.

  "What else do you know about the necklace?"

  "What?"

  "The necklace," Jerry said. "Anything more you can tell me about it. Maybe we can figure out some way to find it, or something."

  "I told you what I know," Henry said. "It came with a questionable history, like I said, and when I hired a guy to look into it, he came up with the story about the curse. Which he thought was pretty much someone trying to drive up the price, but I’d gotten my hands on the thing by then, and – I knew. My safe’s warded as well as locked – and they’re damn good Chubb locks, by the way – and I figured it would be safe there." He shook his head. "I guess I was wrong."

  "Yes," Jerry said, but closed his mouth over any further complaint. There was nothing more he could do here.

  "What in the merry hell?" Alma's scathing voice cut across his sleep, and Mitch woke with sunshine in his eyes.

  "Um?" he said, squinting. It was way, way too bright for his pounding head and he felt vaguely nauseated. He was leaning back against the wall inside a mausoleum in Lafayette Cemetery with the sun streaming through the open door, his arm around a disheveled looking brunette in a torn silk dress, with pretty much zero recollection of how he got there. Except that from the smell it must have involved rum. "It's not what it looks like?"

  "I am going to kill you and suck the marrow from your bones," Alma said.

  "Oh please don't," the woman said, untwining from where she'd been using his shoulder as a pillow. "It's not every day one has a lunatic fugue."

  "You?" Lewis said disbelievingly, to the brunette, and Mitch looked
down at her as well.

  "Hey," he said slowly. "I know you."

  Alma snorted. "I should hope so! What in the hell happened here? No, wait. Don't tell me. Tell me this instead. Do you have any idea what time it is?"

  Mitch blinked again. He had the feeling this was a trick question. "Um, no?"

  "Twenty minutes after seven," Alma said sharply. "Seven. AM. Our takeoff time."

  And then it all came flooding back. "Crap."

  "Lewis and I have been hunting for you for the last eleven hours," Alma snapped. "We've been hunting through the cemetery for two hours, wondering if we'd find you or your dead body. And instead we find you canoodling in a mausoleum with our little stowaway!"

  Mitch got to his feet, which was a bad idea both because it made him dizzy and because it involved dropping Stasi on her behind. "We have to get to the airport," he said.

  "No kidding!" Alma shouted. "Right this very minute we are losing our first place lead! And where the hell have you been?"

  "I can explain," Stasi said, getting to her feet. "I'm not sure he remembers where we've been."

  "I wish I didn't," Mitch said. Which he did. A lot.

  Alma pulled herself up to her full height, dirty man's shirt, black eye and all. "You can explain on the way to the airport. And I'll decide if I'm going to kill you myself."

  They took a cab out to the airfield in the dawn light. The sun wasn’t fully clear of the horizon, spreading molten between the distant trees, throwing elongated shadows. The light was brassy, tilting everything to yellow, even the still water in the ditches that ran beside the elevated road.

  The same light caught the white-washed hangars and the beacon tower, darkened the sod as though it were soaked with rain. Henry directed the cabbie to the main hangar, and they climbed out. Henry left Jerry to supervise getting the suitcases to the plane, and disappeared into the shadows.

  "Say," the cabbie said, as Jerry fumbled for a tip. "I didn’t realize y’all was Gilchrist."

  Jerry paused, forced a smile even as he found a third quarter in his pocket. "That’s right."

  The cabbie grinned. "Hell of a lady, Mrs. Segura. We been listening on the radio. I’m sorry I didn’t get to drive her."

  “Thanks,” Jerry said. He couldn’t think of anything helpful to say, so he handed over the tip.

  "Thank you, sir." The cabbie touched his cap. "Good luck."

  We’ll need it, Jerry thought. The other teams were starting to arrive, loading their planes, turning over engines. He craned his neck every time another cab pulled up, but it was only more of the contestants, or reporters.

  Where the hell were they? And what the hell was wrong with Mitch? He shook his head. He’d been in pretty bad shape himself when he’d come to Colorado Springs the first time, still recovering from the infection that cost him his lower leg. Gil had told him once that Mitch had had a bad time since the War, but at the time, Jerry had still been too weak to think much about it, to ask questions. By the time he’d been well enough to notice much more than people’s general presence, Mitch had seemed ok and the chance had passed. Had there been something he should have seen? Something he should remember? Gil had said — Gil had said that Mitch spent some time traveling before he’d come to Colorado, that it was a touchy subject, something Mitch didn’t want to talk about. No, didn’t want to remember — couldn’t remember? Surely not that. That would be… potentially very bad.

  Henry came striding back across the hangar, waving off a reporter, his coat flying open unbuttoned. “Anything?”

  Jerry bit back a profane response — did Henry think he’d smuggled the team into the Terrier? “No sign yet.”

  “Call the hotel,” Henry said. “I’m going to try to get the referees to let me start fueling without them.”

  Jerry pivoted on his artificial leg, stalked across to the pay phone by the door. Luckily, he still had a handful of change, and fed it into the machine at the operator’s instructions, then waited while she raised the hotel switchboard. The operator was polite, but unhelpful. No, Mrs. Segura hadn’t left a message for him, nor had Mr. Segura or Mr. Sorley. She rang their rooms, and Jerry listened to the bell jangle on and on without an answer until the operator came on again.

