Widow's Row

by Lala Corriere

  “Are you saying he flew Baird’s King Air?”

  “Baird did a lot of his own piloting when it suited him, but he liked to move the plane around a lot. My guess would be he was moving something else around, but it’s none of my business.”

  “What was his relationship with my dad?”

  “That’s what I think you should know. Came to my attention this morning. Shitty timing, I know.” He fumbled for another cigarette. “You see, it seems your dad drove out to that cabin expecting Larry Walden to be there waiting for him.”

  “Why?” An uneasy knot began rising from the pit of my stomach.

  “Larry had got himself a release on the plane, which was considered seized property in Mexico City. Must have offered some crooked official enough pesos to cut the deal. Anyway, he was supposed to fly it back here, pick up Lemay—uh, your dad, and they’d be off to South Africa.”

  “But he never showed up?”

  “Right. Now listen up, Larry Walden’s not a bad man. Just motivated by money like every other sonuva bitch in the county. I swear he didn’t have any idea what was going down. Just seems he answered to a higher bidder that told him to keep the King Air right there in Mexico City, and be on call for further instructions.”

  I’d just seen the man with my own eyes. “Then how come he was at the church this morning?”

  “Because those marching orders came in last night.”

  “To fly to Trinidad?”

  “Nope. To swing by Trinidad. Load up the plane with whatever was left in those storage units. Said he had to be at Dulles by this afternoon.”

  “Dulles? As in Washington?”

  Ari nodded, wiping his scraggly hair from the side of his unshaven face.

  I choked back my shock. “When did he leave?”

  “Before your dad’s service even began, and he’s a bastard for that. But like I said, he really ain’t all that bad.”

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Jonathan looked at me.

  “I’m thinking we better get to Dulles, fast.”

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Fire on the Tarmac

  Getting out of Trinidad, Colorado and into Washington Dulles International Airport could be a time-consuming proposition at best, unless you knew someone.

  Jonathan knew someone.

  Within the hour, a helicopter landed on the dirt road down near the gates of the ranch. Entering the chopper, I felt like we were crawling into the eye of a dust devil, but the landing site was my idea. We could have made a pad out of a grassy knoll near the stables, but I worried it would upset the animals that made the ranch their home.

  Minutes later and dusted off, we arrived at Raton Municipal Airport, in New Mexico. Once the whirling blades of the chopper slowed, the image of the coiffed white-haired bun and tailored Chanel suit appeared.

  “My dear Jonathan!” Her voice, textured with age, rasped through the night air.

  “Ms. Libby.” Jonathan reached for her already extended hand and kissed it as if it belonged to the Pope’s mother. “I didn’t expect you to be out here. At this hour, and in this cold. It’s not wise.”

  “Nonsense,” she snapped. “I haven’t been on a decent boondoggle in years.” She looked me over, from my thick strands of black hair I’d thrown into a loose ponytail, to the suede driving loafers I’d opted for in search of comfort. “I understand this has been one heck of a long day for you, Miss Lemay” She knew my name?

  “It’s so good of you to help us.”

  “Well, you know,” she announced, “I am a wealthy woman. Everything I have, and I dare say my estate is nothing if it isn’t vast, I owe to Jonathan Marasco’s shrewd investment strategies.” She offered me a wink from behind gold-rimmed glasses. She carried her well-worn face the way I wore my favorite aging leather shoes, with dignity.

  “My, you’ve found yourself a pretty one,” she said to Jonathan. “Reminds me of that actress. Connie somebody.”

  I felt my face warm to blush as I managed a thank you.

  “You have a tight schedule. We’ll get you where you’re going.” She tossed her head to one side. “This way and I’ll introduce you to your captains.”

  “Ms. Libby, we can make it on our own. Really, you’ve already done too much,” Jonathan said.

  Ignoring him, she began scooting her wobbly metal walker across the asphalt and toward the Bombardier Challenger 300. She signaled us to follow. “I’m just here to introduce you to the pilots. And you can repay me with longer visitation rights. None of this ‘dropping by for a minute’ crap you indulge me with.” She fired a feisty look back my way. “I’m his ‘Tuesdays with Morrie’, dear, only if he doesn’t start eating right I’m going to be the one to outlive him by years.”

  Once in the air, Jonathan suggested I stretch out on the leather sofa and get as much sleep as possible during the flight. Instead, knowing the incriminating evidence packages I’d overnighted were still hours from delivery, I grabbed my briefcase and dug out my phone, pulling up phone numbers for both major D.C. newspapers. I needed to bait the editors with enough tidbits to entice them to rally up their best reporters. In the cold pre-dawn hours, there was a huge story waiting for them at the airport. Meanwhile, Jonathan called the D.C. authorities, fueling them with the same information. Another few favors called in to my old law partners insured that our contacts had gobbled the lures we dangled.

