Death Takes a Honeymoon

by Deborah Donnelly

  I was still waiting for B.J.’s explanation, but she flapped open her menu. “Think you can manage a humongous hunk of beef like you used to?”

  “Why not?”

  These days I’m more of a pinot grigio and grilled ahi kind of girl, but these rough-hewn surroundings called for heartier fare. When in Rome . . . We ordered a couple of New York strips, medium rare, and two bottles of Moose Drool Ale, keep ’em coming. I was so parched that my second bottle was half gone before I really noticed. Meanwhile B.J. chattered away, as if to keep me from asking questions.

  “Some of the jumpers will probably come in here later. The whole crew that jumped at Boot Creek has been taken off the active list until after the wedding. It’s safety protocol. They don’t want anyone who’s distracted working a fire.”

  She was definitely stalling. “Do you know many of the guys?”

  “Most of them. Actually there’s a woman, too, Pari Taichert. They call her the Little Tyke. A real jockette, good buddies with Jack. Most of the crew are friends of his, so they came for the memorial service and then they’re sticking around for the wedding.” B.J. frowned. “Kind of creepy, isn’t it? I know Brian was new on the crew, but still, you’d think Tracy would postpone.”

  I noticed she blamed Tracy and not Jack. Which was probably accurate, since the bride was the star of this show in more ways than one.

  “Be fair,” I said. “Big weddings are a nightmare to reschedule, even if you’re not a celebrity like Tracy. Vendors get booked up, and there’s all the arrangements for out-of-town guests—”

  “OK, point taken. Sam’s spending a fortune on this one weekend! He spoils Tracy even more than he does Cissy. Wait’ll you see her dress—Tracy’s, I mean. Although Cissy’s outfit is pretty outrageous, too. Pink dress, pink shoes...”

  I followed B.J.’s lead, and as we sawed at our steaks I told stories about my brides and their gowns. Then I asked for a cup of decaf, but B.J. changed the order to a round of Irish coffee. Apparently, whatever she had to tell me required a lot of liquid courage. Finally, I lost patience.

  “Let’s hear it, Muffy,” I said. “What’s going on with you? Why am I here? And what exactly happened to Brian?”

  B.J. sipped from her tall glass mug and answered my last question first, using smoke-jumper jargon that she knew I’d understand. Both of us were born and raised in Idaho, and familiar with the basics of wildland firefighting. In fact, there’s a smoke-jumper base at the Boise airport, and in junior high I’d had a desperate crush on a boy whose dad worked there, the glamour of the father shedding luster on the son.

  So as B.J. sketched out the story of the Boot Creek fire, my imagination filled in the details. Just as it had on the plane this afternoon as I’d looked down into that curtain of smoke and wondered what it was like to leap into hell.

  “Brian and the Tyke were first stick...”

  A “stick” is a two-person team that jumps in quick succession from the smoke-jumpers’ plane, once the spotter by the door gives them the signal. They have to keep clear of each other, but each one watches where the other lands. In puncture-proof Kevlar suits and heavy grilled helmets, they steer their parachutes toward an agreed-upon target, the jump spot, trying to avoid the trees and rocks and snags racing up from the ground like weapons, hungry to crush or stab. Or kill.

  “The wind got fluky and Brian blew way off the spot, into a burned-over area on the other side of a ridge. What they call the black zone. The Tyke couldn’t see where he landed. The next stick was Todd Gibson and Danny Kane—”

  “Tracy’s brother?”

  “Half brother, yeah. You know him?”

  “I met him a few times at Cissy’s house.” I remembered Danny as a tall, weedy fellow, his eyes small and worried, his dark hair soft and untidy. “He seemed nice.”

  “I guess so. He’s been jumping quite a while now. Sam says it’s too dangerous, but you can tell he’s proud of him. Only son and all that. Anyway, Todd and Danny and the Tyke headed for the fire, but kept an eye out for Brian. Between the smoke and the rough ground, they got separated...”

  That was the part that amazed me. After jumping from an airplane—scary enough in itself—these people packed up their gear, picked up their chain saws and Pulaskis and meager rations, and tramped through brush and rocks and ravines into a fire. No roads, no trails, just smoking trees and erupting flames and long unrelieved hours of intense physical labor.

