by Bill Alive
“I don’t know Waterbury was murdered,” Mark said. “But just before he went up, he was about to tell us sensitive information. About Fidelio Samson.”
Gwen startled, then glanced my way for confirmation. “You didn’t tell me this!” she snapped at Mark.
“I certainly planned to, Sergeant. I believe we got sidetracked with a car inspection.”
“Car inspection?” asked Chief Goff. “At a possible crime scene?”
“This car is a menace!” Gwen fumed.
Mark kept his polite gaze on the Chief. “The inspection is up to date, sir,” he said. “And I do need my car to assist with this investigation.”
Chief Goff eyed the car, then Gwen. “The sticker’s current,” he rumbled. He turned to Mark. “Proceed.”
Mark quickly summarized the salient points of all our interviews thus far, including our last talk with Waterbury, which was already feeling like it must have happened in another lifetime.
When he finished, Chief Goff frowned. “We were not aware that this Fidelio Samson may have had a prior relationship with Lindsay Mackenzie. No wonder the bastard was at her place the night before she died.”
“He was?” Mark said.
The Chief nodded. “According to a neighbor.”
Gwen bristled. “Is that privileged information, Chief?”
Chief Goff chuckled. “Quite right, Sergeant. From now on, I’m going to ask you to tell us everything you find out, Mr. Falcon. In return, we won’t tell you a damn thing. Keep us in the loop.”
“But sir!” Gwen said.
“It’s all right, Sergeant,” the Chief said. “I have a feeling about people.” He smiled genially. “And I’m sure I don’t need to remind you, Mr. Falcon, that the second you step outside your legal boundaries…”
Mark nodded. “Understood.”
“Excellent.” The Chief heaved a deep breath and turned away toward the airport building and the other waiting witnesses. Over his shoulder, he said, “Sergeant Jensen is taking point on this. Stay in touch with her.”
Mark twinkled. “I’ll be happy to stay in close contact.”
Gwen’s nostrils flared. She almost squirmed, like an eighth-grade girl assigned the dude she hates as her partner for the science fair project. She opened her mouth, but thought better of it. The Chief was already lumbering away.
Mark grinned at Gwen, then seemed to sober up. “Did you find that bit out about Samson’s visit from the neighbor?” he said casually. “Well done.”
Gwen glared. “It’s called police work, Mr. Falcon. We observe. Everyone.” And she stalked off.
Mark sighed. “Looking forward to working with you too,” he said quietly.
We got into Thunder. Mark seemed subdued, reflecting instead of firing up the car. Myself, I was slowly realizing that we’d somehow actually gotten onto the Force’s good side. “I don’t believe it!” I said. “You conned the Chief!”
“I didn’t con him,” Mark said. “I just got a strong sense he’s a frugal guy. Plus, the department’s had some recent budget cuts. Maybe Hannigan-Quinn’s tirades got some traction.”
“But you lied! You said you had prior experience!”
“You don’t know everything, Pete.”
I was going to press this, but then sirens wailed close, as an ambulance rushed past on the road toward the crash site. I got that sick feeling again … how did I keep forgetting that two people had just died?
“You really think someone killed Waterbury to keep him from talking?” I said, scared.
“Only one way to find out,” he said. He fired up Thunder and pulled out. “Waterbury’s funeral.”
“The funeral!” I shouted over the roar. “But Gwen’ll be there!”
He eyed me.
“We don’t have to antagonize her!” I shouted.
“At the last funeral, I got a straight-up confession-level vibe of murderous hate. This time, all I have to do is shield, and I might zero in for an identification without passing out.”
“Whoa, hold up!” I shouted. “You’re admitting that shielding works?”
He frowned.
Just then, his phone beeped. With blithe hypocrisy, he kept zooming around the roller coaster country road while he fished his phone out and read the text.
“Crap!” he said. “Looks like a client has my next few days planned out.”
“Cancel it!” I shouted.
