by R. R. Irvine
“Well, think about this. If it’s a lie about Mark smoking in bed, then somebody’s covering up his death.”
“The firemen could have made a mistake, but the coroner agrees with them.”
“My B-17 wasn’t a mistake,” Nick said. “I was inside it and so was Mark Douglas. There were bodies in that plane. American flyers who deserve a decent burial at least.”
“It’s in the hands of lawyers, Ms. Scott, and out of mine,” the man said, and hung up.
“Too many people are dead,” she said to the dial tone.
Ken pried the phone from her and replaced it in its cradle.
Feeling cold again, Nick reached for her coffee mug but it no longer had the heat to warm her.
“There were eleven bodies on a plane that carried a crew of ten,” she said. “We dig it up, and suddenly Beckstead, Clark Guthrie, and Mark Douglas are dead.”
“It could be coincidence.”
“And your sniffers?”
“Maybe I imagined them.”
“Sure, and I’m not about to be blackballed either.” Nick closed her eyes and saw Mark Douglas leaning on his cane next to the Scorpion. She blinked wetly. “I say we fly to Albuquerque and confront that editor.”
“What good would that do? He wasn’t out there in the desert with you.”
“It would make me feel better, at least.”
“Think about it, Nick. They’re ready for us in Albuquerque, so I say we go at this another way. We could deliver that love letter you found. If we get enough women asking about their missing husbands, all hell could break loose.”
“Are you telling me that you found the navigator’s widow?”
Drysdale gave her a pleased smile. “Mrs. Ross McKinnon, Glendale, Arizona. A friend of mine at the National Archives owed me. I’m afraid that’s all we’re going to get, though, unless we fly to Washington and go through the records ourselves.” He made a face at the idea. “In D.C. the sniffers run in packs.”
She abandoned the tepid coffee to throw her arms around him. “Maybe one name’s all we need.”
He kissed her. His lips felt warm against hers. She was tempted to surrender, to kiss back and take him to bed. To hide under the covers from whatever was out there. When his lips parted, she broke contact to say, “I promised my father I’d call him as soon as I got the chance.”
“I’ll give you some privacy,” Ken said, and left the kitchen wearily.
Nick dialed her father’s office at the university in Albuquerque, where he’d promised to leave a number. Two calls later, she caught up with him at a mortuary in Santa Fe, where he was making arrangements for Clark Guthrie’s funeral.
“Clark would have a fit if he knew what this was costing,” Elliot said as soon as he heard her voice. “I’m not buying a sarcophagus, I told them, I’m arranging for a cremation. I don’t know if I told you, but Clark wanted his ashes scattered among the Anasazi.”
“Elliot, listen to me. Mark Douglas is dead, his story has been retracted, and I’ve been suspended for perpetrating an archaeological hoax.”
“What hoax?”
“They say the Scorpion doesn’t exist, that I made the whole thing up as a publicity stunt.”
“Calm down, Nick. We know it existed. It’s just a matter of time before everything sorts itself out. My suggestion is for you to get back to the dig and let it all blow over. If we prove my well water theory, your fame is assured. You can come work for me at the university. I’ll get you instant tenure. Now, how soon can you get back? I don’t like leaving my students on their own.”
His question hit her like a slap in the face. The Anasazi were more important to him than anything else. How many times had her mother said exactly that, that the only sure way to get Elliot’s attention was to turn yourself into an Anasazi? And each time Elaine had said it, Nick had denied it, defending her father.
She closed her eyes and for a moment felt like joining Elaine in her black well of despair. Then she smiled at the irony of the situation. Wells of one kind or another had obsessed both her parents.
“Mark Douglas is dead,” she repeated. “He can’t vouch for me.”
“What did you say?”
As calmly as possible, she explained the circumstances of Douglas’s death.
“It could have been an accident,” Elliot said when she finished.
“I don’t think so, and neither does Ken Drysdale. He’s flown in from Hawaii to help me.”
“And what do you want me to do?”
