by Medora Sale
She drove on and on and on, through piles of red earth, construction sites, desolation, and demolition. All the horror of the urban sprawl. Not a whiff of an airport. But as she searched the horizon, she actually saw a tiny plane circling in the sky. Evidence. There was an airport. Over the next slight rise she caught another glimpse of the plane as it began its orderly plunge toward earth. One more sign, one more left turn, and she had made it, just as the little plane touched ground and began to taxi gently toward a low building ahead of her. It was, as airports go, slightly grander than the two-hangars-and-a-shack variety, but no O’Hare. And that meant she shouldn’t have any trouble finding John. She glanced at her watch again, her heart sinking. She was an hour late.
She pulled up behind a small but very elegant bus, dark blue in colour, that was identified by the logo discreetly displayed on the door as from Archway Tours. Surely John hadn’t come on a charter—of course not. She glanced at her watch; he should be standing outside, furious with impatience. She peered into the waiting room; no John. Then his plane was late, too. Very late. She grabbed a small camera and jumped out of the van. Whenever trivial events in her life threatened to turn into overblown, crisis-ridden nightmares, she had always found that examining them through a viewfinder had a wonderfully steadying effect on the nerves.
While she was working her way around the building, people were crowding into it from the landing field. She concentrated on a young woman standing in the doorway, wearing a navy blue skirt and white blouse that shrieked “tour guide” in every stitch. Rapidly switching to a wide-angle lens, Harriet caught her in a continuum that started with the bleak doorway, followed the low sweep of the building, and ended with the tail of the small plane, looking very much as if it were growing out of the terminal. She grinned cheerfully, temper restored. The guide gave her an annoyed look of the you’re-the-last-thing-I-needed-today variety and began to speak. “If you could all just identify your luggage, please, then we’ll have it put on the bus. Unless you prefer to carry it yourself. There is room inside the bus for hand luggage. Larger pieces go in the hold.”
A uniformed man was hurrying about the room, snatching up bags and putting them on a trolley, muttering, “Archway Tours, miss? Sir?” and adding to the frantic, uneasy air of the whole operation.
It occurred to her that there must be someone in that building who might know how late John’s plane was likely to be. Harriet kept well back until the man with the baggage came sweeping through with his load; the group began to straggle along after him. Impatiently, she moved forward toward the waiting room. “Excuse me,” she said firmly as she tried to push her way past a large, brown-haired man with sulky eyes who had the air of an athlete beginning to run to fat and booze. “I’m trying to get in, if you don’t mind.”
“You the person who’s taking pictures of everyone?” he said. “What goddamn business is it of yours who’s on this tour?”
“I’m not,” said Harriet crisply. “I’m taking pictures of the planes and the buildings. I could not be less interested in the people getting on that bus if I tried.”
“For God’s sake, Brett, watch where you’re going.” The sharp, annoyed voice seemed to come from nowhere. “Let the woman get inside.”
Brett muttered something that might even have been an apology and stepped aside. The disembodied voice had come from a woman who had been hidden by his bulk, brown-haired, freckled, and thin, with sharp blue eyes and a basic expression like a lost and hungry kitten.
Beyond her, Harriet could see a child in jeans, a man in uniform, and a tall, thin man wearing a beige raincoat and a tired, uncertain expression. John. Her heart lurched; she forgot her annoyance and the frustrations of the day. Harriet raced over and flung herself at him. “My God, but it’s good to see you again,” she said finally, loosening her grip. “But why were you on that plane? It looks like a charter for a tour.”
“That’s the choice. Charter or buy your own plane. Most scheduled flights land in Albuquerque. You didn’t know that, did you? But your word is my command. You said you’d meet me at Santa Fe, and Santa Fe it was. Never mind, it was an experience and you look terrific,” he murmured. “And smell—mmm. Tangerine soap, grapefruit shampoo, with an overlay of sweat, road dust, and—I know. Garlic. You have no idea how sexy it is.”
