I shivered, feeling the chill of the night as my adrenalin wore off. “Could I make us some tea?” I asked Ellen.
“Oh, would you? You’ll find the tea in the cupboard next to the sink. And there are some cookies in the jar on the counter.”
I left them still discussing who would want to destroy their business. I was trying to convince myself this attempted arson had nothing to do with trapping their one remaining guest in the upstairs of a flaming building. I didn’t even want to think it. I concentrated instead on assembling the tea, sugar, milk and cookies and then finding cups and a tray to transport it all to the living room.
When the police finally left, taking the evidence with them, Stan boarded up the broken windowpane in the door, set his little security monitor again and we all went back to bed.
I sat in the rocker the rest of the night, listening to all the creaks and groans the old house gave off as it settled once more into slumber. No matter how paranoid it sounded, I suspected someone thought it was time I left Fernsville. It was not an accident that the target for the fire was the front stairwell, which would block all guests from exiting the second floor—when the only guest on the second floor was me. I suspected someone targeting Stan and Ellen would have set the fire in the kitchen where rebuilding would be much more costly.
And the only reason I could come up with for someone to want to get rid of me was my outspoken belief Boyd had not killed himself. I should have kept my mouth shut.
* * * *
The next morning Ellen sat with me, drinking coffee while I breakfasted, listening to Stan repair the broken window pane. Later I decided to walk over to the garage and talk to Karl. I wanted to make sure the part for my car was coming tomorrow and get his promise I could be on the road before that day was over.
Karl was accommodating; he called the factory and verified the delivery date would be tomorrow. He said the UPS man usually made his deliveries by noon and assured me it would only take two hours to install the part in my car. Then just before I left I asked, “Karl, has anyone checked with you about when my car will be ready?”
He looked startled, then thinking he responded, “Well, the chief of police called me Saturday, he said he was just verifying why you were in town and how long you’d be here. Why, is it a problem?”
I shook my head. I was restless and spooked. I kept checking behind me to make sure no one followed me as I walked down Main Street gazing in the shop windows, carefully looking both ways before crossing the street. Before long I came to the end of the shops and I doubled back deciding I may as well stop by the police station as I had promised.
“Well, I hear you had some more excitement at Aunt Betty’s last night.” The chief ushered me into his office and sat behind his desk. “Would you like something to drink?”
When I shook my head he rifled through the papers on his desk and extracted one, he then handed it to me.
It was the transcript of his interview with me on Saturday. I read it and then dated and signed it at the bottom.
I stared at him a minute, then decided I may as well tell him what I had been thinking about last night. He listened, but I couldn’t tell what he thought.
“So, I guess what I want to know is who knows I told you Boyd didn’t kill himself? And who could find out I was the only guest still staying at Aunt Betty’s last night?”
My questions surprised him, but he didn’t immediately treat me like a nut case. I could tell he was thinking about what I said.
“Well any one here working on this case could have seen the notes after they were typed up. And,” he looked a little embarrassed, “I guess I did mention your theory to Joe when I interviewed him.”
Instant suspicion flared when I remembered Joe, the bank manager, also had a cattle ranch. Could he also have a loan in the portfolio Boyd was examining?
The chief must have seen the suspicion on my face because he shook his head emphatically, “No. No it wasn’t Joe. He’s been here for years. He’s a well-respected member of the community. And why wouldn’t I mention it to him. He’s the bank manager, who better to know if something suspicious was going on in his bank. Besides, he couldn’t have been involved as he was driving his tractor in the parade at the time the coroner says Boyd died. Everyone saw him there.”
I nodded, remembering I had seen him myself. He had been driving one of the antique tractors, a green John Deere. But something about that tractor was bothering me. Suddenly I remembered.
