by Anthology
And from what he’d seen of her, she was aces, and the sudden desire to protect her crashed over him like the prop wash from a squadron of Wildcats.
“So…” He cleared his throat, then gruffed-up his tone to sound more military, more professional, more detached, all the while still feeling the press of her body against his. He didn’t know a damn thing about flowers, but he would swear she smelled like honeysuckle. He cleared his throat again. “Where do you call home, Lieutenant?”
Neutral territory. It was the most often asked question between new acquaintances in a world at war. The query was benign, yet the answer cracked open the door enough to reveal a little of the soldier standing next to you—the soldier who would come to trust you to save his ass; the soldier you would have to trust to save yours. Men—and now women—hailed from all across the vast U.S. Different cities, different states, different backgrounds, all brought together, united in a common cause against a trio of vile enemies.
The lieutenant’s quick smile looked relieved, as though she was just as happy as he was to move past their encounter. “Michigan. Sir.”
Inside his head, his mind began playing the strains of the Irving Berlin song: I want to be there, I want to see there, a certain someone full of charm. That’s why I wish again that I was in Michigan…
“Down on the farm?” he finished the lyric aloud. There definitely was a certain someone full of charm from Michigan—and he was looking right at her.
The few remaining tears in her eyes sparkled with humor for a moment, then she clasped her hands in her lap and bent her head slightly. As though she were embarrassed, she murmured, “Not exactly. We live in a house near the lake shore, just a little north of Detroit. Gross Pointe Woods.”
Joe’s brows lifted. Even he knew that Gross Pointe equaled money—and not just boat loads of it, either… yacht loads.
So, Charlie Thompson was rich. Fine. Good. Great. That put her even more out of reach. There was no way a girl of her wealth and social standing and sheer class would ever be interested in a half-blind former pilot. And even if she were, her too-too correct “mater and pater” would undoubtedly block any advances.
Unexpectedly, the hairs on the back of his neck prickled and he felt his jaw clench—here was a girl who’d been handed anything she ever wanted, while he and his family had worked their asses off for everything they ever got.
Perfect. Class warfare. Maybe now he could work up enough resentment toward her to stop thinking about her.
She raised her head. “And you, Captain? If I may ask. Where are you fr—”
“Seattle,” he barked. The lieutenant jumped a little at the force of his response, but she said nothing.
God damn. Joe had never thought himself the kind of man to harbor ill feelings toward the privileged of the world, but he suddenly felt a surge of anger for this girl who—just moments ago—he had found himself hungering for. Though she’d done nothing worse than be born into the lap of luxury, it pissed him off. “That’s in Washington,” he mumbled. “The, uh, the state.”
Her lips curved and she sent him a wry look. “I know where Seattle is, Captain Caldwell. So which were you before the war—a cowboy or a lumberjack?”
He sent her his most intense glare, the one he saved for interviewing suspected murderers. “Gosh, golly, missy. That thar’s what we a-way up Northwest call a stereotype.”
Her eyes snapped. “I see I’ve hit a sore spot.” When he made no response, she continued, “And stereotyping is something you would never do, would you. Sir.”
But he had, and she knew it. Damn. This woman, this “Grosse Pointe Rich Bitch,” was really getting under his “Northwest Cowboy-Lumberjack” skin. And she knew that, too.
Long seconds ticked by as they stared across the desk into each other’s eyes. Finally, she said, “I hear that it rains a lot in Seattle.” Her eyes held a glint of humor—and a challenge. Now that they’d established the ground rules, his comeback would tell her if he was a regular guy—or just another self-important asshole.
Though Joe had met her only yesterday, in just a few short hours, Charlie Thompson had taken a position of prominence in his thoughts. For some reason, he wanted—he needed—for her to like him.
Joe shrugged and settled back into his chair. Clasping his hands over his stomach, he drawled, “Seems to me I heard something along those lines myself, but I was too busy swimming to school to check it out.” This got a snicker out of her, which he took as encouragement. “There’s a family story my mother tells.”