“Can’t. Unless you want to take over the mortgage. Damn it. I promise you, a half hour before this funeral, they’ll pop up on chat with some Extremely Important Conversation That Must Commence This Very Second. Sometimes I think they’re the empaths.”
“Can’t you just say you have a prior commitment?”
“Not this time. Looks like you might have to handle this funeral.”
“Me? By myself?”
“Sure. Look for details. Do your thing.”
“But … by myself?”
“You can always take your girlfriend.”
“She’s not my girlfriend! Why do you always say that? She’s my best friend, or one of them, and anyway she’s super Christian.”
“Whatever. She sparks more sexual tension than a celibate nymph.”
“Ceci? What the hell are you talking about?”
He eyed me carefully. “Forget it. And quit worrying, I’ll probably make it.”
“But—”
“And if not, hey, you can always practice being a grownup. Petey.”
Chapter 24
Of course Mark couldn’t make it to the funeral.
Neither could I, actually. My co-worker Raindance was using her vacation days to go to some hands-on Permaculture course in Tennessee on how to build houses out of straw bales and mud. I guess “straw bale houses” are cheaper than normal houses, more natural, and totally illegal. Which, for Raindance, is three for three.
Raindance was born “Patty Reynolds,” by the way. Honestly, she still looks more like a Patty, even with her gray dreadlocks. Anyway, Vivian insisted that I come in during the days she’d be gone. No funeral for me.
But the wake was in the evening. So that Tuesday night, in a cold drizzle that was unusually chilly for September, I found myself walking into a funeral parlor which probably held a murderer.
I was accompanied by (and driven over by) Ceci, awesome as she is, instead of the empath who could vibe the killer.
Lately, my life had gotten kind of strange.
As with every funeral parlor I’ve ever seen, the building itself felt carefully preserved, mummified in a trans-dimensional time bubble that would eddy forever somewhere near 1962. As we crossed the dingy red lobby carpet, I muttered, “I can’t even remember the last funeral I went to before Lindsay’s, and now I’m at a wake.”
Ceci sighed, and said, “You’re the one who’s poking around a possible murder.”
She didn’t usually wear makeup, and now the mascara accentuated her snark. She’d gotten dressed up too, in a snug, knee-length black dress that looked classy but uncomfortable. Whenever Ceci dresses up, she moves and acts like an awkward but aggressive mom at a parent-teacher conference that’s turned hostile.
“This isn’t just any murder,” I said. “We talked to this guy. And now he’s dead.”
“People die,” she said quietly.
Oh right, I thought, she’s a nurse. I was going to ask whether she ever got used to it, but just then, we turned into the room for Waterbury.
The room was packed.
Clusters of warm conversations were murmuring everywhere. There were plenty of older men who had to be fellow pilots or military buddies, but men and women of all ages also filled the room, eagerly chatting about their old teacher. An easel showed a huge collage of photo after photo of Waterbury surrounded by grinning students. The closed casket swarmed with flowers.
To my surprise, my eyes suddenly burned with the threat of tears. My throat ached, and I fought to keep it down.
“Oh, Pete,” Ceci said, in a small voice. Sh
e patted my arm.
On impulse, I wrapped my arm tight around her shoulder. We don’t really hug that often, but she slipped her warm arm around my waist and hugged back.
That’s the thing about Ceci. Every so often, we really connect.
Just then, across the crowd, I saw Jivanta. A.k.a. Dr. Kistna.
Standing by the casket.
And staring right at us.
“Pete?” Ceci said. She followed my look and frowned. “Who’s that? Do you know her?”
I broke away from Ceci and hustled toward Jivanta. What the hell was she doing here? But before I could reach her, some huge old dude flapped his giant suit coat arms around her in a long hug, and as he rocked her, she said something over his shoulder about “losing Dad”.
Dad??
The next moment, Jivanta had wheeled on me and was glaring with folded arms. Between her and Gwen, my life was starting to involve a lot of pissing off beautiful women.
“Waterbury was your father?” I blurted.