  I had no clear idea of what time we arrived at Dulles, only that it was well beyond midnight and not yet sunup. Our captains taxied us toward the thirty acres of land that comprised the Piedmont Hawthorne facility adjacent to the main terminals of Dulles International. The pilot urged that we remain in our seats, rattling off the local time, temperature, and for all I knew, the state of the state. All I could hear, tucked deep inside my head, was my father’s voice, almost chanting his favorite psalm:

  The Lord’s my shepherd, I’ll not want

  He makes me down to lie

  In pastures green, He leadeth me

  In pastures green, He leadeth me

  The quiet waters by.

  There were no green pastures and no quiet waters. Only a sea of glaring red flashing lights.

  Since I was the orchestrator I guess I shouldn’t have felt disconcerted when we pulled on to the same tarmac where the private Baird King Air sat, surrounded by a dozen squad cars, not to mention the reporters and photographers. A large team of what appeared to be S.W.A.T. members contained the area. Still, I shivered. It was all of my doing.

  Jonathan and I remained buckled in our seatbelts. The pilot had turned on the cabin lights and Jonathan quickly asked him to turn them back off and pull up as close as he could beside the other plane. With unobstructed views of the scene, we watched as ground crews waved our aircraft through.

  I wiggled in the swiveling reclining chair, suddenly feeling sticky against its leather. “What do you think will happen if things don’t work out the way we hope they will down there?”

  “You mean if there are too many loose strings? Loose canons?”

  “Something like that,” I said. My sweaty palms and the lump in my throat foretold the imminent danger. More lives were at stake and by my own doing. I was doubting myself. Doubting my trust. Doubting my mistrust. My shoulders sank and I closed my eyes. I was terrified.

  “I know that you will see it through to the rightful end, no matter what it takes, and no matter what that end is.”

  “What makes you think I can?”

  He reached across and cupped my face in his warm hands. “Because you are a little bit Maya Angelou, a little bit of Norman Schwarzkopf, and a whole lot of Breecie Lemay.”

  He forced my smile as I swept my eyes back to the activity below us. I spotted a familiar face. “That’s a hotshot reporter at the Post talking to that mustached man with the bullhorn,” I said. “And I think Mr. Moustache is a lieutenant on the force. I’ve seen him in court a few times.”

  The co-pilot emerged. “Will you be exiting the a
ircraft?” I listened as the two engines shut down. I can open the door or I can just keep us shut up tight.”

  Stealing a quizzical glance from Jonathan, I shrugged. “I guess we didn’t come all this way just for our viewing pleasure.” I unfastened my seatbelt before squeezing his hand. “Just one more thing before we go.”

  “Anything.”

  “Every Tuesday, when you leave the ranch where do you go?”

  “Every Tuesday I visit Ms. Libby.”

  “Next time, do you think maybe I could come with you?”

  Before he could answer the captain turned the cabin lights back on as the co-pilot opened the doors to the Challenger.

  A uniformed police officer began ushering us down the stairs.

  Three muffled gun shots rang out I faltered back and fell into Jonathan’s arms.

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  S.W.A.T.

  The police officer had shoved me down against Jonathan, causing both of us to fall behind the limited shelter of the not-exactly-bulletproof metal stair structure. Jonathan pulled my head deep into his chest as all three of us remained crouched. I listened to the myriad of voices shouting from all sides just below us.

  “Definitely came from inside that aircraft.”

  “Circumference sweep complete. No sign of shattered glass.”

  “Doors and windows all appear intact.”

  The officer next to me urged us to crawl back inside the safety of the Challenger with the pilots. In spite of my shaking body I knew we weren’t in danger and wanted to stay put on the stairs so I could hear what was going on.

  “Confirmation on passenger count?”

  “Only probable, Sir. Two, Sir. That’s T-Tango. W-Whiskey. O-Oscar.”

  Silence, then Mr. Moustache, the man I deduced was a police lieutenant, darted up our boarding stairs. “You remember me, Ms. Lemay? I’m Nolan.”

  “Yes.”

  “We’ve been trying to coerce these guys out ever since we arrived on the scene, and that was about fifteen minutes after we got your phone call and ten seconds before they might have been cleared for take-off.”

  I nodded, still sunken in behind Jonathan’s arms.

  “Do you have any reason to believe there may be someone else aboard that plane?”

  “No. Not really.”

  “Okay. So we have Chancellor and his pilot.”

  “Wait a minute. It’s possible another. I mean, Adam is married.”

  “Her name?”

  I thought a moment, then shrugged. “Mrs. Chancellor.”

  A few moments later, several bullhorn attempts at communication. “Mrs. Chancellor?” “Is Mrs. Chancellor with you?” “Send the woman out, you miserable cowards. Now!”

  Nothing.

  On Lieutenant Nolan’s two-way, “No sign of movement. Think we may have a murder suicide here?”

  The lieutenant turned back to me. “Gonna buy it? You know the players. Give me some background here.”

