Dead Firefly

by Victoria Houston

  “Yes, indeed,” said Patterson with confidence. His face changed, as if he had just thought of something important. “That’s how I made that money that you found. See, I know the area around here. I know the good lake properties and such. So I’ve been helping Gordy buy up some of those, see. That money’s my commission.” He sat back satisfied with his answer.

  Lew got up and walked over to the door. “Officer Donovan, would you come in and bring that item with you, please?” She walked back to the table and sat down.

  “What’s the last piece of property you helped Gordon Maxwell buy?” she asked.

  She had just finished asking the question when there was a knock on the door and Officer Donovan walked in.

  He was wearing nitrile gloves and carrying a long, smooth piece of bleached wood shaped like a club. “Is this what you want, Chief?”

  “Thank you,” said Lew. “Tom, we found this on the floor of your pickup behind the driver’s seat. Why don’t you tell us about it?”

  “What’s there to tell? It’s a hunk of wood I found. Thought it had an interesting shape, thought I might put it on a wall in my house someday. So?”

  “Officer Donovan,” said Lew, “would you please show Mr. Patterson what we see on one end of that driftwood?” The officer held the piece of wood out so everyone could see the dried blood on the club-like end.

  “I’ll be having this tested for DNA,” said Lew. “I know what we’ll learn. We’ll learn that the bloodstain DNA matches that of Chuck Pelletier who was bludgeoned to death a few days ago. Do you want to tell me about it?”

  Patterson said nothing. He looked like he was about to vomit.

  “Let me clarify things, Tom,” said Lew. “You can do a few months, maybe a year or two for theft of the birch logs. That will be in addition to years—possibly life—for the murder of Chuck Pelletier.

  “Now, if you choose to tell us who buys the birch logs, the DNR may cut you a deal on that little project.” She waited a beat before saying, “If you tell me that Gordon Maxwell hired you to kill Chuck Pelletier, you may have a chance to see your son graduate from college. Maybe high school, depending on how much you tell us.

  “Think it over.” She and Osborne stood up and left the room.

  They watched through the one-way glass window as Patterson dropped his face into his hands. His shoulders shook. His forehead hit the desk and his body hung there not moving.

  * * *

  Out in the hallway, Lew took a photo of the driftwood and e-mailed it to Molly.

  In less than a minute Molly called Lew’s cell. “That’s it, Chief Ferris. Where did you find it?”

  “I can’t say anything yet,” said Lew, “but we may have found the man who killed your father. I promise to tell you more in the morning. Try to get some sleep.”

  * * *

  Osborne followed Lew back into the interrogation room.

  “Why Chuck Pelletier?” she asked Patterson after he’d sat up and wiped at his face.

  “Yes, why Chuck Pelletier?” Osborne repeated Lew’s question. “He was a good, kind man. Why on earth?”

  “Gordon said he was in the way,” said Patterson, dropping the nickname he’d been using. “Gordon said that the guy was questioning the invoices Gordon sent to him—”

  “The ones you delivered?” asked Osborne.

  “I guess that’s what those were. He said if we got Pelletier out of the way, the next CFO would be easy to convince and we could do whatever we wanted. Gordon said that’s what he did in Florida and it worked. He made ten million bucks down there.”

  “He lied. He left town before they could nab him for fraud,” said Lew. “I would be surprised if he had ten dollars on him when he skipped. No, he lied about that and he lied telling you he’d make you a partner. You’ve been conned, Patterson. I think you’d better call a lawyer.”

  At the expression of despair on Tom Patterson’s face, she said, “The public defender will work for you. I’ll call her now. But know that the more honest you are, the better the law will treat you.”

  “I have a question, Tom,” said Osborne. “How the heck did you and Gordon Maxwell connect in the first place?”

  “Oh, that,” said Patterson, his shoulders slumping. “You know that house he rents? It’s got two hundred forty feet of frontage on Porcupine Lake and birch trees all along, just above the shoreline. I was cherry-picking those one day and he saw me—”

  “Caught you, don’t you mean?” asked Lew.