  I hefted a Pulaski once, on a tour of the smoke-jumper base in Boise. It’s a double-headed tool, ax and hoe both on a long wooden handle, and I knew instantly that I couldn’t swing one for fifteen minutes, let alone fifteen hours. All wildland firefighters do that kind of backbreaking labor. Smoke jumpers just use different transportation to commute to work.

  “The Tyke spotted his parachute in a grove of ponderosa pines. It had hung up in a big snag, so he’d used his letdown rope. You know, that they rappel down with?”

  I nodded. Smoke jumpers learn to lower themselves from trees with a long rope—actually it’s nylon webbing—that they tie off securely to the trunk or a limb, or else to the risers of their parachute, if they’re certain the chute will stay put.

  “Don’t tell me his line failed?”

  “No, the line was sound. But Brian tied it off wrong. He secured it to his own harness instead of a riser, and he rappelled right off the end of it. Todd found him in the ashes at the bottom of the tree. His neck was broken.”

  “Oh, my God...”

  “Some jumpers are more worried about falling from trees than they are about fires, but not Brian.” B.J. drained her mug. “One night when we...one night he was talking about the training program, and he said letdown was a piece of cake. He was so cocky all the time, like he was invincible.”

  “Wait a minute, B.J., back up. What aren’t you telling me? Were you involved with Brian?”

  “No, I wasn’t ‘involved’!” She glared at me, tears welling in her eyes. “It was just—don’t look at me like that! I should have known you wouldn’t understand!”

  The tears brimmed over and she left the table abruptly, shoving her way through the crowd toward the rest rooms. My own mug, still full, was tepid by now, and I curled my hands around the glass as I put the pieces together. “One night when we...” When we what? I thought I knew, and I wished that I didn’t.

  “Well, if it isn’t long, tall Carnegie Kincaid.”

  I looked up into the face of a man I hadn’t seen in years. I knew every feature by heart. The topaz eyes that met mine in a steady gaze, the narrow face whose high, hard cheekbones were burnished by wind and weather. The thin, mobile lips, as always, seemed to be smiling at some private joke. And the sinewy body, as always, showed a graceful economy of effort as he moved to sit across from me.

  “Hello, Jack,” I said serenely, and spilled Irish coffee all over the table.

  Chapter Six

  REDHEADS BLUSH AT THE DROP OF A HAT. OR A DRINK. BUT at least the fuss with the spill covered my reaction to Jack the Knack.

  I jumped to my feet, apologizing, while he backed away from the flood. It spread swiftly to the table edge and cascaded to the floor in long brown streamers. Laughing faces turned toward us from other tables, and then the waitress appeared to mop up the mess with practiced nonchalance. The whole thing took only moments, but by the time she departed I had my face under control. Sort of.

  “Think it’s safe to sit down?”

  The gold-brown eyes crinkled as he said it, and he slid his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. He wore his jeans snug beneath a blue denim shirt with the tails out and the cuffs rolled back. Both jeans and shirt were as pale and as sun-bleached as his tousled hair.

  “Of course,” I said, and sat myself. My cheeks were burning again, hotter than ever. Dammit, he hasn’t changed a bit.

  Jack, for his part, seemed untouched by thoughts of the past. But he was uncomfortable about something in the present. As he took B.J.’s seat, his face assumed a formal, a
lmost embarrassed expression, and he tried to say something appropriate about Brian Thiel.

  “I’m sorry about your cousin. He, uh, he was a good firefighter. Very strong. Looked like he was going to be a good jumper, too. I’m really sorry.”

  “Thanks, Jack, but you can relax. We weren’t close. In fact, I hardly knew him.”

  “All right, then, I guess I’ve done my duty.” He smiled his killer smile, one that came rarely but with devastating effect. He waved at the waitress for a beer, but after it came the smile faded. “There is one other thing, though. About Brian and B.J. It’s none of my business if they were—”

  “Old friends,” I supplied hastily. “They dated once, remember?”

  “I remember. Carnegie, I don’t know how to say this to B.J., but maybe you can.” Jack winced. “She’s been pestering people about the accident. Asking questions, calling attention to herself. People are starting to wonder about her and Brian. She’s a married woman, and this is a small town, you know?”