Did her father sound hurt, or was she imagining things? Whatever the case, she wanted him safe.
“Go back to your dig, Dad. I’ll feel better when you’re surrounded by students.”
“And how are you going to keep safe?”
She smiled. Maybe she was running the Anasazi a close race.
“The first thing I’m going to do is track down that B-17“s crew.”
“If I don’t hear from you soon, I’ll come looking.”
Nick smiled. That was exactly what she hoped he’d say.
“I’ll be leaving for Phoenix,” she said, “as soon as I can get a plane.”
CHAPTER 24
The official temperature at the Phoenix airport was a hundred and six, though Nick figured that had to be a Chamber of Commerce ploy. Judging by the sizzling sidewalk outside the Southwest Airlines terminal, a hundred and fifteen was more like it.
By the time she and Ken found their rental car, the soles of her feet felt scorched despite walking the last hundred yards in the shade of the parking garage. Next time, she reminded herself, stick to thick-soled Nikes, not low-heeled pumps, no matter how businesslike they looked. Her choice of a tailored cotton blouse and loose skirt, a hastily purchased Macy’s special, was lightweight enough for a California summer. But in Phoenix, she felt decidedly overdressed.
She kicked off her shoes the moment she got into the car. Ken started the engine, set the air-conditioning to maximum cold, and then began adjusting the driver’s seat and mirrors as if he were preparing to pilot a plane.
He drove while Nick navigated, getting them lost only once before picking up Highway 17 north to the suburb city of Glendale. There, on Grovers Avenue, they found the McKinnon house, one of those small side-by-side tract homes with aluminum siding masquerading as wood. The walk from the air-conditioned car to the cement-slab front porch seemed to suck the air right out of Nick’s lungs. In New Mexico, at least, there wasn’t all this concrete and asphalt to radiate the heat.
“Christ,” Ken said, “and to think I complain about the humidity in Hawaii.”
The door behind the screen opened before Nick had time to knock. The woman standing in the doorway, squinting against the noon sun, reminded Nick of her own mother: diet thin, hair perfectly coiffed, fighting old age tooth and nail.
“Mrs. Lael McKinnon?” Nick asked.
The woman nodded, unlatched the screen, and opened it far enough for Nick to catch hold. When Nick hesitated, the woman beckoned anxiously. “Come in, dear. We don’t want to cool the whole outdoors, do we?”
When Ken closed the door behind them, Nick stood blindly for a moment, waiting for her eyes to adjust. The house was cold enough to raise gooseflesh along her arms.
“Thank you for calling ahead,” Mrs. McKinnon said. “That way I could have my son with me. He doesn’t like me inviting strangers into the house unless he’s here.”
Nick nodded at the man.
“Please, sit down,” her son said, motioning toward the sofa.
As soon as she and Ken complied, Mrs. McKinnon’s son helped his mother into an occasional chair and took another for himself.
“Now,” he said, “my mother tells me that you called about an old World War Two airplane. Is that correct?”
Nick had been thinking over her answer to just such a question all the way from the airport. Considering the circumstances, particularly the fact that the plane had disappeared, she’d decided to be very cautious. She also wanted to see
the widow for herself, before springing a long-lost, and possibly painful, love letter. With that in mind, Nick had brought along a copy of her National Geographic story to help smooth the way and gain Mrs. McKinnon’s confidence.
She handed the magazine to McKinnon, who left his chair to share the article with his mother.
“As you see,” Nick began, “I’m an archaeologist who specializes in the near past. Airplanes are one of my passions, in particular B-17s like your husband flew in.”
“My husband was stationed in the Pacific,” Mrs. McKinnon responded.
Her son tapped one of the photographs in the National Geographic. “This is New Guinea, mother. That’s the Pacific.”
“I’m not senile yet,” she snapped back. “Have you found my husband’s plane, is that why you’re here?”
“We found a B-17, all right, but any kind of formal identification has yet to be made.”
“In New Guinea?”