  “Yeah, well, he made me a deal. He wouldn’t report me if I’d run a few errands for him. Then we found we got along, y’know?”

  Right, thought Osborne, he knew an easy mark when he saw one. Easy mark? Hell, an idiot. A murderous idiot.

  Patterson’s cell phone rang again. This time Lew handed it to him. “Be careful,” is all she said.

  He answered, listened, and said, “Okay, I’ll be there.” He clicked the phone off. “That was Gordon. He likes me to drive him to the airport so that antique Corvette of his doesn’t have to be parked out in the lot and get rained on. I’m supposed to pick him up at eight thirty in the morning. Said he’s flying to Las Vegas with his girlfriend.”

  “Good,” said Lew. “I’m a good driver. I’ll take care of him. What’s the address?”

  * * *

  After charging Patterson with the murder of Chuck Pelletier and following the necessary protocols, it was nearly 5:00 a.m. Osborne drove home to get a change of clothes while Lew did the same.

  At five thirty that morning Tom Patterson’s phone rang once more. Since the phone was in need of recharging, Lew had powered it off and plugged it in, leaving it in her office while she drove home.

  Osborne and Lew both arrived back in her office shortly after six, and together, over coffee, they waited until seven when Lew could pick up the warrant for the arrest of Gordon Maxwell.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  It was six fifteen that morning when Gary Geches, the mechanic in charge of supplies in the private hangar, saw the driver of a familiar low-slung sports car park in one of the few spaces next to the hangar and get out to reach in the back for a small black overnight case. His passenger, a woman, opened her own door. She walked toward the hangar carrying a pink overnight case and a large flowered purse that resembled a laundry basket.

  The driver threw his keys at the mechanic and told him to drop them in the office of the manager of the main terminal. “Thanks, man,” he said and kept on walking.

  No tip, of course, mused the mechanic. Maxwell never tips.

  He watched as the couple climbed into the small plane, the plane motored out onto the tarmac, and the pilot finished his preparations for the flight except one: the overdue equipment inspection.

  The mechanic resisted the impulse to warn the woman. If he were about to fly with that goombah he would want to know the date of the plane’s most recent equipment inspection, especially since every other pilot and every mechanic caring for planes using that hangar knew Maxwell’s plane had not been inspected in months, knew that the plane—in housekeeping terms—was a mess.

  “None of my business,” the mechanic muttered to himself, repeating what Maxwell had said to him a couple months earlier when, assuming a simple oversight, the mechanic had pointed out the need for some basic maintenance on the single-engine plane.

  “None of your business,” Maxwell had said, adding an expletive. “You wanna work on a plane—buy your own.”

  Twenty minutes later Maxwell’s Beechcraft Bonanza was airborne, lost from sight above a low cloud bank. The mechanic went back to checking his supply cabinet.

  * * *

  It was 7:30 a.m. when Lew and Osborne pulled into the driveway of the large brick home that Maxwell was renting. Lew had picked up the warrant for the arrest of Gordon Maxwell for complicity in the murder of Mr. Charles Pelletier.

  The nearest door of the four-door attached garage was open—the space empty. Lew got out of her cruiser, followed by Osborne, and th
ey walked over to peer inside the garage. The entire garage was empty.

  “Uh-oh,” said Lew, remembering too late that she had powered down Tom Patterson’s mobile phone. Had Maxwell called to change his departure time?

  She reached Dispatch and asked Marlaine to check the cell phone, which was plugged in and sitting on the file cabinet beside her desk. “I’ll hold,” said Lew.

  Less than five minutes later, Marlaine had the disappointing news: “Hey, Tommy boy,” the man’s message had been, “calling to tell you I need that pickup at six a.m., not eight thirty. Gonna take Patti to Vegas and grab breakfast on the way.”

  There was one more message left after it had become clear to Maxwell that Patterson hadn’t gotten his message for the earlier departure. “Hey, bud, forget it. Leaving the keys in the main terminal. You know the drill—get the car. And next time? Don’t turn off your goddamn phone.”

  That was Gordon Maxwell’s final voice mail.