  “It was a ménage-a-trois of an illustrious, if not illegal overseas partnership,” I sputtered without thought. “The owner of that plane was murdered in Mexico. The second partner is my father, and he was killed. I buried him—shit, less than twenty-four hours ago.” The sun proffered its pre-dawn graying of an inky sky and I remembered I should still be in mourning.

  “I don’t know much about the pilot on board except his name is Larry Walden, and I’ve been told he’s just piloting for the money. But the third partner, that’s Adam Chancellor. You know the name. He’s got the high stakes. I’m guessing his life would be chump change compared to what his ego could afford to lose, but I also don’t believe for a second he would kill himself.”

  The S.W.A.T. members began drawing their line closer against Baird’s plane. I could hear their commands.

  “Watch the windows. Clear as you go.”

  “Clearing as I go.”

  Nothing.

  Nolan scratched at his moustache. “Chancellor is your ex-fiancé, isn’t he?”

  “Yes. And he’s not suicidal.”

  “He has privy to the news right now, and that news is telling the country this senator-elect is a murderer. I’d say he’s desperate. And from what you just told me, he might rather die at his own hands than to live in fear for when he gets his comeuppance from whomever it is after him.”

  “Okay. I hear you.”

  “Do you think he might listen to you?”

  “You don’t believe it’s a murder suicide?” Jonathan prompted.

  “No sir, I don’t think I can afford to believe that. Two people onboard. Three shots fired. My take is that my men are being set up to think they’re dealing with a cabin full of cadavers. I agree with Ms. Lemay. He’s alive in there, still sorting out his options.”

  Several S.W.A.T. members moved under the belly of the plane.

  “Wait. I can try to talk to him,” I said.

  Lieutenant Nolan signaled to halt the team on the ground, then handed the bullhorn to me.

  My knees buckled as I grabbed on to the cold metal side of the stairs and pulled myself up. My sweaty palms stuck against it like a tongue on an icy flagpole. “Adam. It’s me, Breecie.”

  Nothing.

  “Listen to me, Adam. It’s over. You should be glad. You have a chance to own up to your past and get on with your life.”

  Nolan flashed another signal toward his men, then shifted back to me. “You keep talking, hon. If he is alive, maybe we can catch him with his guard down.”

  Jonathan nodded at me in support.

  “Adam. If your wife or Larry Walden is there onboard with you, let them go. They don’t need to be involved in this.”

  Nolan’s eyes pierced the scene. I looked up to see three or four persons gaining access to the bladder cells in both wings. A panel careened to the pavement below.

  “Listen, if you don’t act quickly, they’re going to use force to get you out.”

  “We have movement,” someone yelled.

  “Covered,” a man called back as he aimed his firearm at the cabin exit.

  The door blew open and Adam appeared, pulling Larry Walden in front of him. With no apparent struggle, Walden spiraled out of the King Air. My eyes followed as his black cowboy hat blew off like a tumbleweed in the wind. The velocity of his fall took the officer down with him.

  Two camouflaged persons swarmed the scene, pulling Walden and the officer under the plane. EMTs moved in to aid both the downed officer and Walden. Adam disappeared back inside. Thinking he had just released a hostage, I said, “That was good of you, Adam. It’s a start.”

  The medic called out. Walden was dead. Shot to death.

  “Jesus, Adam. You killed him?”

  I heard the echoes of insane chuckling from inside Baird’s plane. “Breecie. Breecie. Breecie. Don’t you get it yet, girl?” he screamed out. “He killed himself, cowardly bastard.”

  I put down the bullhorn, still clenching it. If I could hear him, he could hear me. “Not buying it, Adam. He wouldn’t have been in that much trouble. He took a job as a pilot. Nothing else.”

  “Don’t you remember? He’s Trinidad’s Jack-of-All-Trades.”

  Nolan grew impatient and tried to jerk the bullhorn out of my hands, but I hung on tight.

  “No games, Adam. What the hell are you saying?”

  “I’m saying he’s an electrician. And he was quite aware that you liked to prepare your afternoon tea in your own apartment, rather than the main kitchen. Mind you, he wasn’t a master electrician, damn it, or things might have been different.”

  I flashed back to my kitchen. Three hard jolts of volts. The electricity that pounded my back. My chest had jutted outward and upward, and the next sensation was the jarring electrical-like currents rising through me.

  Larry Walden had tried to electrocute me? And Adam knew it all the time.

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  And Then There Were None

  A series of hand signals sent Nolan’s men into position. He extracte
d the bullhorn from my now limp hands.

  He pressed the unit so close to his lips his moustache altogether disappeared. “Chancellor. It’s like this. My name is Lieutenant Nolan. I’m giving you one minute to present yourself at the door of that aircraft and we’ll get you out of this predicament. Or, my men are coming in with tear gas, followed by EMD Air Taser guns. Those, my friend, will reduce you to a painful fetal position in a matter of seconds.