“Oh, goody.” She blinked innocently, like a baby bird. “Is it embarrassing?”
“You tell me. When I was a little kid—maybe three or four—my mother took my brothers and me to the park around the corner from where we lived. As we began our walk, I’m told I flung my arms over my eyes and yelled, ‘Ma! Make it go away! It’s too bright! Make it go away!!’”
Charlie giggled. “What’d she say?”
Joe smiled across the desk at her. “She said, ‘That is what’s called the sun, Joey. Mother can’t turn it off. Only God can do that. Believe it or not, in some places on the earth, people see the sun every day, but not people who live in Seattle.’”
Charlie giggled again. “You mean, you were nearly four years old and you’d never seen the sun?”
Raising his hands, palms up, he chuckled, “Welcome to Seattle, Lieutenant.”
He watched as Charlie Thompson burst into full-on laughter—a move that created deep dimples in her cheeks. The sound of her laughter, and the appearance of those dynamite dimples, went straight to his gut and he wondered what he could say or do to keep her laughing like that forever.
Soon enough, though, even as they shared the joke, they both seemed to remember why she’d come to his office in the first place. They broke eye contact, their laughter subsided, and she looked down at her hands in her lap.
“My apologies, Lieutenant,” he offered. “Somehow, we got way off track.”
She only nodded.
He took in a great breath and held it for a moment before blowing it out, after which he pushed himself to his feet. “Although I haven’t seen Lt. O’Day’s plane firsthand yet, I ordered it brought back to base. It’s in Hangar Two where the mechanic can give it the once-over.”
As Charlie stood, she said, “And Edie?”
“I spoke with Captain Gregory at o’six-hundred this morning. He’s the surgeon in charge of the infirmary. Avenger Field doesn’t have the resources to go beyond a cursory autopsy, but Gregory seemed pretty certain his findings would be conclusive.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “There’s just something not right about this whole thing.”
“Sabotage,” she asked. “As I suspected?”
He nodded. “In case that P-47 was tampered with, I have the hangar under guard. I didn’t want anyone to remove or contaminate evidence until the mechanic has finished the physical evaluation of the aircraft. I want this done by the book. Everything documented. If somebody at Avenger Field was responsible for Lt. O’Day’s death, I damn well want to know who it was.”
“Obviously, you were not a lumberjack or a cowboy.” She narrowed her gaze and seemed to assess him. “Just what is it you did in Seattle before the war, Captain?”
“For fun, I flew an American Eagle A-101. To support my lofty habit, I followed in my dad’s footsteps and became a homicide detective with the SPD. And”—he added with a sharp nod—“was damn good at both.” Gesturing toward the office door, he said, “With our combined flying experience, my detection skills, and your intuition, maybe together, we can solve this mystery. You’re with me, Lieutenant. Let’s go.”
Chapter 5
P: Designation for pursuit or fighter aircraft
As they headed for Hangar Two, Joe tried to keep his mind on the airfield, the training program, the dozen or so planes dotting the flight line, the weather, what to eat for lunch, what to eat for dinner, Christ, anything but the beautiful girl walking beside him. It was working
about as well as could be expected—like trying to stroll through a rose garden and forcing yourself to focus on the weeds.
To distract himself from his own thoughts, he casually gestured toward an unusual construct near the end of the air strip. “What’s that?” He watched as Charlie followed his line of sight to what looked like a circular rock wall of some kind. It was maybe ten feet in diameter and no more than three feet tall.
With a nod of acknowledgement, she said, “It’s called the Wishing Well.”
“Is it a real well?” His brows lifted. “Is there water in it?”
“That’s just its nickname.” She laughed. “It’s really more of a fountain than a well. Ceremonial rather than functional.”
He looked at her. “Like for baptisms or something?”
She gave him a guess-you-could-say-so look. “In a way. Whenever a pilot completes her first solo flight, she is escorted, that is to say dragged, kicking and screaming—and laughing—to the Wishing Well, where she gets dunked. We consider it a rite of passage.”