  “I know. I’ll... I’ll talk to her.” I made a last-ditch defense. “But surely everyone’s upset about this?”

  “Of course. All the jumpers are edgy, especially since we don’t know exactly why he fell. That’s why everyone’s drinking so hard tonight, even though Thiel wasn’t the most popular guy.” Jack’s gaze dropped to the tabletop. “Everyone’s thinking, sometimes Big Ernie just hands you a bad deal.”

  Big Ernie is the god of smoke jumpers, a twisted joke of a deity. He appears in costume at the initiation rites for new jumpers, and demands worship from the veterans in the form of prodigious beer consumption.

  And yet he isn’t quite a joke. Fate or luck or destiny, whatever tips the delicate balance between life and death, that was Big Ernie, too. A faulty chute that unfurls at the last possible second, a flaming snag that falls a mortal moment too soon. Or a letdown rope knotted wrong, dead wrong.

  Uneasy with these images, I tried to change the subject. “B.J. mentioned that she talked to you about Boot Creek. I thought you were retiring?”

  “Oh, I am. But I’ve been hanging on since this heat came up so sudden and we had all these lightning fires. I promised Tracy I wouldn’t jump after the wedding, though. And since we’re all off the active list this week, that means I’m done jumping for good.” Jack frowned at his beer bottle, then took a long pull and set it down. “Well, that was then, this is now, right? How are things with you, Carnegie? It’s been a long time since you were here.”

  Since I was in your bed that night, I added silently. My blood was rushing around my body in objectionable ways. Don’t you even remember?

  But all I said was “Yes, a long time. Things are fine. Busy.”

  “Good.” He nodded. “It’s good to be busy.”

  A pause. A long one. We looked away from each other, and then straight into each other’s eyes. Oh, I thought in sudden dismay. Oh, dear. He remembers.

  “Carnegie—”

  “Jack—”

  On the very brink of madness, I came to my senses. “Jack, I haven’t congratulated you yet! It’s wonderful about you and Tracy. Just wonderful.”

  “Thanks.” He shifted in his seat and blinked. “Thanks very much. I’m a lucky man.”

  If I held a different view on that point, I kept it to myself. But at least my blood was back where it belonged. “The wedding plans sound spectacular. I think I’ll be helping out a little, but I’ll have to talk with Cissy about that—”

  “I knew it, I knew it, she’s hitting on the groom!” B.J. was back, her tears scrubbed away and a manic note in her voice. “Girl, I can’t leave you alone for a minute, can I? What’s Tracy going to say?”

  Jack rose at her approach. Back in the Muffy summer they had charmed me to pieces, these old-fashioned courtesies from lean, laconic Jack the Knack. B.J., less easily charmed, stayed standing and aimed a playful punch at his middle.

  “You two taking up where you left off? Where is Tracy, anyway?”

  Jack was unfazed. “Still in Portland. Gets back in the morning. How you doing, B.J.?”

  “I’m fine, Jack.” She fumbled for her wallet and dropped some bills on the table. “My treat. Hey, let’s get over to the bar. They’re starting the Talent Show!”

  “Talent Show?” I had a momentary vision of karaoke, or worse, but B.J. bounded away before I could ask. As we followed her toward the boisterous crowd at the other end of the room, she sent me a look over her shoulder that said the rest of our conversation about Brian Thiel was going to come later—if it came at all.

  “The Talent Show’s a jumper thing, started last season.” Jack grabbed a couple of beers from a passing tray and handed me one. I noticed the friendly wink he gave the young waitress, and the flustered smile she offered in return. The notorious Knack was still operational. “The Tyke takes on a guy at arm wrestling, and if he loses he has to perform. Watch.”

  Everyone in the place was watching, gathered in a tight, shifting semicircle around two stools at the bar. On one of them sat a woman in her twenties, stocky and suntanned in shorts and flip-flops, with a honey-brown ponytail pulled through the back of her red baseball cap. Her turned-up nose might have been cutesy on someone else, but on that broad-boned Nordic countenance it just looked cocky, ready for a fight. Her legs were muscled like a marathoner’s, and her biceps were fit for a Nautilus ad.

  Suddenly I felt pale and stringy, like spaghetti.