“You’re so romantic, John. And I’m sorry. It never occurred to me you’d have trouble getting a flight into here. I didn’t even check.”
A soft voice interrupted her. “Excuse me, ma’am. Could you—”
Harriet turned and saw the skinny child in jeans. She had long, lank, dirty blond hair and a long, very serious face, and looked to be about eleven. Her pale blue eyes were growing alarmingly large and moist, and her pale cheeks were beginning to blotch slightly. “What can we do for you?” asked Harriet quickly, crouching down slightly to adjust to the difference in height.
“Are you with the tour?” she asked. “Because I can’t find our luggage and I can’t find my brother either, and we have to catch the bus or we won’t be able to get home. My mother is supposed to pick us up—” She paused, unable to go on.
“No problem,” said John efficiently. “I think I saw your brother on the plane. What’s his name? And just to keep it official, how old?”
“Same age as me,” she said. “Eleven. We’re twins. I’m Caroline. He’s Stuart.”
“That’s easy. We’ll have him for you in a second.” And he was gone.
“Is he—” She looked worried.
“He’s a policeman,” said Harriet. “You couldn’t have picked a better person to ask.” She saw him emerge from the men’s room, shake his head, and start for the door that led to the landing field. Meanwhile the area had emptied of extraneous humanity. “Are you on this tour?” asked Harriet.
“Oh no,” said Caroline. “But our parents know Mr. Andreas. He owns the tour company. Mum and Dad run a hotel near Taos and Mr. Andreas is one of their biggest customers. He’s nice,” she added doubtfully. “I guess. We don’t know him very well. Stuart and me, I mean. Anyway, if there’s room on the plane from Dallas he lets us catch a ride. And then Bert, he’s the bus driver, takes us to where our road is. He drops us off at the intersection and Mum comes and picks us up. Otherwise she’d have to drive all the way to Albuquerque and back to bring us home and that isn’t very convenient. It’s already a long way from our place to the road.”
Harriet could hear the self-justifying voice that Caroline was unconsciously imitating. If she were mother to this pleasant child, she thought, she wouldn’t leave her to find her way on her own to an intersection on the highway, and there to wait to be picked up. But still—who knows what sort of difficult life the woman might lead? “Were you visiting people in Dallas?” she asked, desperately trying to keep up a conversation to hold those imminent tears back.
“Oh no,” said Caroline. “We live near Dallas with Aunt Jan. It’s because of school, you see. We go to school there and we come home a lot for the weekends. We’ve been doing it since September,” she added. “It’s sort of fun traveling. And Aunt Jan is nice.” She looked a little doubtful, as if “fun” were too strong a word to describe the situation.
“I see,” said Harriet. “Where does the bus go after it leaves your place?” she asked, looking impatiently around for John. She was running out of topics.
“To Taos. I don’t know where it goes after that.”
“That’s where we’re going tonight,” said Harriet. “And I hope it doesn’t take us as long to drive up there as it took me to get down here. I’d like to arrive before dark if I can.”
“Then follow us,” said Caroline. “Bert knows a really fast way to get onto the road north from here. Otherwise you have to—”
“Yes, I know. The long way. That’s how I came in. It sounds like a very good—”
She was interrupted by an excited burst of conversation behind her. Comi
ng in the door from the landing field was a man in a captain’s uniform, his hand resting lightly on the shoulder of a boy who could only be the twin brother of the grave Caroline. John stalked behind them carrying two suitcases.
“I found him discussing the finer points of aircraft design with the captain. He had picked up the luggage and left it just outside the door when he went to investigate.”
“Stuart, the bus is going to leave without us,” said Caroline, “if you don’t hurry up. Thank you for finding my brother, sir,” she added graciously, turned and ran, just in time to see the bus driver climb aboard, close the door, and pull away from the curb.