He smiled down at her. “Have you been so christened?”
She nodded. “I have.”
“Given its name, anybody ever use it for wishing?”
“It’s been known to happen.” She looked away, apparently fascinated by the two olive drab ambulances parked outside the medical building.
Unwilling to let it drop, he said, “You ever make a wish there, Lieutenant?”
She turned her head toward him, meeting his gaze. “They’d most certainly revoke my membership in the Silly Romantic Club if I hadn’t.”
What did you wish, Charlie? Did it come true? Was it maybe coming true right now?
Ignoring the questions he really wanted to ask her, he said, “So, Lieutenant, what do you think of Avenger Field?”
Charlie grinned shyly. “I think it’s beautiful.”
Casting another glance around the place, trying to see whatever Charlie saw that made her think this stark, sparse airfield held some kind of physical attraction, he said only, “Okay.”
Located a little over three miles outside Sweetwater, Texas, the Army Air Force base was only a couple of years old. The twenty-or-so single story white-washed clapboard buildings were functional but unadorned. The field boasted a relatively large HQ building, several single story bays—more commonly known as barracks—and three large hangars, each of which took up more than an acre of West Texas hard pan. The air field was flat, the surrounding area, flat, the weather, yeah, that was flat, too. Only the tower rose from the dust into the empty blue sky, a dizzying three stories above the two converging air strips. Instead of trees, tufts of brown grass poked up from the dirt like the thick shafts of a wire brush. No mountains or rolling hills broke up the line of the flat horizon. Snakes and spiders and rats probably thought the place held a certain charm. Well, snakes, spiders, rats—and Charlie Thompson.
Joe shook his head. “All I can say is when it comes to this base, beauty must be in the eye of the beholder.”
The lieutenant shoved her hands in her jacket pockets. “If we’re talking aesthetics, you’re right, Captain. Avenger Field is somewhat of a Plain Jane. But her beauty lies in the opportunity she’s given girls like me to fly, to truly participate in the war effort. You have no idea how important that is to us. How it makes us feel. We are serving our country in ways females have never been allowed to do before.”
She turned her smile on Joe, and he felt the heat of it all the way to his toes, especially in the general area of his—
“Avenger Field,” she continued, interrupting his less-than-gentlemanly thoughts. “To me, to those of us who have come here to train, we think it’s the grandest place on Earth.”
“Did Lt. O’Day feel that way, too?”
“That way,” she said quietly, “and more. In fact the only thing she didn’t love about the place were the critters, as she called them.”
Joe arched a brow. “She didn’t like men?”
That got a sort of snort-laugh out of her, then a bit of a giggle. “While men are a type of critter,” she joked, “she liked them well enough to accept a proposal of marriage. It was the creepy crawlies she took exception to, especially spiders, and if Texas has anything, it has spiders—and snakes and ants and, well, it seems there’s no end to poisonous vermin.”
Pausing in front of Hangar Two, Joe said, “Are you afraid of critters, too?”
She turned her sea-blue gaze on him. “Captain, I’m not afraid of anything.”
“I’ll have to remember that, Lieutenant.” They reached the hangar door, but before turning the knob, he said, “I don’t know what we’ll discover, Charlie. Are you ready for the truth, no matter what it is?”
He already knew what her answer would be, so it was no surprise when she said, in her usual matter-of-fact way, “One person’s truth may be another’s fiction, Captain. Facts simply are, and can be interpreted in any number of ways, depending on the information we have at the time.”
Intrigued, he said, “Go on, Lieutenant.”
“Well, when the experiences we’ve had in life change, our interpretation of the facts are open to reexamination and revision, too. As of this moment, all we really know is that one pilot went out on a night-training mission and did not come back. Beyond that, all the speculation in the world won’t tell us why the flight ended with that pilot’s death. We must, therefore, gather all the facts we can and then try to interpret them in the most objective way possible.”