Nick dodged the question by asking, “I take it from your name, Mrs. McKinnon, that you’ve never remarried.”
In that instant, with her eyes fully readjusted to the dim light, Nick realized that the question needn’t have been asked. The mantelpiece, the top of an upright piano, and the end tables at either arm of the sofa were covered with framed photographs of a handsome man in uniform. Some of the snapshots showed him in flying gear. He was smiling in all of them, a fair-haired young man, blue-eyed probably, and college age if Nick was any judge.
His son, she realized, had dark hair and brown eyes and looked much younger than she expected. Forty, she guessed before her train of thought was interrupted by Mrs. McKinnon saying, “I never stopped loving Ross.”
She nodded to her son, who abandoned the magazine to remove a picture frame from the wall above the mantel. He handed the frame to Nick. It contained a telegram from the War Department, informing Mrs. McKinnon that her husband was missing in action in the Pacific and presumed dead. Side by side with the telegram was a citation, the Distinguished Flying Cross, awarded to Ross McKinnon posthumously. The telegram was dated 1945, the last year of the war.
Doing arithmetic in her head, Nick figured Mrs. McKinnon had to be seventy at least, and her son a surprising fifty.
More troubling than his apparent agelessness was the War Department’s lie about where Ross McKinnon died. Unless, somehow, the B-17 in the desert outside Cibola wasn’t McKinnon’s plane at all, but only contained his diary. Fat chance.
“To answer your question,” Mrs. McKinnon went on, “a man like my husband comes along once in a lifetime. I didn’t realize that at first, a young woman on her own. I thought I needed a second husband to take care of me and my son, but after a while I gave up looking. My husband is closer to me now than ever. Maybe it’s because I’m getting older and will soon be with him.”
As if by rote, her son handed his mother one of the photographs from the mantel. Her eyes looked vacant as she stared down at it, her fingers tracing the image.
Nick shuddered. Her own mother had that same lost look in the year before she died. Finally, Elaine had refused to leave the house except to have her hair done, a weekly pilgrimage prepared for with the exactness of an overseas voyage.
“Where did you find the B-17?” McKinnon asked.
Nick was still thinking over possible answers when Ken came to her rescue. “A long way from New Guinea, that’s for sure.”
“That’s no answer.”
“Someone from the army contacted me not long after my husband’s plane went missing,” Mrs. McKinnon interrupted. “That was when they gave me his Flying Cross and told me what a hero he’d been. I’m sure he bombed Tokyo or something important like that, though the army couldn’t say then, because the war was still on.”
“Did any of the other members of his crew survive?”
She shook her head. “They all went down together in the Lady Laurie.”
“Was that the name of your husband’s plane?” Ken asked.
“There’s a picture somewhere.”
Her son plucked the photograph from among those adorning the top of the piano. The plane in the photo had one of those lush wartime pinups with Lady Laurie written in script below it.
“My husband was the navigator, you know. He would have named the plane after me if he could have, but the pilot had first say in such matters. His wife was named Laurie. A nice woman. We’ve kept in touch over the years, though the poor dear’s had a stroke now.”
“Is she able to talk?” Nick asked.
“I suppose you could try. Her name’s Laurie Dexter now. She lives in Monterey, California.” Mrs. McKinnon’s face pinched with disapproval. “She remarried, you know.”
“The plane I found wasn’t named the Lady Laurie,” Nick said.
Tears welled at the corners of Mrs. McKinnon’s eyes.
McKinnon said, “They changed it, didn’t they, Mother?”
“That’s right. Laurie wrote to me about that. She’d gotten a last letter from her husband saying they might have to rename their ship for a special mission.”
“What kind of mission?” Ken said.
The woman slowly shook her head. “The censors would never have let anything like that through during the war. But there must have been one, because they won the medal, didn’t they? Every single member of the crew.”
“Besides Laurie Dexter, have you kept in touch with any of the other wives?” Nick asked.