  * * *

  “Chief”—Dani ran into Lew’s office shortly after ten that morning—“turn on the TV!”

  Lew, who had been trying to salvage her spirits after missing Maxwell and trying to convince herself he was not leaving the country, looked up, irritated. “I don’t want to watch the news. Having a bad enough day already.”

  “Chief—turn on the television,” said Dani with more authority than she thought she owned. “A small plane crashed outside of Ladysmith in the woods and it’s still burning. A logger who heard the crash and ran over said he found a wallet of someone named Gordon Maxwell. A business card said he was with a company located here.”

  “Why didn’t you say so?” asked Lew, jumping to her feet. “Holy cow.”

  Holding her breath, Lew stood alongside Dani as they watched the breaking news update. The second it was over, she picked up her phone to call Osborne.

  “I’m driving over to the crash site right now, Doc,” said Lew. “About an hour, maybe ninety minutes, away. Want to go along?”

  “Lewellyn, we were up all night. If you don’t mind, you go. Call me when you know more but I have to get some sleep.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Bulldozers were still clearing access to the crash site when Lew arrived. Debris, blackened by fire, had been cordoned off as firefighters and paramedics picked their way through the wreckage. The local sheriff waved to Lew as she approached.

  “No survivors,” he said. “I don’t expect the FAA or NTSB to get here for a few days, so who knows what happened. Most I can say is the plane plunged into the trees here at high speed and when it hit, the fuel tank ruptured instantly. Whoever was on board is burned to a crisp. The paramedics aren’t even finding body parts. But, hell, I’m no avionics expert.”

  “Me neither,” said Lew. “But the plane did leave the Loon Lake Airport early this morning. At least we know that much.”

  “Yes, we do,” said a voice from behind Lew. She turned to see a familiar face as the man in mechanic’s overalls extended a hand. “Gary Geches, Chief Ferris,” he said, “I’m an avionics equipment mechanic and I work for the Loon Lake Airport. I saw this plane take off this morning. Hurried over the minute I heard the news. Can’t say I’m surprised.”

  “Hi, Gary, I know you,” said Lew, shaking his hand. “You went to school with my son.”

  “You remember,” said Gary. “That was a while ago.”

  “It was,” said Lew with a tinge of sadness in her voice. “Say, Gary, walk me through this, will you, please? Like what can cause a plane like this to go down?”

  “Oh, golly,” said Gary, “that’s a tough one. For starters, people don’t realize how dangerous general aviation is—on average three private planes crash daily, believe it or not. Sometimes pilot error, sometimes defective equipment. And sometimes—”

  “You said you ‘aren’t surprised’ by this one,” said Lew. “Why would you say that?”

  “Every one of us working around Maxwell’s plane for the last nine months has been expecting something like this,” said Gary.

  “When it came to basic maintenance on his plane—the guy was a slob. A joke. Y’know, he’s the type thought he was so smart that he didn’t have to follow the guidelines for keeping a single-engine aircraft in operating condition.

  “My opinion? He treated his plane like it was a car and the worst that might happen was a flat tire. And that is damn stupid. Chief, the minute you own a plane, you own risk.”

  Lew mulled that over. “Is it easy for someone to sabotage a plane like this?”

  “Well, there are ways to do that. You could drill a hole in the manifest, which would cause a carbon monoxide leak. Pilot and passengers would never know. They would just pass out and that’s that.

  “But, Chief, only another pilot or a mechanic like me would know how to do that. And I can assure you there is no one flying or working out of our hangar who would ever think of doing such a thing.”

  “But if they did?”

  “If they did, you’d never know. This aircraft”—he paused to let his eyes wander over the blackened debris, patches still smoking—“is decimated. Just destroyed. I’ll bet you anything that wallet they found is all they’ll find. Too bad, too, if only that joker had maintained it—it was a nice aircraft.”

  “Spoken like a true mechanic,” said Lew, patting Gary on the shoulder.

  “Say, Chief,” he said, turning to her with a slight smile, “I still miss Jamie. He had his demons but he was a good guy. We went all through grade school and high school together. Best buds sometimes. I was there the night he was killed. And it was an accident. I hope you know that.”