“I know he was in the parade, I saw him and I remember he was in that first group of tractors in front of Stan on the riding lawnmower.” I thought hard about this, “I can’t remember seeing him in the third round, but I did see him in the fourth because I noticed he was out of place. In the last pass around he was in between two of the trucks carting the Four-H kids and their animals.” I looked at the chief, “Why was he out of order? Did he miss the third round altogether?”
The chief’s face scrunched up with the effort of thinking this one out. Then he took out a piece of paper and said, “Okay, let’s write down everyone in the parade in order. Between us we can probably remember who was where.”
We worked until we were both satisfied we had identified every piece of the parade and the order they were in. Then he tapped his pencil on the name of the man driving the tractor immediately behind Joe. “I think I’ll give Rudy a call. He’s the manager of the big Ace Hardware out on the highway. He should be in today.”
I sat there, trying to keep from fidgeting in my chair. The chief was good. He got Rudy on the phone and did some ‘good ole boy’ chatting. He ribbed him a little about the parade and then said, “Say what happened to Joe in the third pass, did he get lost?”
He listened, his eyes on me. Then he laughed, and after a few more words he hung up. Now he looked thoughtful. “Well, maybe we have to give your theories some credence. Rudy said Joe told him he had too many beers and had to use the john. So he pulled to the side and told Rudy to go on without him and he’d pull in somewhere else. Rudy said there was a lot of confusion in the staging area before the last and final pass so he doesn’t remember where Joe ended up.”
We both sat there for a moment, thinking about the situation.
“There were a couple of things that were puzzling me about Boyd’s suicide, even without your crazy theories,” he admitted. “First of all we didn’t find a note and while that isn’t conclusive, it is normal to have a note. Then we only found Boyd’s fingerprints on the weapon. That means it was wiped clean before he handled it. That didn’t make sense, why would he wipe it clean?
And finally, the fingerprint boys tell me they couldn’t find one of Boyd’s prints on Joe’s desk. They couldn’t even find a partial one, maybe not good enough to use for court, but to indicate he opened the drawer to remove the pistol. There were plenty of prints on the desk—lots of Joe’s and several that belonged to others in the office. I couldn’t figure out how Boyd got the pistol without leaving a print.”
He nodded, got up and went to the door, “Lance, Bill, can you come in here please.”
When they came in he said, “I think we have a problem with the suicide on Saturday. We’re going to go over what we know and then we can all brainstorm the situation. Okay.”
It was late afternoon when I left the police station and stopped at the café close to where I stood to watch the parade. It was nearly empty that late in the day so I had no problem choosing a table by the window that had a clear view of the front of the bank. I sat there dawdling over my food when the bank closed at four o’clock, and suddenly fifteen dark-suited auditors, each carrying a heavy briefcase, assembled in front of the bank’s door and demanded admittance.
I smiled to myself. Their appearance was the result of my suggestion. I know how quickly banks will respond to any hint of wrongdoing. The chief made a call to the Security department of the bank whose branch Joe managed and now we would soon find out what was bothering Boyd about the loan records.
I slept very well that night, probably because I knew the auditors were working through the night and the police were interviewing everyone in the parade and would soon determine whether or not Joe had been in the third lap or if he had been missing long enough to kill Boyd. I wasn’t worried about another visit from the intruder as Stan had set his alarm and a police officer kept watch in the living room.
After I packed my bag I went down to breakfast to find the police officer had already left. Both Stan and Ellen came to sit with me while I had breakfast. Stan said he needed a bit more to eat as he had already spent a couple hours with his cattle. Before we finished the chief stopped by.
When Ellen and Stan would have excused themselves he shook his head. “No, you folks will want to hear this too.” He sat down on one of the chairs, and cleared his throat. “We got a call early this morning from one of the hired hands on Joe’s ranch. It seems he shot himself last night. This time we have a note, a very long rambling note but it explains it all.”
He had all of their attention.