“I’m afraid not. The fact is, I don’t think most of those boys were married. Most of the enlisted men were right out of high school, you know.”
McKinnon moved behind his mother’s chair and rested his hands protectively on her fragile shoulders. “Why is all this important now? And why are you here if you’re not sure about the plane?”
Nick stared at his hands, then at his face. At first, she’d guessed his age at forty, but now she revised the figure down to thirty-five, tops. Which meant he couldn’t be the dead navigator’s son.
“Excuse me,” she said, making it clear she was addressing him, “your name is McKinnon, isn’t it?”
“Ross McKinnon, Junior.”
“His father would have been so proud of him.” Mrs. McKinnon said.
“You never knew him?” Nick probed.
McKinnon shook his head.
Nick took a deep breath. One thing was certain. Eccentric or not, Mrs. McKinnon still loved her dead husband. In that light, Nick didn’t have the heart to keep the letter from her.
“The B-17 I found had a scorpion painted on its nose,” Nick said. “I can’t be sure of much else at this point, but I did find some personal effects. They’d been buried for fifty years and are in very fragile condition, so I couldn’t bring the original, but I wrote out a copy. It’s a letter to you, Mrs. McKinnon.”
Nick handed the woman an envelope containing a transcription of the letter. Mrs. McKinnon handled the paper as if it were the real thing. As she read to herself, tears slid down her powdered cheeks.
Reading over his mother’s shoulder, McKinnon asked, “Is that all you found?”
“That and names of the other crew members on board your father’s plane. There’s a chance, of course, that the letter was being brought home by another crew. In that case, the Scorpion would have nothing to do with your father.”
“Is that what you believe?”
Rather than speculate, Nick shrugged.
“We’re in your debt,” Mrs. McKinnon said, rising from her chair to take Nick by the hand. “Thank you, my dear. You’ve brought my husband closer to me than ever. Now, you’ll have to excuse an old lady.” She waved away her son’s offer of help and left the room.
“May we have the real letter one day?” McKinnon asked.
“If it’s up to me, you can.”
He nodded. “I’d better see about my mother.”
“We were leaving anyway.”
“One more thing,” Drysdale said. “Would you know your father’s army serial number?”
Thank
you, Ken, Nick thought, realizing she should have asked the same question.
“It’s written on his citation, I believe. Yes, here it is.”
Nick wrote it down and thanked him again.
Outside, she and Ken stood on the curb, in the sparse shade of a listless willow, with the car’s engine running, waiting for the air-conditioning to make driving bearable.
“Why would the War Department lie?” Nick asked.
“It was wartime. Morale had to be kept up.”
“I might agree with you if the Scorpion hadn’t been stolen out from under me.”
“I didn’t say I believed it,” Ken said. “I merely offered it as a possible explanation.”
“And why pretend the crew died in the Pacific? Or hand out medals, for that matter?”
“Like the letter said, it was some kind of secret mission.”
“Are you playing devil’s advocate?”
“I’m old-fashioned. I like things to make sense.”
“What doesn’t make sense is that someone’s still trying to cover it up fifty years later. And why would P-38s shoot down one of our own planes over New Mexico? Even with that diary entry, I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen the bullet holes for myself. That plane was shot to pieces, Ken, and I want to know why.”
“Okay. You’re the airplane buff, so answer me this. What’s the range of a World War Two fighter, a P-38?”
“Maybe a thousand miles. I’d have to look it up to be sure.”
“You’re talking combat conditions, Nick. My guess is that the P-38s which hit your B-17 wouldn’t have come all that far. Which means all we have to do now is find out what fighter bases were in striking range of where you found the Scorpion.”
“You’re right. I’m still so mad I’m not thinking straight. Maybe we’ll have better luck coming at the truth that way.”
“Leave it to me,” Ken said. “Us old sergeants have friends everywhere. One of my closest is stationed at the Historical Research Center at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. It’s a nasty place in the summer, but for you . . .” He grinned sheepishly.
“I’d hug you if it weren’t so damn hot.”