“I’m sorry, have you not heard of interracial marriage?” she said coldly. “I know this is the South, but let me explain it for you—”
“It’s not that,” I said, although okay, partly it was a surprise. “Why didn’t you tell us that Lindsay was learning to fly from your dad? Did he know you were her doctor? No wonder he wouldn’t tell us the doctor’s name! But he said he was single … no wait, he did say he had a daughter. But your last name—”
“I kept my mother’s name,” she said. Her voice was flat. “They divorced when I was eight.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “But still—”
Ceci had caught up with me, and now she dug an elbow into my ribs. In her heartfelt Southern drawl, she said, “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you so much,” Jivanta said, with a tight fake smile. She patted Ceci’s hand, and then shocked me by leaning toward me for a hug.
Only our shoulders touched, but that was enough. Her warm cheek pulsed millimeters from mine, her coconut fragrance immersed me, and her whisper hissed in my ear.
“I want you and your girlfriend to get the hell out.”
“She’s not my girlfriend!” I protested.
Jivanta pulled back and frowned in surprise.
Ceci’s eyes flashed, and her smile was dangerously sweet. “I’m just his free ride,” she drawled.
Jivanta subjected her to a clinical gaze, up and down. She smirked. “I can see why you don’t charge.”
Ceci burned scarlet, but her mouth clamped shut.
“What the hell, Jivanta?” I said, genuinely angry and forgetting not to use her first name. “Pick on someone your own size!”
Ceci snapped me a furious glance (why?), then said, “Your ride’s leaving,” and stormed out.
“Ceci!” I called, but she kept marching, stabbing the carpet with high heels. I jabbed a finger at Jivanta. “We’re going to talk more about this!”
“The hell we will,” she said.
I hustled after Ceci, but she was moving fast. I didn’t catch up until we were deep in the dark parking lot. The cold drizzle was misting her hair and splotching her makeup.
“What a bitch,” she said.
“Whoa,” I said. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard Ceci say anything stronger than ‘heck’. “That was a terrible thing for her to say, Ceci, but it doesn’t mean anything. She was just trying to get us to leave.”
“It worked.”
“Besides, even if she did mean it, who cares? She’s just some random stranger.”
“Random strangers are worse.”
“Why? I don’t see what you mean.”
“Shocker!” she said. “Pete’s not seeing something!”
Now I was really confused. “I think I’m pretty observant,” I said. “Hey, look!”
Back across the parking lot at the funeral parlor, Fidelio Samson was slipping in the front door.
“Fidelio!” I said. “What’s he doing here? What if he’s the murderer, and he can’t stay away?”
Ceci turned to unlock her car. “You want to talk to him, you can take a taxi.”
“Wait, Ceci! Please! We can’t go yet!”
Ceci yipped in surprise and jolted back a step.
She never made that scared kind of noise. My stomach twisted as I scanned for why, then lurched as a huge man lumbered around the car.
Jonas Lynch. The guilty airport glare guy.
He’d swapped his stained coveralls for ancient corduroys and a wrinkled dress shirt (also stained), but the attempt at dressing up only made him look more rural. And murderous.
“Y’all can go right now,” he growled.
“What are you doing here?” I stammered. Hearing my own squeaky voice, I cleared my throat and forced myself to act like a grown dude for once. “And what were you doing in that hangar?”
“Timothy Waterbury was my boss, boy. I got nothing to say to you. You better take your little girlfriend elsewhere before someone gets hurt.”
“She’s not my—”
“Oh my gosh, Pete!” Ceci snapped. “Do you have to sound so offended?”
“Aren’t you offended?” I said, forgetting Lynch looming there with his bulging forearms. “It’s like two adults can’t be friends in this culture, everyone’s mind has to jump right into bed!”
“Oh, so that’s what a relationship is all about for you? Your own sexual gratification?”
“No! I just said the opposite—”
“You said that if two people were in a relationship—”
Lynch slammed a meaty fist into his hand. “I mean it!” he said. “Out. Now. Before you feel some serious pain.”