In the hot, dry, sand-and-rock-filled gully at the foot of a tree-covered mountain, a crow was first on the scene, investigating a heap of pallid flesh, lying face down, dressed in navy-blue socks, striped boxer shorts, and a white T-shirt. He screeched and flapped his wings. The passenger in a pickup truck traveling along the road above the gully, a young, sturdy blonde, was pointing out things of interest to distract her tired and hungry toddler. “See, sugar,” she cooed, “there’s a big, black crow down there, and he’s— Oh, Jesus. Billy,” she went on, trying to keep her voice as steady as she could. “Sweetheart, I think you’d better stop. There’s something down there ought to be seen to.”
He caught the tone under her cautious words and brought the truck screeching to a halt on the shoulder.
Her eyes narrowed in disgust as she got a closer look. “There’s nothing down there,” she cooed once more at her baby. “Look, darling, up there. It’s an airplane. Look up in the sky. A great big airplane. Not down there. The nasty old crow’s gone. There’s nothing to see. Look up in the sky.”
“Looks like someone killed him for his clothes and money,” said the state trooper, staring at the partially clad corpse. He pointed at the bloody depression in the back of the head. “Knocked him out and undressed him and just dumped him off of the road. Left him to die. Look at that—you can tell where the poor bastard tried to crawl for help. Take a look around. Maybe we’ll see what he used to hit him with and save everyone a lot of time.”
“Pretty risky,” said his partner, shaking his head. “What if he’d survived? Then he could describe the guy who hit him.”
“Probably thought he was dead. It’s not that easy to tell, sometimes. That’s why people get buried alive,” he added with relish. “Anyway, you get bashed on the head hard enough, you don’t remember much. That must’ve been what happened to you,” he snickered, poking his partner in the ribs.
“Yeah, well, thanks a hell of a lot,” said the partner, looking a bit green.
“Probably stole his car, too. A hitchhiker, I’d say. We’ll check on hitchhikers. That’s it for now,” he said loudly. “I’d like to thank you folks for stopping and contacting us. Ginny, Billy. And say hello to your ma for me, Ginny. We know how to find you and we’ll be in touch if we need to.” The young couple and their baby climbed back into their pickup. The crow watched from a distance, sitting disconsolately on a bare branch.
Chapter 3
“Damn,” said Harriet. “How could they do that? They could have waited thirty seconds for us.”
But John was no longer standing beside her. He was on the other side of the room, deep in conversation with a sour-looking individual. “And thank you so very much for all your help,” he was saying in a voice thick with sarcasm. “In that case, we might as well take the children ourselves and drop them off.”
The answer was inaudible.
“Do you know your intersection when you see it?” he asked.
“I do,” said a very white-faced Stuart. “And I’m sorry—”
“No time for apologies,” said Sanders. “Just follow that bus.”
The four of them ran as fast as they could, weighed down with one huge suitcase and two gym bags, and scrambled into the van.
The assistant airport manager watched them disappear down the road. A twinge of guilt, quickly replaced by anger, caused his forehead to tighten. He shrugged and prepared to finish up for the night.
Harriet slung the gym bags in the backseat, the children scrambled in after them, and by the time John had the suitcase in back and the door on the passenger side closed, they were moving down the long approach road from the airport. “Which way do we turn up here?” she asked.
“I’m not sure,” said Caroline nervously, “but— There it is. Its got its left-turn light on.”
“Then left it is,” said Harriet.
“I hope this isn’t out of your way,” said Caroline. The cares of the world seemed to be piled on her thin shoulders.
“That bus goes to Taos and so do we,” said Harriet. “And you said the driver knows the fastest route to Taos. So it can’t be out of our way, can it?” They had reached the intersection and Harriet squeaked in between a car and a truck to make one of the world’s fastest left turns. “Buckle your seat belts and prepare for warp drive, Lieutenant.”
The children giggled and Harriet flew down the road after the dark blue shape ahead.
“It’s not that I’m nosy,” said Harriet, once the gap between them and the bus was narrow enough to keep it in sight, “but what did you put into that suitcase? Granite blocks? Light artillery? It weighs a ton.”