  “I’m sorry, sir. There’s no answer.”

  “Thank you,” Jerry said, and hung up. He hadn’t felt a knot of fear like this since Italy, waiting for the balloon to go up, not knowing for sure if they’d get support, or even if their spotters had found the right targets… He shook the thought away, and turned back toward the plane.

  “Dr. Ballard.”

  At least it wasn’t Carmichael, Jerry thought, and forced a smile. He kept walking, the reporter falling into step at his side.

  “Mrs. Segura and the rest of the team — it’s less than an hour till they’re due to take off. Any idea when they’ll be here?”

  Jerry shook his head.

  “Any idea where they’ve gone?”

  “Into the city,” Jerry said.

  “Any word on why?”

  “I can’t answer that,” Jerry said — it was literally true — and waved to Henry. “Any luck?”

  Henry nodded, his face grim. “I’ve got them to agree to fuel her up, and I can move her to the start line if I have to, but anything more — like flying her myself — disqualifies us.” He stopped, shoving his fists into his pockets. “No word?”

  Jerry shook his head again. “They haven’t been back to the hotel.”

  “Goddamnit!” Henry glared at the hovering reporter. “Look, buddy, you’d better clear out. There’s nothing for you here.”

  “Missing aviatrix? In a city where all kinds of weird things happen?” The reporter was careful to stay out of reach, Jerry noticed. “That’s a story, Mr. Kershaw,”

  Henry controlled himself with an effort. “I’ll grant you that,” he said, and his voice was almost his usual good-tempered baritone. “But that’s happening there, not here. We’re as much in the dark as you are, Thompson.”

  “The team owner doesn’t know?” Thompson asked. “Come on, Doc, you must know something.”

  Jerry shook his head, not trusting himself, his hand tight on the crook of his cane.

  “Nope,” Henry said. “We don’t know anything.” He paused. “You want the real story of the morning? The referees are over there right now trying to decide if they’re going to disqualify Gilchrist altogether if they miss their start time. There’s a story for you.”

  “Yeah?” Thompson cocked his head in disbelief.

  Henry nodded. “Check it out for yourself.”

  Thompson backed away, and Jerry looked at the other man. “Is that true?”

  “Oh, yes.” Henry’s fists were clenched again, and he looked more than ever like a baited bull. “Some of the sponsors feel this is showing disrespect for the event, and Alma traipsing around with her harem in tow — her husband and her boyfriend and God knows what they think you are — that doesn’t exactly make this easier.”

  “You know damn well that’s not true,” Jerry said.

  “I know.” Henry had the grace to look abashed. “I do know that. But Winchell’s been making hay with it, and some of the sponsors are a little skittish. A sexy vamp is all well and good, but they don’t want to be associated with actual immorality. Luckily Altner just thinks it makes everything more exciting, and he’s putting up most of the money.”

  “Will they be disqualified?” Jerry asked. They’d staked everything on the race, just as much as Jezek had. If they didn’t win — if they got kicked out because of Henry’s damned necklace — If they’d just managed to get rid of the thing in San Angelo the way they’d planned — He swallowed his anger, knowing it was useless here.

  “I think I’ve talked them out of it,” Henry said. “I hope I have. But, remember, whatever happens, they still have to get to Pensacola by noon.”

  None of it made much sense to Lewis, and by the time the cab tore up to the airport terminal at 8:33 Lewis didn't f
eel he was much the wiser. He had a few points — the guy who hired Stasi to steal the necklace had tried to shoot Mitch, who was apparently in a lunatic fugue and thought it was 1919, but Stasi had gotten him away and dragged him into the cemetery. Mitch might or might not be the New Orleans Axeman. Mitch mostly sat with his head back against the seat and his eyes closed, looking grim and gray and ill, interjecting little into the narrative.

  Meanwhile the clock was ticking, their lead evaporating.

  The sound of a trimotor taking off split the air as the cab pulled up, Lewis paying the driver without waiting for change. "Who is it?" he asked, not looking up from what he was doing.

  "Comanche," Alma said. "They were in seventh."

  Mitch muttered something under his breath and staggered out of the car.

  "Darling, can you walk?" Stasi asked, running around to get under his shoulder.

  "The hangar. Now," Alma said, taking off at a run through the doors.

  "This is not going to be pretty," Lewis muttered, leaving the countess to drag Mitch along. Even if Jerry had gotten the plane fueled, the preflight was going to take a few minutes. He hurried along in Alma's wake.

  She broke into a sprint across the flight line, running for the Terrier pulled up on the apron outside the hangar. At least someone had gotten it fueled and ready to go. Jerry was standing on the tarmac. With Henry. Henry must have pulled the plane out. He'd been a pilot himself, and while he couldn’t fly the race without disqualifying them he could do that much. But thunderclouds were friendlier than the look on his face.

  "Lewis, take the seat," Alma shouted back to him. "I’ll get clearance."

  "What in the name of heaven?" Henry demanded, grabbing Alma by the arm. "You people! What the hell?"

  "I can talk or I can fly," Alma snapped back. "Jerry, get Mitch onboard."

  "Where have you…?" Jerry started, and Alma cut him off with a look.

  Two of the reporters who had been photographing the Comanche plane taking off hurried over, getting between Lewis and the door with cameras. "Mr. Segura, why does your wife have a black eye?"

 

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