  “Thank you, Gary,” said Lew, startled to hear her son’s name. “I do know that. I’ve always known it.” She dropped her head. “I have to get back. Stay in touch, will you?”

  “Hey,” he said, “if you ever want flying lessons, give me a call.”

  “Really? You own a plane?” asked Lew.

  “I own a share in a single-engine Piper Comanche.”

  “Well maintained, I’m sure.”

  “You betcha.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Did you hear the one about the guy who went to the lumber yard and said, ‘I want to buy a two-by-four,’ ” asked Ray, lounging happily in the captain’s seat on his pontoon boat. “ ‘Sure,’ said the clerk. ‘How long do you want it?’ Guy says, ‘I want to keep it—what do you think?’ ” Ray waited for laughter but Molly and Jessie just looked confused.

  After some thought, Molly gave a weak chuckle saying, “Okay, I get it.”

  He decided to try again. “Did you hear about the chameleon who couldn’t change color?”

  Happy to play along with what sounded like a better joke, the girls shook their heads “no” in unison.

  “He had reptile dysfunction.”

  “N-o-o-o,” groaned Jessie, though Lew could tell she was delighted.

  * * *

  Early that morning Lew and Doc had had to twist Ray’s arm to get him to take his pontoon out on the lake so Peter could instruct Bruce on the long cast so popular in New Zealand.

  “I know you don’t fly-fish, Ray,” Lew had said when he resisted, saying he had plans to hit Pelican Lake for muskie. “Oh, c’mon, Ray. Peter and I need open water and Loon Lake will be ideal. The Prairie River, the Elvoy, even the Ontonagon are too narrow for long casts. You might learn something too, y’know.”

  Ray was still resisting when Lew remembered to mention that Jessie and Molly would like to come along.

  “Well, heck, why didn’t you say so before?” asked Ray, jumping to his feet and dashing over to open his refrigerator. “In that case, you better let me pack the lunch. How ’bout egg salad sandwiches and cheese curds? When do you want to go? Do I have time for a shower? Change clothes?” He talked so fast Lew knew she’d hit a nerve.

  Walking back up to Doc’s house from Ray’s trailer, she winked at Osborne. “Forget fishing for fish,” she said. “Ray’s got his priorities.” />
  * * *

  Listening to Ray’s attempts to charm her sister, Molly, who was reclining in a swimsuit on the padded bench along the front of the pontoon, kept her eyes closed as she let an easy grin creep across her features.

  Watching from where she sat on the bench across from Molly, Lew could see the young woman was more relaxed than she had been all week. Happy even.

  “So, Ray, I have one,” said Jessie, bouncing up and down in the padded seat next to Ray. “What happens when frogs park illegally?”

  Ray did his best to give her the dim eye before saying, “They get toad?”

  Jessie pouted.

  “Girl, that is one old joke,” said Ray, burnishing his comedic credentials.

  “Yeah, well, yours can be pretty bad, too, Mr. Pradt,” said Lew, interrupting their banter. “Count your blessings, Jessie, at least he’s not telling any of his off-color ones today.” She stood up on the gently rocking pontoon and got ready to move to the back of the boat. “Now, girls,” she said in a mocking tone, “keep an eye on that razzbonya while I check on our fly fishermen.”

  She smiled to herself as she walked along the deck of the pontoon. From the looks of it, Jessie had plans for Ray. Time for that young woman to have some lightness in her life, thought Lew. While it wouldn’t diminish her grief over her father’s death, it might help her get from one day to the next. Molly was a different case and Lew wasn’t sure how to handle that one.

  They had picked the perfect morning to go out on the water. Loon Lake was so calm that as the boat cruised along, Lew counted half a dozen people out on paddleboards. And for a change, kayaks outnumbered ducks.

  * * *

  It had been three days since Gordon Maxwell’s plane had crashed and burned. All that the first responders had been able to salvage from the ashes was one wallet and shards of a pink overnight case. Identifying what remained of the two passengers would be Osborne’s responsibility.