“Apparently he had been doing some pretty creative financing of his ranch. He had been able to cover it up because it was part of the loans partially owned by the bank Boyd worked for. They didn’t regularly do a physical audit and had never actually came into the office. Boyd’s arrival was a shock. Joe didn’t have time to cover himself and it was pretty apparent Boyd didn’t like what he was seeing. Joe didn’t want to kill him, but said he knew if he didn’t, everything he had built up would go down the drain. It was him or Boyd. He figured it wasn’t likely Boyd’s bosses would be suspicious of his loans if they were distracted by the thought Boyd committed suicide. He couldn’t figure out how to leave a note so decided he wouldn’t, believing that not all suicides left notes.
“When I mentioned to him how you were so certain Boyd couldn’t have killed himself he apparently almost lost it. It was the one fly in his almost perfect scheme. He decided you had to go. But he didn’t know about Stan’s security devise. He was pretty shook up when Stan almost caught him red-handed and he said Stan hurt him, too. He didn’t dare limp for fear someone would wonder how he hurt himself. So he had a pretty miserable day Monday, then when he thought he could head for home, he looked up to find the auditors at the front door. The size of the group alone was intimidating. They had never seen such a large group at once. He knew it was all starting to unravel. He made some excuse about an appointment and headed for home, knowing the auditors would be working with his operations officer through the night. He was desperate. He couldn’t face his friends and col
leagues, so he decided to take the easy way out.”
We all sat in stunned silence.
“So, it wasn’t someone trying to put you out of business the other night, Stan.”
What he left unsaid was this attempt was to get rid of me. I felt sick to my stomach.
The chief stood up and then just before leaving he said to me in a very formal manner, “I hope the rest of your trip is uneventful and that you will enjoy your bungalow on the beach as much as you hope you will.”
But he looked so miserable for a moment I was afraid he was going to cry. “I never suspected for one minute that Joe was embezzling from his own bank,” he admitted. “I was remiss and I’m ashamed. I’m afraid I would have let him get away with murder if it hadn’t been for your suspicions. I owe you and if I can ever do something for you, just call.” He nodded and headed out the door.
I sat there, twisting the linen napkin lying on my lap. I picked it up and put it on the table noticing the shocked expressions still on Ellen and Stan’s faces while they tried to absorb this information.
“Well, I think I will be very careful where I stop for the night tonight. If the town is having a parade I’ll probably just drive on through,” I muttered.
Stan nodded, soberly, “Good idea.”
SNAKE AND SMILEY by Alexis Glynn Latner
The envelope had an old AeroShell oil fingerprint, a shiny Never-Seez lubricant smudge, and crinkles from having been shoved into Tate Aviation’s overstuffed safe. The name written on the envelope was CANA DEBORAH DAVIDSON. Meaning me. Under my name, Ed had block-lettered in blue ballpoint ink IN THE EVENT OF MY SUDDEN DEMIS. Ed is a crackerjack aircraft mechanic but not much of a speller. He was. This morning I’d received a bad-news call from the police in New Braunfels, Texas, telling me that Ed had died from apparent heart attack. I wasn’t grieving yet, just feeling glassy disbelief. A meadowlark trilled from the weedy fence line behind Tate Aviation. A small airplane took off with a soft engine roar. Those ordinary airport sounds seemed unreal to me.
Inside the envelope I found a piece of lined note paper.
LOOK REAL HARD AND YOU’LL FIND THE TRUTH ABOUT SMILEY.
Dismayed, I turned the paper over, but there were no more last words from Ed. I’d known about the envelope for a year and expected instructions about surreptitious disposition of ashes. Not this. A flamboyant pilot named Stuart “Smiley” Miles had been Ed’s naval aviator buddy and then a fellow member of the Texian Air Force. Smiley perished in a small plane crash fifteen years ago. Ed had never talked much about Smiley. Even for tough guys, some losses cut too close to the bone. After that, Ed’s involvement with the TAF had dwindled to almost nil.