  The Tyke said something to the brawny fellow on the second stool, and he nodded his blond crew-cut head. I couldn’t see his face, but he was obviously another firefighter: the back of his T-shirt read “You Can’t Send Us To Hell, We’d Put It Out!”

  Slowly, deliberately, the two of them planted their right elbows on the bar, then locked fists. The crowd bellowed.

  “Who’s the challenger?” I asked Jack.

  “Todd Gibson. We call him Odd Todd. He’s a Ned.”

  Decades ago, “Ned Newboy” was the nickname for a firstseason smoke jumper, and the “Ned” part stuck around as another word for “rookie.” A second-year jumper was a “Sned” or a “Snookie.” These guys loved nicknames.

  It occurred to me that the Tyke and Odd Todd were two of the jumpers who found Brian’s body. I looked around for the third, Danny Kane, but couldn’t spot him.

  “Tyke, Tyke, Tyke!” the crowd began chanting, with an occasional cry of “Yo, Toddy!”

  The wrestlers’ fists were trembling, but still upright. Seconds passed. The Tyke bared small, even teeth, and her opponent’s arm inched back and downward ever so slightly. I found myself gulping beer just to break the tension.

  Abruptly the Tyke grunted low in her throat, Todd’s shoulders twisted in defeat, and his knuckles smacked the surface of the bar with a sound that was drowned by a new chant and a chorus of shouts.

  “Talent Show, Talent Show, Talent Show!”

  “Sing a song, Toddy!”

  “No, dancing!”

  “Yeah, belly dancing!”

  But Todd, nursing his arm with a good-natured groan, deferred to the victor. The Tyke, it seemed, was the only one who could pronounce the loser’s penalty. She hiked herself up to sit triumphantly on the bar and raised a mug, which trembled enough to slop beer down her arm.

  “Todd Gibson,” the Tyke declared, in a low but somehow girlish voice, “your best talent is... Shut up, you bastards! Todd, your best talent is . . . one-armed push-ups! Gimme ten!”

  I couldn’t do ten push-ups if I had three arms. But Todd Gibson just beamed all over his big, square, heavy-boned face. He was young, early twenties at most, and would have made a stereotypical farm boy if he’d had jug-handle ears to go with his lantern jaw. Instead his ears were small and delicate, and just now they were glowing cherry red, though with exertion or embarrassment I couldn’t tell.

  In either case, he dropped promptly to the floor and carried out his sentence, to the roaring approval of the onlookers counting him down.

  “Seven. Come on, bro, you can do i
t!”

  “Eight. Right on, Toddy!”

  “Nine!”

  “Ten!”

  As Todd scrambled to his feet, Jack moved away from me to join his comrades in the last act of the Show: spraying beer over winner and loser alike. The Tyke shrieked and fired back at them, while Todd stood unmoving, exhausted but pleased, like a little boy who’s finally been allowed to play with the big kids. I wondered if the beer shower was the usual Talent Show finale or something special for tonight, to take the edge off everyone’s nerves.

  I leaned down to B.J. “What happens if she loses?”

  “She almost never does. She’s strong as hell and she knows just how to brace herself on the bar. But if she does lose, that’s the joke. Everybody tells the winner that the Tyke’s best talent is arm wrestling, and she already did it. Then they all drink some more.”

  I chuckled. “Work hard, play hard?”

  “You got it. Say, Muffy...” B.J. bit her lip. “Did I embarrass you with that crack about hitting on the groom? I mean, is it bothering you to see Jack after all this time?”

  “Not at all,” I said firmly. “Ancient history. But you look a little strung out. Maybe we should go home?”

  “No way!” She turned in a slow, wobbly circle to survey the crowd. “You hardly ever come to Ketchum; you’ve got to meet all these terrific people. Hey, Tyke, meet a friend of mine!”

  She grabbed the younger woman by the elbow—they were almost the same height—and tugged her away from the melee. The smoke jumper frowned at first, but shook hands like a gentleman.

  “Pari Noskin Taichert,” she announced. “And you are?”

  “Carnegie...Kincaid,” I replied, leaving out the Bernice. Her hand was wet with beer.

  “You’re Thiel’s cousin,” she said gruffly. “Sorry.”