“Only following orders,” said John. “Warm clothes for the mountains, light for the desert. I brought an extra pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. The rest of the space is filled up with your heavy sweater. After all, I wouldn’t want you to get cold.”
“All right—one point for you. How did you know we’d need heavy sweaters?”
“Research, my beloved Harriet. Research and inquiry. It’s the foundation of all great police work. Not your line at all.”
“Research? You?”
“Using my highly developed detecting skills, I called a travel agent and asked what the mean temperature was in Taos in early May. She told me to bring a sweater.”
“Smartass,” murmured Harriet, ducking his fake punch. He turned it into a condescending pat on the head. “It’s been pure hell not having anyone around to fight with.”
“What about your friend, Kate?”
“At the moment, she’s too neurotic to fight. Or too drunk. You can have a very solemn and serious discussion with her—usually about Kate’s world view or Kate’s problems—or you can put her to bed. Those are the choices. She’s at a rather self-absorptive point in her life right now. Did I tell you she’ll be meeting us in Taos?” added Harriet, with enormous casualness.
“You intimated something of the sort. Delicately. Sounds interesting,” he said.
“Do you mind?” Anxiety clutched at her again. “I’m sorry—I got cornered—trapped into inviting her. I can call her tonight and tell her it’s impossible for us—”
“Harriet, darling—what’s wrong with you? What in God’s name are you apologizing for?” John shifted around in his seat and studied her taut shoulders and unhappy expression. “When did you ever worry about dumping me into the middle of your neurotic—or unneurotic—friends? I’m a grown-up, Harriet. Don’t worry about me.”
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” She pushed the hair off her face with nervous fingers. “All day I’ve been suffering from a sense of impending doom. Every time I approached a curve on my way down here, I had a vision of a huge truck thundering along the road the wrong way, in my lane, coming straight at my front bumper. There are a lot of curves in that road, too.” She tried to laugh, unsuccessfully. “It kept me busy. And in between, I’d imagine that your plane had crashed into a mountain, or that I’d get to the airport so late that you’d given up and caught the first flight home.”
“You were wrong. I don’t fly on planes that crash, and I would have waited all night if I had to. I wouldn’t have been very happy about it, but I would have waited.” John gave her a reassuring squeeze of the shoulders. “Anyway, I’m relieved.
I thought you’d turned into one of those creatures who hover, wringing her hands and worrying about what I think. And then apologizing for everything that goes wrong. I don’t think I could stand that.”
“Clown.” This time the laugh was real, and the anxiety faded off into the distance. “Anyway, Kate will probably behave herself around you. She is, after all, an intelligent and rational woman. She doesn’t normally wander around like the ancient mariner, grabbing total strangers and pouring her life story into their unwilling ears. She’s simply been using me as an echo chamber,” said Harriet firmly. “A therapeutic device.”
“You don’t sound very convinced. But it doesn’t matter. Kate and I probably have more in common than you realize. We’ll sit around boozing, exchanging horror stories, and showing each other our scars. By the way, is that blue thing that’s making the left turn ahead the bus we’re following?”
Karen Johnson, the guide for the Archway Tours “Mysticism and Magic in Old New Mexico” special package, watched her clientele handing over their heavier pieces of luggage and heading toward their places. She exuded something less than the cheerful enthusiasm people on such an expensive holiday ought to be able to expect from the help. At the moment, she was staring with a perplexed frown at a note paper—clipped to the annotated passenger list. “Karen,” it said, “the kids are nonpaying passengers. Be nice, but don’t waste too much time on them. They won’t expect it.”
What kids? She had eight passengers on her list. There were eight passengers and two male employees of the tour company on the ground outside. Inside the airport, as far as she could see, a family was gathering itself together—a man, his wife, and one child. In fact, the man seemed to have been on the flight with the rest of her passengers, but was definitely not part of her group. Maybe the note was supposed to go on someone else’s passenger list.