This weekend, though, Ed had gone to a Texian Air Force reunion in New Braunfels. In other words, he had been among old friends and old enemies from his wilder days before I knew him. As I stared at his note, uncertainty scratched in the back of my mind, like a cat wanting to be let in the back door.
Maybe Ed hadn’t meant if I ever die suddenly, look at who was around me, and you’ll see somebody who knows I knew a secret about Smiley. Or maybe he did mean that. Ed had been a guy of few, telegraphic words. I imagined him telling me look hard with a significant arch of a bristly eyebrow. He had been a flinty, pithy old man, but he’d been something of a father figure for me. There was a lump in my throat. I wanted to follow his last wishes. I also wanted to stop the let-me-in scratching of suspicious uncertainty about why he died.
With a phone call, I found out he’d paid for a guest room in the Air Base Inn with the Tate company credit card, for which I was authorized to sign. The room was reserved until Monday morning. Today was Saturday, and New Braunfels was only an hour away by air.
Grief is not a safe state of mind for flying. But the weather forecast looked good until sundown, and my airplane was in tiptop mechanical shape, thanks to Ed Tate.
My airplane was how I got to know Ed in the first place. I showed up at his aircraft repair shop with a battered old fixer-upper Navion and high hopes of restoring it affordably by doing a lot of the work under a mechanic’s supervision. Ed decided that I looked like a woman who could turn a screwdriver. He agreed to the deal, put me to work and soon discovered that I had a knack for the business of aircraft repair. Over the next few years I went from ragtag customer to junior partner in Tate Aviation.
The restoration still wasn’t quite finished. Now the airplane would never feel Ed’s finishing touch. I explained that to the Navion, and to myself, on the westward flight to New Braunfels.
The bony limestone ridges of the Texas Hill Country frame the New Braunfels airport, a triangle of long wide runways. It’s a good airport made even better by the presence of the Air Base Inn—a big, rambling old hangar recently converted to an aviation-themed Bed and Breakfast. The Air Base Inn was the perfect place for the Texian Air Force reunion. And the TAF’s presence here was unmistakable. On the asphalt ramp in front of the Inn, I parked my airplane two tie-down spots away from the TAF’s de Havilland Mosquito.
You might expect a “Mosquito” to be a little bitty airplane. Nope. De Havilland Mosquitoes are twin-engine, World War II-era British reconnaissance bombers, and they’re rare as dragons’ teeth. I traded small talk with an airport line boy who was top-shirt-button-fastened proud of his job guarding the Mozzie.
The TAF had parked a few more of their vintage warbirds on the ramp to
o, plus several glossy homebuilt airplanes that belonged to TAF members, but the Mozzie was the TAF’s pride and joy. She gleamed with an airshow paint job—British racing green, with white and black Allied invasion stripes around the wings and rear fuselage. The artwork on her engine nacelles depicted a large and lurid mosquito. Her name was Mad Mozzie. Starting out with the mighty Royal Air Force and ending up with a rakehell little outfit like the Texian Air Force might have been an undignified career arc for the old girl, but it meant she still flew. Almost every other Mosquito in the world is a motionless museum piece.
Under the Mozzie’s cockpit ran a line of fancy painted writing. Chief Pilot: Guy Oldenshaw. The name rang a bell. Before Smiley Miles’ fatal crash, Oldenshaw had been Smiley’s younger rival for a coveted spot on the roster of TAF Mozzie pilots. Oldenshaw had benefited from Smiley’s death. He gained the fame of flying a Mosquito in airshows.
I once heard somebody say pilots would kill to fly a Mozzie.
Come to think of it, Ed Tate had been who I heard say that.
* * * *
The Air Base Inn’s co-owner materialized at the swish of my opening the door. A stylish, outgoing woman named Lauren, she was immediately sympathetic to me as Ed’s junior business partner. “The reunion is going strong,” she confided. “They didn’t miss a beat. They must be the breed of pilots who take death in stride.”
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