Even though he was gray and fat, he had a huge, powerful frame. If he’d been my age, he definitely could have kicked my ass, and even now, I wasn’t placing any bets. I had no idea what to do. I’d never been within ten miles of getting beat up … the closest was that old wooden roller coaster on a fifth-grade vacation to Ohio, that thing could seriously mess up your neck.
I froze.
But Ceci shook off her heels, planted her stocking feet square on the cold wet pavement, and crossed her arms. Her tight dress hugged her muscular thighs. “I tell you what, honey,” she said. “No one knows pain like a nurse.”
Lynch looked surprised. Then he glowered in his beard. “I doubt that.”
“I’d shake on it,” she said. She jutted out a hand.
Lynch leered and wrapped his own huge fingers around hers.
They stared at each other and gripped hard.
I watched in awe. Her head barely came up to his chest. My mind flashed to an old John Wayne movie where he and the bulky bad guy faced off the same way. Except that had been John Wayne. In a pub.
Finally Lynch cursed and yanked his hand away. “I don’t want to break a girl’s hand unless I have to,” he growled, opening and closing his fingers.
“Holy moley,” I whispered.
“But stay away from that airport,” he said. “Whoever rigged that plane … if I were you, I’d drive real careful.”
“What are you talking about?” I said.
But he booked it across the parking lot for the funeral parlor.
Ceci frowned after him, but her eyes were gleaming with excitement.
“That was amazing,” I said. “Are you good to drive?”
“Of course!” she said. “I’ve seen chemos with a stronger grip.”
But when she got into the driver’s seat and lifted the key to the ignition, her hand was shaking so hard that it took three tries to get the key in.
That scared me.
Chapter 25
When I reported Lynch’s threat to Mark, he (of course) insisted that we visit the airport as soon as possible.
Personally, I thought he was mad at being trapped with all this client work lately, and was hoping to discharge his frustration by harassing a murder suspect. This didn’t seem like the best idea.
“Shouldn’t we try
some other approach first?” I said. I was talking at his back as he typed away at Supervillain Central. “Besides doing the exact thing the local thug threatened us not to?”
“You mean the local thug whose ass Ceci officially kicked? Why don’t we take her as bodyguard?”
I sighed. “I don’t think she’s riding me anywhere for awhile. We kind of—”
He winced. “Got it. But how are you getting to work?”
“Um, I’ve sort of been using Thunder.”
“I thought you were getting your own car!”
“I will!” I said. “But I need to save up, and I haven’t been logging as many hours lately with all this detective stuff.”
“Listen, I know that car doesn’t look like much, but if anything ever happened to it—”
“I already do all the driving anyway!”
“Details, details,” he grumbled.
By Thursday, he’d cleared enough work that we could go to the airport and confront Lynch over his hints and threats. I drove.
When we walked into the lobby, Rich Hollister was standing in a power position at the central desk, leaning on both fists. His pasty cheeks quivering, he was lambasting a shorter man wearing an old-school fedora. A card stuck in the brim had big block letters that read “PRESS”.
“Crap,” Mark breathed. He yanked me back around a corner before either of them could see us. “It’s that Gazette editor, Hannigan-Quinn,” he whispered.
“Really?” I whispered. “He actually wears that hat?”
Mark gave a grim nod. “Last person we need to know we’re investigating.”
“Why not?” I whispered. “Free publicity.”
“I can’t even charge yet!” he said. “Besides, if he does some stupid puff piece on the ‘local detectives’ shaming the police, it might blow the odds of Chief Goff leaving us alone.”
“Or the murderer,” I said.
“Yeah, there’s that.”
We peeked around the corner. Hannigan-Quinn was scribbling furiously on a notepad — not ‘furiously’ as in ‘fast’, I mean it like ‘super angry’. He interrupted Hollister’s harangue with a nasal twang.
“Mr. Hollister! You’re dodging the question. What is your response to the growing chorus of allegations that your company’s airplane may have been sabotaged with the intent to murder?”