He wanted to kiss her. And not just because he lusted after her, but because her take on the situation was exactly right. She got it. She understood the distance that must be kept between an event and the conclusions one reached based solely on evidence. She was a natural detective, and if he wasn’t careful, he was going to fall head over heels for her—and then where would he be? A half-blind, scarred, working class, former pilot in love with the beautiful belle of the ball who could have any man she wanted, and who’d be crazy to want him.
A lock of her lustrous red hair had escaped her garrison cap, and he wanted to reach out, touch it, rub the soft strands between his fingers. Instead, he simply stood there, speechless at the realization he had already developed strong feelings for this girl he barely knew. It was almost enough to make a man believe in love at first sight.
Apparently interpreting his silence as opposition, Charlie lifted her chin and looked him square in the eye—a defiant Valkyrie ready to do battle. “Whatever happened, Captain, it was not pilot error, not Edie’s fault. I’m right about this, and the evidence will prove it,” she added. “You’ll see.”
Charlie followed Captain Caldwell through the door into the hangar. Of the four planes undergoing routine maintenance, Edie’s P-47 Thunderbolt was farthest away, off by itself, like a naughty child made to stand in a corner. Despite the flurry of activity—the banging of a hammer, the snap of a spot welder, the buzz of an engine as it was being tuned—there was very little in the way of chatter among the mechanics. The mostly men and a few women seemed somber, functioning physically, but going through the motions as though their minds were a thousand miles away.
A pilot had been killed; Avenger Field’s first fatality. The fact that the pilot was a woman—a girl really, barely twenty-four—made the loss all the more difficult to comprehend. Most of the mechanics were civilians, contractors hired to maintain the aircraft, thereby eliminating the requirement they stop what they were doing and salute senior officers, so Charlie and Captain Caldwell kept their attention focused on the Thunderbolt as they walked through the hangar.
The nearer they got to the P-47, the more confused Charlie felt. She’d expected to see a crumpled twist of metal, a sheared wing, or at least scorch-marks from an engine fire, but the Thunderbolt appeared to be in pristine condition—not a scratch on her.
The mechanic—a young man about Charlie’s age with short brown hair—came walking around from the other side of the plane, wiping the grease from his hands with a rag. The name
tag on his grimy coveralls read Hank Milton. Addressing Caldwell, Hank said, “You ever fly one of these jugs, Captain?”
Caldwell put his hands on his hips and seemed a little taken aback. “Uh, jugs?”
“Yeah.” Hank tossed the rag into a bin near the wall. “It’s because of her nose. Seems the shape of the fuselage with her blunt nose reminded some wise guy of a squat-like moonshine jug.” He shrugged. “Not that I’d know anythin’ about that.”
Looking a little relieved, the captain turned to Charlie. “You know much about these so-called jugs, Lieutenant?”
She nodded. “Republic rolled them off the line in May last year, but they weren’t available until this year. Right after Thanksgiving, we received a couple of them here at Avenger so we could train our WAFS how to fly them. The cockpit’s armored and roomy. Very comfortable for the pilot. As a result, the visibility’s great.”
“You’ve flown one?”
“I have, but it was Edie who headed up the training effort. She told me that a Republic test pilot was killed in the fifth production of the P-47B when it went out of control on a dive earlier this year. The plane crashed because the fabric-covered tail surfaces ballooned and ruptured. After that, the rudder was revised, and the elevator balance systems and other problems were corrected. This one here,” she gestured to the unblemished carcass of Edie’s Thunderbolt, “is a P-47C so those problems were all supposedly corrected. I couldn’t even make a guess as to why Edie’s plane looks to be in fine shape, while she’s…”
A sick feeling deep inside her gut made her feel dizzy for a moment. Talking like this, about Edie, her sister-friend who in the blink of an eye was dead. The freshness of the loss made her feel all sick inside. In a low voice, she said, “Edie knew all there was to know about the P-47C. She loved it. I can’t believe it could have turned on her.”